“Please sit,” I said, motioning toward the chair.
She didn’t move, planting her hands on her hips. “I don’t want to sit.”
I nodded. “Have it your way.”
“Did you know?” Emily asked, her voice softer, an echo of pain in her tone.
I didn’t have to ask for any specifics. “Aye.”
“You knew that Knox hired your sister-in-law to be his eyes and ears in my father’s house?”
“She wasn’t my sister-in-law at the time.” I sighed. “But yes, I knew.”
“You knew that my father stole seventy million dollars from him?”
I met her gaze. “It wasn’t your father who stole it. Kitty did, but he was complicit.”
“Why? Why’d they do it?”
“That’s not my story to tell.”
Her eyes blazed with fury. “How could you let me think any of this was real?”
I frowned, but before I could speak, she blasted on.
“How could you let me fall for the two of you? It’s all been a lie, Kieran.”
I shot to my feet, my ire rising. “Don’t act like you’ve been blindsided, Em.”
Her eyes widened in shock.
“You knew something happened. You knew Knox took Delta June’s from your father. No one kept you in the dark about that. Knox just didn’t tell you the reasons.”
“He tried to buy me from my father!” she shouted.
My eyebrows shot skyward, and I couldn’t hold in the laugh. “Is that what Rhett told you? And you believed it?” I thrust a hand through my hair. “Jesus, you are naive.”
“If I wanted to buy you, you can bet your ass, your father wouldn’t’ve said no,” Knox said from a distance.
We both turned to see him standing in the entryway, his face haggard, his eyes lacking the spark I was used to seeing in them. I hadn’t heard him come in, but then again, I couldn’t hear much over the pounding of blood in my ears. Emily wasn’t the only one who was pissed at the events of the day.
“Yes,” she insisted. “He said he tried to make arrangements with you. You gave him an ultimatum. Said you’d only take me or Delta June’s.”
I couldn’t look away from Knox, mesmerized by the expressions that flitted over his face. Hurt, anger, fury.
And I knew the pile of rubble that was our lives was about to get significantly bigger.
~~~~
Knox
“Tell me it’s not true,” Emily demanded, her hands on her hips.
“It’s not true.” Even though I said what she wanted to hear, she didn’t believe me. She wouldn’t. I had a feeling it wouldn’t matter whether I gave her all the gory details or not, Emily had her mind made up, and I was the villain in this story.
“Liar.”
I exhaled, dredging the last vestiges of my patience. “You want the truth, Em? You want to know whatreallyhappened?”
