Glaring at David standing in her kitchen in only his fucking boxer-briefs like some kind of Greek god of domesticity, Lianna felt the strongest urge to scream.

She’d lingered in the heat of the shower, taken her time drying off, dragged her feet putting on clothes, all because she hadn’t been sure what she wanted now that he was here. In the two weeks since her father’s death, since her whole world exploded, he had been the focus of most of her thoughts. Getting him back in her life. Getting him here so she could ask him questions, and so she could touch him again and feel something — but now that he was here she had no idea what to do.

Then she’d caught the end of his conversation.

She knows enough to understand why things happened the way they did.

David Gethen had all of the answers, she was sure of it. He knew more about her life, her real life, than she did — and now he was playing games? Keeping things from her? Ordering food for her?

“Fuck you,” she growled, grabbing her phone to stomp towards the living room. This time, she dropped into the chair he’d taken the night before. Her chair, her favorite spot when she sat out here.

He followed her, the soft pad of bare feet on the tile getting closer until he passed in front of her to take the spot she’d had on the couch the night before — well, the spot she’d had until she’d put him in that spot and fucked him. Dammit. Everything was out of control.

The dull clink of her coffee cup settling on a coaster made her look at him. “I’m not drinking that just because you told me to.”

“Would you rather have water? Alcohol? Because those are the only other options you have here.” He settled back into the couch cushions, sipping his coffee as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

It was annoying.

“I want to know what you were talking about on the phone.”

“I was just reassuring my friend that I was okay.” David took another sip before resting the cup on his toned thigh. Every inch of him was as perfect as she remembered. Muscular, tanned, with dark hair and tawny brown eyes that she’d memorized while he’d tormented her. Tortured her. Hurt her over and over.

I’m completely insane for bringing him here, but I’m going to get my fucking answers.

“What did you mean when you told him I knew enough to understand why everything happened?”

He stiffened and she felt a sense of victory, but his expression quickly locked down. “You know about your father, about his family. That’s all I meant.”

“What don’t I know?” she asked, and he cursed and lifted his coffee again. “Just fucking tell me. You promised you would answer my questions!”

“Have you been watching the news, angel?”

Grumbling, she reached for her coffee. “Of course I’ve been watching the fucking news. I’ve also been reading the articles online. Everyone knows what a bastard my father was. Hell, I’m sure I’ll have to testify in court about it along with the entire board from Mercier Systems.”

“Have you noticed what they haven’t mentioned?”

Oh, that. “They don’t know about the Faure family, my family.”

“I thought you turned everything over.”

Lianna laughed, a bitter burn rising in her throat. “Yeah, I wanted to. I wanted to burn them all down, but Michael, or whoever he really is, wouldn’t let me.”

“What?” David leaned forward a bit, bracing his arms on his knees.

“When the medics were working on you in the cell, Michael started cleaning up. Asking me about the pages you’d pulled out of the filing cabinets, grilling me about what I knew, what you knew.” She shrugged. “I told him everything I knew, and he made more phone calls. A bunch of men showed up, men I still don’t know the names of so don’t ask…”

“And?” he prompted, and she sagged in the chair. Feeling the same weight of despair she’d felt in that concrete room.

“They dug through them. Removed every reference to the Faure family, removed every piece of evidence that I’d been there, but they left my father where he was.” Swallowing down the lump in her throat, she tried to bury her own guilt. “Michael told me how dangerous it would be to implicate the Faures, he kept me there for hours as they went through everything. There were bags of papers they pulled from the cabinets, and he kept going over and over the story.”

“What story?” he asked, and she looked at him, confused to see what looked like honest interest on his face.

“The story. The one to explain all of it. The files, my father’s apparent suicide. All of it.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Lianna had her thumb nail between her teeth before she could even catch herself, chewing at the shredded edge that hadn’t had a break in the two weeks he’d been healing in the hospital. “I thought Michael spoke to you.”

“No one came to see me, Lianna. Tell me what he did.”

Wrapping both hands around the lukewarm coffee cup, she chewed at her lip instead for a moment. “Michael called the police. I mean, he had to. My father couldn’t disappear without a lot of questions, and that meant we had to have a reason for all of it that didn’t involve—”

“A story that didn’t involve you, or what I did to you,” he finished.

“Right.” She nodded. “Michael wanted to protect me. He didn’t want me involved at all, and so he said he was going to take the fall for gathering the information on my father. He promised that the police would know I had no idea about what he’d done, and he’d tell them that the idea of being exposed to me, to the public, was what drove my father to kill himself.”

“But those files, my father wrote a lot of them himself. He—”

“I know. Michael knew who you were, or at least he figured it out after he saw your driver’s license and your mother’s obituary.” She felt sick, staring down into her lap as she said the next words. “He remembered the order to kill your family, he… he helped set it up.”

“He killed my mother?” David’s voice was too steady, too cold, and she sensed the threat in him when she raised her eyes.

“I don’t know who did it, but my father ordered it, and Michael most likely made sure it happened.” She raised her hand when he started to speak, too tired to try and argue the corrupt and evil history of the men who had raised her. “He came up with the story to resolve it all. Said that he’d confess, tell the police he was the one who helped your father research everything, that he wanted to bring my father down. To make him stop it all.”

“Why?” David’s voice was hollow, empty, and she felt the same.

“He kept asking me what he could do to make it up to me, to make me forgive him. I told him that if you died, if he took the one person who had been honest with me away — that I’d never forgive him.” Her voice cracked, but she forced out the next words quietly. “I told him he may as well be dead alongside my father, because I’d never forgive him.”

“You shouldn’t have tried to protect me like that.”

“Well, I did. And it all worked anyway. The building was in your father’s name, and from what I know the files they kept were his.” She shrugged. “I’m not sure though, Michael sent me home. Here. While they finished cleaning up, tearing out your cameras, destroying your computers and stuff, so they could call the cops and turn it all over. It was like I was never there, like you were never there.”

David was too quiet, staring at the floor, his ribs expanding and contracting steadily and she wished she knew what he was thinking. Bringing all of this up, every fucked up piece of their shared history, it felt like an impossible chasm between them. Too much to step over, too much to forget. Whatever solace he’d brought her the night before had probably been a one-time thing, driven by lust, by this fucked up attraction — but at least he was free. Michael had made sure of that, as fucked up as that was as well.

“The building was in my father’s name? Not mine?”

Nodding, she watched him closely. “Yeah.”

He laughed, a bitter sound that had no real humor in it. “Fucking Harry… I should have known.”

“Harry?”

“So that’s why the cops never showed up at the hospital? You never named me, Michael covered it up, and the investigators are sifting through thousands of documents on all the shit your father pulled, but they have no idea it was the Faure family that really led to all the killings.” He finished his coffee and set the cup down on a new coaster, lifting the glass from the night before. “I think we need something stronger than coffee for this.”

“David…”

“What?” he snapped, and he finally met her eyes again, but she couldn’t decide how she felt.

Did she feel guilty for every crime her family had committed? For all of the suffering Michael and her father had put him through? Or was she angry with him for everything he had done to her? For every secret he was still keeping from her?

“A drink sounds like a good idea.” Setting down her own coffee and picking up her glass, she offered it and he snagged it from her hand as he walked into the kitchen. The sounds of cabinets opening and closing, and of ice clattering in the freezer, meant she’d have a drink in her hand soon. Before nine in the morning, but it still felt appropriate considering the discussion.

Why hadn’t Michael gone to see him? What if he had told a different version of the story?

As David returned with a bottle of bourbon under one arm, and two full glasses in his hands, she took hers. Setting the bottle down, he dropped onto the couch in silence. Eyes glued to the coffee table.

They both drank, and she cringed as the burn tingled in her nose, making her eyes water. Still, it was good bourbon. Blanton’s, one of her favorites. Something her father had enjoyed regularly. “David, just tell me what you know.”

“I don’t even know where to start, angel.” The anger had left him, buried under another swallow of bourbon, and she felt helpless. More helpless than she’d felt trapped in his fucking cell.

“You’re the only person who can help me make sense of all this,” she whispered.

“I know.” Another drink. “And I’m not going anywhere unless you tell me to leave.”

“I don’t want you to leave.”

“Good.” He lifted the glass, and she watched the amber liquid shine as it slid toward his lips.

Fuck the fact that morning light was pouring in through the floor to ceiling windows, they existed outside of time for now — and she was fine with drinking. It was the only thing that seemed to make these discussions easier.

“I’m glad you listened to Michael.”

His words surprised her, and she wet her lips before she spoke. “About the story?”

“About keeping the Faure family out of it.”

“Are they really that dangerous?” she asked, and he gave a low, humorless laugh once more.

“You have no idea, angel.”

“That’s the fucking point! I want to know! I’m sick of being in the dark about all of this, I’m sick of being sheltered.” She finished her bourbon in two burning swallows, and hissed through her teeth as she slammed it onto the coaster, making the ice clatter. “You promised me the truth. The whole fucking truth, and it’s time you paid up.”

“Okay.” David finished his bourbon, leaning forward to pull the cork free on the bottle and pour more into both of their glasses. “You’re right, I made promises. I promised to tell you anything you wanted to know.”

“So, tell me.”

“The Faure family is all over Europe, in all the major countries. They have connections that cross the ocean, that cross borders, span fucking continents, and your father used that to build Mercier Systems.”

“I know that already,” she grumbled, snagging her drink back.

“You’re not really listening to me. They have real connections. If Michael hadn’t killed your father, he could have made all of this disappear. You, me, the files, that basement — all of it. It would have taken a phone call, and it would have been like it never happened. Well, except for the companies he couldn’t get back.” A smile tugged at the edge of his mouth as he shook his head. “Michael killing your father, agreeing to take the fall for this, it allowed all of it to come to light. It put the target on him. Took it off of you.”

“And you,” she added.

“Because you asked him to, but either way he’s betrayed the family. Exposed Robert Mercier’s crimes, and it was those crimes that let them launder so much money through his company. Even if the authorities don’t make the connections, after this… he won’t live long, angel. You get that, right?”

He said it all with such a steady tone, such confidence, but she hadn’t really thought it through. She had imagined Michael cutting a deal with the authorities and going into witness protection, or at worst serving a few years in prison… but being killed over it? The thought had honestly not crossed her mind, and despite his betrayals, his lies, and the fact that he’d killed her mother with his own hand — she still felt nauseous at the idea that he’d die over it.

“You had to know what he was doing,” David added.

“I didn’t think about that. There’s been so much happening. The board has been calling me constantly about the accusations, about the unapproved sales of the international facilities, and the police have come by a few times. I’ve been distracted, and I just stuck to the story.” Swallowing more of the bourbon, she stared at the replica of Édouard Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergere. It wasn’t an original, that painting hung in the Courtauld Gallery in London, but the version in her apartment was close. The woman’s eyes had haunted her from the first time she’d seen a print of it, and she’d been ecstatic when she had seen it in person. Finding a hand-painted replica had taken time, but she had, and now she found herself drawn once again into the woman’s expression.

Trapped in her role. Stuck in place for eternity with the stroke of a paintbrush.

She wasn’t free. Hadn’t escaped her past or stepped away from her father’s tainted company. She was still there, stuck behind the barrier of everything her unknown past was. And all of it blocked her in, painted her as who she really was…

Lianna Faure.

Mother murdered. Father dead. And the man who had been like an uncle to her had offered himself up like a sacrifice to the family she’d never known.

“You really think they’ll kill him?” she asked.

“Do you really think they’ll let him live with all he knows? With the fact that he’s outed so much to the authorities already?”

They fell silent again, and she pulled her eyes from the painting. Maybe she had subconsciously loved Manet’s painting because it was how she felt. Trapped in a role she didn’t want to be in, forced to be the perfect face of Mercier Systems since she was too young to argue. Staring into the bourbon, she took a steadying breath. “I just want it all to be over.”

“Michael Turner has done what he could to protect you, and the Faure family will take care of everything else. That I’m sure of, and…” David cursed softly, bringing the glass to his lips again as he kept his eyes away from her. “I just want to make sure you stay safe.”

“Do you think they would come after me? Just because I’m his daughter?” The question made her voice wobble, because somehow in their discussion the Faure family had once again become the bogeyman. A nameless, faceless shadow organization that could pull strings and have her dead if they wanted.

“I don’t know,” David answered, and then her doorbell chimed and she jumped.

“That’s breakfast.” Moving to set her glass down, she saw him standing in her peripheral vision and she gestured for him to sit as she stood. “You are not answering my door while practically naked. Sit.”

“You need to stop telling me what to do, angel.”

“Then put some fucking clothes on,” she snapped as she walked towards the door.

“At least check the damn peephole before you open the door.”

Lianna rolled her eyes as she approached it, but glanced through to make sure it was one of the building security people who carried deliveries to the apartments. Opening the door, she propped it against one foot to sign, taking the bag in one hand. “Make sure you add something for yourself to my fees, okay?”

“Yes, ma’am.” The security guard nodded and she smiled as she shut the door.

“Food is here if you still have an appet—” She dropped the bag on the counter, for there, standing in all his sculpted, bared glory, was David.

Clutching a knife.