Page 97 of Vengeful Vows

DECLAN

I want to eat breakfast earlier than Bree, trying to get some time to myself, but my father is there already, chatting with Marisol.

He looks a little red when I come down, and I wonder what they were talking about.

I smile. “Am I interrupting?”

“Of course not.” Marisol bustles back into the kitchen.

My father gives me a look like I’m definitely interrupting, and I chuckle.

“Why don’t you go ahead and ask her out?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, boyo,” my father says, shoveling food into his mouth so he doesn’t have to answer.

I shake my head, thinking about my own relationship, and I lose my smile.

He looks at me and frowns. “What’s up with you?”

“What do you mean?”

I take a page from my father’s playbook and start to eat my waffles, not being able to talk while the food is in my mouth.

“You’ve been acting strange for weeks.”

“No, I haven’t.”

He snorts. “Oh yeah? Is that why you totally zoned out during our morning meeting yesterday?”

I wince. I had just been looking into space, not listening to anything that was said, and Gray had nudged me when my father asked me the question.

“I guess I’ve just been worried.” I shrug. “Murphy hasn’t retaliated, exactly, and I don’t know where or who he’s going to hit.”

“He hit you,” he points out. “In the chest, remember?”

“But he knows he didn’t kill me,” I argue. “And if it were Paige or Lara in Bree’s position?—”

“I’d kill the man on sight,” my father says darkly.

“Exactly. So, what’s the hold up?”

He shrugs. “He probably wants to steal us blind before he strikes like the snake he is.”

“Maybe.”

My mood is bad again at dinner, which Bree doesn’t attend, having gone to bed early. She’s been acting strangely, too, and I don’t know how to deal with it. I don’t know what it means.

Is it just finding out who her father really is, or is it something more? Did she betray me, or not?

I’m always thinking about it, in the back of my mind. It’s like an obsession, and I can’t get my mind off it.

“Why are you so quiet tonight?” Paige raises her eyebrows. “And where’s Bree? Don’t tell me you two are fighting again.”

“We’re not fighting.”

Gray gives me a cool look, but I ignore him, remembering how he suggested she is a traitor just a few days ago. I will him not to say another word, and he doesn’t.

“You’re just being weirdly quiet.” Paige chomps down on her lamb chop.

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