“I’d say that makes you involved, so I won’t be asking you to leave.”
Gratitude wells up in my chest, but I’m not going to cry. I’m not going to break down in front of Eva Morelli. But I do have to say something. “What you did back there was pretty impressive.”
Eva smiles, her hand at her forehead. “I was a bitch. I’ll drop some money into his daughters’ college funds later. A year’s worth for each seems right.”
I look toward the other couch with its pattern of tiny, repeated rosebuds, away from Eva, who is flawless. “The Morellis are nothing like the Constantines say you are.”
She gives a short laugh. “Oh, we’re terrible. The absolute worst, but we take care of our own.” A pause. “You were with him.”
“We had a deal.” It seems like a million years ago that I signed my name with Leo’s on that sheet of paper. I don’t know how much to tell Eva, or how much she already knows. “I was staying with him until he sent me home.”
Simple, when you say it like that.
“If he sent you home…”
“Ronan was at my house first.” Panic echoes in my chest. The longest drive of my life, trying to get back to him. “When Ronan left, I thought something might happen. I thought—”
“You went back for him?”
For him. For me. To find out if the look on his face when he put me into the car and told me to go be with my family meant what I thought it meant. Because I couldn’t live with myself if Ronan hurt him or killed him and I did nothing for the man who made me feel—
He made me feel—
The memories crash in again. A gunshot. Leo falling. The heat of his blood. His wounded groan, the way he tried and tried to get up…
“Yes. I did.” I catch my breath. “My aunt Caroline always said…” Eva drops her hand into her lap. “Well, she said lots of things. About how evil the Morellis are. But she’s the evil one.” My hair stands on end. This whole thing is surreal. Unreal. It can’t be true, having this conversation with a Morelli. It can’t be right, that Leo almost died for me. Maybe I’m going into shock. Maybe I’ve been there for a while.
Eva’s jaw tightens. “The last time I was in a hospital was because of Caroline fucking Constantine. Now here we are again. History repeating itself.”
It’s dream-me who turns to face her, this perfect Morelli princess with shining black hair and red lips. “I know she did that to his back.”
Her eyebrows lift, and when she looks at me I can tell she’s seeing me. It’s not comfortable. I’m falling apart. “Leo showed you?”
No. He didn’t. My cheeks go hot at the memory. The shower. His fury. “I found out. He wasn’t happy about it.”
“I wouldn’t think so.” She shifts so she’s leaning against the arm of the couch, with a clear view of my train wreck self. “It’s the reason for his little vendetta against your family. Caroline started it.” A hard smile. “And then I made it worse.”
“How?”
A brief pause, and then she makes a decision. “I was young and reckless and…beautiful.” She gives me a small smile. “Like you. I met an older man, and I fell for him. This sounds so foolish now, but I thought we were in love. It didn’t matter that he was married.”
My heart twists at the clear anguish in her voice. It may have happened years ago, but she feels the pain as fresh as if it were yesterday. “I’m sorry.”
A short shake of her head brushes away my sympathy. “I should have known better, but I didn’t realize who he was. I didn’t know who hurt Leo before. He never told me. So I didn’t know he was only having an affair with me to get back at his wife.”
“You mean the man was…?” The words Uncle Lane die on my tongue.
“Leo never would have told anyone who hurt him, because he knew it would start a war. And no matter how much pain and anger he had, he wouldn’t put the rest of us at risk that way. I was already in love when I told him.” Her eyes turn distant. “I was so excited that I told him everything. And his face—he was fucking horrified. That was when he told me that Lane Constantine was the husband of the woman who whipped him.”
Tears sting at my eyes. “I’m so sorry.”
“The worst part is, I didn’t stop loving Lane. I couldn’t. It didn’t matter that he only fucked me to get back at his wife. How can you stop love when it’s unconditional?”
Most of her words have been hard. Hard like a whip. The question comes out forlorn, as if she’s really asking me. How can you stop love when it’s unconditional? I don’t know the answer. True love doesn’t have boundaries. It isn’t rational or kind. True love is brutal. It makes this beautiful woman yearn for a man who used her.
“I broke it off with him,” she says, her voice flat. “Of course I did. The irony is I think he might have fallen for me, too. He fell victim to his own games.”
I remember a smiling older man who always had time for the younger children. He didn’t even mind that Dad was such an absentminded intellectual the way Caroline does. It’s hard to imagine him seducing a young woman to get back at his wife, but I don’t doubt that it’s true. And then he died. No one knows who killed him or why, but the Constantines have always suspected the Morellis. This new information about the conflict in his marriage makes me wonder if that’s actually true. “Did he…hurt you?”
“Not like you mean. He never made me do anything. And he sure as hell never whipped me. He did try to continue the relationship. Calling. Emailing. Showing up at the university. Until Leo put a stop to it.”
I shiver at the thought of a younger Leo facing my uncle. Lane was always kind to the Constantines but I know he had powerful connections. “He confronted Lane to protect you?”
A grim smile. “Leo’s the reason we’re surrounded by an army of ex-Secret Service agents right now. So when I say we take care of our own, I mean that Leo took care of me. He took care of all of my brothers and sisters, all except Lucian, who didn’t need him.”
“Who took care of Leo?” The words slip from my lips.
“Our father was a cruel man. An abusive man. And when we all lived in that house, Leo took the brunt of it. No one took care of him, not ever.” Dark eyes meet mine. “Until you.”
CHAPTER THREE
I’m burning alive.
Still. Again. Always. Heat crawls up my back and pushes in, hot blades on damaged skin, and I can’t stand it. I cannot stand it. A minute ago everything was black. I was dead.
This isn’t like being dead.
This is worse.
Panic seizes at my throat with a hard, bony grip. Hell smells like bleach and plastic and it feels like something wrong on my face. I claw it off but the situation doesn’t improve. No control over my breath. I’m drowning in fear and fire. Shouldn’t have let it in. Now I can’t get it to stop. The knives in my chest. The frantic search for air.
The pain. It hurts. It hurts.
The hurt clarifies its shape. Pressure. It’s pressure. From lying on my back. Never. I never do this, not even in my sleep. I never do. Someone put me this way and a new fear rages through tensed muscles that won’t release. It could have been Caroline. She could have kept me alive so they could torture me again and again and again, eternal torture, eternal penance.