Page 24 of Crown of Lies

Atlas presses away from the wall, studying me intently. “Could it have anything to do with your father?”

My heart jolts as my gaze snaps up to his. “Why the hell would it have anything to do with my father?”

“You say you have no idea why you’re so important to The Saint. Fine, we believe you. But that doesn’t change the fact that there’s some reason he wants you—or something having to do with you. It might be something that goes beyond you. Maybe it has to do with your family.”

“My father wouldn’t have kept secrets from me.”

Atlas shrugs. “Every parent keeps secrets from their kids.”

I glare at him. “My father wouldn’t have been involved with anything that would be coming back to bite me in the ass now.”

Even as I say it though, I’m not so sure. I wasn’t a child by any means when my dad was killed—it was just over a year ago. But he died well before he had the chance to teach me everything, that’s just reasonable and logical to assume.

My gut twists with the possibility that Atlas is right.

Did my father have secrets that are coming to light now?

I swallow, shaking my head.

“We can’t ask my father for answers, so it’s neither here nor there for now. Where do you guys stand with The Saint currently?” I ask, pushing the conversation away from the unsettling topic of family secrets.

Thankfully, Nico is willing to oblige.

“We decided to stop reporting to him. That’s the conversation you overheard us having before you—” He breaks off, his hands clenching into fists, and I swear I can hear the whoosh of the fire as their clubhouse burned all over again. Then he shakes his head and continues, his voice cool. “But we never said anything to him, never told him we were backing out of the job—we never got the chance. That will work in our favor now though. We can feed him false reports for a while, and it should buy us some time before he realizes that he doesn’t have his moles anymore.”

A pensive look crosses Nico’s face, and he glances down for just a moment before meeting my eyes again.

“We’re done with him,” he says with a conviction in his tone that I didn’t expect. “It stopped feeling…”

He cuts himself off, and I don’t press him to finish that thought—mostly because I don’t want to know. My emotions are tangled up and chaotic enough as it is.

The four of us talk for a while longer, formulating a rough plan. We’ll divide resources between finding out who The Saint is and sorting through my father’s old stuff to try to find a lead as to what the symbol might be. The Saint will be the hardest angle—all we have is an intermediary who no longer appears, and encrypted messages through which The Saint communicates.

As we work out the logistics of everything, I absently start to rub at my wrists. My cuffs are gone, but that doesn’t mean the effects from wearing them for days straight have faded away.

I try to play it off, soothing the irritation, but I’m not as subtle as I’d like to be. Killian glances over, first out of the corner of hiseyes and then with his head entirely turned toward me, his eyes cast down to my wrists where the small scrapes on the delicate skin have started to bleed a little.

“You need to get cleaned up.”

It’s not a question, or even a suggestion. It’s direct, almost an order, as if he doesn’t like seeing the bright red drops of blood oozing from my skin.

Atlas and Nico follow Killian’s gaze, and Nico stands suddenly, giving a sharp nod.

“We’re done here,” he says. “Whatever other details we need to work out, they can wait. Killian’s right. Those wounds need to be taken care of.”

I can’t help the snort that falls from my lips. “Like you still care about my well-being.”

“I don’t.” His gaze turns hard. “But if you’re going to be helping us, we need you healthy. Oh, and Quinn? Our people and yours don’t know that you’re responsible for burning down the clubhouse. Keep it that way. Don’t even tell Emmett.”

“You’re not in charge of how I run my gang,” I bite out, my eyes narrowing as irritation roils beneath my skin.

He snorts a wry, bitter laugh. “If word got out that you were responsible, you’d have an entire motorcycle club gunning for your head on a platter.”

“Isn’t that what my husband is for? To shield me from his savage crew?” I ask, my voice falsely sweet.

Atlas steps up to stand beside Nico, crossing his arms. “Don’t do anything stupid, vicious,” he says darkly.

“A little too late for that,” I shoot back, although there’s a hollow ache in my heart that’s impossible to ignore. “I’ve already done the stupidest thing that I could have done. I trusted the three of you.”

---