Page 168 of Poison Aches

“Do you want to have something in common with a person you hate?” I ask.

This catches him by surprise.

“What makes you think I hate my cousin?”

I don’t bother answering that, I just watch him, to which he starts laughing again.

“Wow! Indeed you are incredible and very perceptive!” he applauds softly. “I’d say he hates me too.”

At that, I don’t comment.

Emmett, as much as it seems he’s very obvious, is not at all easy to read.

I think Emmett might regard his cousin as a nuisance, an inconvenience more than anything.

Hate? I think that’s reserved for his grandfather from what I saw tonight from the look Emmett gave the frail old man.

“Hey, can you explain what the hell is going on here?” I ask, figuring Vaughn is my only source of clarity even though he just met me in the most brutal and vulnerable point of my life.

“Ask me anything and I’ll try my best to tell you.”

I pause, studying him.

“Are mafia men always so up-front?”

“Well, seeing as you and I might be married in five days, I don’t see why we shouldn’t jump-start the rest of our lives with honesty.”

“Wow,” I mutter, and Vaughn laughs again.

I’d never lie to you…

Emmett’s words from the plane flit through my ears for a second.

I knew he meant it then, but I’m not sure if that, too, is a family trait, because if he’d never lie to me, why didn’t he tell me about the Hughes family?

“You mentioned that Emmett’s mother was the heir of the Easton family, which is pretty badass, what happened to her?”

“It’s not known.”

“What?”

“No one knows what exactly happened to her, but I do know that the very fact that she was the firstborn—which is what automatically made her heir—made her a target. My own father and uncles hated her for that.”

Hmm, so Emmett was literally born into an already evolving conspiracy.

“Aunt Daphne married Syrus because he wasn’t a threat to her power. A year later, they had a son, while at the same time my father was competing against Aunt Daphne.”

“How did your father compete?”

“How else but to get my mother to give birth to me before Aunt did?”

The way Vaughn bites out those words makes me pause. There’s anger in those words.

Something must’ve happened to Vaughn’s mother, if they are all assuming that she’s dead.

“Unfortunately, my father didn’t get his way and so the law of firstborns of the next generation continued. Emmett is the firstborn of the next generation,” Vaughn finishes with a smile that doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

“I’m sorry.”

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