Total pages in book: 163
Estimated words: 157491 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 787(@200wpm)___ 630(@250wpm)___ 525(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 157491 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 787(@200wpm)___ 630(@250wpm)___ 525(@300wpm)
“Obviously, I’m not all of it,” I answer as I saunter across the room.
He nods as though appreciating that snippet of candor. “And your mysterious uncle?”
“He lives in Switzerland.” Barely.
“So my sister gets entangled with the mafia. Threatened?” His gaze is mildly questioning.
“That’s what she said. When she came to me.” Score one for Van as I come to a stop next to an oxblood chesterfield sofa. Not that he invites me to sit.
“Then she marries you, becoming further embroiled.”
“Embroiled isn’t how I’d put it.”
“You whisk my only sister off to Saint Lucia to get married on short notice.”
“You saw the announcement.”
“How are the two related? She’s at risk, then she’s married.”
“She came to me, and I said I’d help. I asked her to marry me, and she said yes.”
“Just like that!” Unfolding his arms, he snaps his fingers. “No buildup. No courtship. No declarations of love.”
I shrug, holding out my hands as though I don’t quite understand.
“I love my sister very much.”
“I know.”
“How, Van? How could you possibly know? You don’t have a sister or, as far as I can tell, anyone you care about.”
The barb is well aimed, and it pierces when it lands. I get it. I’m a shit friend. But I’ll be a better brother-in-law because he’s wrong. I might not have a sister, but I have someone I’d lay my life down for.
“I care about Isla. I care about her more than you will ever know.”
“Do you?”
“What do you want me to say, Alexander? That I betrayed our friendship years ago? It’s true. I fucked her, and I didn’t tell you.” Alexander springs from the desk and lunges for me. We scuffle, my heel catching on a hole in the worn rug, Alexander’s forward momentum smashing me against a bookcase.
“Shut your fucking mouth,” he growls as leather-bound books, musty with age, rain down from the shelves as he crashes my shoulders against the shelves again and again.
“I fucked her, Alexander, and made her promise she wouldn’t tell.”
My former friend presses his forearm against my windpipe. And what’s more, I let him. I let him, and I grin.
“All these fucking years.” He follows up his words with a gut punch that I fully deserve. “All these years you were fucking her! Playing with her!”
“I don’t even regret it,” I taunt, feeling like I deserve his ire because how could I ever explain all I risked, all I did, to protect her?
“Bastard!” His head rears back, and I appear to have enough self-preservation to keep him from headbutting my nose.
“Motherfucker!” My cheekbone, however, is another story. “Did you hear that crack?”
“I think that was my forehead,” he mutters, rubbing the back of his hand across his brow. He pulls back a little, seemingly shocked that it had come to this, that things had moved so quick.
“I don’t regret any of it,” I say, my chest heaving as adrenaline twists through my nervous system. “I love her. I’ve always loved her. I just couldn’t have her.”
“Sounds like you have,” he says, his face contorted with disgust. “Sounds like you’ve had her again and again, and you didn’t have the fucking decency to—”
I begin to snort great bellyfuls of wheezing, painful laughter. Thanks to my battered cheek.
“What’s so funny?” he growls, looking like he’s thinking about threading his fingers around my lapels for a second round.
“You, the great Duke of Dalforth, worrying over his sister’s virtue.”
“This is not about my past.”
“No, it’s about hers, and if she could hear you now, she wouldn’t send for your white horse. She’d knee you in the fucking balls.”
“Yes, well. You’re not telling me she knows about this conversation.”
“Of course she doesn’t,” I reply, sliding down the bookcase until my ass hits the floor. Otherwise, we’d be laughing our asses off about how she thinks he murdered Giles. She won’t be laughing when she finds out he didn’t, I suppose.
“I don’t know what to believe anymore,” he mutters, dropping to a nearby cedar chest.
“It happened—we didn’t mean it to.” Stretching one leg straight, I rest my hand on my bent knee, my eyes on the peeling frescoed ceiling. “I kept it from you because I knew I couldn’t keep her, and I couldn’t lose you. We kept it from everyone because I couldn’t protect her. Not then.”
“You’ve manipulated her,” he says, seeing through my bullshit.
“I saw an opportunity, and I grabbed it with both fucking hands.”
“So you lied to her?” Leaning forward, he presses his elbows to his knees. “You don’t lie to the people you love.”
“Yes, you do. You do it to protect them. Tell me, does Holland know about Thornbeck? Does she know about your past?”
“That has nothing to do with this,” he growls.
“Because the means justifies the end. Now I can protect Isla. I can take care of her.”
“Good luck with that.” He snorts. “Isla doesn’t like to be coddled. She’s not a pet. She won’t be kept.”