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“You what?” Connor says, still unflinching in the tone of his voice.
“I hid. Like a fucking scaredy-cat.” The harsh word sounds weird, coming out of her rosebud mouth, and we all go silent. “I don’t know where he is. I went to look for him later, after I thought the men had left, but he wasn’t there. Blood was on the ground.”
She gets a distant look in her eyes, like she’s reliving the night, and I understand completely. I relive my worst nights continuously.
“Why were you looking for your brother? How did you get to Heywood?” Connor closes in, his face stoic, the palm of one hand down on the table in front of her, bracing himself.
He looks fierce, and if I didn’t know better, I would be terrified of him.
“He always told me if I wanted out to come to him. Things were—are—different here, he said.”
“Where are you from?” I ask her, knowing I won’t get any information out of Connor so I go right to the source.
She looks back and forth from me and Connor, clearly confused why I’m asking her this question since it seems Connor and Geo know exactly where she’s from.
“Chicago,” she tells me, and I outwardly shudder.
“You are a Leoni?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “No, I’m not. But my mother is connected to them. She married a Leoni guard after my father died. But thankfully Fern was able to stay here, with your father protecting him.” She looks at Connor.
“He was good at protecting those who served a purpose,” Connor replies, his voice giving nothing away about how he feels. “He valued loyalty.”
“As do all the men I know,” Francesca says. A toneless laugh escapes from her throat, and I’m surprised when it’s raspy. “I’m sorry to hear of his passing.”
“Thank you,” Connor says, nodding. “What are you running from, Francesca?”
“An arranged marriage,” she says. “My mother set it up—with the help of Viktor, I think.”
I snort. Seems very common in this life. That and forced marriages. Marriages of mutual convenience.
“Those happen every day,” he retorts.
Francesca’s back gets straighter.
Good girl. Stand up to the big bad wolf.
“To Anthony Bertolli,” she whispers.
The name doesn’t carry any weight for me, but I can tell that both Connor and Geo go still at the name.
“He’s got to be—” Geo finally starts to say, but Francesca cuts him off.
“Sixty-two, yes.”
“What? Sixty-two? How can they do that? Why would they do that?”
“Wryn,” Connor says, stopping my rant. My name full of warning.
“I can’t do it,” Francesca says.
“And you shouldn’t have to. That’s creepy. He sounds like a pedophile.”
“She’s not underage,” Connor says, as if it were completely reasonable for a sixty-two-year-old man to marry someone of Francesca’s age.
“I’m nineteen,” Francesca says.
My hands curl into fists. Those sick people disgust me.
