“Your father’s painting?” I asked quietly as I worked the top right edge away, then carefully followed the seam to the bottom right corner. When I peeled it back, I saw it.
Not a will.
That would have been too easy.
But a small key, taped to the lining fabric between the painted canvas and the frame support.
“What the hell?” Bianca whispered, her lax hands falling from my arm.
I plucked the key from the tape and pocketed it before turning to face her. My heart was racing, adrenaline like a drug overdose in my veins.
“Your dad left you something, Bianca,” I explained, reaching out to grab her shoulders when she took a step away. “Lane Constantine left you and Brandon a lot of money.”
“What are you talking about?” she asked, more breath than sound. “How do you know my father?”
“He knows that son of a bitch because he once tried to destroy our entire family.”
That voice.
It sounded like a crater opening in the ground about to swallow me whole.
It signaled the end of this charade with Bianca, the end of the game I played against my own father.
Bryant had arrived.
Bianca swirled to face him, then instinctively took a step back, away from him and into me as if I would protect her.
Bitter humor clogged my throat.
“What are you doing here?” I asked him flatly.
Dressed in one of his perfectly tailored tuxedos, Bryant looked every inch the business magnate, the exemplary gentleman. It was his mouth that gave him away, hooked through one side in a grin as crooked as his morals.
He was going to enjoy this.
Get at the Constantines while at the same time taking me down a peg.
Taking away the only woman I’d had in my life in any meaningful way since he stripped Grace Constantine from my side.
“Bryant Morelli,” Bianca breathed, reaching back to grab for my hand, tangling our fingers together like we were some united front. “I think you should leave. We want nothing to do with you.”
His laugh was bright and brittle, the crackling of a high flame. Beyond him, outside the door, a shadowy figure waited in the hall. My father never went anywhere without protection. Normally, my presence would have been enough, but this time, I was a possible enemy.
“Speak for yourself, little bastard.” His eyes fucking danced as he gestured toward me. “The scarred man behind you is my son.”
Bianca stilled like some time lapse of a pond freezing over through the winter season, a complete hardening of each atom in her short form. She was making herself impregnable, a human shield.
It wouldn’t work.
I knew from experience.
This was going to fucking hurt.
“Bianca,” I said softly, tugging her to face me by her frozen fingers, still intertwined with mine like an afterthought. When she refused to look me in the eye, I clasped her delicate chin and forced her to tip her head up to mine. Still, her gaze was pinned just over my right ear. “Look at me.”
“A Morelli,” she whispered, her mouth barely moving, an incantation like a witch’s curse spilling out between us. “You’ve been a Morelli this whole time?”
Panic sluiced through me, but I forced it down, desperate to keep my calm, to get out of this shit show with as little damage possible done. “I’m a McTiernan too, on my mother’s side.”
“But you’re Bryant Morelli’s son.” A shiver rattled her slight body so fiercely I thought she might break bones.
“Not just my son,” my asshole father called, tucking his hands in his pockets as if he had all the time in the world for a leisurely conversation. “My right-hand man.”
I was close enough to see the pain lance through her dark blue eyes, a shooting star streaking across a midnight sky.
“I see the Morelli reputation has preceded me,” Bryant noted, sounding delighted. “Even all the way to Nowhere, Texas. Have you heard about me, little girl? I promise you, all those wicked rumors were founded on truth. What you might not know is that the man currently holding your hand executed most of those atrocities.”
“Shut your mouth,” I snapped at him, dragging Bianca behind me before I stepped forward menacingly. “You want an atrocity, Father? I’m happy to show you just how vicious I can be.”
Bryant clucked his tongue. “A cornered animal, Tiernan, is never very smart. Did you think I would come unprepared?”
From the shadows, a tall man emerged. He was leaner than me, only an inch or two shorter, but otherwise, we shared a nearly identical build, the same dark hair and rich bronzed skin.
I blinked at Carter as he stepped into the light holding a gun trained my way.
“Carter,” I breathed, struck through the heart by the sight of him after so many years, bleeding out inside my chest as old sorrows broke open and wept. “What the fuck?”
“What the fuck is right,” he mocked, adjusting his grip on the gun. “Whatever happened to loyalty to the family?”
A harsh, broken laugh carved up my throat. “You want to talk about loyalty while you’ve got a goddamn gun in my face?”
“You deserve it,” he said simply, eyes a dark and dangerous Morelli brown.
But he adjusted his gun again, hands sweaty against the slick metal. He didn’t seem entirely comfortable standing there trying to prove to Bryant and me both that he was a killer.
He wasn’t.
The fourth-born son, the one Leo had worked so hard to save from Bryant’s fists and fury. The one Lucian had policed through his youth, making sure he stayed on the straight and narrow. Carter was the one we expected to do great things, to make an actual difference in the world.
Yet here he was holding a fucking gun because Bryant knew I’d never be able to hurt him.
Not again.
“Carter,” I tried, stepping forward even though my brother shook the gun at me in warning. “Brother, don’t do this. I know I deserve your hatred, but you could hurt Bianca if you aren’t careful.”
“She’s Lane Constantine’s bastard,” Bryant scoffed. “She’s worthless except for what she can give us. Did you get the will?”
Good, the bastard hadn’t seen me take anything from behind the painting.
“It wasn’t there.”
“Bullshit,” he seethed, stepping forward himself.
We were close now, four paces between us. If I lunged, I’d be in his face, close enough to do damage. I didn’t need a weapon to incapacitate a sixty-five-year-old man, even if he was in excellent health. My body was a blade, my mind a tactical missile.
I’d put both to good use before I let them touch a hair on Bianca’s head.
I shrugged a shoulder and casually put my hands in my pockets, fingers curling around the edge of my knife. “It’s the truth.”
“It is,” Bianca interjected, holding her chin high in that natural haughty tilt she must have inherited from Lane. “My dad was far too clever for the likes of you Morellis.”
“Careful,” Carter warned. “I suggest you shut up before you make my father any angrier.”
“Make me,” Bianca countered.
“If Tiernan doesn’t have the will by now,” Bryant mused, nodding at his new thug. “We’ll take the girl.”