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Stepping off the elevator, I strode into the main dining area and toward the bar. The stench of copper filled the air, and it was unusually quiet. Where was everyone? Normally, you could hear the clanking of pots and pans through the service door and the chef yelling obscenities like an Irish Gordon Ramsey knockoff.
“I’d stop right there if I were you.” A voice drifted through the empty bar as I approached the kitchen doors. Then there was the click of a gun. Fuck, the bitch couldn’t let me have my coffee first?
“Marianne,” I drawled her name in a bored tone as she stepped out from behind the service doors and the bar, her gun level with my face. “You look like shit.”
Her strawberry blond hair was slicked back in a ponytail, and her eyes were tear-stained and puffy. She’d collected quite a few bruises since I had seen her last. They snaked up her arms, and the ones on her throat had begun to turn a sickly yellow.
Whoever had done that to her wasn’t a happy person.
“Shut up,” she snapped. Her grip tightened on the small revolver in her hand—a .38 lady. Nothing special, but it would suck if I got shot with it. “You ruined everything,” she hissed at me. “Everything. Just like your whore of a mother.”
Shrugging my shoulders, I yawned, already bored with where this conversation was heading. She was spewing the same old shit.
“Is that what you told my mother the night you killed her?” I asked, knowing full well it wouldn’t be long before my father or one of the twins came downstairs for their own cup of morning coffee. Marianne sneered at me. “Oh, come on. Just between us girls. You can tell me anything, I promise.”
Her lips were shut tighter than Fort Knox.
“Why don’t you tell me about how you screamed at her that Liam was yours,” I taunted. “That she took everything from you. How you were never her friend and whispered your secrets in her ear before you left her to die.”
Marianne let out a sharp, mocking laugh. “What are you trying to do, little girl?” she asked, her lips splitting into a demented smile, showcasing her pearly white teeth. “Get me to confess to something I never did to make your story more plausible? I never hurt your mother. I was her best friend.Youare the one who orchestrated all of this.Youare the puppeteer. So jealous of what we had here that you had to go and try to tear it apart.”
Huh? “What are you talking about?”
“Don’t be stupid, little girl,” she spat venomously. “You want your father all to yourself. Admit it. Want to take everything you didn’t have. What doesn’t belong to you. Don’t play stupid.”
My god, the bitch was unhinged.
Which, of course, naturally meant I was going to poke her with a stick.
“I think someone is projecting, don’t you?” I held my hands up in front of me and shrugged. “I mean, you did take everything that was meant for my mother, after all.”
“This ismyfamily,” she screamed. Yep, that ought to wake the neighbors. “Mine. Not yours. Not your mother’s. Mine. Your grandmother took everything from me.” She brandished the gun at me, taking a few steps closer. “Everything, you hear me? She deserved what she got just like your…”
“Mom?” Seamus stepped into the bar, his green eyes on his mother, brow creased with concern. Or maybe suspicion. It was hard to tell. Meanwhile, Kiernan, who was a few short steps behind him, looked downright hostile with his cold, dark eyes glaring daggers at the woman who gave birth to him.
Kiernan was a naturally suspicious person. Unlike Seamus, who was open and trusting, he had seen Marianne’s treachery early on in his childhood. It wasn’t that his twin was blind to their mother’s actions, but I think, in a lot of ways, he was like I had been with Elias. Hoping that one day she would show him the parental love he had always wanted from her.
I snorted internally at the thought. Fat chance of that. The woman was a pure narcissistic sociopath.
“Seamus,” she breathed.
“What are you doing?” He frowned at the gun in her hand. Marianne’s face fell as she looked at her son.
“What do you mean?” she asked innocently. “Your sister has been manipulating you. Poisoning your mind against me.”
Rolling my eyes, I blew out my cheeks. “Yep, that was exactly what I had been doing. Caught me. Criminal mastermind of my own making.”
Marianne scowled at me.
“Put down the gun, Mother,” Kiernan hissed at her, his hand going to the back of his pants.
“You don’t tell your mother what to do, boy,” she hissed at him, dropping the innocent face she’d been sporting seconds ago. “This is my house.”
“Actually, it’s mine,” my father’s voice boomed. Taken off guard by his sudden entrance, Marianne seized my moment of weakness and pounced. Her long nails scratched at my scalp when she grabbed a handful of my hair, wrenching me to her. With my back to her front, she placed the barrel of her gun against my temple and snarled.
“This has to end,” she cried. “She’s tricked you. Manipulated you. Why can none of you see it?” She dug the barrel into my temple, and I winced. That was going to leave a bruise.
“Put the gun down, Marianne,” my father growled.
