He disconnected from me, examining my face.

I started laughing. “Damn.” I pushed him away. “Get the fuck out. I’m not your son. I may be dumb and pretty, but for fuck’s sake, I am pretty. You look like Gargamel.”

As I said that, I realized I’d stopped believing it. Well, some of it. I wasn’t stupid. I wasn’t a dumbass. I was just an asshole with no one to hold him accountable for anything. Until now.

“You little piece of—”

The front door three floors under us was kicked open before Syllie finished his thought. Shouts of “FBI” rang from the first floor.

I sighed at him exaggeratedly, lifting my timber of whiskey and using my hand to pry his jaw open by squeezing his cheeks. I poured the contents of my glass into his mouth.

“Here. I’ve a feeling you’ll need some liquid courage for this next part.”

I knew the police had been sent to the Lewis residence. That type of courtesy I expected, seeing as I’d called them with my story, but had no hard proof to give them. The fact that the FBI was here made me think someone else was involved.

Troy Brennan, to be exact. Sailor had asked him for help, knowing I might not be able to pull it off myself. She’d asked her father for help, even though she hated everything he did and represented. For me.

Syllie’s face contorted in fury. “They’re dead men walking. There’s no way you can reach them, you little idiot. They don’t have any reception where they are.”

“Why did you do this?” I asked.

Footfalls raced up the stairs. Dozens of them, it sounded like. It was happening.

“I was always mistreated. I gave Royal Pipelines my best years and didn’t even get a raise. The truth is, your father has a lot of blood on his hands, which is why he hired Troy Brennan and his son to work on retainer for him. Cillian is a well-suited terrorist, a devil waiting to unleash hell at any moment. And you? You’re a simple idiot. I tried to save this company from itself, from awful, unjust succession.” Syllie grabbed me by the shirt and tried to fling me over the bannister.

He’d been calling me an idiot the entire six months I was in Boston, but somehow thought he could fling a two-hundred-pound, six-foot-four-inch ex-polo player made of sheer muscle and pheromones. I stumbled two steps before throwing him toward the bannister, bending him so half his body was hanging in the air, between life and death.

It was a tall fucking house. The air felt thin and chilly, like breathing icicles.

“You’re dead, Fitzpatrick!” he spat, his face red.

The boys in black kicked the office door open (I loved when they did that; door handles were for pussies) and rushed over to grab him by the robe.

I waved goodbye with my fingertips. “We’ll always have our little league softball,” I called.

“Fuck you!” he yelled back, rather impolitely. “I want to call my lawyer. Let me speak to my lawyer.”

I stayed half an hour to give two investigators my side of things, then asked if I could start making my way to Maine. They said yes. When I exited the Lewis household, I got a text message.

Ash: Mom said you’re not getting anything before you talk to her face to face. Sorry.

I wanted to kill someone.

“You do realize your husband and son are mere hours from being blown to pieces in a remote place with zero reception?” I moved down the corridor toward my mother’s office.

She led me briskly to her private room—not the bedroom she sometimes shared with Da. She nodded. “I do. But you are just as important as they are, sweetie.”

I said nothing to that, because I still didn’t believe it. After we got in, she closed the door and took a seat behind her desk. I didn’t even know why she had an office. It’s not like she’d worked a day in her life.

I remained standing. I didn’t have time. “Get it over with and give me the keys to the private jet.”

“Private jets don’t have a k—”

“It’s a figure of speech.” I smiled. “Talk, Mother.”

She shook her head, looking down at her fingers, which were splashed on the table.

“I know you’re mad at me, Hunter, and for good reason. I had you illegitimately to get back at your father, then sent you away when you were six. You have every right in the world to despise me. But honey, you must understand. I wasn’t a terrible mother to you. I was a terrible mother, period. When I found out I was pregnant with you…” She sucked in a breath and looked the other way, shaking her head, like the memory was too much.

If this was her plan to make shit better, she was doing a terrible job.

“It was the happiest moment of my life. Would you like to know why?”

Not really. “Sure,” I groaned instead. Anything to make her give me the goddamn Gulfstreamer.

She looked up at me, her eyes shining. “Because you, I knew I’d love the most. I was crazy in love with your father—your real father—but Filip never loved me back. In fact, he ran back to Croatia when he realized I was going to leave Gerald for him. Your father paid him handsomely to disappear, I assume. But you were my lovechild, Hunter. Still are. You were the only one of my children I breastfed, that I nurtured until you were three.”

“Wow. I’m humbled,” I said sarcastically. I didn’t understand where she was going with this.