Page 62 of Sinful Attraction

I frown. I really want something more concrete than ‘follow my lead,’ but what can be done? He knows everything about his family, and I know almost nothing. I’ll just have to trust him.

This time, when we go inside, I get a surprise. Not a pleasant one. It’s Michael’s mother, eyeing me angrily as I come in with him.

I stop short. Michael tries to greet and hug his mother, but she just glares at me. Finally, she says, “Did you turn my boy against his sister?”

I squash a surge of panic. For a moment, I get a hint of where Maria got her irrational streak from.

Fortunately, I soon learn it’s not actually as strong as Maria’s.

“Mom,” Michael sighs. “I overheard Maria and Brian Cleary arguing about the crime in her room. Arya didn’t have anything to do with it. Please, don’t start this. Things are bad enough for all of us.”

She frowns up at me... and then relents, her face softening. Then, she goes off to direct the kitchen staff.

I let out a breath as she walks away. I see the set of Michael’s jaw and touch his shoulder.

“She wants to blame everything but Maria for why Maria is this way. She’s not going to realize the truth until she sees it for herself. Maybe not even then.”

“I almost feel sorry for her,” I say quietly. “But I know she’s caused you a lot of problems.”

“It’s not her, it’s Maria. My mom’s just so biased she can’t even think straight about it.”

There’s a small crowd in the dining room when Michael’s father brings us in. His wife joins us, Billy, and finally, Maria.

I feel those alarm bells go off in my head again when I see her. She looks haggard, her eyes sunken, like she’s just come off a bender. They fix on me like flat, dark beads with no real expression in them. Not on Michael, but on me.

Michael’s father sits at the head of the table, with Maria at the far end, his mother and Billy on one side of his father’s end, and us on the other. I sit nearest Maria, which could have excused her glaring if it started after I took my seat. But no. I’m not just in her line of fire as she glares up the table.

She’s looking at me like she wants to murder me, personally, in the nastiest way she can.

I stare back a moment before turning my attention back to Michael. I want to get his attention, but he’s stuck talking to his father.

“All right, people,” his dad speaks up. “I think you all know why we’re here. Michael says Maria took the money, there’s a guy downstairs who either helped her or conned her into doing it, and Maria keeps saying Michael is falsely accusing her and knows where the money is. So... I had my guys look into it.

“It turns out that everything we picked up corroborates this guy Brian Cleary’s story.” He stares down the table at Maria, who tenses, and then at his wife, who shifts uncomfortably in her seat. “So, I’m going to bring that guy up here and give him a chance to say what he has to say. And once that’s done, I’m going to decide what we do next.”

I feel Michael move restlessly next to me. Billy can’t look at anyone. Maria seems to have forgotten how to blink. That scares me more with each passing minute.

Michael’s father sends his men to bring Cleary up. Maria tries to slip out of the room, mumbling something about a bathroom break. Michael’s father gently stops her. His eyes are on her like a hawk’s on a squirrel. She flops back into her seat, sulking.

I’m not convinced. Everything in me is screaming that something is wrong.

When they bring Brian Cleary in, he looks haunted. His eyes are sunken and full of fear. He looks like he has lost 10 lbs, and he’s as pale as a dying man. His gaze flits to us as he walks in, and for a moment, he actually looks relieved.

Then, I hear Maria’s chair shift behind me.

The gun goes off before I can act: one, two, three times, louder than anything I have ever heard in my life. I scream, and Michael pushes me to cover under the 6-in. thick tabletop, and I hear Cleary gibbering in terror.

Everyone is yelling at once. Michael and Billy are yelling at their sister to put the gun down. His father is bellowing at his men to get Cleary out of the room. His mother is wailing in disbelief, begging her daughter to stop: “Please, just stop.”

There’s silence for a moment as I crouch under the edge of the heavy oak table, and I dare to hope that it’s over and they’ve talked that maniac into setting down her gun. I wait for it to hit the tabletop.

It doesn’t.

Suddenly, before anyone can react, the gun goes off twice more, forcing Michael away from me as two bullets bite into the floorboards. My ears ring, and my nostrils are full of gun smoke. Then, someone grabs me by the hair and drags me out into the hallway.

It hurts worse than I would have expected; tears squirt out of my eyes as pain lances through my scalp. She’s dragging me, crazy strong with adrenaline, with the pistol held in her other hand.

“Let me go!” I yell and try to squirm away, but she whacks me with the barrel of the gun and curses at me.

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