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“Mackenzie might be in danger,” my father says.
I clench my jaw, and adrenaline shoots through my veins. “What kind of danger?” I’ve got the feeling he doesn’t mean from her epilepsy.
Lucia clears her throat and presses her knuckles to her lips. “She did something. Something bad. It’s the reason we came to Verona Falls.”
My gaze flicks between her and my father. Hadn’t they come here to play happy families? I thought Mackenize just got dragged along for the ride. What did it have to do with her?
“What kind of bad thing?” I find it hard to believe our Duchess is capable of anything that would require her running to this place.
“The reason we came here is because someone tried to assault Mackenzie.” Lucia’s words fall like stones in the silence of the room as I stare at her.
My hackles rise. “Assault her? What do you mean? Like, rape her?”
I instantly see red. What the fuck? Who did this? I swear I’ll hunt them down and kill them myself. The thought of another man holding her down, forcing himself on her…fuck. I can’t handle it. I actually think I might explode with fury, like my body can’t contain my anger, and I want to tear down this entire university and destroy everyone inside it.
My dad can see I’m about to implode, and he puts out his hand. “Calm down, Dom.”
Oh, now he wants to play the father figure, does he? Screw him to hell and back.
“Don’t fucking tell me to calm down.”
“You have to listen now, okay? If you want to help her, you need to understand what’s going on.” My father’s gaze beseeches me, and if I didn’t know better, I’d think there was an apology lurking in those depths.
I force myself to inhale deeply and exhale again. I’m not sure I have the self-control to hear this, but then I remind myself it’s Mackenzie, and it’s important. She’s important. How or why, I don’t damn well know. When did she go from being someone I wanted to hurt, to someone I wanted to fuck, to someone I want to possess? My feelings for her aren’t good or pure, but they’re strong as the foundations of this building. Hate, love, desire, it’s all a mind fuck with us and her.
Lucia sighs and runs her fingers through her glossy hair. “When this man attacked her, she tried to defend herself. She grabbed a pen from the nightstand and stabbed him in the neck.”
It takes me a moment to comprehend her words. I can’t make them parse. Our cool Duchess stabbing a guy. In the neck? That takes balls. It’s not something a lot of people could do, even if they were in danger.
I might need to rethink my view of Mackenzie.
A shot of pride burns in me, like a nice slug of whisky, warming me.
If she were here right now, I’d high five her. Fucking hell. Our little Duchess has some fire in her. Some fight. It occurs to me that we’re lucky she hasn’t tried stabbing one of us as well. I never knew she had it in her.
“Then what happened?” I ask.
Dad’s lips tighten. “Mackenzie believed she’d killed him. She called Lucia, and Lucia called me, and I got them both out of there and brought them here.”
My gaze darts between them. “Why? Surely it was self-defense?”
“Do you know how often rape cases are charged?” Lucia says. “Mackenzie has been in some trouble in the past, so she has a history. She knew this guy.”
I frown. “Knew him, how?”
“He was her professor at her college.”
This still isn’t making sense to me. “And he tried to rape her? How are the cops not all over this?”
Lucia shakes her head. “No, you don’t understand. They were already in a relationship. Mack said it had been going on for almost a year. They’d kept it a secret from everyone. But then she tried to break it off with him, and that’s when he turned nasty.”
“And she killed him with a pen?” This all sounds insane.
My father takes a step closer. “This is where it gets complicated.”
I almost laugh at that. Like this wasn’t already complicated. “What do you mean?”
“I sent a couple of guys to this man’s apartment to clean up whatever mess Mackenzie had left, and make it look like he’d just up and left for whatever reason, but when they got there, they didn’t find a body. There was one hell of a mess, sure, blood everywhere, but no sign of Professor Kassell.”
