Glancing at the street, recognizing we were in West Midtown, I raised her knuckles to my lips. “Not until I’ve dropped you off.”
“Sure?”
I nodded.
Raisin skewered me with a distrustful look, but I ignored it as I returned to my mental juggling while they carried on sniping at one another.
See, Jen might hate her mother, might detest everything she stood for, but that didn’t mean she’d be happy with her husband murdering his in-law.
As for me, I couldn’t allow that cunt to bring a hint of tension into my brother’s marriage.
Butchering his daughters’ grandmother and feeding her to our pigs might trigger a moral dilemma for him, so there was no alternative but for me to handle it on his behalf.
Whatever that cunt wanted, whether it was to blackmail us or simply to test our limits, I wasn’t about to let her wreck it for them. Not after she’d shoved his mercy in our faces by entering Manhattan when that was a breach of their agreement and I?—
“I still say you should pretend to have a stomach bug, Kitty, not me.”
That statement had me focusing on Neev, who was studying her nails.
“Why me?!”
“Because you know how to fake the symptoms. You’re a nurse. Duh.”
My lips twisted.
“By that logic, you could fake breaking your ankle again,” Kitty hissed.
“That wasn’t fake!”
“It was a sprain. At best.”
“We returned two days’ late that time. Not early. You know what she’s like,” Raisin pointed out. “She’ll sniff us out.”
“That’s probably because you’re terrible liars under pressure,” I added truthfully, having witnessed them at the dinner table last night.
Neev immediately pouted. “Hey!”
“We’re not all criminals,” Raisin retorted with a sniff.
“If I wanted to deceive you, I could.”
I arched a brow at Kitty. “Bet you can’t. Your poker face is good—” Read excellent. “—but I doubt you can lie to me.” Not now that I’d seen her come…
“Those screamshadto be fake,” Raisin mocked.
Kitty’s smile turned, well,feline. “Oh, that was the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help me God, Raisin.”
As their bickering restarted, not even Kitty stroking my ego held my attention for long.
Unfortunately for me, their presence only amplified my dilemma.
Because family mattered.
Family was everything.
Jen might end up hating me, but I’d protect her.
No other alternative made sense.
