Answering, he took a chance. They would only have one, so he hoped toGODthey figured it out, and figured it out fast. If he smelled a lie, he was hanging up again.
“What do you want, Callen? Feel like turning the knife a little more to finish the kill?”
The man blinked.
“My dude, what the hell?” Callen asked. “Why would we want to hurt you?”
Michael stared at him on the video call. That was exactly what he wanted to know.
“You all let me walk into that. You let me get blindsided. You know I can’t take much more. You know how much it took to come back from this seven years ago!”
Oh, he did.
That’s why they’d never hurt him. Michael was one of Elizabeth’s favorites. She doted on him and protected him fiercely for a reason.
He was broken more than the others.
“She hurt me,” he admitted.
Callen stopped that then and there.
“Do you honestly believe that she took information you gave her about a man in your past, hunted him down, got you betrayed by Riley, shot by a nut, and then sent you there just to play some game?” he asked. “Really?”
Okay, when he said it that way, it sounded insane, and he could at least admit that.
“Coincidences are bullshit,” Michael admitted, trying to explain.
Only, Callen stopped him.
“This one is a legitimate coincidence, and they do happen once in a while.”
He said nothing.
So Callen explained.
If he wouldn’t talk to Elizabeth, he’d at least listen to him. It wasn’t fair to let her take all of the blame. All she did was send him back to the man heCLEARLYstill loved.
“When Chris and I bought the castle, we needed someone to be the caretaker. I met Graham when Ivan hired extra security for a book signing I was at in Scotland. He came on as extra protection for me. I was thereWITHOUTElizabeth. She’s never met the man in her life.”
Michael listened.
So far, nothing sounded off or like a lie. He knew for a fact that she’d never gone to Scotland. He would have remembered that. Michael did know that Callen had been there a year ago.
Callen continued.
“Ivan hired him, and I liked the guy. Graham is good at protecting things, so Chris and I opted to hire him full-time to manage the castle for us. We needed someone there we could trust, and he was a good guy.”
Michael said nothing.
Why?
He was hoping he’d not just jumped down Elizabeth’s throat for a legitimate coincidence.
Damn it.
“None of us knew about Graham Lainey being the man you loved and who broke your heart. Elizabeth didn’t know about the castle until right before we sent Gryphen and Ian there. I don’t tell her who I hire for a business because she hates knowing those details. They freak her out. She didn’t know about the castle at first.”
That feeling of guilt started creeping in. Everything that Callen was saying was the truth, and he knew it. The big joke between them all was that Callen had bought a castle, and she hadn’t been told at first.
