FIFTEEN
Anthea
My head jerked around.I glared at Darius. “What the hell are you talking about? If you really think you can convince me that—”
“Shut up and listen for a second!” he barked, and then shook his head with a pained grimace. “I’m sorry. I’m fucking sorry. I just can’t believe— That fuckingcunt.”
The last few words came out in a snarl, and they obviously weren’t directed at me. I hesitated, my arm going limp, and Darius let go of me after all. His fury had sounded totally real.
“What do you mean?” I asked, not liking how small my voice came out sounding but too shellshocked to bolster it.
Felix had shoved himself off the sofa. He stalked over, his mouth twisted. “Holly lied. We never talked about you like that. I sure as hell neverthoughtabout you like that. Fuck, I’m not exactly Mr. Commitment, but I’ve never treatedanywoman I’ve been with or considered being with that horribly.”
Lucan had walked closer too, pulling their semi-circle tighter around me. His face had gone totally white, his expression as somber as a funeral.
“We’d talked a little bit about the fact that we were all interested in you,” he clarified in his usual factual way. “But never outside our rooms, and never joking about it or making bets or anything creepy like that. All we did was come to the conclusion that we were all attracted to you, and we all wanted to be with you if you were interested, so if you made a move with any of us, then we’d let you pick. At least, that’s how it was supposed to work.”
He shot a brief glance at Felix, who shrugged and offered a hesitant smirk. “You can’t tell a ladies man not to go for it when the vibe is right.”
I did remember Lucan saying something about their agreement at the time. My forehead furrowed, a pit opening up in my stomach. “But—why would Holly lie? Why didn’t you talk to me after and ask why I’d left?”
“I have no idea why that bitch stuck her nose where it didn’t belong and hurled around more shit than a monkey,” Darius said, “but she lied to us too. She said she caught you in Dad’s office, looking through his files, taking pictures of documents. Spying on the business. That you’d left because she told you to get out—she couldn’t let you stay, and she didn’t want to find out what we’d do to you if we found out how you’d backstabbed us.”
My jaw went slack. “Are you kidding me? Of course I wouldn’t have been sneaking around. Why would I be spying on the Hell Kickers? You were our allies. That doesn’t even make sense.”
Darius threw his hands in the air. “I don’t know. Maybe your dad was rethinking the alliance. Maybe your brother had other ideas with his eyes on the inheritance and put you up to it. She sounded convincing, and youhadleft, and we didn’t have any reason to think Holly would make up some crazy story. She was arm candy, not some maniacal schemer. At least, as far as we knew.”
I absorbed that information, my stomach starting to churn. Hollyhadbeen quite the schemer, it seemed. I’d known from the comments I’d heard her make to Marcel here and there that she’d imagined herself an ideal partner in his business as well as his personal life, but I hadn’t realized she’d taken any kind of covert action on her own.
It’d been such a brilliant scheme that it’d almost lasted forever. She’d pushed just the right buttons to ensure we would never reach out to each other, too horrified by the betrayal—and by how vulnerable we’d gotten right before.
“She knew we’d slept together,” I said quietly. “Maybe she’d already figured it out before I came out that morning, and she was waiting for me. She knew it’d have stirred up all kinds of emotions and how easily those could be turned into insecurities. Maniacal isn’t even the start of it.”
If she’d come to me with claims about the guys saying that kind of crap about mebeforewe’d actually acted on the feelings that’d been simmering between us for days—really, for at least a couple of years at that point—I’d have been more confused than wounded. I’d have confronted the guys about it. But hearing it right after I’d let myself get that close to them, done things with them that I’d never done with any other guys, that I’d known my own family would have called me a slut for... It’d been too easy to rattle me, to turn my tentative giddiness into horrifying doubt.
I rubbed my forehead. “I still don’t get it. Why would she have wanted to turn us against each other? It’s not like I was a threat to her. She never seemed like she minded me coming for those weeks in the summer.”
“I don’t know,” Lucan said. “Maybe she was secretly paranoid, and she thought Dad had been eyeing you and just wanted you out of the house for good.”
Felix snorted. “Maybe she was pissed off that she was stuck with his fickle ass and you’d landed not just one but three prime men.”
Darius rolled his eyes at his younger brother, but when he glanced back at me, his expression had gone solemn again.
“It doesn’t really matter now, does it?” he said. “Whatever it was she was hoping to get, I don’t think she did. He divorced her less than a year later. She’s out of the picture.” He paused. “But we’re still in it.”
“Yeah.” I looked at each of them, the events and emotions of the past few days crashing over me with a dizzying mix of revulsion and regret. “We’ve been so awful to each other.”
“We instigated it,” Lucan said with a wince. “We were trying to come down on you hard from the second we found out you’d shown up. If we’d had any idea—”
“You thought you were defending your family,” I said. Could I really blame them for that when I’d come here for that exact reason myself? I understood better than they could have realized.
Every vicious moment made perfect sense. I couldn’t summon the slightest flicker of anger over it, especially not when the horror at their actions was written so clearly on their faces.
We’d both been fucked over by a woman who was years out of the picture. I’d have liked to punch Holly in her immaculate face given the chance.
Darius growled under his breath. “That isn’t an excuse. Weknewyou—we should have realized it couldn’t be true. All these fucking years…” He held my gaze, the mix of apology and heat in his eyes making my pulse wobble. “Those years should have been better. They should have been more.”
What would my life have been like if their stepmom hadn’t destroyed our fledgling romance right after it’d really begun? Would Dad have decided to solidify the alliance between the Nobles and the Hell Kickers by arranging a marriage with one of the brothers after all?