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She didn’t see any of it.
What she did see was her family, and she lived for how much she loved each and every one of them, even if her relationship with her father was strained. She was family to her core, and the feral instinct in him wanted to yank her from this world—her family—and bring her into his.
Mostly because he didn’t understand it. This need of hers for family.
He wanted her and to hell with her family.
But she would never accept that, never accept him—hate him, even—if he tore her away from them.
What, then?
That question sat like a festering worm in his mind.
Over and over during the last days, that one question had driven him to ponder what he really wanted out of life, and the answer, disastrously, was beginning to center on this woman sitting across from him, picking at her peas.
For he wasn’t about to give her up.
But that would mean his world wasn’t his world anymore. His empire given up.
He swallowed a bite of a mutton pie that tasted more like dirt than mutton, his look centered on her downturned eyes as the tines of her fork clinked again and again across the pewter plate as she worked to stab one pea. “Eat.”
Her eyes lifted to him. “It is hard. All food I eat sits heavy in my stomach.”
“I know you are worried, but eat.” His look dropped pointedly to her plate and her mutton pie with only a nibble eaten away from the crusty edge.
Not willing to fight him on it, she jabbed a bite of the pie and set it into her mouth. Her eyes scrunched as she chewed and it took a grimace for her to swallow. “This tastes like—”
“Dirt. I am aware.” His mouth pulled to the side. Maybe the peas would have to do tonight. “But it was, unfortunately, the most appetizing of what they had available. We rode too late into the night and the better meals were gone earlier.”
She nodded, her eyes dropping back to the plate as she chased another pea with her fork.
Apparently, good food only came with leisurely travel—not a breakneck journey across the land as fast as the horses could carry them and had them riding well into the night.
Silence drifted between them for long minutes as she stabbed and ate every last pea, until her gaze lifted to him again.
“Why did you do this? Take my family?” Her voice was soft, not accusing, more searching for understanding. “You said it was for revenge, and that you were forced into it, but there had to be some impetus for it.”
She’d dipped a toe into shark-infested waters and she knew it, for the look on her face. An uncomfortable squirm made her arm twitch, her fingers curl around the fork. He’d been waiting for this very question since they left Seahorn.
“I know my father lived a life of adventure before he came home.” She set the fork down onto the plate. “I’m not stupid. The number of guards always around Seahorn has told me far more than he ever has about the enemies he’s made. You’re one of them?”
Her trust with him was balancing on the edge of a blade, and she could slip down the wrong side at any moment.
This, he had to give her.
She’d trusted him enough to keep her safe, he needed to trust her with the truth.
He nodded. “Yes.”
“Why? What happened?”
“Your father killed a number of my best men. Your Uncle Reiner ran my father out of England. And your Uncle Roe killed my father.” Setting his fork neatly beside his plate of half-eaten pie, he leaned back in his chair. “When my father was run out of England, I was yanked out of the only home I knew and set down on foreign lands. And then my father disappeared on me. He was gone—gone all the time until I was thirteen and I convinced him I was ready to start learning.”
“Learning what?”
“Everything about the business. His business. The reason he was driven out of England.”
She mirrored his body, leaning back in her chair as her arms slipped around her middle. “What, exactly, is the business you’re in?”
