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I searched his eyes, but found no suspicion. Worry and guilt were slowly replacing the blank look he’d been holding on to, and I knew he wanted to know what had happened last night. Wanted to know how it had all gone so wrong when he wasn’t guarding the house.
But I didn’t know either.
All I could give him was the truth. “Out my bathroom window. I heard them breaking things, knew none of you would do that, and I ran.”
He nodded, the movement slow under his grief. “I’m so sorry, Lil.”
“It would’ve happened one day. This couldn’t last forever.”
Conor’s mouth twitched into a grimace, acknowledging my words. “But not last night.”
“Any night would’ve been the wrong night.” I sighed as I looked back at the destruction in the living room, then carefully stepped away from Conor. “Well, are you going to stand guard or help? Because this is my house, and this is where I’m sleeping tonight.”
His only response was the loud crunching beneath his heavy steps as he quickly passed through the house to the kitchen to find the broom and trash bags.
We’d barely made a dent in the living room and kitchen when a voice like steel called out, “Leave.”
I straightened from where I was picking up the shattered pieces of my French press, but didn’t turn to watch Conor leave the house.
“Shit, that was quite a show you put on back there,” he began, forced amusement dripping like acid from his tone. “I might’ve been impressed with the power and determination in your voice if you hadn’t stormed out like a damn toddler throwing a tantrum. You almost sounded like the queen you’re meant to be.”
Determination . . . there was that word again.
I finally turned to look at Mickey, not bothering to hide my hatred for him. Let him assess it how he would. “I was done with the conversation and done listening to the five of you decide what to do with me as though I wasn’t in the room. As though this isn’t my life.”
“It isn’t.”
His response was so immediate and brutal that it stunned me. My mouth opened but I was unable to speak.
“This is Holloway’s life, Lily. This is Holloway’s future. You are Holloway’s future, and we need to protect that future however we see fit.”
“Protect me?” I asked on a breath. “Is that how you see last night? I protected myself. If the Borellos weren’t so sure I wasn’t kept on this property as I have been my entire life, they wouldn’t come looking for me here. They wouldn’t know where to start looking. If I had a say in how to protect myself, last night wouldn’t have happened.”
“If you had a say, you would be buried next to your brothers, and Holloway would have no hope for a future.”
I scoffed, and couldn’t find it anywhere in me to regret the sound when Mickey’s eyes burned with the need to kill anything in his path. Me.
“There will always be a future for Holloway, Dad. If I end up in the ground next week, there will still be a future. It’s just not the one you want.”
I bent to return to cleaning, but froze when his next words sounded throughout the small space.
“There is no future if O’Sullivan blood isn’t at the head. You’d be smart to remember that. You’d be smart to start assuring that.”
I didn’t move and I didn’t look at him, I just stared, unseeing, at the shattered glass beneath me.
He sighed in defeat, the sound as foreign as it was fake, because Mickey would never accept defeat. “If the Borellos know you’re alive, there’s no reason to continue acting like you’re not. You’ve had a four-year vacation, and you’re welcome for it. It’s time you remembered your place here, Princess. So do what you always planned to. Marry Kieran and have kids. Ensure our bloodline. Try to make yourself believe you can do half as good a job as I’ve been doing the past twenty years, and maybe the rest of the guys will believe you can too. Maybe I’ll even believe you.”
He acted like he was giving me the greatest gift instead of sentencing me to a life in this prison.
For years this conversation was all I had wanted. From the day I’d turned eighteen until just before Aric had died, I’d begged Mickey to let me marry Kieran.
But it had never been the right time. Even though he knew one day it would happen, it had never benefited Mickey, so he’d brushed my pleas away. And now that the day had finally come, I wished it hadn’t.
Even if I’d never known what it was like to be kissed so passionately it made my soul cry, I’d still wish this conversation hadn’t happened. Wouldn’t ever happen.
Because the man who entered my bed at night, the man who kept me at arm’s length both physically and emotionally, was no longer the man I’d always sworn to love. He was no longer someone I even knew. The thought of marrying him had a panic rising deep in my gut. The need to be free of this place became more urgent.
“I’ll expect your engagement as your thanks,” Mickey said as he walked out of the house.
