“Makes sense,” she mumbled. “I’ll take you.”
“That’s not—”
“I told you, I wish my sister would’ve accepted our help. I know why you have to be there, and I know why you don’t want to be. Let me help you because I’m the only one who can.”
I wavered, thankful and wary and worried for this girl all at once. “You can’t go near the property line.”
“I’m crazy . . . but I don’t have a death wish.”
For the first time that morning, the corners of my mouth twitched into a smile. “If you think Johnny and Dare won’t find out, then I appreciate it.”
But Einstein was already walking . . . again, without looking back to see if I would follow her.
As we hurried down the driveway, she slowed and blew out a steadying breath, her eyes fixed on the ground for a moment before she met my gaze. “Do you even know why?”
I lifted a brow. “Why I would stay?”
“Dare doesn’t have solid proof you’re alive. He’s just been told—well, and I guess your house told him all he needed to know. But do you know why he would want to kill you if he knew you were?”
“Because that’s what you do. That’s what our families do. That’s what this fucked-up world we live in thinks is necessary. They steal and retaliate. Kill and retaliate. It’s endless.”
Surprise flickered across her face but was quickly replaced by grief. “You really don’t know, do you?”
I bunched my shoulders up in a shrug and relaxed them with a frustrated sigh. “What? Is it because Kieran stopped them from taking me four years ago?”
“No.” She tilted her head and looked at me carefully, like she knew she was about to turn my world on its side again. “Mickey murdered Dare’s fiancée.”
I sat on my window seat, head pressed to the glass as I replayed everything I’d learned that morning.
“Mickey . . .” Einstein said uncertainly as she drove me back toward the Holloway property. “He snuck into Dare’s apartment in the middle of the night about two months after your funeral. Dare woke up to his fiancée, Gia, being torn out of their bed. Your dad didn’t make a big production out of it, just said, ‘This is for Lily’ and shot Gia in the head.” She glanced at me a couple times before focusing on the road again. “That’s why Dare wants to kill you. Not because you’re an O’Sullivan. Not because they didn’t get you four years ago. It’s because his fiancée died as retaliation for your death that never happened.”
It all seemed unreal.
Einstein had told me I was never supposed to be taken the night Aric died. The man who killed Aric was Johnny’s cousin, and he wasn’t supposed to have even touched me or woken me.
She hadn’t said a word about why they’d been there or Aric’s death, but all I kept thinking was if that man hadn’t touched me, I wouldn’t have screamed. Aric wouldn’t have come running. That man wouldn’t have shot Aric and wouldn’t have been killed by Kieran. Dare wouldn’t be planning my death, and his fiancée would be alive. And Kieran and I would be somewhere far away.
We’d be living such a different life.
I would’ve never met Dare.
I couldn’t help wonder if things had gone differently, if Kieran and I had left as planned, if I would’ve ever known I was missing something amazing in my life. If Dare would’ve been happy with his fiancée—or, I guess wife now—or if he too would’ve felt empty. Or if we were only so perfect for each other now because of the death and grief that had led us to this point.
So many what-ifs.
“Why are we mad at that window?”
I jerked back, startled by Beck’s voice, and twisted to look at him from where he towered above me. “What?”
“Just wondering why we’re mad at the window. I think I might’ve missed that meeting, and if I’m gonna be mad at some fucking glass, I oughtta know why.”
The corner of my mouth curved up but quickly fell. “I’m not mad at the glass, you hulk.”
“Sure looked like it.” He settled himself on the other side of the seat, his questioning stare fixated on me. “So?”
“So what?” I mumbled, trying to seem interested in the grass so he wouldn’t continue asking questions.
“So, I’m about to leave for work and haven’t seen you because you’re keeping yourself locked in here. I had to make my own coffee, and it was probably the worst thing I’ve ever tasted in my life. I don’t have your dad or Kieran breathing down my neck, so that means I can breathe. And you’re fucking mad at motherfucking glass. So . . . tell me what’s wrong.”
I fell for a stranger.
Somehow, somewhere along the line, I think I fell in love with him. He’s my greatest enemy, and I’ve never felt safer than I did in his arms last night. And even after I learned who he was, I knew there was nowhere else I wanted to be.
Tell me I’m insane.
I glanced at my best friend and offered him a weary smile. “Kieran proposed a couple nights ago. Sort of.”
Beck’s eyes widened in surprise and excitement as they dropped to look at my left hand, and the smile that had quickly covered his face fell when he found it bare. “Oh, well. Eh. You said sort of?”
“We were fighting—”
Beck snorted. “Right.”
“Really,” I pressed. “Actually fighting. Yelling at each other. I think you saw the beginnings of it the afternoon he left for Texas.”
Beck continued to give me a disbelieving look, so I went back to looking out the window as I told him about what had happened with Kieran that night. I understood his doubt. Kieran didn’t know how to argue, he didn’t know how to have fights like a normal couple. He was too calm and unmoved by anything for that to happen.
That didn’t mean there weren’t times when we weren’t angry at each other. It was just handled differently because Kieran was different. He always would be.
Even if I hadn’t met Dare. Even if I hadn’t started questioning my love for Kieran. I would’ve known something drastic had shifted between us as soon as the real fights began.
“Fucking Mickey,” Beck grumbled once I was finished.
You have no idea.
My heart ached for Dare as I thought about how terrible it must’ve been for him. I knew the pain of watching your enemies kill your loved ones. But to be woken up in the middle of the night by your greatest enemy killing your fiancée? I couldn’t imagine.
“Yeah . . . yeah.” Something Beck had said earlier finally clicked, and I glanced at the early afternoon sky. “Wait, what time is it?”
“About three.”
“You said you were leaving for work soon. You don’t go in until late.”
He shrugged, his playful expression suddenly hidden behind barely concealed frustration. “With Kieran and your dad out of town for a few days, Kieran wants me to do a couple things for him today and tomorrow before my normal shit. I probably won’t be around until after the meeting on Sunday, but Conor will be outside.”
I stared at him for a few seconds, and saw when he understood.
“You didn’t know he was gone, did you?”
“No.”
He heaved himself forward and pulled me into a bear hug. “I’m sorry, Lil. Just don’t give up on him, okay?”
I didn’t respond. There was no point telling Beck that it was already too late.
“If I say the bitch is alive, then she’s alive.” The man’s natural cockiness gave way to frustration at being asked again. But he wasn’t able to hide his nervousness. His pulse was visible in his throat from where I was standing.
I grabbed Einstein’s tablet from off the desk, then walked calmly to where the man sat, guarded by Johnny. I pretended to look at the picture I could recreate in my sleep for a few moments then turned the tablet so the screen was facing him.
“What exactly did you expect us to do with that? You said you had a picture proving she was alive. This is just a shitty attempt at Photoshop.”
He gestured to it,
his anger growing. “That’s her. Ask any of the guys, they’ll all agree.”
“They’ll agree it’s a girl with blonde hair.”
“It’s the girl I have to put up with on a daily basis,” he said with an edgy laugh as he grabbed a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket.
Despite how nervous he’d been ever since I’d had Johnny pick him up and bring him here, that was the first outright lie I’d caught.
“Lie,” I said on a low growl.
His eyes darted to mine as he placed a cigarette between his lips. “She’s in that house every day, all day unless she’s in a meeting with us. She’s at that window most of the time.”
“And yet, she wasn’t there.”
“Not my fault you idiots don’t know how to play fetch.”
Johnny twitched from behind the man, wanting to inflict pain I knew he’d been dreaming of. But this guy was only running his mouth because he was trying to seem like more than he was.
“Or maybe she wasn’t there at all,” I said, hinting he’d led us on a wild goose chase. “Maybe there was supposed to be a trap you forgot to set. Do you want to know what I do to people who set me up?”
For the first time since he’d been thrown in here, his pupils dilated and brow started to sweat.
“Truth or dare,” I continued when he didn’t speak.
“Uh, I . . . I-I—”
“Truth,” I answered for him. “Did you set us up?”
“No, n-no. I’ll h-hand deliver her to y-you,” he said, stuttering over himself. “I’ll do it personally.”
If I wanted her brought to my feet, I’d send the twins to hunt her down.
“I don’t want her delivered to me,” I said with a sneer, then bent so I was face to face with him. “I want to rip her away from the walls she’s been hiding behind. I want to watch fear fill her eyes before the light fades from them. Now get back to the hole you crawled out of before you piss yourself in my chair. Next time you see her, call me.”
I watched as he scrambled to leave, then met Johnny’s shocked glare.
“You let him go?” he asked, disgusted.
“He has access to what I need,” I replied with a weighted breath as I tossed the tablet back on the desk.
Staring at the now darkened screen, Gia’s face flashed through my mind and was immediately replaced with ice-blue eyes as cruel as the devil.
“This is for Lily.”
If Gia died as retribution for the princess, then that princess needed to die.
I’d known as soon as I’d woken this morning I wanted to get away. It was like Beck had said the day before—Kieran and Mickey were gone. They weren’t breathing down our necks . . . and I knew Beck would be gone doing errands for Kieran.
With Kieran’s proposal, I’d known I wouldn’t be able to handle staying on Holloway with nothing to do but stare out a window. I needed to have a day where that suffocating weight wasn’t pressing down around me—one where I wasn’t worried about getting back before someone noticed I was gone.
After finding out why I was being hunted by the Borellos and that I was the reason Dare’s fiancée had been murdered, it felt impossible to face him.
But I didn’t know how to stay away from him.
So it didn’t surprise me when I found myself walking into Brooks Street Café.
I didn’t look around to see if he was there, I didn’t need to. My body wasn’t thrumming with excitement as if it knew the person I had been made for was close by. I kept my head down as I sank into a booth, and tried to wrap my head around my life, as I had been for so long.
I wondered if it was even possible.
I’d wondered a lot of things lately . . .
I tensed when someone suddenly slid into the booth across from me, then loosed a slow, calming breath when I recognized the older woman.
Dare and Libby’s mom.
My dad killed your husband. Do you even know? What would you say if you did? The ache in my head was nearly as real as the one twisting my stomach.
When tense seconds passed in silence, I ignored the tightening in my throat and managed to say, “Hi, Mrs.—”
“Sofia. Please, just Sofia.”
“Sofia.”
“I called Demitri, he knows you’re here.”
My eyes widened, and I sucked in a sharp breath at his name—that name—being said so casually.
His mom dropped her head into her hand and stifled a laugh. “I’m sorry. Dare. Those kids and their nicknames.” With a roll of her eyes, she murmured, “Maybe one day I’ll catch up with them.”
I forced a twitch of a smile. “I would’ve never known that was his name.” When she lifted her brows in surprise, I explained, “My friend thought he said Darren. I thought maybe that was his real name, and Dare was just a shortened version.”
And what I wouldn’t give for that to be true.
She laughed softly, her tired eyes studying me curiously for a moment. “Every time I see you, I think you look so familiar.”
Because I look like my mom like this, I thought to myself.
With these colored contacts, if I lost the glasses, I looked exactly like she had at my age. And rival families tend to know everything about each other . . . unless the kids are kept sheltered from the world, as I had been.
“Dare thought the same thing,” I admitted, only because I didn’t want to seem rude by keeping silent.
“It’s strange, almost like déjà vu.” She quickly shook her head, then glanced at the delicate watch on her wrist. “Well, I suspect they’ll be here soon, but I wanted to catch you before they arrived.”
I sat silently as she played with a gold wedding band hanging from a chain around her neck, trying not to worry over why she wanted to see me—trying not to apologize for everything my dad had done and demand to know why their family had delivered their share of heartache.
“You make Dem—Dare . . . Dare happier than he’s been in a long time. I don’t know if you know that, or if you’ll ever know.” She eyed me, suddenly wary, then whispered, “But I need to know why you’re here.”
“What?” I asked, stammering over the word when she caught me off guard at the direction of her question.
“You come and go, there’s no way to get in touch with you. I know because they talk, and we’re all in the same place for the time being. Well, Libby talks,” she added quickly. “And it worries me for my son when he’s already suffered so much. I want him to be happy, and I want him to have things he thinks he can’t . . . but I see what he won’t because he’s too caught up in you.”
I stared at her blankly, waiting for her to acknowledge who I was.
“He’s found the first girl to make him feel again, but I would rather him hurt for a while longer than be played by you until you decide you’re done with him and disappear.”
When I realized she wasn’t going to continue—that she was finished with her rant—I let the blank mask lift from my face.
Disappearing was something I’d been planning forever, but it wasn’t something a Borello would know. Hell, Beck didn’t even know.
I thought back through everything she’d said about me, thinking about it through her eyes, a mother looking out for her son whose fiancée had been taken too soon, slowly nodding as I did. “I understand.”
My stare fell to the table as I opened my mouth to speak again. Every explanation to all of her worries was on the tip of my tongue, but somehow felt wrong.
“I could try to reassure you, but they would only be reassurances from a girl you don’t know, and a girl who is already worrying you. They wouldn’t mean much.” I met her steady gaze. “However, he saved me, and I think—given time—I might save him from what’s haunting him.”
“You know,” she assumed, her voice low.
I dipped my head in confirmation. “But he wasn’t the one to tell me.”
I wanted to tell her I was sorry for her loss, because clearly it would’ve been her loss as well, but I didn’t kn
ow how when the reason for it was sitting directly in front of her.
Instead, I found myself saying, “The thing is . . . we’re not meant to be. And yet, I’m positive I was made for your son, and he was made for me. I fell in love with him knowing the universe would do anything to prevent it. And it’s an irreversible, world-changing kind of love.”
Sofia studied me for a long while before asking, “And my son knows you feel this way?”
“No,” I answered honestly. “Because like you said . . . I come and go. But I have no intention of playing him and then leaving him.”
“I wasn’t expecting anything that honest, and I don’t think I’ll get anything better than those answers.” She cast me a little grin. “I should probably get back to work before Demitri comes in and catches me grilling you.”
“Sofia,” I called out when she slid out of the booth and turned to leave. “Do you think it’s possible to love someone after a tragedy?”
“You want to know if my son loves you?”
I shook my head, because of all the reasons I’d asked that question, that hadn’t been one of them.
I wanted to know if she thought love was possible after all she’d been through since she’d never married again.
I wanted to know if love was possible for Kieran after everything he’d seen—after losing his best friend. After losing me.
I wanted to know if love was possible for Dare when his heart was so full of hatred and his mind so set on revenge.
I wanted to know if it was wrong of me to love after having witnessed both of my brothers killed in front of me.
I wanted to know from the mother in front of me, because mine had never recovered after the loss of my brothers.
She stepped forward with a soft smile playing on her lips, and bent to rest her arms on the table, her face close to mine. “There are tragedies all around us, Elle. Every minute, every hour, every day. Without love, there would be no reason to stand back up and fight. Without love, there would be no reason to live.”
With a gentle squeeze of my hand, she pushed away from the table and left me alone with my thoughts. Left me alone with hope.