“You really gave the bastard a gift in exchange for getting me out?” I ask, incredulous.
“I gave him Jack’s head on a silver platter.”
“I’m sorry, you did what?”
Swinging my gaze to the right, I seek out my brother’s profile. He stares straight ahead, his grip loose on the steering wheel, his expression apathetic. “Left it on Guthram’s bed,” he says, drumming his finger to an indistinct rhythm. “Tucked it in real nice, too, beneath the covers.”
Staring at him, the only thing I can even think to say is, “You’re full of shit.”
He smooths his palm over the leather wheel. “It was Damien’s idea.”
“You’re both absolutely mad.”
“Or just brilliantly creative.”
“I don’t even know what to say.”
“I’m sorry.”
My brows shoot up in surprise. The last time Guy apologized—never. It’s happened approximately zero times in my entire life. And I can’t deny that it feels good to hear the words, to know that he cares—
“You should say I’m sorry,” he finishes.
I open my mouth . . . I open it, and absolutely nothing comes out. My palms land on my thighs, just north of my knees, and I squeeze the muscles through the fabric of my fresh trousers. Keep your cool. Find your calm. Teeth clenched, I bite out, “Why the hell would I apologize?”
“For choosing her.”
An animalistic sound claws its way up my throat. “I will always choose her.”
“I know.”
“If you know, then why ask for the apology? Why bother springing me from jail when you know . . .” I suck in a sharp breath of air, letting it fill my lungs. “Why bother,” I try again, my voice laced with grit, “with anything, when you know I’ll wait all of minutes to find my way back to her again?”
“Because she’s made you weak.”
Never taking my eyes off my brother, I issue a single-word command: “Fuck off.”
“Let me show you something.” He tilts his head toward the glove box.
Muscles coiled tight, I snap it open and pull out a leather-shelled briefcase. It’s no bigger than a purse. Tugging on the zipper, I fold one half of the leather back.
Photographs slip across each other.
Their primary subject makes my stomach churn.
“Where did you get these?” I ask, quietly, as I stare down at William Bootham’s tortured body. Picture after picture all reveal more of the same: handprints circling the priest’s throat, the man’s blank stare, the broken chairs and furniture beneath him—all signs point to him putting up a struggle. I lay my hand flat over the last one, unable to take anymore. Not of this. Not of him.
“Jack was hiding them in our desk when Isla stumbled upon him. Most likely to implicate you as co-conspirator to the murder. That’s my guess.”
Shocked, I blink. “Jack? He did this?”
“Playing two sides of the field, it seems.” Guy never diverts his attention away from the motorway to the photographs in my lap. While he wasn’t friends with Father Bootham, the two were acquainted. Friendly enough, at least, that I know my older brother feels uneasy about what happened. After a moment, he adds, “Guthram will be placing the blame where it belongs.”
“On a dead man whose decapitated head he found in his bed?” Christ. What a shitshow. With both hands, I drag my palms over my face. “It won’t hold up. Not in court. Which means we’ll be in the same position within months.”
A position I’d been more than willing to undertake if it meant keeping the heat off Isla. But sitting in prison in place of Jack, who actually murdered Father Bootham? No shot. Not in this lifetime, not in the next one either.
“Jack killed him in his own flat.” Guy gestures toward the briefcase. “I don’t know how he lured Bootham there. I don’t know what he said to the priest. But I recognize those chairs, that table—we helped him bring them up to his flat years ago. He left everything as is. Guthram confirmed it.”
“Only a fool would conspire to murder someone in your own home.”
“Jack was a fool.”
I’d said as much to him weeks ago when I sacked him. Only, I’d been a fool too. Then, now. I never saw the evidence laid out before me. Maybe I hadn’t wanted to see it. Hadn’t wanted to consider that Jack was a two-timing bastard.
“Who was the other side?” I ask. “If we were one, then who—”
“Ian Coney.”
My mouth falls open. “No.”
“Jack claimed they were brothers but Damien, he’s already figured out that Jack didn’t mean so literally. They belonged to a . . . political cult, if you will. The pay was good, so recruitment was high. We’re looking into it, seeing how it might pose a threat to Holyrood.”
My back collides with the seat. “Bloody fucking hell. How? How do you know all this?”
“Because she chose you.”
He says it like she’s alive. Like she’s breathing and healthy and wasn’t just mowed down with a gunshot wound to the chest last week. Gut instinct has me wanting to lean into the visceral relief, to bask in the knowledge that she is alive. But something . . . something does not feel right. “Elaborate,” I demand, “right now.”
Guy lifts one hand off the wheel to scrape down his clean-shaven jaw. “Trust you to find the one woman in this country who has balls bigger than any man.”
“Christ, get on with—”
“She came to the Palace.”
White noise rings in my ears, startling in its ferocity. Beneath it, I hear the roar of tires ripping down A20, toward Kent; there’s the sound of my brother’s steady breaths, too. The white noise, I think, is the sound of my soul shattering.
The photographs fall to the floor, between my seat and the center console, and I can’t find it in myself to pick them up. To do anything but whisper, horrified, “Tell me you didn’t.”
“Saxon—”
“Tell me you didn’t!” I roar the words, breathing fire into every syllable. “Tell me you didn’t put her back in that fucking cell. That you didn’t”—I gasp for air, my hands clawing fruitlessly at my chest—“tell me that you didn’t . . . Fuck, I can’t say it. I can’t say it.”
An arm flies across my torso, the way a parent might with their child to keep them from going headfirst into the dashboard. Guy twists his arm, so that his fingers dig into my clavicle, keeping me restrained.
“She’s alive. A little worse for wear after what Jack did to her, but she’s fine, Saxon. She’s fine.”
A wretched noise climbs my throat, and I find myself gripping my brother’s arm. Holding tight, the way I did as a child frightened by the world that we were thrust into, alone. My head falls back, my lids slam shut. Emotion assaults me from every angle: joy that she’s alive and safe; relief that my brother is still the honorable man I’ve always known him to be; greed because I need years more with Isla Quinn and I’m selfish enough to demand that she spend each one with me.
Swallowing, roughly, I jerk my head in a short nod. “Is she there now? At the Palace?”