I had to be ready.
She touched the bedsheets and then the TV, taking in my living arrangements. “Xav won’t do a damn thing. I’ve been paying him for his girlfriend’s handbags so he can get fucked for three years now.”
“Okay,” I said slowly, and then, “Why are you here?” Archer had told me earlier this week she was unhinged and they had her locked up. So, I glanced behind me and considered how far I could fall out of this window. Would I survive a four-story drop just to get away from her?
“Jameson needs to see reason, and I guess you’re the only one who can talk him into that. God knows he’s not talking to me.” She gestured at her dress like he was the one who’d betrayed her by locking her away.
“He put me in jail, can you believe that?” A shrill laugh tumbled from her lips.
“I don’t know how I can help you, Lex.”
“My name is Alexandra Wilshire to you,” she spat, pointing abony finger at me. “I’m an heiress to a billion-dollar pharmaceutical company. A woman no man should turn down. Especially not Jameson. The partnerships I secure for my family will make us the equivalent of worldroyalty. He should want that for us. For Franny.”
“Okay,” I murmured, not sure what she was trying to prove. I didn’t care about any of that. I cared about getting away from her and making sure the people I cared about were safe from her too. “I’m sure you’ll be happy with those partnerships—”
“I won’t!” She slammed a hand down on the granite TV stand and took another step toward me. “You did this, you know?Ruinedmy family … And you’re going to fix it. Formyfamily. You understand?”
“I don’t know how I could—”
She set her purse down on my bed and pulled a gun from it to hold by her side. “He thinks you two love each other, and you can be perfect, but what’s perfect, Mia? Do you really want this life?”
That ringing in my ears started. The feeling of being trapped flew in and pumped through my veins.
I squeezed the metal on my lap tighter but didn’t point the weapon. I ran through the scenarios in my head. If I aimed the gun, I knew it had to be with the intent to kill. Would Xavier have left me a loaded gun? Did I have trust that his loyalty truly did lie with me secretly? Was this the family that I thought it was? “The life I built with Jameson and Franny would be—”
“No.” She raised her gun. Her hand was steady, not shaking at all like mine would have. “You don’t have a life with them. That was my family before, and it will be again now. He’s going to help my business. He has to, Mia. Do you understand?”
“They’re yours now? As opposed to a few years ago?” I couldn’t help but say it, because she’d left Franny. I knew the pain she’d caused, and it was all for greed. For power.
“A year ago, I was solidifying a partnership that will help to make sure that Franny is always taken care of. I’m her mother, after all.” She was talking fast and staring off, her brow sweating. I wasn’t sure if she was even focused on me at this point. “Paolo promised me he’d be good to her too, and we’d get even better leverage with her.”
“Paolo? Leverage with Franny?” I questioned, not understanding what she meant, not comprehending that she could possibly be insinuating what she was.
“He’s the head of the cartel, and they have ties to men all over the world that would love to partner with him if he had a young heiress to offer too, Mia. Franny could help us expand.”
“You’re trying to offer Franny to another man? Yourdaughter?” Even with a gun pointed at me, I couldn’t hide my disgust.
She continued, “Franny will be fine giving it up in a few years. Don’t be ridiculous. Arranged marriages are—”
“She’sseven.”
“And so what?” Her voice was shrill. “She’ll do what needs to be done for this family.”
“You can’t honestly think it’s worth trading your daughter for a partnership.”
“Of course she’s worth it!” She tilted her head. “Everyone is expendable. I would have overturned that whole damn school to get to her.”
“School?” The pieces fell into place slowly but surely. “That wasyou, not Paolo, who came after her at the school?”
“Paolo was a great scapegoat, though, don’t you think?” She threw her head back and laughed and laughed. The moment she took her eyes off me, I raised that gun, ready now to meet her on equal ground as I stood too.
She didn’t cower from my aim or from the gun in my hand. Instead, the smile across her face held nothing but condescending amusement. “Oh, Mia Darling. You realize you’re pointing agun at a woman who’s been threatened time and time again. I’ll even admit to you that it was me who planned the school shooting, me who had made sure that it looked like the Irish doing our dirty work, me who wanted you dead in the club too. It’s me. Surprise.” She singsonged. “Who else would it have been? Franny’s Sanctum. Not one person was going to do what needed to be done against Jameson butme. So, I did the hard work, and now you’re going to tell him to hand over our daughter while he gets over his puppy love for you. You’ll do the right thing.”
“Right for who?”
She set her hands on her hips, letting her gun tilt over them. “Everyone. You know it too. This is the right thing. You can’t pull that trigger because youknowmy daughter belongs with her mother. And her father.” She took a step closer, and I raised the gun higher. She didn’t back away, just kept walking until we were only a foot apart. “That’sa family.”
“Sometimes that’s true. Sometimes it’s not,” I whispered. Sometimes a family, sometimes a mother and a father, could break a child so far down that they never found their way out. I knew it because I’d experienced it. I knew what a family was supposed to be, and it wasn’t her. “A family is the people who show up even when it costs them something. They show up and they stay, not because of a blood obligation but because it’s their choice.”
