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Chapter 24
Kieran
“Ican’tdoit anymore, Daddy. I just can’t. She absolutely refuses to let anyone but me help her, and I’m drowning in schoolwork trying to take care of her. I’m a kid, I’m not equipped to handle this shit.”
Shifting my weight onto the balls of my feet, I lean closer against my father’s closed office door, Fiona’s voice bleeding past the heavy wood. His seventy-year-old, gray-haired assistant, Valerie, let me in without asking, which is why I’m still standing in the top floor lobby, eavesdropping.
“Sweetheart, I know it’s hard.” My dad’s voice is slow, exhausted, and I can practically imagine him swiping a hand down his haggard face, trying to get her to listen.
“It’s not hard, it’simpossible. She loses more and more control over her body every single day and refuses to acknowledge it. Half the time, she can’t even remember her own name, or she’s off in dreamland with Murphy, acting like he wasn’t practically burned at Kieran’s stake.”
“Stress can have a great toll on our memories—”
Something slams down, maybe her palms hitting the surface of his desk. “Mom needshelp. And not the kind I can give her. Not anymore.”
“What’re you doing?”
I startle, knocking my brow bone on the door as Boyd approaches me, smoothing a hand down his crisp, mustard yellow vest. We haven’t spoken much, still, because he’s not really the confrontational type. My mother always used to call him a lover, not a fighter. The calm, quiet type—exactly why I needed him in my corner, to offset the asshole vibes I toss at everyone.
Yet, all the talking I’ve been doing over the past few weeks with Juliet has me feeling like I need to throw him a bone and fix the rift between us. It’s a rift I can’t quite afford—the Devil needs as many allies as he can get.
“Are you fucking my sister?” I ask in lieu of an answer, snapping up straight. Valerie glances through the glass divider at us, her fingers pausing over her keyboard, but I ignore her, lowering my voice. Everyone in this town likes to sell stories to the tabloids, and I don’t want this one front and center. “She’s practically a kid, asshole.”
His jaw tenses, eyes darkening. “She’snota kid, but that’s beside the point, because I’m not fucking her.”
“Then why did my dad—”
“He walked in on me helping her with homework in her room, and he just assumed, I guess.”
“That’s a pretty large assumption.”
“She’s into me.” He shrugs, leaning against the door. “Always has been, I think. I don’t see her like that.”
I squint at him, remembering how he stopped her from leaving with a frat guy at the gala all those weeks ago. Crossing my arms over my chest, I study him for a few beats of silence. His forehead creases, the corded muscles in his neck strain against his skin. “You know I don’t give a shit if you like her, right? I’m not that kind of brother.”
He rolls his eyes. “Thanks for the permission, but she’s way too young for me.”
“Nine years.” I shrug. “That really matter in the grand scheme of things?”
“Look, it’s great you’ve found your happily-ever-after and shit, but that’s not in the cards for me, all right? I’m not the guy for Fiona.” He straightens, yanking on the hem of his vest, and I can’t deny the quiver in my chest when he mentions my happiness. Because fuck if I don’t hope he’s right, and that the darkness in my heart isn’t enough to keep out Juliet’s light. “I’ve got too much shit on my plate as it is, and I don’t want to talk about it.”
Cocking my head, I start to ask what’s going on with him but am cut off when the door swings wide open, Fiona’s red hair flying back with the force. She meets Boyd’s gaze for a half second, and I see a flare of hurt behind her big eyes, but she tamps it down within seconds, darting to look at me instead.
“Mom’s moving into a home and we’re selling the house.”
I blink, my brain struggling to wrap around her words. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me. All of us need out of that haunted mansion, and she needs twenty-four hour care that I can’t give her. Talk to Dad about the specifics, I’m going to drama club.” Tossing her hair over her shoulder, the ends whipping against Boyd’s chest as she pushes past us, she saunters out of the office lobby to the elevators, the click from the needle-thin heels of the thigh-high boots she has on reverberating in the air.
With no fucking clue what just happened and no time to address it before she disappears, I shake my head and enter the office. My father sits behind his desk, legs propped up, a glass of scotch in his hand. “Your sister is something else.”
“You guys raised her that way.” Boyd and I settle into the plastic seats across from the desk, and I toss a yellow folder at him. “Selling the house?”
My father scoffs, taking a swig of his drink and dropping his feet to the floor. “Yeah, right. And have the spirits of everyone who’s ever died there follow me elsewhere? No, thanks. They need to stay contained.”
The Ivers and their fucking superstitions.I’m starting to wonder if I’d be a different man without them.
“What’s this?” he asks, flipping the file open. The photographs sit in front, on top of various financial documents, shipping details, and businesses involved in the underground sex trade our little town’s fully entrenched in. “You have a lead?”
