Page 88 of Bound By Blood and Lies

Four to three.

There is only Victor’s dad left.

We all watch as Strickland stands, and I hold my breath. Every other father has backed their son. Hope pushes in, and beside me Fae shifts as her hand tightens in mine like she’s thought the same thing. Strickland exhales slowly, his gaze moving to Victor before settling on me.

“Nay,” he says, dropping back into his chair with a small shake of his head.

My jaw locks as Victor is already on his feet. “You son of a bitch!” he barks. “Girls, Dad. Girls as young as ten. What about Mum?”

“You’re speaking out of turn, Victor,” Strickland snaps as he glares back at him.

“No, you?—”

“Enough.” The crack of Snider’s fist against the table cuts through everything, silencing the room instantly. “In the event of a tied vote, the wider council will be consulted. This is not over. We will reconvene in a month?—”

“A month?” Riggs chokes with disbelief laced through it. “A month? He could have killed us by then.”

“Look,” Snider exhales, pinching the bridge of his nose, “it’s not ideal, but?—”

The door opens, cutting him off mid-sentence, and every head turns at once. My breath catches as my mum steps inside. Her head is high, her shoulders back and she is dressed in sharp red that cuts through the room like a warning. Her makeup is flawless and there is not a single hair out of place. She barely looks at me, just a quick, dismissive flick of her eyes, and my stomach drops hard.

What the fuck is this?

“Hello, boys. You started without me?” she purrs, her attention drifting to the men as my brain scrambles to catch up with what I’m seeing.

The woman in front of me isn’t the one I know. The soft, flour-dusted mum who moves around the kitchen in bare feet is gone. In her place stands someone colder, sharper, someone who looks like she could break men without thinking twice. Was she playing me too? Was she working with him all along? My mouth hangs open as I turn to Fae. Her hand is clamped over her lips, tears already filling her eyes.

“Ah, Fiona. You’re late,” Harding says, adjusting himself as he leans back.

A familiar anger crawls up my spine as she walks past us, stepping behind the table and taking the seat my father should be in.

“Not too late, I hope?” she says, flashing Harding a look as she settles in, completely at ease.

It’s with that look that I realise… It’s over.

It’s fucking over.

CHAPTER 25

ROMAN

“What are you doing here, Mumzy?”

Riggs’ voice cuts through the room, and the pain in it hits me. I press my hand against my chest like I can stop it from splitting open. It doesn’t do a thing. I turn to take Riggs in, and he glances back at me. His eyes look bloodshot, like he’s a second away from crying, and I grit my teeth to control my own emotions.

I break eye contact quickly, forcing my focus back to the woman who raised us. It hits in a way I wasn’t ready for, deeper than my dad’s betrayal ever did. Maybe it’s because I always knew what he was, but this… this feels different. Every instinct in me is screaming to get up, to demand an answer, to drag her out of that seat and take her home, but I don’t move. I can’t.

She made her choice and I have to make mine.

Fae’s hand moves softly against my thigh, tracing slow circles, but it barely touches the storm tearing through me. The room falls into a heavy silence, broken only by the quiet shift of fabric as Mum lifts a dossier and flips through it. The coldness in her eyes knocks the air from my lungs as she skims over her husband’s sins like they’re just paperwork, and when she finally looks up, it’s not at us.

It’s at all of them.

“My husband is absent,” she says, her voice carrying without effort. “Which, as I’m sure you’re all aware, activates clause seventeen of the bylaws.”

My eyebrows draw in.

What fucking clause? Why didn’t we know about this? There’s a shift across the table and I zone in as Lawson opens his mouth before snapping it shut. Snider leans forward, frowning, and Parson’s eyes narrow. Buckley shifts in his seat, shooting his son a sympathetic gaze and my stomach revolts again. On the outside I’m calm. On the inside I’m one more second away from exploding.