Page 45 of Forbidden Need

“You think I’m naïve to what he does?”

“I think your brother carries a gun.”

“Connel is surrounded by guns,” she said. “As he said last night, this doesn’t have to be adversarial.”

“I have to clue you in on something.”

“What? Clue me in on what?”

“You’re not the best mediator, Scamp. And there’s a battle being fought on too many fronts for any one person to control.”

“Conn will control it,” she said. “Is Jagg coming?” Strat didn’t answer in words; the tightening of his jaw did it for him. “Why do you hate him? For falling in love with Imogen? Your daughter loves a man you helped raise. You should be happy for them.”

“What do you care? She broke your brother’s heart.”

“Yes, she did. I don’t know how long it will take Lach to get over that, but I’d rather he be hurt than with someone who didn’t love him. Imogen isn’t a bad person, it just didn’t work out between them. Lachlan will get over that. He’ll get there.”

“How long will it take him to get over you and Ire together?” he asked, glancing her way and back at the road a couple of times. “That’s a whole other kind of kick in the sack.”

“I don’t know,” she said, not sure life was so light anymore. “I didn’t want to hurt him. I didn’t want to hurt anyone. Conn and I ended it because we thought it was best for everyone. We truly thought that, I truly thought that, but last night…”

“Last night?”

“No man makes me feel like he does, Strat. You warned me, I know you did. You told me if I fell for him I’d be sucked into a world that would never let me go. The thing is… ending it, cutting each other out, it didn’t save me. It didn’t free me from that world because… my heart is in that world. So long as he’s in that world, my heart will be too.”

“Poetic,” he said. “Think your dad will see it that way?”

She bristled, her body reacting to the nausea that rooted itself in anger. “He’s on the take.”

“What?”

“Connel and Razer told me last night. The good and righteous superintendent is as corrupt as the rest of City Hall. All my life I thought he was…” She sighed, though tension made it come out more like a growl. “I walked away from Connel McDade to save my family and all the time my family, my father, was a worse man.”

“Worse?”

“At least Connel is honest about what he is.” About what he did? Not always so much, but he didn’t pretend to shine a halo and defer to any higher power. “My father pastes lie on top of lie.”

“Did you call him out?”

“My dad? No,” she said. “I haven’t seen him since. And I won’t call him out because it was told to me in confidence, just like I’m telling it to you.”

When he spotted the narrowing of her eyes, he laughed. “Shit, all that moll practice is paying off. Ire tell you to use his name?”

“Any time I want.”

His hands slid up to the top of the wheel. “Oh, baby, you are currency now. Just you wait.”

Turned out she wasn’t the only one waiting. When they turned the corner, a group of men stood by a couple of cars parked on the curb in front of Stag.

“What’s going on?”

Her father and brother were a little away from the group, talking. Strat pulled up a couple of feet behind the closest car.

“Want me to take you inside?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. What the hell were her father and brother doing? “Park and come in round back.”

“Yes, mistress.”

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