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I could fight him on this. I could bring up my mother. I could say so many things, but the truth is, my mother hid this from Eric. My mother hid this from law enforcement. I have to trust Eric right now. He needs to know that I’m with him, the way his father knows that my mother is with him. She’s made her choice. Now I have to make mine. And so, I ask simply, “How?”
The Kingston family is evil. They have to pay for their sins but at my agreement, surprise flickers in Eric’s eyes. He expected a battle of wills, but mine is his. “Aren’t you going to tell me to save your mother?”
“I think this family has told you enough. You don’t need that from me, too.”
“What about your mother?” he repeats.
“I don’t even know who she is anymore, Eric. How can she know what he did and still protect him? I told you, I let myself believeit wasn’t true because if it was, any shred of anything between you and your father would be gone. Today I lost her.” I lift a hand. “I’m sure our phones are going crazy.” I try to duck under his arm and he catches me to him.
“You don’t want to talk about your mother,” he says.
“Not now. I’m having a hard time accepting what she’s become. Then again, can a person become evil? Or is it just who you are? Are you born that way? Maybe she was always like this, I just never saw the truth.”
“Let’s hope like fuck not. I’ve got that man’s blood running through me.”
“You’re nothing like them.”
“Yeah, well if I act like them, check me. Check me hard.” He laces the fingers of one hand with mine. “I need to change this fucking shirt. I’ll meet you in the kitchen and we can heat up our food.” He kisses my hand.
“Yes,” I say. “Sounds good.”
He walks away, and I turn to the window, the horizon streaking the sky with hues of yellow and orange. I want to hide here, disappear for days with Eric, and pretend no one else exists. But there’s no escaping the world outside. Most people seek shelter in their families and call them their moral support. We need bodyguards and weapons to face ours. We might as well call them serial killers.
At the very least, just killers.
Chapter ninety-six
Eric
The food is hot and we sit at the kitchen island, eating our food, and sliding into a debate over what is really going on with both our families.
One thing we both agree on—the Kingstons want to end us.
I grab the beer she set on the kitchen counter and chug it.
“Are we sure this is about the mob at all?” she asks, taking the beer from me. “That’s my point. Did they find out that you tried to end them?” She takes a swig from the bottle. “Is that what set this off? You said you talked to bankers.”
“My father was poisoned. Without that piece of the puzzle, I’d buy into that theory. Whoever wanted me, and you, out of the picture wants him gone, too. Blake believes the mob’s involved. So do I.”
“Then we’re back to how Isaac got them in trouble with the mob. He set you up not once, but twice. He had to have convinced your father to come here. That made the hit on him look like it came from you.”
“My father isn’t convinced to do anything. He didn’t come here at Isaac’s direction. I told you. He was distracting me.”
“From what? What is so big he has to personally distract you?”
“My father didn’t choose to involve me in anything. He knows I’m a problem for him. Most likely, Isaac got them in trouble. He’s a two birds one stone guy. Solve the problem and pin it on us, therefore he gets rid of us.”
“Or maybe he was going to ask you for help.”
“Never. He would never ask me for help.”
“Maybe he was. Maybe that’s why Isaac had him poisoned. Of course, maybe Isaac just wanted the money he’d inherit to pay off the mob.”
“My dumb ass brother is just that—dumb. I know for a fact my mother was a genius who let it cripple her. I am who I am because of her genetics and thank fuck. In other words, you overestimate Issacs’s skills. If it was as simple as what you suggest, my father would never have involved me, and Gigi didn’t plot to kill her own son. She’s a bitch, but that man is her world.”
“Okay, but what if Gigi knew what Isaac was into? Maybe she even believed your father knew but he was too prideful to ask for your help, so she did it herself through me. You’re a savant, a genius and a billionaire. She’s smart enough to know who to call with the brains to help. We need to find Gigi.”
“She’s on a plane to Europe.”
