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“Fuck this,” he muttered, sitting next to her. He scooped her up, ignoring her yip of surprise, and turned her to straddle his lap. As soon as her knees hit the couch, he cupped her face and kissed her until she melted into his arms.
“W-what was that for?” she asked, cheeks pink when he finally came up for air.
“You were tense as fuck. Now, you’re not. It was a sacrifice, of course, but I didn’t want you to get a muscle spasm or anything.” He winked.
Her answering chuckle was music to his ears. “Thanks,” she whispered as she traced a tattoo on his chest with one finger. He tried to keep from popping wood, but, fuck, she was too damn hot. It was a losing battle. “You might feel differently after I tell you this.”
“Doubt it.”
Her huff of laughter held a world of sadness. “My last name is Carver. I changed it to Nichols, my mother’s maiden name, after I left home at sixteen.”
That was it? His eyebrows drew down. “Okay. If you’re worried about that, babe, you can relax. I don’t give two shits what you want to call yourself.”
“If only it were that simple.” She blinked moisture from her eyes. “Carver, Ty. Think about that name.”
What was she getting at?
“I must be dumb because the only Carvers I can think of are that fucking corrupt family on the news all the damn ti—oh… fuck.”
She stared down at her short, manicured nails resting against his chest. “Yeah,” she said with a nod.
He crooked a finger under her chin to lift her gaze. “McCarthy Carver is your father?”
“Bingo.” She smiled sadly.
Jesus, the man had superiority oozing out of his pores. Ty had never met him, but in his interviews and social media, he portrayed himself as a pompous, power-hungry sociopath who didn’t give two shits who he crushed in his quest to keep his position at the top of the country’s socioeconomic food chain.
“That family is notorious. A ruthless group of hungry sharks.”
“Yes. And the second they smell blood, they attack. Even if the bleeding person is one of their own. ‘Family first, last, and above all’ is the family motto, but it’s bullshit. It only applies if you follow my father’s lead,” she continued, making air quotes. “It’s the biggest lie. There is no loyalty to family, only money and power.”
Kelsie was a Carver. His brain couldn’t reconcile who she was with where she came from. To him, Kelsie stood for everything anti-Carver.
“Rumors have been flying around social media for years about McCarthy Carver’s long-lost daughter. She fell off the grid as a teenager, and no one in the media has seen or heard from her since. The family doesn’t mention her anymore. It’s as if she vanished.”
He studied her. The sadness in her face, the longing for a family without the toxicity of the one she’d been born into. She’d mentioned being on her own since she was sixteen, just a baby. How lonely must she have felt, hell, still feels? Ty knew a bit about loneliness. When Curly was behind bars and his marriage crumbled to bits, Ty had gone through a dark period of isolation he never wished to return to. The family he had now might be comprised of a band of societal misfits, but they were loyal as fuck and loved hard. He wouldn’t go back to those solo days for anything.
“Yeah. That would be me. I was a pawn to that family from the moment I was born. My mother died in a car accident when I was barely three, and my brother was thirteen. Dear Old Dad wanted to portray the image of a grieving widower billionaire who somehow managed to devote his entire life to his children while dominating the business world. I was there to smile for the cameras, to draw in unsuspecting clients, and to help the wolf hide. I was the sheep’s clothing that made my father look good.”
He captured her hand, still playing with his tattoos, and flattened her palm over his heart. The steady thump reverberated through his chest into her. “Something drastic must have happened for you to leave at such a young age. To go from where you lived to nothing.”
She huffed. “Yes, going from spoiled princess to practically homeless was quite the culture shock.”
“I don’t mean that.”
“But it’s true.” She shrugged. “I went from living in a sixteen thousand-square-foot mansion to a studio apartment with roaches and mice. But I was so much luckier than most runaways. Had I not had an inheritance from my mother to keep me afloat so I didn’t have to work for my food, who the hell knows what would have happened to me? I chose my apartment, hoping it would keep me off my family’s radar.”
Christ, the thought of her living alone in Tampa at sixteen was enough to give him a month of sleepless nights. “What did happen to you?”
“I isolated myself. Became a loner. For a while, I thought I was successful in staying off my father’s radar, but that was just the naiveté of youth. He’d known where I was from the moment I rented that crappy apartment. His plan was to let me crash and burn, then wait until I came crawling back and offer me the world at a very steep price.”
“Ultimate loyalty.”
“Yes.”
“But you didn’t go home.”
She pursed her lips as she shook her head. “No, I did not. And by then, he was done with me. He decided it was a more fitting punishment to leave me to live without his riches in a shithole apartment alone.”
