Page 84 of Seduce & Destroy

Chapter 29

LANEY

"She’d take you back,” Neenan said for the fourth time since we left the Ravencroft Estate. No day went past where she didn’t enter my mind, Neenan made sure of it. We were staying at an inn over a pub in the neighbouring village Oxenwood. “After I left you in that van, I met one of our guys, a guy named Sorren, he vowed my safety if I align myself with them. They weren’t killing indiscriminately.”

The only image in my head was of my hand fisting the pomegranate band feeling at a loss and like I'd been relentlessly run over by a lorry. Not a bird in the sky. Does it really matter if it wasn’t indiscriminate when it was my family that they were targeting? Granddaddy, Tilly, Flavia Novelli, for all intents and purposes, Father.

“No lives needed to be lost. This was only ever about revenge.”

“And Kenna?”

“The greatest revenge of all.”

“You don’t believe that?” He said, but his words were distant, he was being more talkative than usual, and it was always the same topics. It wasn’t what I called a good distraction, I didn’t need the reminder of what I lost.

“I have to, Neenan.” The drum of loud music shook the floorboards under us, it was karaoke night downstairs. Thankfully, the bass drowned out the singing. “Can we talk about something else?”

For a moment, there was a harmony to the place we were in. The pub was between songs. The conversation was between talking points. The distant church bells paused between rings. When it all started up again, though, I cringed.

“Bad migraine?”

I nodded. “Throbbing at the exact rate as my heart palpitates.”

He looked at me blankly. “That bad?”

I offered him a weak smile, but it took effort. The last couple days had been slow, all the options for our next steps came so fast it confined me to stasis. It’s funny that the moment I lost all my attachments, I felt the most free I’d ever been but also the most confined.

Only two bags left the estate on our body, but the number of things scattered about the place would make you think otherwise. One thing caught my eye in particular. The box my mother gave me.

Neenan followed my gaze.

“Are you going to open it?”

I was building myself up to it. Marriage was the last thing on my mind, but I wished for some words of comfort right about now, so I grabbed it from my nightstand and just held it. It felt heavier in my hand than I’d thought. The musical vibrations below us were drowned out by the gravity of the moment.

I didn’t know much about her, and I was the reason Father never talked about her. It was a weight that I carried with me every day and something that my father saw in my face each day too. Having this little piece of her was a treasure to me, to open it was to let it go. But with the current times, I needed to end every mystery in my life, and this was a big one.

What message would my mother have wanted me to receive upon marriage? Inspiration? To learn from her mistakes? I wasn’t sure.

“Can I?” I asked as if Mother was in the room with us. In some ways, it felt like she was the only one close. Minus Neenan, of course, but he was such a permanent feature in my life that he felt as solid as the earth we stood on.

He insisted.

Fear rocked me for a moment. “What if it’s bad?”

“What if it’s good?”

“What if it’s not?”

“What if it’s great?”

I had to believe him. He was only a little older than me, but sometimes I think he knows things about me that I didn’t. As if his father had all the stories about my parents that Father refused to divulge. Sometimes I wished for his perspective. But wait–

“Your father! Is he okay?”

He swallowed hard. My heart plummeted. I didn’t even ask him. Dammit. Too self-absorbed to even consider that my family wasn’t the only one affected. Stupid girl.

“Uhh…” The words seemed to lodge in his throat. I didn’t need them anyway. I threw myself at him, arms wide and tight as they wrapped around his shoulders. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. So sorry.”