I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know what to say. It had just been drinks. Some good brie. A surprising amount of laughing. Ronan was silent, too.
Bryant lifted a finger and Tiernan smiled with malice and punched Ronan across the face.
“Stop!” I screamed. “Stop! I’m telling the truth. It was just drinks.”
“He offered you a job?” Bryant asked Ronan and after a second Ronan nodded.
“Did you take it?” Bryant asked.
“I’m not working for the Morellis,” Ronan said and then spit blood on the carpet.
“You are a fucking Morelli!” Bryant shouted. “It’s your blood, Ronan. It’s your goddamn destiny and I don’t know what I need to do to convince you.” His face lit up. “Well, now, perhaps I do.”
He walked over to me and I could feel the violence coming off of him in waves. The pleasure he was taking in this game.
“Touch her and I will kill you,” Ronan threatened. “Lay one finger—”
Bryant touched my face. The shoulder bared by the dress and I felt my skin crawl. “I paid your husband a lot of money over the years to work for me. And he died before he could give me what he owed me.”
“What does he owe you?”
“Information. Influence,” he smiled at me and then grabbed me by the hair. “Perhaps I can take it out in trade.”
“I’ll work for you,” Ronan said. “I’ll take the job. Don’t touch her.”
Bryant’s face lit up and he stepped away from me. My breath heaved in my chest.
“When?” Bryant asked.
“I need…just give me a week,” Ronan panted.
“Two days. That’s what I give you. Two days and you’re back here where you belong. A Morelli. Say it.”
Ronan, beaten and bloody, nodded. The soul he’d been showing me. The heart. The dreams. The man he’d been, were all gone. He was the killer I met years ago. Distant. Cold and remote.
“Say it!” Bryant roared.
“A Morelli,” Ronan said.
“I’ll raise you up at my side like my sons, Ronan. You’ll see. You’ll have more power than you’ve ever dreamt of.”
“Ronan,” I whispered. “No. Don’t do this.”
“It’s already done,” Bryant said.
He gestured to the men standing behind Ronan, they stopped pressing on his shoulders and he got to his feet.
“Two days.” He grinned, wolfish and confident. “Welcome to the family.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Poppy
“Your face,” I said once we were back in our car. I reached for him, the bleeding from his eye and lip. He dodged my touch.
“Are you all right?” he asked. He was driving. When we were dropped back off at my house, we found Raj, unconscious in the back seat of the car. He was conscious now, but in no shape to drive.
I touched my cheek, tender from the backhand. “Fine. That was more for show than anything.”
“Are you really going to work for him?”
“I don’t have a choice.”
“Can’t we… I don’t know, find what the senator was doing for him?”
“How? Where? Poppy, that’s all a dead end.”
“Ronan—” I felt all those dreams for us vanish like they’d been popped. It was violence and more violence. I reached out to touch him and he shifted away.
My stomach knotted with fear.
At the apartment, I went to the bankers box for no good reason but that I was desperate. Perhaps there was something we’d missed. Some treasure map.
I heard Ronan back in his bedroom thumping around with something and I pulled out the files we’d already looked through. The plastic bag of all my jewelry was still on the table and I picked it up and tossed it on the couch to get it out of the way.
Ronan came stomping into the room with a leather bag open in his hands. In the bag I saw a bunch of my new clothes all bunched up. “What are you doing?” I asked, though it was painfully obvious.
“Are you pregnant?” He asked me that question without looking at me. “Is that why we went to your house? To get that shit? And don’t fucking lie to me.”
I flinched at him calling that box shit.
“I…I don’t know yet.”
He sucked in a deep breath. “When do you know?”
“Two weeks.”
“Jesus Christ, Poppy.” He looked sideways, his jaw hard. He’d washed his face and changed his shirt, but he looked deadly. As deadly as I’d ever seen him. And far away.
“Don’t be mad at me,” I said. “Be mad at science.”
“I want you out of my house. I want you out of the country.”
I blinked at him and went back to the box. I should have expected this. I should have seen it coming. “No.”
“I don’t want you here.”
Even though I knew what he was doing, it still stung. He grabbed the bag of jewelry off the table and I snagged the edge of it as he was about to put it in the suitcase.
“I’m not leaving,” I said.
“Jesus, you really are pathetic. I don’t love you.”