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Chapter Thirty-Three

Finn

B efore the door clicks closed, I’m striding over to the dresser where I stashed my gun. I check how many bullets I have. A full clip. Perfect . I only need one.

“Finn,” Carys says from the doorway.

There are no words for the anger raging inside me right now. The warning in her voice is easy to ignore. He put his hands on her as though he was entitled to her body, as though she’s an object he can take and use as he likes. There is no fucking way I let that smug asshole get away with that.

When I get to the door, she’s pressed against it.

“Move.”

“No.”

“If I kill him, our problems go away.”

“They don’t. And if you think about it, you’ll know why.”

“I don’t fucking care. He’s not railroading you. He’s not forcing himself on you. None of that is happening—ever.”

“I love you, Finn.” She molds herself to me.

I close my eyes and try to block out the smell of her. When her hands slide around my waist and her ear is on my chest, I can’t hold onto my rage.

“I love you.” Her voice is muffled by my shirt.

My arms stay at my sides, the gun still grasped in one of my hands. I want to kill him for putting her in this position.

“I love you.” She lifts her head, but I keep my gaze focused above her. “Can I talk to you?”

“You won’t change my mind.”

“What would we tell Lucas? If I let you kill Eric, what would we tell him?”

“Nothing,” I say. “He doesn’t need to know. Dad’s dead is enough.”

“Is it? Was it enough for you with your mom?” Her voice is gentle, but her words cut like a knife.

“Not the same.”

“You’d be his dad. Someday he might find out the truth—you killed his biological father. We lied.”

“Fine. We’ll tell him his bio dad was a dog who deserved to be put down.” But she’s got me. She knows me well enough to understand if she keeps at me, I’ll concede her point. The situations may not be the same, but they’re too similar to ignore. If I kill Eric, someday, in Lucas’s eyes, I’ll be no better than my father was. Instead of being someone he looks up to, I’ll be the person who took someone from him. God knows if I end up loving this kid half as much as I love his mother, it’d kill me to know he thinks of me the way I think of my father.

“What has Eric done to deserve to die ?”

With careful precision, I place my hands on her biceps and detach her from me. The anger still courses through me, and touching her is dangerous. At the dresser, I take the gun apart as though I’m going to clean it. I’m not. The routine offers me a strange comfort to be away from her and doing something with my hands.

She sighs. “The truth is, I don’t care all that much if you murder Eric. I don’t care about him at all. The reason I don’t want you to kill him is because of what it would do to us, to your relationship with Lucas, to my relationship with Lucas when he found out I not only went along with it but loved you more for doing it.”

“Loved me more? Is that possible?”

I stay focused on the gun, but she’s right. Killing Eric would be a short-term solution that would trap us into long-term problems. For years, I hated and feared my father. I don’t want that kind of relationship with Lucas. It seems impossible to parent any other way, but I’m sure as hell gonna try.

“I love you more all the time Like right now? I love you more for listening to me, for being willing to do anything to protect me.” She appears at my shoulder, but she doesn’t touch me.

Her closeness is enough to wear me down.

“I hate this,” I whisper.

I drop the gun and press my hands into the top of the dresser. Her hand rests on my back, tentative, light as a feather. Half of me wants to shrug her off, and the other half wants to gather her up, make her scream so loud with pleasure the whole fucking house knows she’s mine.

She’s saying the right things, but earlier she was slipping away, as though a crevice opened between us the moment Lucas became her child.

“I hate how I’ve become a mother. This situation would never have been my choice. I—I made peace with the fact I wouldn’t have children. But now that he’s here and he’s mine? I can’t carry resentment into my relationship with him. I can’t. Eric and my father did this, not him.”

“I don’t hate the baby.” I turn to her.

She’s been my foundation since I lost everything else. Until now, I haven’t even missed my old life. Helplessness is the one emotion I can’t stand. There’s always an angle to be played, an avenue to take. There’s one here too. Murder. Simple. For once I have to think beyond the now, consider the future, a future with her and with Lucas. I won’t become my father.

I clear my throat and stare at the dresser again. “He’s so sure he’s going to win, and I can’t think of a way around what he’s done.” I push my hands harder into the polished wood. “He’s given you the one thing I can’t… I wasn’t even sure I wanted you to have, even though I knew how badly you wanted it.”

She’s quiet beside me.

“I’m sorry I never offered,” I say. “I didn’t suggest—”

“Don’t—please, don’t. I would have said no. You didn’t see me after the last miscarriage. There’s no way I could have gone through the whole thing again. The hope, the disappointment, the crushing grief.”

I circle my arm around her, tugging her into my side. Her expression would undo me, so I avoid meeting her gaze.

“Even if that wasn’t true, I wouldn’t have wanted you to become a father because I wanted you to. I still don’t. If this isn’t what you want—”

“I want you.” I scoop her into my arms, securing her tight. “I’m not letting you go because the situation is hard, or not exactly what I thought our relationship would be. Fuck that. Maybe a better man than me would back off and let you figure this out with him. I’m not that guy.”

“I don’t want you to back off. You’re what I want. We just have to make the circumstances work. In a few days, once things have calmed down, once he realizes I won’t change my mind, maybe he’ll be more reasonable.”

I scoff. “There’s no reasoning with him. He took your DNA and made a secret baby who he presented to you like a… prize or gift.”

“What else can we do? Killing him is too risky. I doubt he’s given me any legal rights to Lucas. And even if I should or can have those rights, we’re in Russia trying to deal with Russian laws as outsiders.”

My mind drifts to Hagen, but I don’t want to call that fucker again in Boston for another international favor. Still, if he can pull strings in Russia and at least make sure Carys’s name is on the birth certificate, we might have a hope in hell of securing some sort of custody agreement. At the moment, we’re flying blind. Hagen might refer me back to Demid, and I can’t go to him with this problem. If the guy is like me, he’d murder Eric’s child in retaliation for Valeriya’s death. He wouldn’t think twice about the baby being biologically Carys’s kid too. He didn’t seem that ruthless, but the last time I underestimated someone, I was shot up in a warehouse and almost bled out on the floor. That’s not happening again.

“I’m tired,” Carys says, against my chest.

I lift her up in my arms and carry her to the bed, then slide her under the covers. She reaches for me, and I shake my head.

“You’re not coming back to bed?” she says.

“I’m going to grab a drink,” I say. “Get some sleep. I’ll come up in a while.” I pick up my clothing strewn around the room and get dressed.

“Finn?” Her voice is heavy with sleep. “Leave the gun here.”

The weapon is still in pieces on the dresser. “Get some sleep.” I close the door tight behind me.

Downstairs, I search the kitchen for everything to make a pot of coffee. Carys will need caffeine when she gets up, and Jay drinks a cup too. Those other fuckers in this house better not touch the pot.

I dig into my pocket and remove my phone. Scrolling through my contacts, I stare at Hagen’s name. He is my worst option and also my most logical one. Nothing good will come from owing him. If Lorcan were here, he’d have a strategy, something I never considered, and times like these I miss the fucker, even if he chose Kim over me.

The coffee finishes, and I drop my phone onto the counter. I take a mug from the cupboard, pour the hot liquid into it, and then bring the caffeinated goodness to my lips. Carys likes to sweeten her coffee, but I enjoy it bare, undisguised.

“I smell coffee,” Charles says as he enters the kitchen. “Oh, it’s you.”

I raise my drink to him. “It’s me.”

“When are you leaving?” He grabs a mug from the cupboard and takes the pot I made.

The temptation to snatch it away or punch him is pretty fucking strong.

“That would be never.”

He finds the milk in the fridge and drowns his coffee. After heaping sugar into his cup, his spoon clangs on the porcelain as he stirs the liquid. “You’ll stand in the way of her happiness?”

“Is that what I’m doing? Strange. That’s not what she thinks.”

“You’ve been an unwelcome and unexpected distraction for my daughter.”

“Again.” I press the cup to my lips. “Not what she thinks.”

“My daughter has never been very good at sorting out her personal life.”

“Oh?” I put down my coffee and cross my arms. “Please enlighten me. I’m fascinated to hear your take on her personal life since you seem so hell-bent on controlling it. Your life is such a shining example.” I pin him with my gaze. “Remind me again. Where is your wife?”

He flushes, and liquid splashes over the edge. I hope it fucking burns him.

“Eric’s a good man. He’s the father of her child.”

How did he become so deluded? Eric’s behavior must be like staring in a mirror. They’re both womanizing liars who believe control equals love. My father had a similar belief system. Being with Carys this last little while has changed my mind on how love and caring works. For years I treated Lorcan the way Charles and Eric are treating her. He only needed to understand what I wanted to tell him. Didn’t exactly work out how I expected.

“I wonder if she’d let me kill you.” I cock my head. The question doesn’t need to be asked because I have the answer. I hope Charles doesn’t.

The coffee slops over the edge again as he turns toward me, and he switches hands, shaking off the excess liquid. “What?”

“You heard me. You’ve been a shitty father. I’m not sure you’d be missed. What do you think?”

He gapes and sputters.

“When you chased me off seventeen odd years ago, I actually thought you were right. I wasn’t any good for her. My temper almost got her killed. Her dad, I thought, he’ll watch out for her. If he realizes I’m no good, he’ll be able to recognize terrible men coming and protect her.” I raise my eyebrows. “Instead you not only condoned but supported a womanizing, lying piece of shit who murders pregnant women.”

“Murders pregnant women?” Charles scoffs. “Sounds more like you than him.” He gestures wide with the hand holding his mug, and the coffee trickles down the side of the cup.

“The whole time he waited for your grandchild to be born, he was fucking Valeriya Kuznetsof who, it turns out, became pregnant with his child. Guy’s got magic sperm and probably a host of venereal diseases.”

Charles scowls. “I couldn’t care less if Valeriya was pregnant. I’m not sorry she’s dead—she betrayed us. He had nothing to do with her murder.”

“Well, it must be true if you say so.”

“She was selling company secrets to a third party. She was caught. Fled Russia and went to Ireland to meet up with whoever had been bankrolling her. We think it was the PLA. Eric and I flew to Ireland to head off the meeting, but we arrived too late. She was dead, but Carys was in trouble. We stayed to make sure she was okay.”

“You knew this about Valeriya before you flew to Ireland?” He doesn’t realize I was listening to his conversation with Eric. He didn’t know shit about her or why she died until Eric told him.

“Yes.” Charles gulps his drink.

Is there anything this man won’t lie about? A waste of breath to talk to him. Eric probably fed him enough lies to cover up his own crimes.

Without saying another word, I grab my phone off the counter and drop it into my pocket. My coffee is only half full, so I refill it and turn to exit the kitchen. He’s too deluded to deal with rationally.

“If you don’t leave, he’ll take Lucas and run. Carys will never see him again.”

I half turn back and eye him over my cup before taking a drink. “Oh? Is that what a good man does? Forces a woman to abandon her child so she can be in a relationship with him?” I feign thoughtfulness as he flushes red. “Oh, no. Wait.” I point at him. “You. You did that. What Eric’s doing is so much better. You’re right. He’s such a good man. He doesn’t force women to make impossible choices. That would be wrong.”

Considering how red he is, Charles doesn’t miss a beat. “I’m sure you’ve never forced a woman to make an impossible choice—human trafficking is such a decent way to make a living.”

I clench my jaw. Guess he’s been conducting his own research, but I’m not letting him rub my past in my fucking face. “I’ve never told a woman I loved her and then asked her to make a choice meant to break her. Say whatever the fuck you want about me. But that’s the line I won’t cross.” I start out the door and then turn back. “If I thought you and Eric engineered this baby to make her happy, your actions would be a lot easier to swallow. But you didn’t. This baby is about control, about figuring out a way to force her to bow to your wishes.”

I leave the kitchen before Charles responds. Jay is getting a wake-up call, and he can get his own fucking coffee. We’ve got work to do.

Eric won’t get a chance to run with Carys’s baby. If anyone will run, it’ll be me and her with Lucas. All I need to find are shackles for Eric, and right now, I’ll take them literally or figurately, whichever I can find first.