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“Amen, brother,” Savage agrees. “Where are you going with this?” He motions with his hands. “Take me there now. Bring it.”
“Follow the facts to see the facts. They’re in front of us, but none of us, your team included, are following them. What do we know and where does that lead us?”
Savage shoves the pastry box aside. “Let’s do this. I fucking love a game of chase my fucking tail, where I actually catch my damn tail.”
Emma scoots around the island and shoos Savage further down, allowing her to stand directly in front of me, and she’s all in. She gets right to the fact-finding. “Let’s start with a recap of the most evident points. Randall came here and threatened me and you. He gave me seventy-two hours to go back to California, or he’ll come at you. Oh, and I might end up dead. He threatened us both.”
Savage whistles. “He went big and went home. Sounds like a threat to me and an invitation for me to string that wimp ass toad up by his toes and let him dangle awhile.”
“A toad?” Emma asks.
“A toad by his toe,” Savage agrees.
“O-kay,” Emma says, refocusing on me. “Aside from Savage being strange,” she says, “Randall seems to be afraid of whatever it is that he says you know and can use to hurt my family. Do you have any idea what that can be?”
“It has to be the DNA test,” I say. “They must think I knew about it before tonight.”
Emma shakes her head, rejecting that idea. “That doesn’t make any sense. Assuming that Hunter really was my father’s son, which we don’t know for certain, Hunter’s gone. He had a potential claim over our family money, not you. Aside from scandal, why does that matter now?”
Assuming that Hunter really was her father’s son.
I force myself to accept that possibility and therefore let my mind go where that takes me. Emma’s father was communicating with Hunter, even visiting him, but that didn’t start until my father died. In other words, her father showed interest in Hunter, once Hunter had the ability to give away the farm, so to speak.
“Jax?” Emma prods.
“The DNA test matters,” I say, snapping back to the present. “And I say this because it establishes a motive for murder. As for who it condemns in the eyes of the law—me or your brother or someone else—we don’t know, because we don’t know why your family wants the castle.” I lift my cup. “The castle is the root of all of this.”
“Or the symptom,” Savage suggests. “Speculating here, but we need a theory to work with. What if Hunter died before Emma’s father achieved a certain financial goal? Seems like the castle is a part of a contract not executed or some shit like that.”
“Agreed,” I say, wondering what kind of craziness Hunter had gotten himself, and us, into. “The sale of the castle must be a trigger point to terms inside an existing contract. It’s the only thing that makes sense but why the hell don’t I know about it?”
“Randall’s exact words,” Emma says, “were: The North family is our enemy. They can take everything from us. They can destroy us. Jax is using you. Seems to me,” she adds, “that he thinks you know why he and my brother want the castle.”
“I don’t think that statement says they think I already know. I think it says they’re terrified I’ll find out. And the only thing that makes me their enemy is Hunter’s murder.”
“You mean the only thing that makes you our enemy?” she asks. “I’m still a Knight, Jax.”
“You are not my enemy, Emma. You will never be my enemy, not unless you allow them to demonize me.”
“Bingo,” Savage says. “Team Knight needs to demonize you, before you marry her and end up running the whole two-company show.” He points at Emma. “Not that you couldn’t run it all. You could. I’m just saying that’s where I’m betting their heads are right now.”
There’s a heavy moment in the air when Emma blushes and cuts her stare, clearly reacting to the reference to me marrying her. She’s embarrassed or awkward, or perhaps both. I, on the other hand, considering my previous claim to eternal bachelorism, am not any of those things. She’s it for me.
“Whiskey’s in my blood, baby, not hotels,” I say, catching her hand, and when she looks at me, there’s a punch of awareness, between us as I add, “Just like you are. We are not about our families.”
“To them, we are,” she says. “And that means they’re going to keep coming at us as long as we’re together.”
“Then we need to get them under control.”
“And if we can’t?”
“We will.”
“Now. We have to do it now,” she says. “Because I have this nagging sensation in my gut is telling me someone else is going to get hurt. Randall threatened you. Actually, as much as I hate saying this, my brother threatened you, because Randall does nothing without my brother’s orders or agreement.”
