My fork clatters onto the plate. “She did what you asked,” I say, voice low but steady. “She pulled the trigger. She tortured Harold. She did the job.”
He smirks. “Did she? Or was she just along for the ride?”
I want to rip his smirk off his face.
Caroline gently places her napkin on the table and clears her throat. “Mr. Crowley. If I may.” Her voice is calm. Perfect. The kind of calm that only exists before lightning strikes.
His eyebrows lift, amused. “Go on, sweetheart.”
She leans slightly forward. “I know I came into this family…uninvited. I know it must seem like my bid to stay here is really just a bid for my life. But I assure you my children have bonded me to your family in a way you couldn’t understand. Now, I’ve done my best to prove I’m useful, but I know your sons certainly deserve your trust, and it seems to me that if they think I’m trustworthy, that should be enough.”
His face stills, a calculated rage that’s always unnerving to witness. “And what makes you think you’ve earned the right to speak for them?”
The table goes quiet. Caroline smiles politely, but her eyes flick sideways toward me. “I don’t think I have the right,” she replies evenly, tapping her temple with her finger. “I know it.”
My stomach flips. The signal. I nod once, slow. Barely perceptible.
She knows I saw it.
Unfortunately, I think my father saw it too.
39
CAROLINE
It happens so fastI don’t hear the gunfire as much as Ifeelit. The thud through the table, the crack in the air, the sudden wetness that doesn’t belong. Then I see the blood.
Kellan stumbles backward, the chair screeching behind him as it topples. He stands quickly, his hand clamped to his side. His eyes are wide, confused. Not from pain, but from betrayal. Like something broke inside him that isn’t physical. He tries to say something, but blood bubbles on his lips instead.
I scream. IthinkI scream. It’s hard to tell. Everything goes muffled, like the world ducked underwater. Rian grabs me and yanks me down, shielding me as we crash to the marble floor. The cold bites through my dress, the floor hard and unforgiving against my cheek.
Blood trickles out from under the table. Not just a few drops, but a puddle. The kind of red that means something awful just happened.
Chairs scrape violently, legs shuffle like thunder, and I watch bodies move like they’re pieces in a game I don’t understand.Fionn Crowley surges toward us, gun raised, and Declan leaps over the table like a wild animal, intercepting him. He kicks the gun away and it slides in the opposite direction, toward Kellan.
I see it all in frozen frames. From on top of me, Rian tries to draw his gun. Fionn is at us, slamming it out of his grip, metal skittering across the tile. Rian’s weight is pressed against me, his elbow against the floor. He tries to shield me as death walks closer to him. I elbow against him, trying to get him to move, to save himself. He can’t save us both.
Under the table, I see Kellan dropping to his knees. He’s in the background, just beyond the scuffle, like a backdrop to the fight. One hand is still pressed into the hole in his side, as the other reaches out for something or nothing. His mouth moves silently. Declan is pressing his hand to his wound, looking around wildly for something. He picks up a cloth napkin that fell in the scuffle and he tries to stop the bleeding.
“Kellan!” I scream, my voice cracking. I try to crawl under the table to him, everything else just noise. I don’t care about Fionn approaching. I don’t care about any of it. I know I had prepared for someone to die, but in my heart of hearts I thought we’d all live. I thought we had goodness on our side.
Rian tries to pull me back underneath him, but I kick myself free. I feel Fionn’s presence standing over me, the gun in my peripheral against my temple. I look up with just my eyes, keeping my knees and palms planted against the cold floor.
Fionn sneers with those whiteish lips, the cracks in them so ugly. “I had a feeling about you, Caroline, that you were a mistake.”
I encourage him to keep talking, even as the sickness in my stomach swells as I watch the life drain from Kellan’s face. Hegets paler and paler, like Fionn’s words are the source. “Why’d you do it then? Why’d you tell them to get me?”
He laughs, cocking the gun and pushing it even harder against my skin. “I don’t know. I guess I thought—” Rian swings his arm and tries to knock the weapon aside, but Fionn’s faster. He knees Rian in the ribs, and the sound it makes is awful. It’s not just one crunch but several, and Rian folds in on himself, disbelief all over his crumpled face. “I thought I had raised thesethick planksbetter than that. Parenting is hard, Caroline. You know that.”
“I do,” I tell him, meeting Declan’s eyes. He watches me carefully from under the table across the room, putting a finger to his lips as he starts to crawl toward his father. “It’s the hardest thing you can do, I think.”
“You give them everything, and then they betray you,” he spits out, shaking the gun’s barrel. It’s grinding into my skull, and I wince at the sensation of metal on bone.
“Maybe there’s time to mend this,” I breathe, and Declan crashes into his father, dragging Fionn backward by the throat.
“Get off her!” he snarls as I breathe for the first time since Fionn pressed that gun to me. I gasp, tears leaking down my face.
Fionn thrashes, red-faced and furious. “You’d really kill your old man? After all I’ve done for you?”
