“Wouldn’t it be easier to use her as bait?” Hamish asked.
“That is a possible future contingency,” Peyton said. “But I don’t want to risk her safety. She’s been through too much already. Not to mention, we aren’t certain Faegan might not just kill her or have her killed.”
Hamish snorted. “Considering what’s happened, living safely’s too good for her, quite frankly.”
Trevor sipped a glass of wine. “I know,” he wearily said, “but I’ve personally spoken with her. I agree with Peyton. It’s…complicated. She had no part in this and did, in fact, lobby Faegan to settle and take the dowry. He severely beat her for that ‘disloyalty.’”
Hamish struggled to rein in his own emotions. “Well, she was already checked out when I knew her. An alcoholic.”
“I guess that’s something she overcame before Tamsin was born,” Trevor said. “Tamsin told us her mother has never touched alcohol, as far as she knows.”
“Perhaps you two can forgive her, but excuse me if I don’t hold the same charitable thoughts. Faegan isn’t a Prime. You can’t tell me that, throughout all these decades, at any time when he was asleep she couldn’t have gutted him like a fish and let him bleed out.”
“It’s complicated,” Elizabeth quietly said from where she sat next to Trevor. “I can see both sides of this. I’m blessed I’ve never experienced any abuse, but I’ve seen it countless times in others. That many decades beaten down by him? She was in survival mode. I can feel pity for her while neither absolving nor forgiving her.”
After more talking, Hamish finally bade his leave and retreated to the guest room the Clarkes had assigned him. There he stripped, took a long, hot shower, and tried not to think about Corrine.
One of the things he’d planned to do before returning to Florida was spend at least a week staying near her nursing home so he could visit with her every day before it was too late.
What if she really was my mate, and I was so fucked up because of my family that I ignored the signs?
That thought had plagued him since all the revelations.
It was also guilt he’d carried throughout the years, shoved down except during the turmoil with each failed relationship he’d attempted since that night with her.
But especially so now that he knew what had happened. Because had he claimed her as his mate, she wouldn’t be rotting in a nursing home with more of her mind slipping away by the day.
All her children would’ve been his, the ones he always secretly wanted but never had.
Not since she’d walked out of his life that night.
Because he wasn’t there for Imani’s birth, her first giggles, first words.
First steps.
First shift—which wouldn’t have been her only one had he been there to help raise her.
He didn’t “blame” Corrine—she had no idea. He blamed himself.
Imani might carry his DNA, and he already loved her as her father, but the time lost between them and her love for the man who raised her would never allow her to see him as her “father,” and he damned well knew it.
Fucking Faegan. Everything the man touched withered and died, a toxic weapon of mass destruction, leaving carnage in his wake.
Of all of them, Hamish hoped their little sister had enjoyed life after escaping Faegan’s clutches.
I hope Bryn and Callum found happiness.
If for no other reason than the mighty “fuck you” that would be to Faegan and his “legacy.”
Chapter Fifty-Three
Miranda Segura
Sitting at the desk in her home office, the sanctuary of her condo far from her father’s prying eyes, Miranda Segura struggled to make sense of what she was looking at.
The business spreadsheets were, of course, coded in such a way as to disguise what everything was.
It wouldn’t exactly be smart not to do that when keeping the books for a drug cartel, right?
