“And you?” He pulled his lips from my breasts, glaring at me intensely. We were hidden by the wall next to the glass door, but I knew we needed to stop this sooner rather than later before anyone saw us. “Are you scared of me?”

“I was never truly scared of you.” I rolled my thumb along his jaw, feeling blush creeping to my cheeks. “Not when I was seventeen and not a decade later. To me you’ll always be beautifully misunderstood. And maybe I’m an idiot to care, Sam. In fact, I probably am, but I still want you to quit smoking because I want you to grow old and gray and be healthy. Even if I can never have you.”

His eyes narrowed and something passed between us. I shuddered uncontrollably in his arms, like he’d managed to put something inside me with this one look.

“Aisling, I—” Sam started.

A blood-chilling shriek pierced through the ballroom just then, making him stop midsentence, followed by a commotion, the sound of breaking glass, and hysterical crying.

“Someone call 9-1-1!”

“We need an ambulance!”

“Oh, dear God! What’s happening?”

I broke free from Sam’s arms. We both rushed into the ballroom.

I stopped dead when I realized what the spectacle was all about.

In the middle of the room was my father, Gerald Fitzpatrick, dressed in his flannel pajamas and a house robe, looking like a homeless person with his hair wild and his eyes bloodshot. He held my mother by the throat, shaking her, looking drunk and out of focus, in front of an audience consisting of the cleaning crew, waitresses, and a few odd guests who still hadn’t left.

“The family heirloom!” he raged. “Where is it, Jane? Tell me now. I know that it’s you who stole it. You who sent those threatening letters.”

My mother fainted in his arms, just as my brothers jumped in to pry him away from her.

Cillian dragged a kicking and screaming Gerald off of Jane while Hunter scooped his limp mother in his arms, shouldering past people as he rushed her out of the limelight.

British Clark Kent, AKA Devon Whitehall, appeared out of nowhere, making a beeline straight to the doors, having security close them as he demanded the staff to dispose of their phones so he could delete any sensitive material that might be leaked. The night had tapered off and only a handful of guests and the cleaning crew remained.

Aisling trembled next to me like a leaf, watching her family go down in flames.

Gerald had finally realized the cufflinks I took were missing, and he was blaming Jane for it.

His sanity was evaporating into thin air, along with his common sense.

The crazy hair. The pajamas and robe. The drastic weight loss. The drunkenness.

In public.

I imagined he had his driver bring him in, mumbling incoherently the whole way here. Poor asshole was probably going to get fired by Jane.

He was on the fast track to oblivion. Everything was going according to plan.

At some point, Aisling sneaked away from next to me, catching Cillian’s steps, pushing Gerald out of the ballroom while people around them gossiped and gasped.

Her face was tight with emotions, her eyes glassy with concern.

Suddenly, I grappled with a feeling completely foreign to me. I never felt it before, so I couldn’t exactly pinpoint what it was. It was a mixture of nausea and dread with some anger thrown into the mix.

Had I been poisoned?

Funny, because I couldn’t find two fucks to give about Cillian and Hunter crapping bricks right now, even if I looked for said fucks with a search unit. I couldn’t bring myself to care about Becca, for that matter, who was currently tucked in an Uber, heading back to wherever-the-hell she came from, probably cursing me all the way to next Tuesday for bailing on her ass as soon as Aisling showed up in the cloakroom.

Guilt.

That was what was seeping its way through me like poison.

After all this time, and all the sins I’d committed, it had finally wormed its way through my exterior.

It was new.

And it felt like shit.

At the same time, I knew backing down wasn’t an option. Not like this. Not right now. Gerald had ruined my life. He had to pay.

He killed my fucking unborn brother.

Drove my mother away.

Then had me do all his dirty work—his arm bending, his illegal dabbling—all while throwing in fat bonuses to make sure I didn’t touch and sully his precious princess.

“Give us a ride home.” Someone clapped my shoulder from behind. When I turned around to inform them I wasn’t a fucking Uber driver, I was surprised to see Troy and Sparrow, hand in hand.

“Didn’t know you were here.”

Troy tucked his free hand into his front pocket, glancing around the apocalyptic scene in front of us with indifference.

“Got here ten minutes ago from dinner with friends just to drop off the check. We stayed for the entertainment. Our taxi driver has left.”

Sparrow smacked wet, lipstick-stained kisses on both my cheeks. She stopped, hovering an inch over my mouth, smelling Aisling. A private smirk marred her face.

“No heavy petting in the backseat,” I quipped, taking out my car keys and flipping them in my hand.

“Can’t promise anything,” Troy deadpanned.

“Well, I can. I’ll push you out on the highway without even blinking,” I reminded him, meaning every word. I hated public displays of affection. “Your wife, I’ll spare.”

In the car, Troy asked from the passenger seat, “So, when are you going to quit your blood-thirsty vendetta?”

My eyes flicked to the rearview mirror, searching for Sparrow’s reaction. She sat in the backseat, looking at me pointedly without offering her words.

Did she know? Of course she did. Fucker told her the aroma and frequency of his farts, not to mention all of his secrets. Mine too.

“I’ll stop when he comes clean.”

“That might never happen,” Troy pointed out.

“Then I might never stop,” I volleyed back.

“Are you planning to kill him?”

I opened my mouth to say yes but stopped short when I thought about Aisling.

Her unexplainable love for her shitty parents grated on my nerves. Developing sentiments for people just because they gave you their shitty DNA was a concept I would never understand. I settled for a brash, “I don’t know.”

“That’s a first, smartass,” Troy groaned.

“Huh?”

“You. Not knowing shit. You’ve always been like this.” Troy sat back, stroking his chin, half-entertained. “Took what you wanted, even if you had to set the world on fire in the process.”

“It’s called being a go-getter. Not a bad thing,” I pointed out, stopping in front of their place and killing the engine.

“That depends on how you look at it,” Sparrow offered from behind. “It might be a very bad thing for you.”

“Cut the riddles, Dr. Seuss.” I turned around, scowling at her. “If you have something to say, say it, and be fast about it. I outgrew tonight about three days ago.”

“What your mother is saying, and you are too stubborn to comprehend,” Troy ground out slowly, the edge of his tone warning me not to give his wife lip, “is that what you want might end up not wanting you back if you slaughter everything on your way to get to it.”