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“I can’t tell you.”
He narrows his eyes, trying to figure out what I’m not telling him. He won’t figure it out. I’m a fantastic liar.
“Are you going to make Liesel pay for what she did?” he asks. He doesn’t give away if he wants me to punish her or not. There was once a time when Liesel was his friend too. He knows her more intimately than I do, but Enzo is also a man of honor. He won’t let someone hurt his family without consequence, and Siren is his family.
“Yes,” I say.
“Good,” his voice is strained as he says it like it hurts him, but he knows it has to be done. “Liesel used to be part of this family. She used to get our protection. Not anymore. She chose to leave. She chose to hurt this family. That is the one thing I will never forgive.”
I nod, and then I look at him with all the pain of our past. “This is our fault.”
“How do you figure?”
“We failed her. We didn’t protect her when we should have. Time and time again, we failed to save her from the darkest among us. From your father. From others…”
Enzo turns back to the ocean. It’s too painful to know the part we played in making Liesel this way.
“We did fail, but we were kids then. Since then, we have done everything we could to protect her. She made her choices,” he finally replies.
“We were never kids, never given the choice to be innocent. We should have protected her. There isn’t any excuse that’s good enough. Someday, we will pay for that sin.” I run my hand through my hair, feeling the salt from the ocean turn my hair into blonde waves. “And I’m not sure we didn’t fail again as adults.”
“We’ve had an eye on her this entire time.”
“I know, but how did she end up in that twisted game on that boat the first time? How did we miss that?”
“Because she wanted us to. Listen, Liesel isn’t innocent anymore. She’s a woman who can make her own decisions. You have to let her go. Punish her, get Siren justice, but then let her go.”
I can’t.
I frown.
“What do you need from us?” Enzo asks.
“One month. I need you to give me one month to get some answers from Liesel, and then I’ll end this.”
Enzo nods and then pats me on the back. “I’ll hold you to that. You have one month, and then I don’t want to ever speak of Liesel Dunn again.”
He walks back into the house, and I know I won’t be able to keep my promise to him. Even if I accomplish everything I need to in one month, I won’t be able to give Liesel up. She’s in all of my thoughts. She’s in my soul, and dare I say it—my heart.
I don’t waste any time. Enzo gave me a month before he intervenes. That’s how long he’s willing to put his family, and me, at risk before he makes me give Liesel up.
I stand on the floor of the convention center with a crowd of people who have come to mourn Waylon Brown.
Nolan, his campaign manager, is on stage speaking about how great Waylon was and all the amazing things he would have done as governor.
I resist the urge to roll my eyes. The man was a monster who lent out his soon to be wife to play in a sick game for his own twisted pleasures. The man would have run this state into the ground.
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“Let’s all have a moment of silence to honor Mr. Brown,” Nolan says.
The room goes quiet, and that’s when she spots me.
Liesel is wearing a black lace dress sitting in a chair on stage to the right of Nolan. She plays the part of heartbroken fiancée well.
That’s because she is heartbroken, even though I’ll never understand why she fell for that old, fucked up man. He had to have brainwashed her.
Our eyes meet through the silence.
