Page 148 of The Sinner's Bargain

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

THORAN

“We’ll meet you inside,” I told the two in the front as the SUV rolled to a gentle stop outside the front doors of Lacroix House.

Vance grabbed his briefcase off the floor of the car and muttered something about filing the paperwork with the lawyers, but I was watching Naya. Watching her examining her hand bearing my mother’s rings.

No one had spoken through the drive, but I had never been more aware of another person than I’d been watching her twitch and shift her small hands. Letting the sun and light lance off the cluster of diamonds and emeralds.

It had been the ring Hael had given Delphine. The ring Jeffrey had given Vittoria. It was the family ring going generations until it had ended up on Mom’s finger. It seemed ironic that the ring had out lasted five Lacroix women. Now six.

I hadn’t given it to the others. I hadn’t given them any. There was never any chance to, but even if I had, it hadn’t felt right. With Naya, I had wanted her to have it. Mom would have wanted her to have it. She would have loved Naya. She would have insisted because that ring held the love every Lacroix woman had ever had for their husbands. It was their courage and strength. Mom used to talk about the bands giving her strength when she needed it because it reminded her that no matter what, she had my father and me, and as long as she did, she had the world.

I wanted Naya to have the world.

I wanted her to know that I would always stand between her and anything trying to get her.

That ring was supposed to symbolize just how serious I was about keeping her forever.

But she hadn’t said a word.

Her expression was so sad, so desolate. Did she hate it? Had she hoped for something better? Did she think it was cursed like the house? Maybe it hadn’t been a good idea giving her something that was only ever passed down through death.

Fuck!

I should have known better.

“We can get something else,” I told her once Cyrus’s door had closed behind him.

Naya’s head turned to me, confusion creasing her brow. “I’m sorry?”

I nodded towards her hand. “A different ring. We can go tomorrow—”

Her small fingers curled against her thigh as if afraid I was going to rip the ring off her hand. “What? Why?”

“I thought maybe you would like something of your own.”

I watched her run the fingers of her free hand over the bands. Uncertainty drawing her lip between her teeth.

“Then why did you give them to me?”

This wasn’t how I had wanted this conversation to go. I was trying to make it easier on her to tell me she disliked the ones she was given, but her expression was ... hurt.

“Because my mom would have wanted you to have them, but I understand if—”

“I love them.” She lowered her chin to the bands and smoothed her thumb across the thin cluster of diamonds. “They’re so beautiful and I love that they belonged to your mom.” She raised her face to mine. “But if you’re having second thoughts about giving them to me—”

I took her hand and kissed the back. Then the tips of each finger before making my way across her palm to the tiny pulse just inside her wrist.

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