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Sadie glared at him with a sliver of sympathy in her eyes.
“He claims he had no knowledge of Brendan’s actions, that they weren’t sanctioned by him. I believe him.”
“Ma, you can’t be serious!” Calvin’s outrage was palpable. I couldn’t say I blamed him, but I kept quiet, watching in twisted fascination.
“I didn’t say I’d give the bitch back. I said I believed Brendan acted without his knowledge. The boy is a rash idiot, nothing but trouble. Ronan should be thanking us, and I told him as much.”
“I’m sure that went over well,” Kat snorted with a laugh.
“He was oddly silent on the matter,” Sadie said as if it were a small detail. “The point is, what do you want to do about it?” She posed the question to Jasper.
“You know what I want to do. I want to choke off their supply and kill them slowly. Make them think they can still put up a fight, and then we end the fucking Crusaders.”
Holy hell, who knew behind that pretty boy office drone façade was a stone-cold killer? I had a newfound respect for the eldest Ashby sibling.
Sadie nodded, a small smile of approval on her lips as she let her gaze land on each of her children, ending with Jasper. “I think that’s an excellent plan.”
The whole thing sounded a bit too cutthroat for me, but I supposed when your back was against the wall, you had to get creative. And if anyone could get creative, it was the Ashbys.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Virgil
Long after the breakfast table had broken up, I sat there with my mind racing, spinning, trying to figure out what in the hell I did wrong to upset Maisie. Sure, she put on a good show for breakfast, answering questions with a polite smile but not too polite, and even joking with Kat and Cal. Terry too. But nothing reached her eyes. Not her smile. Not her laugh. Not even the genuine interest she showed in Cal’s tech shit.
Nothing.
I poured my heart out to her, ripped that shit open and laid it bare and she seemed…disappointed. I said I cared about her and wanted her around and it was like it wasn’t enough, like she expected more. I didn’t know what more I had to give. Honestly, I wasn’t even sure I could give what I promised, but I was willing to try.
Which meant I had to get my ass up and away from the piles of food growing colder by the second on the table and walk up the stairs to the guest room where she was staying. We needed to talk. Hell, we needed privacy and there was only one way to get that.
“Come in,” she called out when I tapped on the door.
She was stretched across the bed with an e-reader propped up against the headboard, long legs dangling off the edge of the bed.
“Can we talk?”
Something in my tone alerted her because Maisie turned and nodded, closing the e-reader and giving me her full attention. “Sure.”
I shut the door and walked toward the bed, keeping a few feet of space between us just to make sure we talked first.
“I feel like I said something wrong earlier but, fuck me, I can’t seem to figure out what.”
Her lips spread into an amused grin that was at odds with the heavy sigh she let out.
“I know and I’m sorry for that.” She patted the spot on the bed beside her and I sat, watching as she grabbed both of my hands and held them in her lap, cradling them in her much smaller hands.
“I didn’t see you coming, Virgil.”
I knew exactly what she meant. I wasn’t in the market for a full-time woman, didn’t believe I could love—or be loved for that matter.
My childhood and even my adulthood were too fucked up for lily-white notions like love and happily ever after, so what the fuck did I know about it? But I did know Maisie was always on my mind. My body constantly craving hers. Nonstop. “I know what you mean.”
“I need time,” she said after a long pause.
“Time,” I grunted. What the fuck did that mean?
Maisie let out a long sigh. “Not because I don’t want you,” she tried to reassure me but it wasn’t working. “Seriously. I need to reassess my own thoughts about relationships and expectations. I thought I was so damn modern,” she said on a bitter laugh. “But after all the sweet stuff you said to me before, I felt disappointed, all because you didn’t say you loved me. And that seems pretty childish.”
I opened my mouth to tell her I cared about her. But she put her hand up and stopped me.
“It’s on me, Virgil. Hell, I don’t even know if I love you, so why should I expect you to tell me you love me? Or to even know how you feel?” She sighed and stroked the side of my face. “Your actions have shown me that you care. I just need time to believe it.”
