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“You can leave this town, Theo. I wanted the boy back, but if this is what I get…” I pause with my jeans pulled halfway up my legs. I look him up and down and barely swallow the fresh grief that wants to consume me. “If that boy is gone forever, and you’re this guy who’d rather execute innocents because of who their parents were, then not only are we not compatible on a personal level, but you can be sure I’m taking my ass to work and I’m going to run you too. I have powerful computers too. In fact, I’m pretty sure the Griffin logo is on the back of every monitor on every desk at the station. I’m going to find your crimes, and I’ll lock you up.” I yank my jeans up and jump to pull the button together. “I’m a good fucking cop, I’m clean, I do good work, and you…” I laugh and shake my head. “You’re an asshole. You came here thinking you’re the only victim in Colum’s empire, but you’re not. You’re not even the hardest done by.”
I pull the Griffin shirt off and toss it away, only to quickly slide the one I was wearing earlier back on. I’m braless, my shirt has dried blood on the front, and wearing it gives me the heebie-jeebies for reasons I can’t figure out, but I shake my shoulders back and ignore the slithering oil that moves in my stomach. “You won’t find an ally in me if you’re here to hurt people.”
“You’re choosing them,” he murmurs. “You say you’re clean, but you’re choosing Bishops over me.”
“You are a fucking Bishop!” I pick up a water bottle from the desk in the corner and toss it so he has to bat it away. “You are a Bishop. But you’re wrong; I’m not choosing them over you. I’m choosing right over wrong. My entire life, the only control I had, the only thing I could do and control all on my own, was whose side I was on. Whose word I believed. Whose back I could have. I choose right every time. I would choose you too if you were here for the right reasons, but you’re not. You’re not looking to find the good in people you literally don’t know. You’re digging up dirt, tossing it at them, and hoping it sticks.” I meet his eyes and shake my head. “I will not help you do that.”
I snatch up my phone and wallet and move across the room. I need to buy another half a dozen packets of ibuprofen on the way home, then I’m going to sleep and pray I don’t wake up.Take me, concussion, because I got everything I wished for… but it’s nothing like what I wished for.
“Don’t stay in town, Theo. We have nothing here for you.”
“I can’t let it go, Lib!” His voice cracks when my hand wraps around the door handle. “I’m not saying everyone else who stepped into the club didn’t get a shitty hand. We all did. I get that, okay? But how do I know if they’re good or bad? How do I know that they wouldn’t sell an innocent woman for a few bucks?”
“You could ask them,” I argue quietly. “Instead of offering Sophia sex and a penthouse, you could ask her about her sister. You could ask Jay about the sex-trafficking operation he shut down. He didn’t benefit from it, Gunner. He didn’t allow it to go on. He shut it down and saved countless lives.”
“They have dirty money in their accounts.” He stands on the very opposite side of the room and swallows. “I came to you because your accounts are clean. Your whole fucking life is clean. But then I look at Sophia’s dance studio, and she’d have us believe she’s made millions in less than a year?”
“Youwantthem to be guilty,” I murmur. “You want to punish them, because you can’t punish Colum. I don’t know them on a personal level. I don’t know about their money. I’ve stayed far away from it all, because that’s what I can control now. I can control the people I associate with, because I need people not to assume I’m just like my father.”
“You’re not.” He takes a step forward. “You’re nothing like that mongrel.”
“And you’re nothing like your dad, right?”
He shakes his head. “Nothing like him.”
“So maybe they deserve the same benefit. They at least deserve the opportunity to discuss it. They have no clue they even have a brother.” I release the door handle and walk toward him. “They have no clue there’s a third. How is that fair?”
“You…” He hesitates. “You didn’t tell them tonight, while I waited outside the club?”
I shake my head. “No. Because Gunner Bishop has my loyalty. This dude Theo? He’s an asshole. He’s no one to me, but Gunner… that sweet boy?” I look between his eyes. “He has brothers. And all three of them deserve to know each other. They deserve the truth.”
“It’s not my responsibility to mind their feelings, Libby.”
I stop in front of him and bend my neck to meet his eyes. “How old are you, Gunner?”
His lips twitch. A memory from forever ago flitters through my brain.
“I’m thirty-three and a half.”
“Which makes Kane your big brother, and Jay, your baby brother. It makes you family. No, it’s not your responsibility to care about their feelings. They’ve had each other this whole time, they’re a team, and that’s great for them. It’s more than you got. They seem to be a pretty impenetrable pairing, and I know that if I was you, I’d be scared of approaching them, because as a Bishop, it’s your rightful place to be beside them. They might reject you, and that’s scary.”
I don’t fight when he takes my hand and begins rubbing my stinging palm.
“But if they’re good, if they’re moreyouthan they arehim, then isn’t it worth trying?”
Gunner’s chest shudders as he drags in a deep breath and lets it out in jutting spurts. “What if you’re wrong? What if I go to them and simply… ask, but they turn? I’ll have given up my cover, I’ve put my company and the livelihoods of a hundred thousand people at risk. What if they–”
“Reject you?” I repeat on a quiet sigh. “It’s a scary thought, isn’t it?” His eyes are warm like how I remember. The boy is in there, hidden beneath twenty years of fear and loneliness. “Do you want me to come with you?”
“They don’t know who I am yet?”
I shake my head.
“They didn’t ask in that hour I waited outside 188?”
I nod. Then I let the tension coiling in my belly out on a laugh. “Of course they asked. They want to know who you are. They want to know why I shoved you out of a window instead of let my chief see us together. Sophia resorted to blackmailing me to get answers.”
Theo’s eyes darken on the word blackmail. “You say they’re good, but they’d blackmail an officer? What does she have against you, baby?”
