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I part my lips to speak, to draw him back and get answers, but then he turns to me and the intensity of his eyes alone dries up my words. My knees weaken and I lock them tight, forcing my mouth closed again as I wait for what he has to say.
‘I’m back, Alexa, and this time nothing can stop me taking all that I’m owed.’
* * *
I wait for her to erupt, to demand my explanation and tell me to go to hell.
Instead she frowns, her brows drawing together as her hand—the one that still bears my brother’s ring—rises to her neck. It taunts me. Fires my blood with the need to possess, to take back what was once mine. But she’s no object. I have no hold over her.
Only, my body can’t be told so easily.
She wets her lips, and when she speaks it’s with a calmness I’m sure she can’t feel. ‘What, exactly, do you think you’re owed, Cain?’
Her question chimes with my mental rampage. Calls my mind back to my choice of words seconds before. The double meaning is glaringly obvious to me and I wonder if she has any idea of it.
If I’d thought about it first maybe I would have been more careful, masked the personal entirely with business—just business.
But I was angry, bitter, my mind lost to how different things might have been—no, should have been.
Her by my side, wearing my ring.
My younger brother still alive and working alongside me.
My father proud, my mother prouder.
But, no. I’m back as the black sheep, half my family gone, and now... Now what?
Now I’m staking my claim to the business and...
I look to the single gold band around her finger. ‘You don’t wear an engagement ring.’
Her frown deepens. ‘What does that have to do with anything?’
Hell, I have no idea. I came to discuss business. Instead I’m caught up in her, in the personal. In what we once had and what I lost.
‘I’m just curious.’
She lowers her hand and rotates the gleaming metal between her thumb and forefinger, brandishing her love for another man with every twist. ‘I didn’t need one.’
I laugh; it’s a bark. Harsh. Brutal. ‘No one needs an engagement ring, Alexa. It’s just expected...a loving gesture—’ My voice catches and I mask it in a barren smile. ‘It’s tradition.’
‘It was enough that he proposed.’
‘Enough?’ I stare at her, incredulous, my anger getting the better of me. ‘How very romantic. You science folk really are clinical, through and through.’
Her eyes snap to mine, bright and fierce. ‘If you’ve come here to lay into me and rip apart Liam’s memory, you can leave right now. You don’t get to speak ill of us—especially not him.’
‘Why? Because he was so talented at everything? So good? The proper little Catholic boy my parents always wanted but had to wait two extra years for?’
She releases the ring and flexes her fingers. I know she’s itching to swing for me again. Funny, I’ve never thought her capable of violence.
Shows how much I knew her then.
And how little I probably know her now.
Or is her love for my brother so strong even in death that she just can’t bear it...?
Ice pierces my heart, rebuilds my defences, reminds me of why I hate her.
