Page 78 of Shattered Vows

She thinks about that for a moment. “All right, well, you’re protecting your family’s interests. That’s not so terrible.”

God, this woman just doesn’t want to see what’s right in front of her.

A caustic laugh leaves my lips. “I should’ve known you’d find some way to make what I’ve done unselfish. You’re too naïve for your own good.”

Her head rocks back as though I’ve slapped her. “I just don’t think it’s that big of a deal. I’m not naïve, I?—”

“There’s more.”

“Okay…”

“I didn’t just kill people while I was in the military. I’ve killed people since I’ve been out as well.”

She stiffens. “Your father…”

“I won’t speak about that night. That’s not what I’m referring to anyway.” My brothers and I made a pact that we would never speak with anyone about what went down the night my father died, and I’ll go to my grave to stay true to that pact.

“Who then?”

“Three different people.”

Her hands fly up to her face, and her emerald eyes glisten with unshed tears. “Why?”

I explain the circumstances that Asher and Anabelle found themselves in last summer and what I did to ensure they’d be okay and that no trouble would come their way.

“I don’t know what to say. What did you do with the bodies of those two men from the airport?”

I rub the back of my neck with my hand. Fuck. She’s going to think I’m a monster. “Returned home with their bodies on the private plane, then piloted my smaller plane out over the Gulf, weighed them down, and pushed their bodies out the door.”

She gasps. “The same plane you brought me here in?”

I shake my head, then look away from her, not wanting to see what she thinks of me.

After a beat, she asks, “Do you regret it?”

This is an easy enough answer. “No. Those men threatened people I care about. I’d do it again if I had to.”

They may have deserved it, but it’s still not easy to look at a man while the life drains out of his eyes, knowing you’re the reason why. But it not being easy doesn’t mean I wouldn’t do it again in a heartbeat.

Rapsody doesn’t say anything. At all. For what feels like five long minutes, I sit there wondering if I’ve torched the best thing to ever happen to me.

When she finally does speak, her words make my guts twist.

“I think I’d like to go back to the manor now,” she says.

“Rapsody, I?—”

She raises her hand. “Can we just go back please?”

I nod solemnly and take the oars in hand again, rowing us back to the dock. Once we’re off the boat and walking back through the mist toward the manor, Rapsody keeps a good distance between us. Of course she can’t stand the idea of being near a predator like me.

We don’t speak the entire walk back to the manor, and when the ethereal glow of the outside lights are first visible in the fog that’s now set in over the property, Rapsody says in a quiet voice, “I think I’m going to sleep in my room tonight.”

I swallow down my disappointment. Her words hurt more than the blows my father used to inflict on me when I was growing up. “Of course.”

When we reach her bedroom, she doesn’t say anything to me before entering and closing the door.

She’s as good as gone. I should have expected it, I suppose.

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