Page 85 of Cruel Lies

"Threats likewhat?"

He shook his head solemnly, hiding whatever he’d been told from us in his usual protective manner. "It doesn’t matter. What matters is I need more time. And unfortunately for us, I don’t have it." The dinging of the clock against the wall signaled the top of the seventh hour, and I mentally counted down to midnight in my head.

"Five more hours to change your mind."

His eyes met mine, and it felt like the fucker could see right through me. "You don’t want to kill her any more than I do."

"But I don't want to lose my whole life, either, brother. We might be able to pick up the pieces and move on, but what about Nash? Or does his life not matter to you anymore?"

I could see the anger building in him, but I didn’t care. This wasn’t about him and Nash. It was about hiding the truth from myself. The truth I couldn’t even think aloud, lest it shatter what little control remained in my body.

"There’s only one way to stop him, and you know that."

Sadly, I did know that, and it entailed very likely leaving the manor in a fucking body bag. Making it past all his guards was easy going in. Coming out after killing our father was an entirely different matter. One with very low odds of success.

"I’m not eager to lose my life, Ro. I have things to do in this one." Things nobody else cared about. Things like revealing the truth about my mother’s death. "And if we kill him, what happens to Nash’s mom?"

Natalia Blackwood was a wonderful woman while she was alive and conscious, but conveniently, when she’d first spoken out against dear ole dad, she had a strange and unfortunate accident in her brand new car that same night.

She’d been in a coma ever since.

Part of Nash’s arrangement with our father had been that he’d continue to pay for her treatment and care, her life support, in the hopes she’d wake up again someday if he did what was asked of him. Until now, he’d kept that promise. But who knewwhat would happen to her if we didn’t fulfill the contract? To the truth about my own mother? And what about Rowan?

"What does he have on you?"

Rowan’s eyes cut to mine with a dangerous glint in their depths. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, what dirt, what leverage, what fucking strings does he have attached to you that keep you from making a move?"

Deep down, though, I already knew.

Rowan’s weakness had always been us. His older brothers.

In a sad sort of twisted fate, he’d become our de facto protector, and the one thing he could have leveraged against him to make him forget his morals and do the wrong things over and over again without question.

It was what led him to the situation seven years ago.

Seven years. Seven o’clock. That lucky number seven really was a bitch to us.

"He threatened to kill us."

It wasn’t a question, nor was it a statement. It was a solid fact, something I’d known deep in my gut for a long time. His mother was dead. He had no other family aside from Nash and I. And Harper, of course. All his life, he’d been protecting us from our father. Since he was big enough to understand what happened behind those closed study doors, he’d been stepping in to take our punishments and standing up for us.

The fact that Rowan only hung his head in response was telling enough in itself that I hit the nail on the head.

"So he’s hanging us above your head, and that’s why you’re so torn up about it."

Rowan stayed silent, refusing to meet my gaze. His locs hung around his face, shielding him from view, and I impulsively leaned forward and yanked on one, eliciting a yelp from the stoic bastard.

"Fucking talk to me, man! We’re brothers! You don’t have toprotect Nash and me. We’re big boys, okay? We don’t need you to serve as a fucking human shield anymore."

"There’s more on the line than you know, Angel, and I can’t explain it. But we have to be careful and get ahead of this before it spirals out of hand."

I sat back down, laid my hand atop one of his balled-up fists, and sighed. "Then let me help."

THIRTY-SEVEN

NASH

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