Everything that happened lately was eating at me, especially what happened to my wife at the last gathering here. I wasn’t the type to beat around the bush. I had serious suspicions about Marquette and planned to confront him directly. I wasn’t the man to mess with. Everyone knew I had a quick trigger. When you got too close to what was mine, I got violent. And right now, I had questions for that old man. I hoped his answers wouldn’t be the kind that sent me to war for my woman, again.
“We’re here to see Judge Marquette.”
“Of course. Make yourselves comfortable, he’ll be with you soon. How’s Serenity doing? She must be pretty shaken after all that. Hard to believe the Sawyer’s actually went as far as kidnapping her. Poor thing must’ve been scared out of her mind.”
“She’s still processing,” I replied.
“Of course. She needs rest. Halley and I will visit her soon.”
“Yeah, sure.”
I managed a weak smile, stopping myself from saying Serenity was at the Veylor estate and it was killing me being so far away from her. Funny how I spent a year running and living apart, but now, just two days without her felt like an eternity. I didn’t think I could get through another night without her in my arms, without the warmth of her skin, her scent when I held her close. Not to mention how damn full my balls were after getting usedto fucking my wife every day. God, I needed her forgiveness more than I needed air. I wasn’t sure how much longer I could take it.
“I’ll leave you to your business,” Maureen Marquette announced before slipping out as her husband walked into the room at the same time.
He looked at Krash and me, and his brows drew together immediately.
“Korven. I wasn’t expecting you,” he said, taking a seat across from us.
“I have something important to discuss with you. I figured it was best to have this conversation face to face.”
“What’s going on?”
“I’m not going to dance around it. I want to know why my wife’s toxicology report shows she ingested something at your party that could have killed her.”
Marquette was caught off guard. He hadn’t seen that coming at all.
“Excuse me? What are you talking about, Korven?”
I locked eyes with him, my face stone cold. Marquette was my father’s age—hell, maybe even older. But among the Big Six, we were equals. He was head of his family. I was head of mine. So I spoke to him with the weight of a boss.
“At the last party, my wife ended up with something in her system that nearly killed her. That’s what caused her vertigo before she fell in the pool. She swears she only had a glass of wine. So I want to know how Serenity’s drink got poisoned.”
He looked truly shocked when I laid it out. His reaction said he had no clue, that he hadn’t orchestrated a damn thing. Years of working as my father’s right hand in the Big Six and Marquette never gave my father a single reason to doubt his loyalty, but you never really know people. After everything that happened, I had to keep my guard up. Did I truly believe he tried to poisonSerenity? Honestly, no. Even if the facts seemed to point that way. Still, there was something off, and I planned to find out what, especially if it led back to the Sawyer’s.
“Wait, Konflict. Are you accusing me of trying to kill Serenity?”
I crossed my arms and stared him down.
“I need answers.”
“Well, I don’t know what happened. I’m honestly surprised you’d suggest Serenity’s drink was poisoned. Marlau, the bartender, has worked for us forever. I refuse to believe he’d do something like that. And if the drink was poisoned, more than one guest would have shown the same symptoms as Serenity. He poured from the same bottle for other people.”
He was right about that. I’d considered it, but I wanted to hear it from him.
“I can’t believe you’d think I’d hurt Serenity. She’s like a daughter to me. She’s almost the same age as my own girl. If mine wasn’t away right now, they’d probably be good friends. I would never harm Serenity, not after Kate made me promise to protect her if anything ever happened.”
“What?” I asked, caught off guard.
“Yes, what? Why do you think I pushed for your marriage? It’s what your mother wanted. She was working behind the scenes to smooth things over between the Korven’s and Veylor’s, just so you could one day approach the girl you had a crush on for so long. I don’t know why you’ve been acting like a fool with her, when we all knew you loved that girl, Konflict.”
Now I was the one who didn’t know what to say.
“If I wanted your wife dead, I wouldn’t have insisted you marry her. Why would I push you to marry Serenity, only to want her killed later? It would’ve been easier to just let you finish her that night and end the war. Though I’m convinced you wouldn’t have killed her. Forcing you into marriage was about keeping her alive.”
I’d never understood why the other families stepped in on a conflict that wasn’t theirs, when Emberwick law says every family is sovereign and nobody interferes when two go to war. That night, they showed up and made me lower my weapons. Even though they were too late because most of the damage was already done, and Marquette was right—I never would have killed the woman I loved. But even so, they broke the rules of the Big Six. Now I understood Marquette’s motivation.
“Then why push to bring the Sawyer’s in? Why act like it’s a problem that I hold too much territory and power if there’s no sixth member?”
