“No.” I laugh and it’s not with humor. I sound a little crazy. “No. This isn’t a good idea. I was smart to not tell you. I was holding it back to protect you.”
His jaw sets and voice firms. “You’re going to tell me.”
Panic rises inside me. “Let me off the window.” He doesn’t move and I push on his chest. “Let me off the window!”
“Harper—”
“Eric. Damn it. I’m suffocating. Let me off the damn window.”
He stares at me, his eyes glinting with steel and storm clouds. He wants to push me. Oh God, he’s going to push me. I reacted emotionally. I opened my mouth. There are so many prices that will be paid for this. “It’s nothing I did. It’s nothing I did. I would never—let me off the window. Please.”
His jaw flexes and the next thing I know I’m over his shoulder and he’s carrying me across the living room. I don’t even yelp. I can’t seem to process anything for the ache in my chest and the blood rushing to my head. By the time he lowers me onto the bed and then comes down on top of me, my head is thundering, throbbing painfully.
“Tell me.”
“And if I don’t?”
“You will.”
I cup his face, tenderness filling me for this man. “This is a motive for you to kill your father. Right now, if you get accused of killing him, if he dies, I can say under oath you didn’t know this. Wait until we know if you’ll be blamed.”
“Harper, princess—”
“I hate that name. I hate that name right now because it implies I’m a part of that family. I don’t want to be a part of that family. I want out of the Kingston operation. I want out.”
“And you are. You’re coming to work with me, but, baby, I need you to tell me. I promise you, I will not leave this apartment after finding out. I’ll stay right here with you.”
“That’s not enough.”
“It’s all I have. My word. My word to you, and a vow to make that mean something to you now and forever.”
“Please don’t hate me for not telling you.”
“I don’t. It’s clear you were protecting me.”
“Say it again. Promise me you will not leave after I tell you, but more, tell me you’ll confirm the information, and take a step back, a week, days, to think before you act.”
His eyes meet mine. “I promise.”
“And I’m not saying this to protect your father. If this is true, he is worse than I ever dreamt he could be. He’s a monster. I’m saying this to protect you because you don’t deserve to end up behind bars because of him.”
He rolls to his back and takes me with him, and now I’m draped over him, I’m the one in control, which is what he’s trying to tell me, even show me. I breathe out. “It was—about six months after my miscarriage and my mother called me. She was in a panic. She’d found something that freaked her out. I met her at their house, and she said she’d seen notes in your father’s files. She was looking for some property lease and—”
“What did she find?”
“Just keep in mind that she told me she was wrong. She read the document wrong.”
“Baby, you’re killing me here.”
“The document was about a cancer trial that your mother was trying to get into.”
He doesn’t blink. “Why would my father have that document?”
“Then you know about the program?” I ask.
“Yes. I know about the program. It was her best hope. It was what we were hoping for, but she killed herself before she got in.”
I swallow hard. “Yes, well when I heard your father had documents related to the trial, I thought that meant that your mother mattered to him. That she was more than we realized to him.”