“I’m scared for you,” she said, ignoring Ezra and Lucian as they slunk through the narrow gap we created in the frame of the gate and onto the property. “Bryant, he…he’s very angry with you, my sweet monster. Dr. Crown had to stay for three days while he tended to your father after what happened at The Met.”
“Good. It’s too bad the asshole didn’t just keel over and die.”
“Tiernan!” She pulled away, her face pale with shock. “That’s your father you’re talking about.”
“Yes,” I hissed, the violent wind whipping the word into her face like the crack of a slapping hand. “The same man who gave me his scar. The same man who drove Grace to kill herself and our unborn child. The same man who isolated me from my siblings, who wouldn’t let me go to school because my dyslexia and the scar he gave me made me a disgrace to his family name.”
I heaved in a cold breath that helped bank the heat of the fury crackling in my chest.
My voice softened and I took Sarah’s gloved hands in my own, tugging her close to protect her shivering form from the worst of the wind. “The same man who essentially locked you in the east wing and forgot about you as soon as you’d pushed out the last of his brood. The man who drives you to drink too much and pop pills like M&Ms.”
“I don’t…” she started to protest instinctively, but the words withered under my fierce glare. “Well, I suppose this had to happen one day. The son must always try to break free from his father.”
“Not just one son,” Lucian finally interjected, staring at our mother like she was a gnat beneath his shoe. “I know you don’t have much time for us, and I don’t really give a fuck. But you can’t imagine we’d have much sympathy for you. You chose this life. Not just for you, but for your children. No wonder you need those pills to sleep at night. Bryant’s crimes are on you just as much as they are on him.”
Sarah quaked hard in my grip as if Lucian’s words were sundering her in two.
“Quickly, let’s go inside,” I urged, leading her forward through the gap in hedgerows into the snow covered back garden. “They’ll be arriving any second if they aren’t here already.”
“Who?” Sarah asked.
We ignored her, jogging through the grounds to the east wing’s back entrance where Sarah’s favorite bodyguard waited at the door. Up the stairs into her opulent set of rooms, the parlor made even more lavishly feminine by the presence of three enormous men clothed in black who set up station on her antique coffee table.
“Carter should have set up cameras in the office yesterday,” Lucian murmured as Ezra flipped open his laptop and started to pull up the feed.
A moment later, the two men grinned as video popped up on the screen. The room was empty. Ezra pressed a series of controls and a grainy sound feed erupted in the room.
Sarah winced as she handed her coat off to me so I could hang it for her. “What in heaven’s name is all of this? You said you were coming to visit me.”
“I’m here, aren’t I?” I countered, tossing her coat on the back of a gold chair before joining my brothers around the computer.
“They’re here,” Lucian noted as Carter’s microphone spilled smoothly through the speakers, revealing Bryant was leading Santo, his men, and Beckett up to the office.
“But what are you doing?” she hissed, high color sluicing down her neck. She hated any sign of neglect and there I was, eschewing her for something to do with Bryant.
The air around her popped and fizzed, a tantrum brewing.
“Tiernan!” Her voice was shrill as a tea whistle.
“Shut her up,” Lucian demanded, casting a cold look at her.
I understood my brother’s apathy toward our mother. Sarah had stood by too many times in the past when Bryant took his fists and belt to us. It was a hard thing to forgive and even loving her, I wasn’t sure I could ever forget her negligence.
Even loving her, enough was enough.
I stalked over to her, watching as her expression changed swiftly from anger to a pleading kind of neediness.
“Tiernan, sweetie,” she began then swallowed the rest of her words, turning ashen when Bryant’s voice came through the mic.
“Ever thought you’d see the inside of the enemy’s camp, Beckett?” he was jeering, taunting him because of his close relationship with the Constantines. “When I heard you were turning on them, I had my suspicions. But it seems you and Caroline had a falling out over Christmas? How unfortunate you both.”
“Who?” Sarah breathed, but I didn’t have to answer because he did.
“My reasons for doing this are my own, Morelli, but don’t forget for one moment that I do not like you and this is not a social call,” Beckett replied with icy civility.