I’d taken my eye off the ball and she was to blame. The timing… Around the time Russo had talked with my father about an alliance. I bristled again from the thought. What the fuck kind of game was being played?
That wasn’t the only reason. My father had allowed himself to take the blame. For his brother, Uncle Armand. As the Don and leader of the family, he decided how everything occurred within the family and the business. The rest of us hadn’t been given a choice. It was his punishment to take.
Another reason loyalty was something I held so dear.
And betrayal was considered a sin worthy of death.
I paid close attention to every head tilt, every flick of her hair and the soft pursing of her lips as she laughed easily and often. When away from her captor.
“I thought you’d think so. From what I can tell, Ms. Devereaux has had little to do with her father in the last few years, but the coincidence isn’t one we can afford.”
He was right about that. What I remembered from the case involving my father, a shoddy attempt at framing him for a murder he’d had nothing to do with, the then prosecutor had even threatened my father after his acquittal, promising one day he would destroy the Prince name and the hold my father had over the city.
My father, being the man he’d been, had laughed it off. But there was more to the story that hadn’t been told. I could feel it in my bones. “I need you to find out exactly what the man is doing in his retirement.” I thought about what she’d told me regarding her father and the anger and hatred she felt for him.
A betrayal. At least she understood the concept.
The woman’s laughter caught my attention and as always when concentrating on Catherine even for a few moments, my body’s reaction was borderline toxic.
“I already have. He’s remarried and living in Montana, so I doubt he had anything to do with your father’s murder.”
I thought about what he’d found. So far, she’d been truthful with me, but there was something there, information that would change things. “Dive deeper into Catherine’s background. I want to know everything about her.”
“A full dossier.” Jarvis seemed amused.
“Yes. I don’t care how you discover her life story. Do it.”
“Yes, sir. Are you certain you want to know? You’re getting very close to her.”
My cock ached from the thought of just how close. “Family comes first.”
“Understood.”
I shoved the phone into my pocket, keeping my distance as I tried to decide what if anything to say to the sweet angel. While there was no concrete evidence she was anything but what I’d seen and been told, the simmering anger had just been fed.
We were two opposing forces on different sides of the law. She was light.
I was pitch-black darkness.
There was no sugarcoating who and what I was. We shouldn’t work yet the passion and drive we both felt deep within our souls meshed perfectly. As if we’d been carved from the same stone. Whatever the outcome of the accusations against me and even if the result ended in her betraying me, one thing was perfectly clear.
I would never be able to let her go.
The obsession had turned into something else.
A loaded gun.
When Emmeline offered her look of scorn, only then did I move closer.
“I thought you were ignoring us on purpose,” she said with her casual perfected passive-aggressive tone.
“Just handling business.” I could never let my sister know how close she’d come to having her entire life derailed. It was something I’d find difficult to forgive my father for.
“On a Sunday. Today is a day of celebration.” Now my sister was daring me to remember an event when she knew I couldn’t care less about the legendary circus the city often became at night.
“Did I miss a holiday?” Catherine asked, immediately sensing something had changed between us. She had an uncanny ability to read me, our connection going far beyond the heated passion. As her eyes searched mine, I allowed my gaze to fall down the long line of her neck to her breasts, my lips stretching into a grim smile.
“My sister enjoys creating holidays that don’t exist.” I shifted my full attention to my sweet angel, who was carefully searching my eyes.
