“No. Though at the end I had my suspicions.” She tilted her head, her eyes all over my scar. “You were shot?”
“Are you going to pretend to care?”
Caroline had the gall to look hurt. “I know it might not seem like it where you stand, but I always cared.”
“That must be why you married me to the senator,” I said, like it all made sense. “All your care certainly explains why you sent me back to him. Your care has been so good to me—” I shut my mouth, tilted my face away from Caroline. I just couldn’t stand to look at her anymore.
“Are you forgetting about your sister?”
“What about my sister?”
“You couldn’t have handled that situation on your own. You needed help. I helped.”
“And I repaid you in blood.” I nodded my head. “That’s your barter and trade system, I just didn’t realize it.”
“You had a choice.”
“Don’t—” I gasped. “Don’t you fucking comfort yourself with that lie.”
Caroline’s tongue came out and touched the middle of her upper lip. “Fine. You’re right. I needed the senator under the control of the Constantines and not the Morellis. He expressed some interest in you and I saw a way to keep his loyalty.”
“Well, that worked out great, didn’t it? For all of us.”
“I didn’t think he would”—Caroline shook her head—“actually hurt you.”
“Well, that’s a relief.” My sarcasm was a goddamn delight.
She blinked at me, stunned, and I smiled at her with all of my teeth. “Why did you have him killed?”
“The senator?” Caroline’s eyes went wide and then narrowed. “Is that what Ronan told you? That I gave him the order?”
I tried to remember the conversation. Had he told me? Had I assumed and he let me believe what he wanted? Caroline took my silence as a yes.
“No, honey, Ronan went rogue on that one,” she said, settling into that old position of hers. I was the child, she was the adult and the world was far too complicated for me to understand.
Fuck. That.
“You’re saying he did it on his own?”
“Apparently your bruises were a step too far for my bulldog.”
“Caroline—”
“Yes. Ronan killed him for his own reasons.”
“Did you order him to seduce me?”
She shook her head slowly, a smile on her face. She was really enjoying this. “Not even I’m that cruel. I imagine he makes the senator feel like a prince?”
Oh, how wrong she was. How clearly she did not know Ronan. But I wouldn’t be the one to inform her. To change her mind. “You wanted me occupied. Distracted.” That was what he told me.
Her face folded into lines of pity. “He lied.”
“Then why…?” I stopped because I didn’t want to hear her speculation. I didn’t actually want to hear Ronan’s name out of her mouth. But the rug was fully pulled out from under my feet.
“I imagine,” she said, “that he took pity on you and your bruises and the way you clung to the corner of every room scared of your own shadow. He always was a sucker for a victim.”
I flinched and regretted it immediately. Showing her that much. Giving her any more of myself.
“Is that why you have a bounty on his head?”
“No. I have a bounty on his head to remind him who he works for.” Caroline got to her feet and I realized I was standing, too. And so the gloves were off; we were done pretending. I was not a child and she did not save me.
“Call it off,” I said.
“Why should I?”
I stepped towards her, not only ready but suddenly longing to do violence to her. To snatch out her hair. To bloody her nose. My muscles clenched with a need for action. For blood. After all she’d done to me, to my family, smashing her face against the desk seemed like the least I could do. She must have seen my bloodlust, barely contained. She stepped back and held up her hand.
“Fine,” she said. “I will remove the order. But he owes me answers.”
“He doesn’t owe you shit, Caroline. You don’t seem to understand that. We don’t owe you anything.”
“That’s remarkably ungrateful of you,” Caroline said, managing to appear hurt by my attitude. Like she was a mother and I was a surly teenager. I felt my temper fraying and surrounded myself with some of Ronan’s icy chill.
“Do you know why the Morellis wanted me dead or alive?” I asked.
“My guess is that it had something to do with the senator and the work he was doing for them?”
“Do you know what kind?”
“The bad kind, Poppy. Oh, they have Morelli Holdings to do legitimate business, but they always have something on the side. Especially Bryant.” She looks almost wistful. “He can’t help himself. No doubt he’ll try to pull Ronan in as well.”
I recoiled at the thought. “Ronan won’t work for them.”