Page 12 of Black Sheep

At twenty-six, I should be putting my actively pursued, proudly earned interior design degree to good use. Instead it’s a front for my real vocation as Finnan Rutherford’s companion. A career I didn’t choose but find I’m now irreversibly immersed in.

I had to learn the game fast or risk losing my life through apathy. It’s a good thing I’m a fast learner. I discovered that I’m an even better student with a loaded gun against my temple.

I’ve stood over too many graves and seen too many of the risks Finnan takes with others’ lives not to have learned my lesson. So now I comply. I obey. I smile through the ravaging pain and the blood-red rage in my heart.

And I plot.

Revenge is the only thing that sustains me. It keeps me breathing, helps me place one foot in front of the other, and steers my compass true.

On the worst days, I wonder if everything I’m fighting for is even worth it. Those dark days I yearn to give in. But I can’t. Not yet. Not if I don’t want my mother’s death and countless others’ on my hands. Having finally accepted the responsibility of my birthright, I’ve also accepted responsibility for those in my care. I do this for the dozens who don’t know that me staying on my knees is the only way they get to breathe.

Checking out would be the cowardly. Although I haven’t ruled it out completely as a last resort. For now, like the six prom dresses I tormented myself over choosing from what feels like a million years ago, I’m keeping my options open. The grim, otherworldly humor behind the sentiment almost makes me smile.

The oil-smooth door swings open behind me, wiping away every last trace of phantom humor. In the den where countless lives have hung in the balance, I fight the shiver that trembles up from my ankles.

In the half hour since my return from New York, he’s kept me waiting in this room that reeks of violence and corruption. A deliberate act meant to establish my weakness and his power.

“You failed me again, my angel.” The accusation is softly voiced in a deadly rasp.

I force my spine not to stiffen and take a breath. My gaze rests on the view of the immaculately kept Connecticut mansion grounds and encroaching dawn for an extra moment before I turn around.

Finnan Rutherford, the man everyone thinks is my adopted father but is as far from a father figure as the moon is from the stars, regards me from his impressive six-foot-plus height. Despite the early hour, he’s fully dressed in a tailored white shirt and navy three-piece suit, his Oxford pinstriped tie neatly knotted. Not a hair out of place. Like his four sons, he’s built of strong Irish stock with a square jaw, thick shoulders and smoky gray eyes always set with narrow-eyed focus. For the longest time, I was terrified of that stare, couldn’t imagine that he didn’t see into my soul and read the intentions in my heart. But I’ve learned to contain that emotion when in his presence, much like I contain all of my emotions these days.

I stride forward, slowly, and pause against his desk, my own gaze direct. “I warned you this plan would fail. You didn’t listen. Don’t blame me now that my predictions are coming true.”

One dark eyebrow lifts. “Are you saying you weren’t the right person to handle this? That I was I wrong to think I could trust you to get it done?”

I swallow the kernel of terror that threatens to break free. I know better than to answer in the affirmative. “I’m saying I would’ve done things differently. Sending me to him almost every night for two weeks reeks of desperation,” I say with a shrug, even though my heart is hammering. Finnan doesn’t like his faults pointed out. But I’m done dancing around the issue. Or subjecting myself to another long night involved in a staring contest with Axel Rutherford.

Being forced to face Axel again after years of meticulous avoidance has been ten different kinds of hell. Doing it night after night from behind the mask of my rage has been crucifying. But the state of being that sustained me all these years did nothing to protect me from what seeing him again did to me.

What it continues to do to me. Even now, I can barely contain the trembling inside, the volatile electricity pulsing through me.

I wrestle down my emotions and watch Finnan cross the room to the drinks bar he had custom built two years ago. Like most of the prominent furnishings in the house, the initials FR are etched into the polished teak surface.

Finnan Rutherford is very much into branding. He placed his most intimate brand on me on my nineteenth birthday.

In silence, I watch him pour a shot of premium single malt Irish whiskey into a crystal tumbler. At this early hour, anyone would be forgiven for thinking he suffers from a drinking problem or that he’s rattled by the outcome of another failed assignment. Or even that he slots his early morning drinking under the it’s-always-five-o’clock-somewhere excuse.

But the shot is merely part of his morning routine, much like his twice-weekly kippers-and-boiled-eggs breakfast. Worse of all, Finnan does his most ruthless thinking fortified with that single shot of liquor.

He knocks back the drink, sets down the glass, and turns to face me. Eyes so much like Axel’s, and yet infinitely different, drill into me as he approaches. There was a time when I made the game interesting for him by showing fear or retreating several steps backward to prevent contact. That time has passed.

I stand my ground, rigid and resolute.

His forefinger touches my cheekbone for a second, lingers, then traces downward to my jawline. I don’t shudder. Or gasp. Or pull away. I don’t lean into the caress to express false pleasure. Those are all wasted efforts, useless gestures I don’t exert energy on. Every last reserve of my strength is saved for other things.

“You think I took the decision lightly to send you, my most prized possession, to him?”

Some women might enjoy being at the receiving end of such a blatant statement of ownership from one of the most feared men in the country. Others would perhaps protest, albeit diplomatically—unless they had zero self-preservation—at being labeled a possession. I don’t react one way or the other because Finnan’s words are the truth.

He owns me. In every way thinkable, save for a signed paper proclaiming me his chattel, I belong to him. Ever since I discovered the chilling and calculated way he dealt with my parents, I’ve accepted the futility of protest.

“No, I don’t think you made the decision lightly. But it’s clear it needs rethinking. Axel—” I stop, realizing that, although he features prominently in my thoughts—how could he not when he’s the star player in my end game?—this is the first time I’ve said his name out loud in years. I’m not prepared for the onrush of memories that accompany uttering his name. I absorb the shock of it and take a frantic moment to regroup. “He dug his heels in the moment you sent Ronan.”

Finnan drops his hand from my face and walks around to drop into the high-backed seat behind his desk. “Those two have been bickering like wet hens since they were in diapers,” he says, his jaw tight.

A situation Finnan encouraged at every turn, steeped in the unfortunate thinking that pitting one son against the other would breed healthy competition. All it did was breed resentment.

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