“I’m not going anywhere until I have some answers.” She glared. “What the fuck is going on?”
Lucian was the one to answer. “You two really are a pair, you know that? You should have been actresses.”
I looked up at him, confusion playing across my face, but all I saw on Lucian’s was distrust.
“Don’t you fucking talk to her like that,” Birdie snarled. “Do you have any idea what she’s been through because of you?”
Lucian looked at me with arctic eyes. “She got her money, didn’t she? I’m sure the few tears she had to shed were worth it.”
I saw it happening. The rage building inside Birdie. Her red, mottled neck and the way her pupils had taken over her eyes completely. But I was powerless to stop it, paralyzed by my own pain as Lucian flayed me open with his eyes.
There wasn’t time to speak before she lunged at him, destruction in her eyes. But luckily, Ace stepped into action before she could reach Lucian. Birdie was a force to be reckoned with in her fits of anger, but even so, she stood no chance against Ace. He wrapped his tank of a body around her and tackled her to the bed, holding there as he forced her to calm down.
I was in a state of shock as he whispered in her ear, stroking her hair while he held her broken arm so she couldn’t move it. For a split second, I wanted to rush forward and tell him he had to stop. He didn’t know about Birdie’s demons. He didn’t know how damaged she was. But something miraculous happened as I watched them. Birdie closed her eyes and shuddered, and then, to my complete surprise, she stopped fighting altogether.
“Why don’t we take this into the kitchen,” Ace suggested. “Where we can all talk about it like adults.”
Lucian didn’t move until I did, but his eyes were on me, watching me like I might try to pull something at any moment. I trailed down the hall behind Ace and Birdie, my hand clutching my stomach as if to protect the baby from whatever awful thing was about to come.
“Father Hawk?” I came to a halt when I saw him sitting at the kitchen table, his face grim.
“Gypsy.” He nodded in my direction.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“He’s here for me,” Lucian said from behind me. “He’s here as my witness.”
I didn’t know what he meant by that, but when Ace pulled out a chair for me, I sat down. Lucian sat directly across from me, his eyes trained on my face while Birdie and Ace took their seats.
I looked at Lucian, desperate for even an ounce of warmth. “I have so much I want to ask you,” I said. “But I don’t even know where to begin.”
He folded his hands across the table and looked straight through me. “Why don’t we begin at the part where you tried to kill me.”
“WHAT?” GYPSY SOUNDED HORRIFIED BY the accusation, and for a second, I almost wanted to believe her.
“You can drop the act.” I looked between her and Birdie. “I know.”
“Know what?” Birdie demanded. “It seems like the only thing you know is your own delusions.”
I pulled out the printed sheets of search history that had been removed from her ipad, sliding it across the table so we could drop the bullshit.
“Insulin would be a good weapon of choice,” I told Gypsy. “But you didn’t take into account that I had eaten a meal shortly before the injection, unfortunately for you.”
Her hands shook as she read through the printed search history detailing how to kill someone with insulin, and when she looked up at me, her eyes were blurry with unshed tears.
“I didn’t do this,” she declared. “I never searched for these things.”
I wanted to believe her, and I hated myself for it. I hated myself for being weak and for falling in love with her, exactly like she wanted. Her actions had destroyed me, but I couldn’t show it. I couldn’t show her how much power she had over me, even at that moment.
“I suppose you’re going to tell me that even though this search history is on your ipad, you weren’t the one to sneak into my hospital room that night and inject my saline bag as well.”
Horror painted her features, and it only managed to fuel my ire when she tried to deny it. “I would never.” She choked. “Lucian—”
“What I can’t understand is why you were in such a hurry,” I snapped. “I was dying anyway. Was it really so terrible to wait until it happened naturally?”
Gypsy brought a trembling hand to her mouth as tears spilled free from her eyes. They looked so real, but I’d fallen for that before. It was only after the insulin incident that my eyes had been opened and the truth came to light. She was playing me, just as she’d played every man before me.