Page 42 of To Claim A King
Lucky strode over to me, wrapped his good arm around my waist and softly squeezed. “Pretty sure she set me up on this one, love. Can’t argue with her paying the price for it.” He kissed the top of my head as if to accentuate his point. I reached down for his hand and interlocked our fingers, squeezing in response.
“I’ll pay for it. Can you set this up before tomorrow?”
Before tomorrow. Before the world opened up to us, or crashed and burned. There would be no in between.
“It is done,” my beautiful Colombian said succinctly, turning his attention back to the game in front of him. Waving a large palm, he beckoned me forward. “Come,Mi Reina. I will teach youTriquebefore dinner.”
They were trying to distract me. We’d all been buried in our own pain after Kellan had left, but were equally committed to putting on a good face. Our lives would change tomorrow, for better or worse, and we wouldn’t waste our precious time wallowing. Outwardly, at least.
Lucky released his grip and pulled up another chair between them, counting out another color of Froot Loops on the tabletop. I leaned in to learn, enveloping myself in thefamily I had built for myself, and sent a brief prayer to the stars tomorrow wouldn’t take them away from me.
The sound of the hot-wired engine coming to life was music to my ears, drowning out the voices of doubt pounding violently inside my head.
I pulled out of the tiny fast food parking lot, long since closed, and hoped whoever I’d screwed over had insurance on the junker I’d stolen. Exacting justice on the sacks of scum in our society was one of my favorite pastimes, but harming innocents—especially the working poor—was a line I hated to cross. They had enough battles to fight without my adding to them.
I’d driven aimlessly for a few hours northward before driving east, deeper into mountain territory. Itwas the second car I’d stolen that night, but it was that, or risk my brothers following me. Tonight, I had chosen me. With the warehouse out of the question and my bungalow—the closest thing I had to a home in this state—no doubt under my father’s surveillance, I didn’t have anywhere else to go.
And whose fault is that, idiot?
My thoughts hadn’t given me a moment’s peace since I’d left the woman I loved sobbing on the floor. I’d been a true asshole delinquent. It nearly broke me to see her beautiful body collected in a heap, the tears as bitter as poison. I did that to her. As long as I was around her, I’d keep doing it to her. My birthright made me the worst person to fall in love with, and, as hard as I’d tried, she’d fallen for me, anyway. Just as I’d tried to stop myself from falling for her.
Fucking impossible. Hillary Lane was everything I could ever want in a woman—in a partner. Fierce loyalty, a calculating brain that rivaled her beauty, and a body that could kick my ass when needed. She was too damn perfect, and didn’t deserve the life I would give her.
Hell, thanks to my father, I couldn’t guarantee a life on this side of the dirt whatsoever. She deserved more than that. She deserved better than me.
Lauchlan and Aaron would take care of her. I took comfort in that fact. Two men with the skills to protect her and the will to watch over her. Aaron would lay down his own life before he’d ever let her get hurt, and Lauchlan—the man might not have said the words, but he was just as in love with her as we were.
My heart twinged at the thought of leaving both of them behind too. Men I cared about in ways I never could have imagined. Pretending we could have had a life together as one big fucked-up family was only going to make the hurt worse. I needed to focus on the future or I’d never make it through the night, let alone alive.
I’d spent the last few nights in a seedy motel on the other side of Sheldonville trying to figure out the rest of mylife. I was at a loss. No actual plan, other than marching up to my father’s door and stabbing him through the chest with the blade Aaron loved so much. One of Antonio’s goons would shoot me on sight. An easy death, and someone would rush in to fill my father’s place—likely one, or both, of my idiot brothers.
Or, I could slow-play—get into my father’s good graces and wait for the right time to pounce. This was the stupidest version of a plan yet—once Antonio stopped trusting you, you were fucked. I would have to murder every single person he had a vendetta against in cold blood for him to ever reconsider my status in the family.
The devil himself already owned the deed to my soul. I wasn’t going to accelerate the process of my demon-hood by acting as Antonio’s personal assassin, just for another five minutes to possibly drive a stake through his heart. The man would kill everyone I loved to make a point, and then dangle me on a cross to serve as a warning to others.
It really didn’t matter what plan I chose—my death was the inevitable end. Trish wouldn’t protect me, and no one else could. Unbidden thoughts of my mother rose to the surface. The tepid smile of the woman who’d been broken by my father. She had been stunning. Hair of spun-gold, blue eyes like mine—one of my father’s favorite possessions to play with. Until she was too fragmented for him to get any joy out of any more. He’d driven her to insanity with his head games, and she’d eventually chosen suicide as the way out.
She’d left me, a twelve-year-old boy, in Antonio’s eager hands to manipulate and mold in his image. Venomous bile pooled at the back of my throat, and rage blistered the inside of my mouth. Ingrid Lindberg left her only son to a monster. She had escaped his cage, only to put me in her place.
Did she think she was protecting me? Did she think ofme at all? Long-buried emotions sat like stones in my stomach, immune to the biting acid. When doubt made its way through my mental shields, thoughts of my mother plagued me like an incurable disease.
I couldn’t curb the nagging sensation of uncertainty balling up over and over in my gut. I needed to detach the cancerous tumor, but it was a relentless beast on my conscience.
My brain knew leaving was the right decision. My heart was being a fucking nuisance.
While my mind was caught up in the middle of a painful memory lane, my subconscious controlled my wayward driving, bringing me to the outskirts of Brenton.
Brenton. My half-brother, my nephew, and their family lived here. And at two in the morning, in a stolen car, with not a single other vehicle in sight for over an hour, it was likely the safest time to see them.
Decision made, I drove directly to their home nestled in a private mountain suburb. I punched in my personal code to enter the gate, and security lights followed me as I drove up the concrete driveway into the private portico.
I opened the door of the crappy car and let the crisp, cold air fill my lungs, unsure of what to do now. A sleepy female voice laden with consternation echoed against the stone building.
“Kellan Carlos, you better have a damn good reason you’re here and not with Hillary right now.”
A slow smile twitched across my lips at my sister-in-law’s tone. I’d shared a night with Winter almost a decade ago. Since then, she’d fallen for my nephew, my brother, and three other men. After we’d worked together to take out Georgio, my oldest brother, we’d stayed in touch. Over the years, she’d become a close friend—as close as anyone could get to me. And she had no issues reaming me out when the night called for it.
Like now, apparently.
