Page 60 of Dearly Betrayed

“Really?” I feel my ears flush pink. “I’ve been thinking about it too. The kissing stuff, I mean.”

“What else are you thinking about?” He brushes his knuckles across my cheek.

“I’m not miserable here. I thought I’d hate it, but—” I shrug a little. “I miss home. I miss my family and my old life, but it’s been nice, you know?”

“I’m happy. I like having you in my life.”

“Do you really? I mean, you didn’t want this marriage. Maybe you wanted it even less than I did. What made you change your mind?”

“You did.” He says it so simply, and the implication rings in my ears.He changed his mind.

We stay in silence like that for a little while. I think of my father, and the memory doesn’t feel like a stab in my guts anymore. Papa made his decisions—he went to war with the Costa family knowing damn well what would happen. Cousins, soldiers, friends and husbands died in the fighting, and it was my father that made the call. He sent them to their graves, and he went too.

I want to find the anger still. I know it’s there, hidden away, plastered over by these feelings I’ve developed for Jayson. The Costas aren’t the monsters I thought they’d be when I first came here, and things are so much more complicated than I guessed.

Forget black and white. Forget gray. This is all mud, a sludge of conflicting emotions, conflicting truths. What does it mean that my husband ordered my father’s death? What does it mean that my father ordered my husband’s murder? One worked, the other didn’t. Do they cancel each other out? Does revenge help anyone at all?

It doesn’t help the dead. I doubt it helps the living.

I close my eyes for a while and let my mind drift.

Chapter28

Jayson

Ilet Fallon sleep, but before I leave, I make sure there are at least two guards on the door. “Nobody in or out unless it’s me,” I tell them before I leave to find Adler.

My brother’s still in his office, looking exhausted. “You’re not going to like what he said,” Adler says as he stares at me. I slump into a chair in front of his desk.

The rage is still there. It’s hotter than ever, burning to break free from my chest, but it’s tempered now. I can control it, direct it where it needs to go. Spending some time with Fallon helped—making sure she’s safe, getting her off, putting her to sleep, that helped me find a center I didn’t know existed. A center walled-off from the hate and rage and guilt that’s been eating at me.

“She didn’t deserve this.” The words come out harsh. I hate myself for feeling this way. For loving her the way I do. For the weakness it implies. But it’s also a kind of strength, loving when love is hard.

“You’re right, she didn’t.”

“What did the brother have to say for himself?”

“Only that there are factions within his family that aren’t fully under his control and that he was looking into it. He seemed cagey.”

“Could he have ordered it?”

“I don’t think so.”

“I want to talk to him.”

“That might not be a good idea.”

“Let me rephrase that. I am going to talk to him.”

Adler snorts, shaking his head. “Yeah, I figured.”

“And I’m going to do it with Fallon in the room.”

That surprises him. His eyebrows raise as he sits back to study me. “Why?” he asks.

“Because she was nearly killed, and if I hadn’t already been on my way to find her, she’d be dead right now. We got lucky, and I want her to get some closure on this. I want her to hear it from her brother.”

“Interesting.” He steeples his fingers. “You care about her.”

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