What the hell was taking Reagan so long? She’d gone up to ‘fetch his reluctant bride’ as she’d put it over a half an hour ago, and they still hadn’t made an appearance.
He was just about to head up there himself when he spotted her. And everything in him froze with wonder and terror.
The dress she had on wasn’t anything special, other than the way the deep purple made her eyes seem even stormier than usual. But the curve-hugging cut showcased the slight roundness of her stomach, highlighting the fact that she was, indeed, carrying his child. She had—or more likely, Reagan had—pulled her hair up in an elegant sort of twist that made her seem less like a college student who’d been thrown haphazardly into their world and more like a woman who belonged there.
None of that was what really caught his attention, though. As stunning as she looked, it was the pin affixed to her dress, just to the left of her collarbone that drew his attention. The O’Rourke lion, mid-pounce, just as it was depicted on their coat of arms.
Did she know what it meant? That it wasn’t simply a piece of jewelry, but a statement of her place in their family?
Judging by the way her chin jerked up when his eyes found hers, she knew exactly what it meant.
And he had no fucking clue how he felt about that.
He also didn’t have time to parse it. The front door opened right as Aria stepped down onto the marble foyer and his cousins poured in. Lochlan and Tiernan first, with the former for once looking as somber as his twin. Murphy was on their heels, without Rowan as he had made it his life’s mission to keep his son as far from the darker aspects of their family business as possible.
Brody joined them from the other direction, having gone to check on dinner while Killian waited for Aria and Reagan to join them. His gaze locked almost immediately on the pin at Aria’s breast, and while his brows rose slightly, he wisely didn’t comment.
“Dinner will be ready soon. We should get started,” he said instead.
“We should,” Killian agreed, turning back to the woman who had captured and held his attention from the first moment he laid eyes on her. Heart pounding, he offered his elbow, curious to see if her outfit was simply a change of clothes or something deeper. “Shall we?”
She hesitated, but only a moment before sliding her hand into the crook of his arm and giving a single, regal nod.
Arm in arm, they led the way to the dining room. And again he wondered if she knew what a powerful statement she was making, standing at his side, his family’s emblem shining from her chest as she settled in the seat to his left.
Once everyone had taken their seats, he met his sister’s gaze from across the table.
And prepared for anarchy.
“Richard Williams killed our parents.”
They didn’t simply fall into silence. They crashed headlong into it, a soundless cacophony of horror, disbelief, and fury as his cousins grappled with this new information.
And then the silence shattered, everyone shouting at once, and he waited them out, let them have their moment before they finally settled again.
“How do you know?” Brody asked, his voice thick with the emotions he was trying so desperately to keep inside.
“Lorenzo told me. Not outright, because that isn’t his way. But he made a very pointed comment about mothers and then he said it was ‘deliciously ironic’ that I had chosen Richard to take over the docks.”
“I want him.” Lochlan’s eyes burned with the same fury they’d all been wrestling with for a decade. The lovable sociopath he usually was had been stripped away, revealing the brutal killer that lurked underneath. “I want to take him apart, piece by piece, and remind the world why fucking with the O’Rourkes is a big fucking mistake.”
“We can’t.” At Lochlan’s snarl, Killian shook his head. “I’m sorry, Loch, but that’s not who we are anymore.” He paused, locking gazes with his cousin. “But believe me when I tell you that we will have our revenge.”
That seemed to mollify Lochlan, at least for the moment. But they would need to move quickly. God only knew what Lochlan would do if he decided things were moving too slowly for his tastes.
“What about the DeLucas?” Brody asked, the whitening of his knuckles as he made a fist on top of the table the only outward sign of his anger. “They came for your…” He paused, glancing over at Aria with a frown. “They came for Aria in broad daylight, with plenty of bystanders in the way.”
“And they tried to poison us,” Reagan added, her expression darkening as she glared at her wine as if it had offended her merely by being the same kind of drink Lorenzo had used in his assassination attempt.
“We need to make a statement.”
Silence once more fell as everyone, himself included, turned to look at the mother of his child. Calm, head held high, the golden lion glistening at her breast, she looked as much like an O’Rourke as if she’d been born into it.
What had he done?
There was no time for the grief clawing at his insides, however, not with so much at stake. “What kind of statement?”
Her pale eyes met his, the rage of millennia of mother warriors protecting their young storming in the blue. “The kind that tells them, and everyone watching, not to fuck with us.”
