Concerto (North Security 2)

She’s quiet a moment. “So your team eliminated him?”

“No, sweetheart. I did that.”

A flinch. “You were just doing your job.”

Even now she wants to make excuses for me. “My orders were to continue to watch him. They wanted to see what happened next. I already knew, and I wasn’t going to wait around. So I slipped a little something into his special dark roast coffee beans, the ones he guarded so fucking religiously that no one else could drink it.”

Her eyes are wide. She knows what’s coming next. “The coffee.”

She never drank coffee with me, not once. Only tea. Some part of her recognized the danger, even if she couldn’t remember why. “I didn’t know that a twelve-year-old little girl liked to sneak a sip of the stuff. Not until I found out she was in the hospital.”

Tears fall down her cheeks. “That’s why I don’t remember.”

“They didn’t put it together at the time. An old man dying of a heart attack. A young girl who’d seen it, passed out with memory loss from seeing something tragic. By the time anyone thought to investigate, he was cremated.”

“Is that why you wanted custody of me?” she says, the words like venom, full of pain. “To make sure no one could run a blood test on me without your permission?”

“Christ. No, Samantha. Any trace would be gone from your system.”

“Then why?”

“Because you deserved a hell of a lot better than a traitor for a father and a bastard for a brother.” I give a humorless laugh, knocking my head back against the splintery wood. “Do you know what I regret the most? Not killing him. I’m sorry I didn’t do it sooner. I had to watch him forget to feed you, forget to clothe you. I saw him leave you at the square in Leningrad while it was snowing, and you weren’t even wearing boots—I couldn’t call anyone to get you because it would prove he was being surveilled.”

She listens to me speak and then gives a brief nod, as if our conversation is concluded. And I suppose it is. This is the only way it could end—with the truth.

SAMANTHA

In some ways the information about my father wasn’t a surprise. I may not have known the specifics, but I knew what kind of man he was. Loyalty wasn’t in his vocabulary. And if I had thought more about it—the money that would come and go. The way he’d buy me a new dress to attend a fancy dinner one week and then leave the pantry empty the next. Alistair Brooks was a desperate man. And I was his desperate daughter, so eager to believe that someone cared about me that I invented stories. If only I could play violin well enough, if I followed the rules hard enough. If I wanted it bad enough, there would be a father to love me.

Growing up isn’t about learning something new. It’s about unlearning the fairy tales you believe as a child. Elijah offered to take me away from here, but I won’t put that between the brothers. Instead I call a cab and pack a single carry-on suitcase. A flight leaves Austin in a few hours that will take me to Chicago, and then on to Tanglewood. I can start my new life there, a little earlier than I had planned. I’m ready.

I put my suitcase in the car and step into the back of the cab. The front door opens, and Liam strides toward me. Don’t ask me to stay, I beg him silently. I’m not sure I can say no. It’s not because I stopped loving him. I think I love him even more now, somehow, seeing him

battered and broken against the obstacle course he built himself, beating himself against his own guilt. But he will never see me as a grown woman while I stay here. He will never accept me as an equal while I remain in his custody, if only in body and not spirit.

The only choice is to leave, which means it’s not really a choice at all.

His silhouette breaks from the house, and I realize he’s holding the violin. The Stradivarius. I hadn’t brought it with me. There are violins everywhere, and societies and museums would be happy to loan me a great one. It wouldn’t equal the Lady Tennant, but nothing would.

“Why did you leave it behind?” he asks, his voice hoarse.

“I wasn’t sure you’d want me to have it. After everything that happened.”

His green eyes are lighter than I’ve ever seen them, almost see-through. This is the most he’s ever shown me of him—his past, his emotion. All it took was for me to leave.

“Bullshit,” he says.

“Fine. Maybe I wasn’t sure I still wanted it. After everything that happened.”

“Take it. That is, if you want to play this violin, then I want you to have it.”

I swallow hard and take the case, my fingers brushing his on the wooden handle.

“And if you ever need me—” His voice breaks.

“I know where to find you,” I finish for him.

He shuts the door and slaps the top of the cab so we move forward. I watch my home disappear through my tears. Only when we get to the airport do I realize that it’s Josh driving the cab. “What the hell?” I say as he steps out to squint at a parking meter.