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There. That’s where I want you. Where I need you.
CHAPTER SIX
Ronan
I pulled back. “We’re partners now,” I told her, my voice low, my eyes locked on hers. This was a tightrope I did not like, holding myself distant while pulling her in.
“Fine,” she said. “Partners. But don’t lie. No more lying.”
“The same to you, Poppy.”
She nodded, her breath hitching with nerves and desire. “Ask your question.”
I sat on the edge of the tub. “Why would the Morellis want you dead or alive?”
“How do you even know this? Like, is there some kind of bad guy newsletter you’re all on and you get updates about murders for hire?”
I would not smile at her. Would. Not.
“It’s what Theo said before I put a bullet in his brain.”
“Did you kill him for shooting me?”
“I’m asking the questions now. Why do the Morellis want you dead or alive?”
I saw it settle over her face. The confusion and fear. “I’m no one. Nothing.”
You’re not no one, I wanted to tell her. And you are far from nothing. But how I felt about her was never the point. “Well, that’s what we need to figure out, Poppy. And fast.”
“Okay,” she whispered, nodding, a star pupil. “What do we know about the Morellis?”
“They don’t hide their crimes. Of which there are plenty. They’re as rich, if not richer, than the Constantines.”
“That must bother Caroline.”
“Everything about the Morellis bothers Caroline.”
“She doesn’t want me dead or alive, does she?” Poppy asked, like the question was pulled from her stomach.
“She very much wants you alive. And living in her pocket.”
“I guess . . .” She blew out a slow breath. “I was an idiot thinking she loved me. That we were family.”
“Oh, princess, she treats everyone like that. It’s not just you.” I’d known going in I was a tool for Caroline. A weapon she wielded against her enemies. But at the beginning, being needed that way, and being appreciated in any way . . . well, it’d felt like love. Like a mother’s love. To a killer who didn’t know his mother, Caroline had filled those shoes in a way that embarrassed me now.
But I wouldn’t be saying any of that out loud.
“What do you know about the Morellis, Poppy?” I asked, pushing us back to the subject at hand.
“They’re violent,” she said. “Lawless. Like . . . they don’t play by the same rules Caroline and her family play by.”
“They don’t care about the same things. But,” I said. “They’re upfront about it. The Constantines are a knife in the back. The Morellis are a gun to your face.”
“You sound like you admire them.”
“They’re a worthy enemy, and I spent a lot of years fighting them. Did Caroline ever tell you anything about them? Something that might have seemed like a secret?”
“Never. I swear it. She rarely talked about them. I don’t even know what the feud is about.”
“Money. It’s always about money. And control. It started in the ’50s over a land dispute in Las Vegas. Bryant Morelli and Caroline Constantine just inherited the fight.”
“Would they want to hurt me because of you?” she asked, pink cheeked and embarrassed. “Like, maybe they thought what was between us was real. On your end.”
Ah, she was still wrestling with that bit. Fair. I was too.
“No one gives a shit about me.”
“I do,” she whispered. So sweet. So precious and sweet and brave sitting there.
I stood, getting some distance from the beautiful naked woman in the tub. “It’s got to have something to do with the senator.”
“I don’t know what,” she said.
“Yeah. Me neither.” I sat down on the closed toilet lid and grasped a corner of the tray still balanced on the sink. “You want some of this?” I asked her. “You must be starved.”
“I don’t want to get crumbs in the bathtub. But I can’t . . .” She sighed and gave me a chagrined smile. “I can’t actually get out of the tub. My arm . . .”
Pulling her up and out of the water was nothing. Resisting the press of her body against mine was harder. She was damp and warm and soft against me.
“Here,” I breathed, looking away from her face and sweeping her legs up over the edge of the tub. I set her down on the mat and I made the mistake of looking into her deep brown eyes.
With my blood-soaked killer hands, I touched her throat, the fragile edge of her collarbone, the sensitive skin of her neck where she’d been bruised that day when I saw her in her kitchen. It had been easy, for the two years when I didn’t cross paths with Poppy again, running Caroline’s obstacle course, earning her approval crime by crime, to believe Poppy wasn’t getting hurt by her husband. I’d known, of course, the second I met the guy just what kind of man he was. How he shared the same space as the priests up the hill in the school I’d been sent to.
