Page 138 of Lawless Rivals

My father’s hand slams on the table. Crystal jumps. Cutlery rattles. A red line of wine shivers up the inside of his glass and slides back down.

“I’ll say nothing of the sort.” His eyes are like fire now, all the dinner-table politeness stripped from his face. “The man will go to prison for kidnapping my daughter.”

I shake my head. “Not if I tell Crowley what really happened in his cabin. I’ll tell him how we fucked in the shower and on the kitchen table.”

A muscle pulses in his jaw. “You’re lying⁠—”

I can hear my blood rushing through my skull, steady and hot, pushing through every expectation to stay meek and obedient. But I’m over letting men decide which version of my character, my name, my story is theirs to manipulate.

“You want to fight over land and history, father,” I say. “Go ahead. But leave me out of it. I’m not interested.”

Fionn’s hand settles at the small of my back, firm enough to get me moving before this turns into something I’ll never come back from.

We leave the dining room with every eye on us and my father’s silence too loud. I realize my outburst crossed a boundary under this roof, and consequences are certain, which is why I need to get far away from Black Heath.

Fionn doesn’t stop until we reach the entrance hall.

“Christ, Keira,” he mutters. “What the fuck was that?”

I pull away from his hand. “That’s me having a voice, Fionn. And now I’m leaving Black Heath behind.”

“You just told a room full of people you went willingly.”

“You know why?” I fold my arms across my chest. “Because if I let them call it kidnapping, he turns me into the bullet that destroys Saint. He makes me the weapon in a war he’s fighting alone.”

“But they fucking kidnapped you,” he grits. “Don’t you see that?”

“I know… And then it became more complicated than that.”

Fionn glances over his shoulder, then lowers his voice further. “You want to protect Saint Tallon. A man who’s violent and resorts to underhanded tactics to get what he wants?”

“I’m not protecting him,” I say. “I don’t need to report it to Crowley when I’ve got ownership of the only thing Saint wants. The one thing he risked everything for and didn’t get. I have his precious land. And I won’t be around for him to take it.”

Fionn sighs.

“The land’s in your name,” he says. “But it belongs to the Harrington trust.”

I stare at him. “That makes no sense.”

“You’re the named beneficiary,” he lowers his voice. “That means Saint needs your signature. But you can’t sell it, transfer it, or hand control to anyone outside the trust without trustee consent.”

“And our father controls the trustees, right?”

A cold feeling moves through me.

“Exactly.”

Saint thought taking me would force my father’s hand.

But my father had already moved the game somewhere out of reach.

“Coming home was the worst mistake of my life,” I add.

His expression changes, the hard set of his mouth giving way for a second. “Don’t say that.”

“Why? It’s not like you came to Paris to see me?”

“You were lovin’ life with some French guy called Lucien.”