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Raphael shook his head once, his lips in a flat line. “Doesnae matter. Ye know the lengths he’s gone to in the past. He’ll find out.”
Ariel scoffed. “And you know what I have on him. What we all have on him.”
Jackson chimed in. “He wouldn’t dare.”
“He would, or have ye forgotten what he attempted only months ago?”
Ariel’s focus came my way with some kind of understanding in her eyes. She spoke again to her brother. “You’re displacing.”
That comment was about me. “What is he displacing?” I asked.
I was clueless as to what was going on. Why Raphael’s mood had shifted so abruptly. All I knew was that I wanted to comfort him from whatever was hurting him. His family knew, and pulling the scant pieces together suggested it was to do with their history, though I had no idea what.
Ariel sighed. “The reason he’s a bodyguard, and why he’s never had a girlfriend.”
Raphael stomped away from her to yank open the passenger-side door of the car, indicating for me to get in. I did, right as he delivered the killing blow.
“And why I never will.”
Chapter 27
Alexandra
In silence, we wound through the dark countryside, back to the cottage, not speaking in the living room where we kicked off our shoes, but moving together, like clouds rolling into a storm front, with lightning crackling and thunder shaking the land.
Inside the bedroom, with the lamp on and the curtains closed, Raphael finally relented.
This was something significant. Some dark secret that was hurting him. I perched on the bed and watched him pace from the window to the wall.
“I’m sorry about that.”
I didn’t want him sorry. I wanted him to let me in. I stayed quiet.
His gaze flicked to me. “I told ye about our father being a terrible person. In the winter, he tried to kidnap Ariel.”
Of all the things I’d expected him to say, that hadn’t crossed my mind. “Oh my God.”
Raphael dug his fingers into his hair. “Not only that. Jackson, who I’d arranged to protect my sister while I was away at flight school, was injured and abducted by Dad’s pet assassin. Obviously Jax and Ariel both survived, but one slight change inhistory and I could have lost them both. Before that, when we lived with him in California, he regularly hurt Gabe. And me.” He added the last two words quieter, as if an afterthought. “He thinks with his fists when it comes to those closest to him. With outsiders, he doesn’t hold back on his tactics to intimidate and control.”
My heart ached. Of course, I’d suspected something bad of a man they’d run from, but hearing him describe how domestic abuse turned to something deadlier sent a chill down my spine.
“What did Ariel mean that she has something on him?”
“A whole dossier of his backstabbing. If shared, his Mafia business associates will tear him apart.”
“You don’t think that threat will hold him off.” I didn’t ask it as a question. The answer was obvious.
Raphael’s head slashed once in ano. “It has done for a while, but the moment something goes bad for him, what’s to stop him thinking ‘fuck it’? Where does he turn but to the kids who escaped him? To Scotland, which was his homeland, and his first grandchild who he’ll see as the future of his enterprises. He is poison, and from the moment Gabe and Effie announced their pregnancy, the thought has been eating me alive.”
I couldn’t tell him everything would be okay. My words would be meaningless against a situation I could barely understand. I knew crappy families, though. “Gabe and Effie think the risk is worth it.”
“I know. I’m happy for them. I struggle to feel the same. Not while he’s still breathing.”
“You’re doing enough worrying for everyone.”
“Who better than a man whose job it is to analyse risks and protect against them?”
Pieces clicked into place. The flying, his strength, his reaction to threat. “You turned yourself into the trained man who can defend against everything your father can throw at your family.”