Keep your cards close to your chest, mon cheri. You heard his maman yourself. He is a good blackjack player.
“Illegal, experimental drugs?” he prodded, swirling his thumb faster against my clit.
I shook my head desperately, refusing to cooperate. He used his free hand to grab my butt, curling a finger into my ass through my dress.
A moan ripped from my mouth at the unexpected intrusion, and I felt so full I knew a violent orgasm was coming my way.
“The no insurance, doctors-without-borders bullshit where you treat the poor ain’t flying, sweetheart.” He raised an eyebrow, slanting his gaze to the apartment complex behind me, fucking me harder with his fingers, slipping a third finger in and nearly throwing me off the edge. “Whoever lives in that building doesn’t get monthly food stamps. Take it from someone who looked poverty in the eye. I’d hate to blow your cover and kick in every door at the complex to find the asshole you visited and milk your secret out of them. But I’ll do it if I have to. So for the last time, Aisling, tell me what the fuck it is that you do.”
I shook my head, stitching my lips closed and squeezing my eyes shut, the climax washing over me, making every fine hair on my body stand on end. When Sam realized I wasn’t going to answer, he let me go. Moved away from me unexpectedly.
I was so weak with desire and pleasure, I nearly fell flat on my ass, bracing myself on the wall as I struggled to gain my footing.
Sam’s eyes were still on me, narrowed and full of fury. He sucked his index finger, releasing it with a pop, absorbing all the juices that coated it from when he fingered me.
“I was close,” I protested.
“Tough fucking luck. For more information, go to www.lifeain’tfairandwe’vebeenthroughthis.com.”
“What the hell!” I flung my arms in the air.
“The hell is you are a fucking headache and need to be taught a lesson. I am going to get the truth out of you, Aisling, one way or the other, but until I do, you lose all cumming privileges. Not by my hands, anyway, and let’s admit it—your sole purpose in life is getting fucked by me.”
His knowledge of just how much I wanted him destroyed me. I was too transparent, too naïve, too willing to show him how much he meant to me over the years. Now he was using it against me, and there was nothing I could do about it.
Nothing but try to show him I was my own person. That there was more to me than loving him.
“Why do you even care what I do?” I rearranged my torn dress around my legs the best I could to protect myself from the harsh weather. “You made it perfectly clear you don’t give a damn about me. You spent a whole decade dodging my advances.”
Not that there were many. But whenever I did muster the courage to reach out, he always shut me down in a spectacular fashion. The truth was, I was too scared to upset my parents to go after a man they didn’t want for me, and Sam was too career-focused to let someone like me become a problem for his business.
He took his car keys out of his coat’s pocket.
“Circumstances change,” he clipped.
“Yes, they do,” I agreed. “Which is why I suggest you stop assuming I am always going to be at your disposal. I’m not the same girl you met at the carnival, Sam. I’m all grown up, and I won’t be treated like I’m a toy.”
He leaned toward me, smirking teasingly. “Wanna bet?”
“How are we going to settle the bet? In your card room at Badlands?” I arched an eyebrow, a childish part of me desperate to let him know I was privy to the way he ran his business.
“No. You’re not allowed in Badlands,” he reminded me in a withering tone.
“But Sailor and Persy are.” I laughed bitterly.
“Sailor and Persy are not running around looking for trouble. They stay at home with their babies. I suggest you do the same.”
“I don’t have babies,” I pointed out the obvious. “Oh, and it’s not the nineteenth century.”
“You might be annoying, but I’m sure you’ll find a schmuck willing to knock you up.”
“What about Belle? How come she’s allowed in Badlands? She looks for trouble all the time. Much more than me.”
“Belle is damaged goods and also none of my fucking business. If you end up catching the clap in Badlands’ restroom, your family will come crying to me.”
“You’re a sexist pig.”
“And you are still interested. What does it say about you, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Jr.?”
I was going to say something snarky, but apparently, Sam was through with the exchange. In a swift fashion, he turned around and sauntered over to his car, which was parked right behind me.
“Hold onto those little secrets of yours, Nix. Because I’m going to have one hell of a good time unraveling them.”
He slid into his car and sped off.
Leaving me with a throbbing center, wet cheeks, and a jumbled head.
I knew something was wrong as soon as I parked the car by the fountain at my front door. Avebury Court Manor was like a body. It had bones, a heart, and a soul. I could recognize its pulse from miles away, and something felt different. Erratic.
All the lights in the house were turned on, the staff, which should be long gone, running back and forth by the window like shadow puppets. There was a commotion. My brothers’ cars were also still parked by the entrance. They should be home by now.
Something happened.
Hurrying out of the car, I clutched my keys in a death grip.
Please be okay, Mother.
As soon as I flung the door open, Cillian and Hunter poured out of it, each of them holding Da from each side. My father, green and dripping with sweat, was slouched unresponsive between them, his head dangling from his neck like a pendulum.
“Where are you taking him?” I shrieked.
Cillian shouldered past me, toward his car. I followed them, my legs still shaky from my crazy night.
“Disney World,” my older brother drawled, sullen. “Where do you think? The hospital.”
“The hospital!” I echoed, my mouth turning dry. “Why? What happened? Where’s Mother?”
“Mother is hiding in her room crying about how Da stole the show, being a real fucking adult about it per usual,” Hunter filled me in, his voice playful as always, even when his words were hot and angry.
“As for Athair, he’s been vomiting nonstop since you left, has diarrhea, a dry mouth, a rash, trouble breathing, and he fainted twice since dessert.”
Cillian buckled my dad inside his Aston Martin. “How would you diagnose that, Doc?”
“Well, I need to run more tests, of course, but at first glance I would say he was poisoned.”
“Ding, ding, ding,” Hunter congratulated me. “When Da finished his cup of coffee, he proceeded to collapse on top of the table like a stack of cards.”
All the air left my lungs at once.
“I’m coming with you.”
“You just got back from the hospital,” Hunter pointed out.
My face filled with heat and shame, and I curled my long coat around myself to prevent my brothers from seeing the giant rip in my dress. They thought I was at Brigham, too. Because I lied to them. To all of them. Every single member of my family and the small circle of my friends.
“It’s no trouble.”
“Your funeral,” Cillian clipped. “Hunter, let her take the passenger seat. C’mon, Ash. We’re taking the car. We don’t want the headlines an ambulance would create.”
“Forever the Fitzpatricks.” Hunter touched his forehead with mock salute, tucking himself next to Da.
I stuffed myself into the seat next to Cillian.
“Sure you’re okay leaving your baby behind?” Hunt asked from the backseat, jerking his chin toward the manor. He meant our mother.
“Don’t start.”
“No shade.” Hunter raised his palms in the air defensively. “All I’m saying is she is probably writing all of us out of her will because we are driving Da to the hospital instead of telling her how pretty she is—after she poisoned him.”
Hunter only knew the half of it. Jane Fitzpatrick’s problems were much worse than being self-centered and prone to drastic mood swings.
Athairwas unresponsive the whole way to the ER. As soon as we walked in, I found out who was the doctor assigned to deal with Da, took him aside, and explained I was a fellow doctor, relaying the evening to give him the full picture, omitting the poisoning part to prevent it from leaking to the media.
The three of us siblings spent the night sleeping by Da’s bedside, huddled together like when we were kids. The blood and urine test results came back the following morning.
It looked like my father had taken an enormous amount of warfarin, a blood thinner and also an active ingredient in many rat poisons. A drug that can easily cause death if taken in a certain quantity.
My father had been poisoned by a pro who knew what they were doing.
Not enough to kill, but definitely enough to deliver a message.
The weird thing was no one at the table had any motive to kill Da.
No one other than Mother.
“It’s not Mother.” I shook my head, standing in Cillian’s home office later that day, looking out the window as more snow fell and covered the rose garden and trimmed bushes, painting everything white. “It’s not.”
“Oh, come on, Ash. At the very least, it’s an option worth considering. They’ve been at each other’s throats for as long as I can remember.” Hunter massaged my shoulders from behind, still in his suit from the previous night.
We’d come here straight from the hospital, as soon as my father’s secretary took over and arrived there.
I whipped around, slapping his hand away. “No, Hunt. She is incapable of hurting a fly.”
That was not completely true. The only person Mother was capable of hurting was herself, and she did it often, but I didn’t want Hunter and Cillian to know about that side of her. They had enough on their plate, running Royal Pipelines and taking care of their families. Their wives were my best friends, and I didn’t want to hog my brothers’ attention by dragging them into the issues we were having at Avebury Court Manor.
“She is also the only person at the table with a hard-on to see Gerald return his equipment to the Almighty,” Cillian pointed out, taking a seat in his plush leather chair and lighting up a cigar, his legs propped up on his desk with his ankles crossed.
Something about my older brother rejected vulnerability, so I learned how to become robotically efficient in front of him from a young age. I didn’t allow myself to show too much emotion. Not for the first time, I found myself envying Persy and Astor. The way he looked at them so adoringly, like he was still hungry for something he already had.
I wondered if I would ever experience what my friends had. The kind of love that changes people from within.
“Let’s make a list!” I proposed, snapping my fingers, remembering how Sam planned to tackle my father’s sex scandal. “Of who was there. Then we can go through it and dig deeper.”
“All right, Sherlock.” Hunter lounged on the settee by the window overlooking Cillian’s garden. “Let’s see, there was Xander, Rooney, and Astor, all of them under three years old …”
“Astor’s been teething. He can be a mean little thing when he is teething,” Cillian pointed out sarcastically, causing Hunter to laugh and me to roll my eyes.
“Rooney has a mean streak, too. But she usually pees on the carpet when she seeks her revenge upon us. Then there was Sailor and me,” Hunter said. “Neither of us have beef with Da. And you, Ash, don’t have a motive either.”
“Persephone and I are out of the question. My wife couldn’t hurt a fly if she tried, and I already have everything I ever needed from Gerald,” Cillian continued. “And then there’s Emmabelle. A distasteful excuse for a human being, sure, but I wouldn’t go as far as calling her a murderer.”
“Whoever did this didn’t try to kill him. They tried to spook him,” I pointed out. “But I agree, Emmabelle has no connection to Da whatsoever. What about Troy? Sparrow?”
“As far as I’m aware, Troy and Sparrow have no business with Athair. No reason to want to threaten him.” Hunter shook his head.
“Devon?” I wondered aloud.
Cillian somehow managed to look down at me, even from his position sitting. “No motive.”
“True, but he is not family.”
“Neither is Sam.” Cillian puffed on his cigar.
“I think we should keep an eye on him, too,” I said honestly, something clawing at my stomach when I thought about getting him in trouble.
Hunter jumped upright. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, keep an eye how …? We were joking, but … he’s my brother-in-law.”
“He is also the most corrupt man to walk this earth.” Cillian blew rings of smoke in the air. “I’ll deal with him. Sniff around. See what he is up to.”
“No…” I turned to face both my brothers “…I’ll do it. He won’t suspect me.”
“I suspect you.” Hunter’s eyes flared in alarm. “No offense, sis, but even Rooney knows Auntie Ash is in lurveeee with Uncle Sam. And I don’t mean you being patriotic toward the US of A.”
“But see, that’s what makes it so perfect,” I said desperately. “He will never see me as a threat or think I could harm him.”
“I don’t want him anywhere near you,” Cillian hissed.
“Well, tough luck, big bro. I’m twenty-seven. You can’t shelter me forever.”
“Wanna bet?” Hunter grinned. I shot him a look. Cillian sighed. We all wanted to wrap this up and go about our days.
“Fine. Ash, you can sniff around Sam. Just remember it is frowned upon to have sex with your target,” Cillian clipped. “I’ll check the Devon angle.”
“And I’ll pray for both your souls.” Hunter did the sign of the cross, rolling his eyes. “Because both of y’all are dumbasses who watch too much CSI. It’s Jane. She wanted to get back at Da for sticking his dick in the wrong hole and things got a little bit out of hand. Not the first time she did something drastic and threw a fit. Remember when he gifted her the butterfly garden after she found out he’d been screwing her own sister? Not that I ever liked this particular auntie, but she threw his Rolex collection into the food processor and set it to high.”
We had a butterfly garden at our house, built by my father to show Jane Fitzpatrick his undying love for her. A love that came with the price of $670,000 worth of luxury vintage watches he parted ways with.
“Thanks for the little trip down memory lane to remind me I am the spawn of two of the most disgusting people to ever grace the planet. Now, if that is all, I’d like to go back to running my company.” Cillian put out his cigar, standing up and walking briskly toward the window where I stood. “May the best man win, Aisling. You think it’s Sam, Hunter thinks it’s Mother, and I think Gerald has been spending too much time at the medicine cabinet and had an oopsie.”
But it wasn’t accidental. I knew.
Because Athair would never make such a mistake. He loved himself too much to overdose. As someone living under the same roof as him, I knew he was careful with his prescription drugs.
This was intentional.
All men at the table were cunning, smart, and capable, but only one of them had murdered someone before, to the extent of my knowledge, and would go to such extreme lengths with such ease.
Sam.