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“Look,” Eden said as calmly as she could. “It’s all right there.”
I could see it over his shoulder. It was his birth certificate. Father: Sean Byrne. Mother: Gwen Morelli.
“Oh my god,” I whispered.
“This is fake,” Ronan said, rejecting it.
“Why would I fake it?” Eden asked.
“I don’t know why you’re doing any of this.”
“Your file,” I whispered and pointed at the blue folder on the mantel. “You said it had your birth certificate in it.”
He dropped the paper Eden had given him and grabbed the folder. Eden stood, gathered the teacups, and went to refill them as if she were just hosting a little party. But it also indicated how confident she was that she was right.
“Holy . . .” Ronan finally turned to look at me, his eyes wide and full of so much pain. “It’s true. I’m a Morelli.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Ronan
Oddly, it answered a question that had been bothering me for years. Why me? Why did Caroline Constantine pick me up out of the gutters when they were so full of boys exactly like me? Why did she install me at her side? What was special about me?
I had thought, perhaps, it was my blind loyalty. My willingness to do whatever she wanted. Needed. Those things had value.
But this was the answer.
Because I was the child of her enemy. She’d groomed me. Trained me. Used me against her enemy. My family.
It was so diabolical. It was genius. The laughter that poured out of me—like water from a broken kettle—was tinged with madness.
The breath in and out of my body crackled and burned. Eden handed me a teacup full of whiskey and I drank it this time. Poppy tried to touch my arm and I shrugged it off.
“How long has the Morelli family known about this?” I asked.
“Not long,” Eden said and then adjusted her coat around her body. “I . . . ah . . . I just told them.”
“Why?” I asked.
“How do you know?” Poppy asked at the same time, but that was hardly relevant anymore. We were past that. But Poppy didn’t fully realize what was happening. She had a few more seconds of innocence.
“Well, Bryant was getting a little tired of my . . . sharing of Morelli secrets and was threatening to disown me.”
“You’re dragging me into this because you don’t want to lose your furs?” I asked.
“Well, it gets a little uglier than that. Morellis don’t kill Morellis. And if I were no longer a Morelli . . .” She shrugged, the fur slipping off her shoulder.
“He would kill you?” Poppy asked, shocked.
“She really is an innocent, isn’t she?” Eden asked me, and I ignored that too. In fact, I was doing everything in my power to ignore everything about Poppy. To build a box around her and put her away. “But.” Eden took her teacup of whiskey back to her chair and sat back down. “This is where our fates intertwine.” She glanced at the fireplace, cold and full of ash. “Does that thing work? It’s fucking freezing in here.”
“How do our fates intertwine?” Poppy asked flatly.
“Good God, you’re a few steps behind.” Eden sighed. “I mean, does innocence come with stupidity? I guess I’m glad I was never inflicted.”
I turned away and began laying a fire to light. Clean the ash. Place the kindling. Strike a match.
The rote steps were a distraction from the noose tightening around all our necks.
“Fuck you,” my princess snapped at Eden. “Ronan. What the hell is she getting at?”
“She is saying,” I bent and breathed over the embers so they’d ignite into flame. “That the way to save your life and get the Dead or Alive order off your head is that you need to be a Morelli. And I can do that by marrying you.”
I glanced over my shoulder to watch her stumble backward into the chair.
“No,” she said, which I knew she’d say.
I won’t be married again. For any reason.
She’d said that to me, and I’d believed her. Marriage was hell and we both knew it.
“We’ll get married,” I said. “And have it annulled. We won’t actually be married.” I stood and she was shaking her head. “We’ll send Eden back with whatever proof she needs, and we’ll go our separate ways.”
“Ah.” Eden winced. “Gonna have to stop you there. You’re going to have to come back with me.”
“Why?”
She sighed. “Or they’ll disown me. And kill me.”
“I don’t give a shit,” I said.
“Well, then the proof of your marriage won’t be going anywhere, will it?”
Eden Morelli was a stone-cold killer. I could see it in her eyes, just like she could see it in mine. “I’ll come back with you,” I told her. “Poppy goes free.”
“Yeah,” Eden winced again. “That’s not going to work either. There’s that whole Dead or Alive thing. You marry her and they won’t kill her, but they’ll still want her alive, and that could get ugly. And,” she said, smiling suddenly. “We could go another thirty rounds on who’s going where, but there’s the little matter of the favor Poppy owes me.”
