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But leaving her here or alone when there was an open threat on her?
That I couldn’t do.
“Car,” I ordered as I reached for her. As soon as I had Tree in my grasp, I ushered her toward the back seat where Kieran was already waiting, then followed her in.
I still had one foot on the pavement when Dare started driving. Tires desperately trying to find traction on the slick ground when he floored it.
“Lily, where are you?” he shouted once I had the door shut, and then choked cries filled the car when he placed the call on speaker.
“What has she said?” Kieran asked when Lily didn’t answer.
“To get there, and she’s sorry,” Dare said through gritted teeth, then asked Lily, “Who’s with you, Lil? You have to give me something.”
Felt like we were all holding our breaths as we waited for a response from her. The car was thick with tension that only seemed to grow with each second that passed. Building and building, drowning out the rest of the world until there was only the sound of grief. Only the feel of Tree gripping my arm like a lifeline.
“Oh God,” Lily finally forced out, her voice warped with emotion. “Oh God, Dare, I’m sorry.”
The pressure in the confined space morphed into something unstable, putting every one of us on edge because, even though we didn’t know anything, that pained I’m sorry changed everything.
Dare looked like he was going to shatter the phone with how hard he was holding it as he let the car roll to a stop. Kieran had one of his knives clenched tightly in his hand as if he were ready to use it in the next breath. And Maverick and I were in varying stages of preparation, ready to carry out whatever order came next.
He was holding one of his guns in his lap, knuckles white where they wrapped around the grip, and I was listening for every sound coming from the phone as I reached for my own.
“Sorry for what, Lily? Where are you?” Dare asked, the question filled with a whisper of apprehension and warning to whoever had made his wife sound like this.
“She wouldn’t—” A strangled noise left Lily before she began rambling. “God, I tried, but she wouldn’t come to Holloway. She wouldn’t come, and I kept calling to make sure she was okay, but she stopped answering, and then she wasn’t at Brooks. So, I came to check—”
“Who?” The question ripped from Dare on a horrifying breath as a disbelieving curse left Maverick. The soft word seeming to claw through my chest in a slow, agonizing way.
The silence after a grenade goes off near you—full and piercing and so damn disorienting—that’s what it felt like as we waited for Lily to answer.
Because there was only one of us who’d refused to go to Holloway last night, so we already knew. We could feel the loss in the weight pressing on our chests. We were just waiting for the confirmation.
“Your mom,” Lily wheezed. “They came to the main house. They—her body’s here, but she’s gone, Dare.”
Dare’s arm shook as he sat there. Glazed stare straight ahead and strained jaw shaking.
He had to clear his throat again and again before he could finally speak, and even then, his voice twisted with the grief he was struggling to keep at bay. “We’re coming, but you and Libby need to get out of there.”
“She isn’t—” Another agonizing sound left Lily. “Libby went back to Holloway. She isn’t here.”
“Are you—fucking hell, Lily, leave,” Dare yelled, the words coming out with a frantic kind of intensity. “You never should’ve gone near the main house, especially alone!”
“She wasn’t answering,” she cried back.
“Then you fucking call me,” he shouted as he slammed his free hand on the steering wheel. “You tell me, and I look into it. You don’t go there when there is a threat on our goddamn family. I need you safe. I need you alive. Fuck,” he yelled when Lily ended the call.
Dropping the phone, he let it fall and clatter near Maverick’s feet as Dare repeatedly dragged his hands over his face before gripping his hair. “Fuck,” he repeated, this one on a breath.
“They’ll get theirs,” Kieran muttered, but Dare just slanted his head.
“It’s on me,” Dare said as he turned the car to go in the opposite direction, toward the main Borello house. “I knew my mom was too stubborn to leave the Borello house. I should’ve been there.”
“No,” Maverick countered. “Putting us somewhere else was the right move. Especially with the Guerra’s being in on it...they know that house.”
More than most.
That’s what Dare had said last night once we realized which Borellos had joined Keane Street because Dare and Johnny had followed in their fathers’ footsteps...
