“When did you show me you could?”
“How about tonight? Risking my life to save herfuckinghide again!”
Jack flung a hand toward Amelia’s bedroom upstairs. A wave of anger seized on Emory. His blood coursed hot with savage visions of squeezing Jack’s neck the way he’d squeezed Ivan’s.
“Enough!” Liam barked and inserted himself between them. “I can’t have you two squabbling over trivial bullshit.” He swung around to Jack. “Amelia is one of us now and Emory’s queen. You’ll respect her as such and shut the fuck up about it. End of story.”
“And you.” Liam turned to Emory. “It’s embarrassing it took you this long to realize Jack and Mirabelle are together. Your sister is a grown woman and could do far worse than Jack. Count your blessings, and quit your bitching.”
In the subdued light, Emory and Jack locked eyes. He looked remorseless and vindicated. For what, Emory didn’t know.
“You two will leave tomorrow afternoon,” Liam said. “We can’t be scattered forever, so this is just until we sort out our own.”
“What about you?” Emory asked. “You pulled it out tonight, but you’re not a young man anymore. You need to be with me or Jack.”
“This is where I belong. If that little shit shows up here, I’ll kill him myself.”
Liam’s eyes crinkled at the corners with a hollow laugh. It momentarily dispelled the tension until a knock sounded at the door and Mirabelle peeked inside.
“Sorry to interrupt,” she said. “Emory, can I talk to you?”
With nothing left to discuss, Emory waved her in as Jack and Liam said their goodnights and left. Mirabelle stood at the room’s center as Emory took up Liam’s spot at the mantle.
She’d washed off her makeup and changed into pajamas, her hair still wet from the shower. Something in her hesitation and doll-like features—big eyes laden with regret and a mouth drawn into a pitiful frown—reminded Emory of when they were kids.
“I’m sorry,” she said carefully, as if dipping a toe into turbid water.
When Emory refused a response, Mirabelle stamped her foot and halved the distance between them.
“I said I’m sorry!”
He glared at her. “I heard you the first time.”
“And you won’t forgive me. Amelia’s upstairs, afraid but alive, and you won’t forgive me.”
“I owe you nothing!” Emory bellowed and slammed the mantle with his fist.
The vase tottered off the edge and shattered on the floor. Mirabelle swatted away tears with a shaky hand.
“How can you be this cold?”
“I can’t forgive you right now, so stop saying you’re sorry if that’s all you’re after.”
Mirabelle knew him better than that. He wasn’t surly for sport, just quick to anger and slow to forgive. For her, a rebuffed apology was an open wound she’d pack with bandages and wonder why it festered.“You gotta let things breathe,”Emory often told her. Forever her folly, she never listened.
Emory toed the vase’s porcelain pieces into a pile. Remorse would come later. The only shame he felt was for the perverse satisfaction of breaking beautiful things.
“You saw him?” Mirabelle asked, her morbid fascination entirely transparent.
She wanted a post-mortem of grisly details, but the night came back to Emory in ink-blotted memories, misshapen at the edges and parts of it haphazardly redacted altogether. He didn’t care to run down the gaps.
“I did. He got away before I could kill him.”
The lie took the air out of the room. Mirabelle’s gaze sharpened, and her duality emerged; the childlike need for protection juxtaposed with an ability to peer into him with cutting clarity.
Kill Ivan or save Amelia. One or the other, he’d had to choose. The others didn’t know and hadn’t seen that he could’ve had both.
Mirabelle knew, though. Somehow, she knew. She inched closer and Emory stood tall, poised to defend himself against the accusations he deserved. He’d had his chance to end it but didn’t.
