AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Alexander Medlock studied me, one eyebrow raised in question and a smug knowing. “That is the plan, isn’t it?”
“I don’t…” I began when he sighed and sat back.
“Do you have any idea how much money I had to pay the warden to keep him from throwing her and your sister into the slammer with you?” He didn’t wait for my answer. “A lot. That man could comfortably buy his own island and retire. They were a pain in my ass for nearly a year. A year! But you know what really confused me?” Again, he did not wait for an answer. “Why was Kami so hellbent on seeing you? Lavena, I understood. She’s always been persistent and she’s your sister, but Kami?” He clicked his tongue and took a sip of his drink. “She’d always been a sweet girl, but to visit that place day after day for someone they weren’t very close with — at least to my knowledge — was baffling, especially when she certainly never tried to come see me when I was incarcerated.” He shot me a teasing smirk. “It was your mother who put the pieces together for me. According to her, I — despite my many observant abilities — was clueless to what was right in front of my face. Apparently, a blind bat could see that Kami loved you and had for a damn long time. A womanwouldn’t fight that hard against law officials or wait that long for someone they were mildly fond of.”
There was so much to unpack, but all I could manage to choke out was a pathetic, “Mom knows?”
My father chuckled. “Son, everyone knows. I wish I could tell you, you did a great job hiding it, but you should know better than to think you can hide anything from your mother or sister. They can sniff out a secret better than a bloodhound. That is why, you need to get Abilene on our side before they learn about Volkov because they scare me far more than Uriah ever could.”
Everyone knows.
The horror that phrase shot through me was crippling.
Everyone knows.
Did Volkov know?
No. He couldn’t. He would have gone after her already. Wouldn’t he? Unless he was waiting for me to get out so I could feel just how powerless I was when he went after her.
“Darius?” My father was watching me, expectation arching his brow.
“What?” I heard myself rasp.
“You did know, didn’t you?”
I stared at him, trying to sift through all the thoughts jumbled up in my head. “What?” I said again.
He searched my face. “That Kami loves you.” I shook my head, more to clear it than anything else, and he swore. “I thought you knew. I never would have said—”
I put a hand up to stop him. “I knew … know.”
He relaxed. “Oh, thank God. The way you were just sitting there like you swallowed a fly had me worried.” He settled back once more. “So?”
“So, what?”
He waved his drink in my direction. “Do you love her back?”
This was probably the most personal conversation I’d ever had with my father. It wasn’t that we weren’t close, but we seldom had heart-to-hearts, orman-talks.I didn’t know how to answer him.
“Does it matter?” I muttered at least. “You know better than anyone it would never work.”
“Explain.”
His absolute lack of understanding at that moment made me want to kick a wall. The sudden and violent need to lash out, to upend the room and rage was the very thing that calmed me. I wasn’t one for fits of temper. I wasn’t raised to lose my patience or my wits. I took a deep breath and did the very thing my father taught me to do — I broke it down into rational chunks.
“She’s not one of us,” I listed, ticking off each reason as if addressing a board of thirty and delivering key issues in the company. “She’s lived a fairly normal life with a normal upbringing with normal parents. She might have an idea of what we do and, to some degree, what we’ve done, but she doesn’t actually understand the extent of our business. She doesn’t know the protocols and procedures that would come with joining a family like ours. She doesn’t know the dangers that come with attaching her name to ours. She doesn’t understand the risks, not just for herself but her family. Loving her would mean accepting that I’m okay with her getting hurt or worse.”
Listening patiently with one finger curled lightly at his chin, my father cocked his head to one side when I stopped. “You’ve listed all the reasons she shouldn’t be with you, but you never answered my actual question — how do you feel about her?”
My temper prickled and I swallowed it the best I could. “Why does that matter?”
“Because,” he sat forward, adjusting the lapel of his blazer, “she would be your partner, not a business merger. If we try hard enough, we can talk ourselves out of literally anything.Why bother breathing if we’re all going to die eventually?” he shrugged when I narrowed my eyes at his example. “Am I wrong?”
“She’s innocent,” I bit out through stiff lips.
“Oh, without question,” he agreed, his expression pensive. “Of our families, Kami is definitely the one I worry about the most.”
“Then why—?”
