Page 85 of Betrothed in Fury
“Right before he passed, Dad had me sign a document to ensure our family’s safety. We weren’t in a good place, and he didn’t want anything bad to happen to us.”
“Neither would I,” she insists.
Why does she keep saying things that fuck with my head?
I ignore the comment and continue. “At the time, I didn’t read what he asked me to sign. Didn’t think it would matter, but apparently it was an agreement to marry Killian Lorde. The marriage would fuse our families together and offer us the long-term security we never could have even hoped for on our own.” I can’t look at her as I say the next part. “We’re planning to marry at the end of the week. We’ll have a small ceremony at his place, and that will be that. And that’s all I came to say.”
There. It’s out. It’s done.
I wait for her to respond, but when she doesn’t, I force myself to look at her.
Her cheeks are pale, her gaze right through me. She looks terror-struck, as though she finally realized what she tried to do to us all those years ago. Of course, I know that can’t be the case. It must be something about what I disclosed, but I can’t imagine why she would care all that much what I did with my life when she was so hasty to end it.
She mutters something so softly, I can’t make it out.
“What’d you say?”
“He won,” she says, only slightly louder, her gaze meeting mine.
“Won?”
She tightens her jaw, the muzzle shifting as she explains, “Old Terror won.”
“I don’t understand.”
She sneers. “Come on, Logan, you’re a smart man. You’re probably the smartest of your brothers aside from Malaki.”
It’s not the kindest remark, but not surprising coming from her.
“Think,” she says. “You must have wondered what made your mother snap that day. What would drive her so wild that she would feel the only way for justice was to end the lives of her own children.”
In the times I’ve visited, she’s never once brought up that day. I’d hoped that maybe she knew it was too traumatic to mention, but clearly that isn’t the case. But more importantly, I can’t make out what her snapping had to do with Old Terror and Dad.
“Your father betrayed me with Old Terror,” she says, eyes wild.
Betrayed?
I assume she means in a business matter before she adds, “They had an affair.”
“An affair?” I ask skeptically, certain this is one of her fabrications. “Stop it.”
“For years, behind my back, and when I found out, I lost my mind. I lost my reason for being, even all my protective instincts as a mother. I just wanted us all to disappear together; that was the only way he would know how cruel what he’d done to me was. Surely if you’d known, you would have understood why you had to die. Maybe I could have done something less violent…we could have all drunk something together. I could have gotten us some pills…” Her eyes tear up, like she’s sharing some lovely dream of the family going to Disney together, not the thought of us all killing ourselves together. “It would have been so beautiful,” she says as a tear pushes free from her eye, though it doesn’t seem to be from sadness, but from marveling at what she must perceive as a romantic idea. “Think of the horror on your daddy’s face when he would have discovered us. He would have known he should never have done that to me…to us.” It’s clear inthe way she says it that she only thought to addusafter saying what this was really about.
Despite how much I want to disregard her accusation, something about it rings true. The closeness of Dad and Old Terror. Why they would have been such good friends who would have gone this far to protect their families. But I have every reason for my doubts.
“This is just another thing you made up in your head,” I insist, recalling the numerous times she accused our father of having affairs with other women.
“That’s a lie.” She raises her hands, drawing my attention since she should’ve been in restraints.
Holy hell. While talking to me, she’s been undoing her cuffs.
In no time, she’s on the table, crawling toward me, the guards screaming her name as they rush over.
“I found the letters Old Terror wrote your father. Love letters. Your father’s betrayal to me.”
Before she can reach me, one of the guards seizes her by the arm, the other one rushing to help. She thrashes about, struggling against their hold.
“No, let me go! That bastard is coming back from the grave to torture me!”
