I caught her around the waist, bending to kiss her forehead. “I’ll be fine. You forget, I’m most people’s worst nightmare.”
Her laugh was half-hearted. She preoccupied her nervous hands by smoothing them down my black compression shirt, tracing the hard ridges of my pecs and abdominals beneath the stretched fabric. “A beautiful nightmare.” She corrected, finally looking up at me with luminous eyes like morning sunlight on lake water. “My nightmare, okay? Don’t let anything happen to you.”
“I’m only going for the satisfaction of seeing the fucker get caught at his own game. Much like you did with Caroline, my savage little thing.”
Finally, a grin that warmed her entire face. She rocked to her tiptoes and cupped the back of my neck with one hand, tracing my scar with the thumb of her other hand. “This is the last of it, okay? No more scars, no more battles, no more heartache. I’m going to give you the happily-ever-after you deserve.”
“Happiness isn’t free, Bianca. It demands payment and I’m willing to pay whatever toll it demands in order to be with you. In order to keep you safe,” I told her and the words were harsh, but my tone was gentle because she was still young, still pure even after being exposed to the filth of Bishop’s Landing. Pure in a way I knew she’d stay pure forever.
Bianca kissed me in response, as if I was a sailor going off to sea for God only knew how long. As if she was willing to live and die spending the rest of her life in that single kiss.
My heart ached and thumped, stretching and growing and warming like a struggling bloom under the sunlight of her love.
I left after that, not turning back even when Brando called goodbye again because I didn’t want to think about what would happen if we failed in our plan. What would happen if Bryant ever got his filthy fucking hands on my sweet Belcantes.
I got into Lucian’s car, slamming the door behind me, a scowl affixed to my face that I knew wouldn’t dissipate until I returned home to Lion Court. Ezra got into the back on the other side, the only man I was taking with me because he was the best man I had in any dangerous situation.
And we were off.
“I wasn’t expecting you,” I told my eldest brother. “I don’t expect you to fight my battles for me. I’m not a kid.”
“No,” Lucian agreed. “God knows I’ve got my own shit to deal with, but if I’ve learned a goddamn thing over the last few years, it’s that family matters. So, here I am.”
I caught his eye in the rearview mirror. “I’ll be there when you need me.”
He shrugged as if he didn’t give a fuck either way, but the fact he was helping me at all spoke volumes.
“I know he deserves jail. Or worse. But it would harm the family irreparably for him to be publicly punished that way,” Lucian informed me as he raced through the icy streets, the wiper blade’s working hard to clear the windshield of thickly falling snow. They made a whomp-whomp sound that mimicked the brutal beating of my heart. “That would harm everyone. Morelli Holdings. Mom. Our sisters. So we’ll back this house arrest.”
“Not to mention the tell-all book he would probably write if we didn’t have him under our control. We’ll keep the entire thing under wraps. It’s strictly need-to-know. And no one but us brothers need to know about it.” I produced the cuff Henrik had secured and programmed for us from the leather satchel I carried. “I’ve got the tracking device.”
Lucian looked in the rearview mirror at the large device. “That’s fucking massive.”
My grin was twisted like heated metal as I raised it to my throat. “I had Henrik order a large one instead. It seemed fitting for an animal like Bryant.”
My brother chuckled sinisterly, the sound linking between us like a tangible display of our bond. It was a bond built on more than just revenge, though. We were brothers in arms against a tyrannical dictator who had brutalized us for years. We were forged from the same fire, honed to sharp points by the very same man.
And together, we would bring him to his motherfucking knees.
The rest of the drive was silent, a mounting tension seeping throughout the car until Ezra had to crack a window so we could breathe easier. We parked around the corner from the Morelli Mansion in Mr. Andrew Gibson’s driveaway, a friend of Carter’s who’d agreed to hide the car. From there, we collected our gear and tromped through the crunch of snow to the back gate of our family estate.
To our collective surprise, our mother was the one to great us at the gate. She was bundled up in a huge cream suede coat with the fur-lined hood pulled up over her auburn hair, only her mercury grey eyes bright in her flushed face. Her silly dog, Sheba, was curled against her chest, but she still stepped forward to embrace me in a hug that was edgy with even more desperation than usual.
“Tiernan,” she said, turning her face into my chest, closing her eyes. “You’ve been neglecting to visit.”
“I’ve been busy,” I murmured, but I hugged her back. Even though my mother was weak-spirited, nothing like my sweet Bianca with her sharp claws, she was the only member of my immediate family who had loved me consistently my entire life.
“I’m scared for you,” she said, ignoring Ezra and Lucian as they slunk through the narrow gap we created in the frame of the gate and onto the property. “Bryant, he…he’s very angry with you, my sweet monster. Dr. Crown had to stay for three days while he tended to your father after what happened at The Met.”
“Good. It’s too bad the asshole didn’t just keel over and die.”
“Tiernan!” She pulled away, her face pale with shock. “That’s your father you’re talking about.”
“Yes,” I hissed, the violent wind whipping the word into her face like the crack of a slapping hand. “The same man who gave me his scar. The same man who drove Grace to kill herself and our unborn child. The same man who isolated me from my siblings, who wouldn’t let me go to school because my dyslexia and the scar he gave me made me a disgrace to his family name.”
I heaved in a cold breath that helped bank the heat of the fury crackling in my chest.
My voice softened and I took Sarah’s gloved hands in my own, tugging her close to protect her shivering form from the worst of the wind. “The same man who essentially locked you in the east wing and forgot about you as soon as you’d pushed out the last of his brood. The man who drives you to drink too much and pop pills like M&Ms.”
“I don’t…” she started to protest instinctively, but the words withered under my fierce glare. “Well, I suppose this had to happen one day. The son must always try to break free from his father.”
“Not just one son,” Lucian finally interjected, staring at our mother like she was a gnat beneath his shoe. “I know you don’t have much time for us, and I don’t really give a fuck. But you can’t imagine we’d have much sympathy for you. You chose this life. Not just for you, but for your children. No wonder you need those pills to sleep at night. Bryant’s crimes are on you just as much as they are on him.”
Sarah quaked hard in my grip as if Lucian’s words were sundering her in two.
“Quickly, let’s go inside,” I urged, leading her forward through the gap in hedgerows into the snow covered back garden. “They’ll be arriving any second if they aren’t here already.”