“I’m not going to tell you again,” I say to Niall, quietly. “I didn’t hurt Roxy. And I’ll prove it to your father. But I need time. And information.”
Niall blinks up at me. I can’t tell if he’s half-conscious from the blow to the head, or if he’s considering my words.
“Was Roxy still seeing Evan Porter?” I say. “I don’t care if she was. But I need to know the truth.”
Evan is Roxy’s ex-boyfriend. He was not at all happy when she broke off their relationship to acquiesce to the terms of the marriage contract. He’s just a two-bit hustler, nobody that Connor Maguire would have ever allowed to marry his daughter with or without me in the picture. But he’s violent, and may have been angry enough to take out his rage on Roxy and me.
“No,” Niall mumbles through swollen lips, after a moment. “She knew better than that. My father wouldn’t have allowed it.”
Possibly true. Connor Maguire is an intimidating man, harsh and authoritarian over his two wild children. Still, it wouldn’t have been the first time Roxy defied him.
“Did you see Roxy the week before she died?” I demand of Niall.
He’s starting to regain his wits, and with them, his opposition to helping me in any way.
“You’re not going to fool me into thinking you give a shit,” he sneers. “This Inspector Clouseau bullshit isn’t tricking anybody—”
Yury takes a step forward again and I make a hissing sound to remind him to back off. Yury looks at me in confusion. Usually this would be the point in the proceedings where we’d be pulling out fingernails with pliers.
Well—he has a point.
Striding forward, I seize Niall by the throat and lift him out of the chair and off his feet.
“I may not have killed Roxy, but I’ll snap your fucking neck if you don’t answer me,” I snarl, right in his face. “I’m trying to do your family a courtesy. If you force my hand, I will slaughter every last one of you. Every uncle, every cousin.”
Niall sputters something I can’t make out, because his face is purple, his lips turning blue. I loosen my grip a fraction.
“Yes,” he wheezes. “I saw her three days before.”
“Where did she get the wine?” I demand.
“What—what wine?” he gasps, his toes scrabbling for the floor as I keep him held aloft with one arm, my hand clamped around his throat.
“The wine we drank that night! Where did she get it? It was expensive, Chateau Margaux. Was it from your father’s cellar?”
“He does—doesn’t drink—”
I set him down so he can speak a little clearer, but I don’t remove my hand from his throat.
“He doesn’t drink wine!” Niall gasps. “Only whisky.”
I let go of Niall, allowing him to collapse backward onto the chair.
I can hear Clare’s whimper of relief on the other side of the room, though I don’t look at her.
“Take him home,” I say to Yury.
“Shouldn’t we hold him?” Yury says. “In case Maguire comes after you again?”
“I think we should kill him,” Emmanuel says, flatly. “They can’t be reasoned with. And Petrov won’t like it if you let him go so easy.”
“I don’t care what Petrov wants,” I say. “This is between me and the Maguires.” Then, facing Niall, I add, “You tell your father that if I killed Roxy, I would have killed you too. You tell him that whoever did this wants a war between us, and he’s playing right into their hands. I’m not going to give them what they want.”
I jerk my head toward Clare. “You. Here. Now.”
She’s pale and sickened, staring between Niall’s battered face and my right hand, shining red across the knuckles where Niall’s blood ran down.
“Now!” I bark, making her jump to attention.
Reluctantly she joins me, though she’s not standing as close as she did before.
I’m equally irritated with her.
Grabbing her arm, I drag her roughly toward the car.
“Let go of me!” she cries. “I can walk.”
“You don’t do a fucking thing without my permission,” I hiss at her. “And you sure as fuck don’t interfere when I’m working.”
“That’s working?” she cries. “Beating up some twenty-year-old kid who just lost his sister?”
I round on her. “Do you think there’s an age limit to swing a knife or pull a trigger? I just fucking told you I killed a man as a child. Niall would have stabbed that knife right through my heart if I gave him the chance.”
“He never got close,” Clare says.
“This isn’t a game. And if it were, I would be the one who understands the rules, not you. You have no idea who we’re dealing with, and what they’re capable of doing.”
I yank open the rear door of the SUV and practically chuck her in the back seat. Then I climb in after her.
“You see any newspapers with your face on them?” I demand. “You hear your name on the news?”