“Who?” Sarah asked.
We ignored her, jogging through the grounds to the east wing’s back entrance where Sarah’s favorite bodyguard waited at the door. Up the stairs into her opulent set of rooms, the parlor made even more lavishly feminine by the presence of three enormous men clothed in black who set up station on her antique coffee table.
“Carter should have set up cameras in the office yesterday,” Lucian murmured as Ezra flipped open his laptop and started to pull up the feed.
A moment later, the two men grinned as video popped up on the screen. The room was empty. Ezra pressed a series of controls and a grainy sound feed erupted in the room.
Sarah winced as she handed her coat off to me so I could hang it for her. “What in heaven’s name is all of this? You said you were coming to visit me.”
“I’m here, aren’t I?” I countered, tossing her coat on the back of a gold chair before joining my brothers around the computer.
“They’re here,” Lucian noted as Carter’s microphone spilled smoothly through the speakers, revealing Bryant was leading Santo, his men, and Beckett up to the office.
“But what are you doing?” she hissed, high color sluicing down her neck. She hated any sign of neglect and there I was, eschewing her for something to do with Bryant.
The air around her popped and fizzed, a tantrum brewing.
“Tiernan!” Her voice was shrill as a tea whistle.
“Shut her up,” Lucian demanded, casting a cold look at her.
I understood my brother’s apathy toward our mother. Sarah had stood by too many times in the past when Bryant took his fists and belt to us. It was a hard thing to forgive and even loving her, I wasn’t sure I could ever forget her negligence.
Even loving her, enough was enough.
I stalked over to her, watching as her expression changed swiftly from anger to a pleading kind of neediness.
“Tiernan, sweetie,” she began then swallowed the rest of her words, turning ashen when Bryant’s voice came through the mic.
“Ever thought you’d see the inside of the enemy’s camp, Beckett?” he was jeering, taunting him because of his close relationship with the Constantines. “When I heard you were turning on them, I had my suspicions. But it seems you and Caroline had a falling out over Christmas? How unfortunate you both.”
“Who?” Sarah breathed, but I didn’t have to answer because he did.
“My reasons for doing this are my own, Morelli, but don’t forget for one moment that I do not like you and this is not a social call,” Beckett replied with icy civility.
A moment after he spoke, Sarah fainted.
Luckily, I was close enough to lunge forward and catch her before she hit her head on the edge of the bar cart. Still, her shoulder hit the corner, sending two martini glasses shattering to the floor beside us.
“Fucking hell,” Lucian growled. “Get her under control, Tiernan.”
I lifted our mother into my arms and deposited her on a pink tufted chair. There was a vial of smelling salts on the sideboard I retrieved to wave under her nose until she slowly blinked back into consciousness.
“What was that?” I demanded as soon as she was cognizant. “Why did you react so poorly to Beckett Fairchild?”
I watched her throat move with a painful swallow, her hand fluttering to cover it from my gaze. “Be a darling and fetch me my pills. I need them.”
“No. Tell me why the fuck you fainted at the sound of his voice?”
Something was building inside me, sucking everything I was back into a looming wall of water that seemed to threaten my very existence. That tingle of premonition sparked down my spine and urged me to shake Sarah’s shoulders lightly as if I could rattle the answer loose.
“Tell me!” I demanded when she only blinked into the distant.
Her grey eyes cut to mine, wide and opaque as stone. “I-I’m just scared for you. What if Bryant discovers you’re here?”
“Lie to me again, Mother,” I growled, my teeth set on edge. “You’ll be reminded why you call me your monster.”
“You would never hurt your mother,” she gasped.
I arched a brow in cold challenge. Of course, I would never hurt my mother, but I wasn’t above making her sweat in order to get my long awaited answers. “I’m here today to hurt my father. What makes you think I’d hesitate with you?”
Of course, I had no intention of hurting her, but I was done, that wall of water curling high over my sense of self. There was no hope of reining it in. At this point, I could only hope it was crash down soon, ridding me of this poisonous anxiety.
Bryant’s voice came again. “So sensitive, Beckett. I expected bigger balls on a man with your reputation.”
His rough laughter echoed through Sarah’s parlor.
“Please,” she breathed as if she was asphyxiating. “Get me a drink, Tiernan.”
I took mercy on her, pouring a large tumbler of straight vodka. She took it gratefully, her hand trembling so badly as she raised the glass to her lips that alcohol spilled down her chin into the collar of her cashmere hoodie.
“I met your wife once,” Beckett said. “She was a lovely woman.”
Sarah whimpered, clutching the empty glass in both hands like a life preserver.
“Ha!” Bryant snorted. “That must have been a very long time ago.”
“Enough with the misogyny, Dad,” Carter protested mildly. “I don’t think Santo Belcante needs to hear about the dynamics of our family, hmm?”
“Who is Beckett to you?” I demanded of Sarah. “You have three seconds to tell me.”
“Tiernan,” she protested.
“Three.”
“Tiernan, sweetheart, you don’t understand––“
“Two.”
“Tiernan!”
“One.” I warned. “You owe me the truth, Sarah. Tell me now or I swear to fucking God that I will never visit you again. You’ll waste away in this suite, unloved, unwitnessed and when you die, one of the servants will discover you and no one will go to your funeral.”
“Stop!” she said, dissolving to tears. “No good was ever going to come of it, Tiernan. Don’t you understand? It was a mistake. A stupid, vengeful mistake I made because your father could never love me. Do you understand what that’s like?”
“How dare you ask me that?” I murmured darkly.
She ignored me, hysteria settled so deeply inside her that I wasn’t sure she could even see me anymore.
“Beckett, he was so beautiful, so kind. And he was close with the Constantines, basically one of them. He liked me and I was lonely, aching to stick it to Bryant for neglecting me for so long.”
“You slept with him,” I said the words aloud even though they’d been sitting inside me since the moment she reacted to Beckett’s name.
Sarah blinked at me, fresh tears raining down her cheeks into the vodka-soaked neck of her shirt.
“He’s my father.” Something was wrong with my voice, the words fell dead between us, thunking to the floor. “Does he know?”
When she didn’t respond immediately, I surged forward, looming over her like that tsunami wave inside my chest, caging her in. “Does he know?” I roared.