Page 8 of Forbidden Bond

THREE

TURNED OUT IT was as easy as bribing the caretaker’s kid to buy supplies.

No phones. No computers. Everything was done the old-fashioned way, long hand on legal pads. One after another, their failed attempts littered the floor in scrunched balls and torn fragments.

For five whole days, they stayed in that room, together, draft after draft, argument on top of argument. Would they ever come to a consensus? With the curtains perpetually closed and meals only arriving when her father chose to order, she couldn’t identify the time of day and still didn’t know which state they were in.

Sitting on the floor, back to the end of the bed, she was numb, yet still curious.

“Why did you do it?”

Her father, in the chair by the TV that had never been on, looked her way. “Do what?”

Frayed emotions settled in their intensity. It just wasn’t possible to live with such angry hate every minute, especially when they were hardly sleeping.

“Silvio Manzani, was he the first? Who approached you with a bribe?”

“We met. A few years ago, by accident.”

“Accident, huh?”

“We were at a city function, a fundraiser for something, I can’t remember. I’d stepped out to take a call. When I hung up and turned around, he was in the office with me.”

“That’s not by accident,” she said. “Whether you knew it was going to happen or not, that was deliberate.”

“Perhaps. It was harmless conversation, at first. We talked about the city, about a vision of the future. About our differences… our similarities.”

“He seduced you, told you what you wanted to hear.” Flattered him, no doubt. “Gave you a sense of righteousness. Shit, Dad, you walked right into it.”

“What about you?” Though rankle hid in his expression, he did a not so bad job at remaining calm. “How did Ire seduce you away from your family?”

“It wasn’t like that,” she said, doodling in the top corner of the pad on her folded legs. “Connel and I were entirely mutual in our attraction.” Though he’d videoed them, suggesting he intended to play her from the first second. “Conn never promised me anything but truth and he never let me down.”

Ronald had torn the phone from the wall on their first day there. That and the TV’s power cord had taken a shallow bath, rendering them useless. Any chance of help, of learning the truth of Conn’s fate, drowned with those power supplies.

“Ire McDade was a dangerous man.”

Past tense. Her father always spoke of him in the past tense. Uncertainty was poisonous… and contagious.

“I never doubted that.”

“He could’ve hurt you.”

“He didn’t,” she said, raising her eyes from the stag’s head she’d drawn. Though smaller, it was a perfect copy of Conn’s tattoo. “He’d have done anything for me, Dad. Anything. He loved me.”

“Did you consider your family when you were with him? Giving yourself to him?”

“Yes,” she said, fighting to restrain herself. “In fact, we broke up once because I couldn’t exist in two worlds. He gave meup. He didn’t have to make the sacrifice; he did it for me. For the McLeods.”

“I didn’t go into my deal with Silvio intending to hurt anyone.”

“These things always start with one small step,” she said. “Doing the right thing never starts with doing the wrong thing.”

“Your brother’s words.”

“He’s right. It’s always him, don’t you see? Lachlan is the best of us. Mom and Grandpapa are gone. You and I are damaged, broken. The only hope for the McLeod family is Lachlan’s purity. He wants to do good, to be good.”

“He was raised with integrity.”

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