She shrugs. “Your brother would only find another way to spy on me. I’m beyond caring.”
“Quinn, if that’s why you’re upset, I’ll speak to Mace. He shouldn’t have done it. And I would never have agreed to it without your consent.”
“So, tell me. If you weren’t discussing all the ways my movements could be tracked, what did you talk about? And no more bullshit about giving yourselves another night to mull things over,” she adds.
Seeing what state she’d been in when I got back to the hotel, I’d been reluctant to burden her with the arguments I’d had with my brothers. But if she’s thinking the worst anyway, I need to come clean. Being honest with each other is the only way we’ll get through this.
“They want to keep us away from each other until we find Blake” I admit. “But I haven’t agreed to anything.”
Quinn doesn’t react, and there’s no emotion in her voice when she says, “You should. It would be safer if you cut all ties.”
“That’s not going to happen, Quinn. What Ash told you yesterday still stands. We promised to keep you close.”
“Close to your brothers. But not close to you.”
This feels too much like a break-up conversation, and I can’t let that happen. I won’t let that happen. If I can’t stand by Quinn when she’s at her most vulnerable, I don’t deserve to have her. Period. “I’m not going to be separated from you.”
Quinn huffs, shaking her head. “You won’t choose me over your brothers, just like I wouldn’t choose you over Blake. And I wouldn’t blame you, Reid. Not one bit,” she says, her voice crackling with emotion.
“There isn’t a choice to be made because my brothers would never ask me to choose. They’d bombard me with endless advice, sure. But they’d never give me an ultimatum like that.”
Quinn flinches, and I curse my runaway mouth. An ultimatum is exactly what Quinn gave her sister when they argued last year over Ilya. It’s why they stopped speaking.
Her cheeks pink up, and sparks in her grey eyes catch fire. “Do you honestly think they’d leave it up to you to decide?” she snarls. “You’re the half-brother with the half vote. You’ll just do as you’re told.”
“Fuck you!” I glare at Quinn, and she glares right back. The pain in her eyes doesn’t match the venom in her words. “Are you trying to pick a fight?”
Her eyelids flicker. “Listen to your brothers, Reid. If you stand by me, you’ll have to face the consequences.”
“Consequences be damned,” I grit out. “I’m not walking away. And my brothers can’t drag me away either.”
We stare at each other until Quinn drops her gaze. “I’m not worth the risk,” she says, almost in a whisper.
I want to scoop her up and hold her tight, but if I do that, we won’t be talking for long. I rest back against my chair and fold my arms across my chest. “For the record, my vote is the only vote that counts when it comes to you. I spent the better part of three hours trying to convince the others that the more time we spend together, the stronger we’ll be, and the weaker Ilya’s hold on you will become.”
“You don’t think I’d betray you?”
I want to say no, but we both know that would be a lie. “It would be foolish to discount it completely, but if you did, it wouldn’t be a reflection on you,” I reassure her. “It would be a matter of how extreme the pressure will be from Ilya.”
She splutters a laugh. “I don’t think you could begin to imagine what he’d do. Have you thought about why he stopped me from leaving the other day?”
I shrug. Shouldn’t the answer be obvious? “He knew you were leaving for good, and he didn’t want you to go.”
“No, he told me to pack my bags and leave. The only reason he got Mikhail to keep the gates closed was to test you. He wanted to see how much you cared.”
“I care a lot.”
Quinn takes a gulp of wine. “I wish you didn’t.”
As I watch Quinn unravelling before my eyes, I hear Mace’s warnings from earlier. He’d told me to look for the contradictions in Quinn’s story. I take a sip of water to loosen my tongue. “You didn’t tell us Ilya wanted you to leave.”
“No, I didn’t,” she admits. “It’s like I’ve said before. You can’t trust me. I’m Ilya’s pawn.”
Ice spreads through my veins. “What the fuck’s going on, Viper?”
Quinn rests her elbows on the table and puts her head in her hands. Her fingers twist and turn the studs in her ears. “I just want this to be over.”
My arms ache for her too damn much, and I get up and go to her. Crouching down, I turn her chair so she’s forced to look at me. “Hey,” I say, sweeping her hair from her downturned face. “We’ll get through this, I promise. One day soon, I’m going to take you back to that log cabin, and I’m going to finish making you breakfast. We’re going to spend days and days in bed, getting crumbs all over the sheets and doing unspeakable things on that table.”
