“I’ve seen how friendly you are with those at Dreagan, and how they rush to your side when you’re in trouble. If you don’t do what I say, I’m going to kill one of them. Perhaps one of those who work in the shop with you? What are their names? Cassie, Jane, and Elena?”
As Dennis said the names, the faces of Hal, Banan, and Guy popped in her head. Those men—any at Dreagan, really—would rip Dennis in half for even thinking of harming their wives. All she would have to do is go to them and tell them.
Let Dennis think he was winning and getting what he wanted. Hal, Banan, and Guy would be there waiting for him.
“And when is this supposed to take place?” she asked tightly.
“Tomorrow.”
Lily suddenly realized she wasn’t as afraid of him as she used to be. She’d left once. She could do it again. She had also survived many of his beatings. She stood and walked to the door where she unlocked every dead bolt and then held it open. “I need time to scout the area.”
Dennis drained the rest of the whisky in his glass and set it down on the table before he rose. He walked to her and paused in front of her. “You’ve got a day.”
She let out a sigh when he began to walk through the door. Then he stopped and backed up, carefully shutting the door. He looked at her with a cold, confident smile.
“Let me be very clear,” he said with a smirk. “If you think to go to anyone at Dreagan and tell them what’s going on, they won’t believe you.”
She made a sound at the back of her throat. “Of course they’ll believe me.”
Dennis raised his ginger brows in mock surprise. “How na?ve you still are. Do you think anyone has seen me? How do you think it’ll sound to them when you tell them you’ve seen and heard me for weeks, but only just came face-to-face with me tonight? You’ll appear touched,” he said and pointed a finger at his head.
Lily’s stomach rolled. No matter how daft she seemed, she would tell someone at Dreagan so Dennis could be stopped.
“On the off chance they do believe you, I’ll do more than kill one of them,” Dennis continued. “I’ve got a backup plan.”
She had been waiting for this. He was going to threaten to kill a member of her family. Lily steeled herself, wondering who he would choose. Her father, who Dennis hated with a passion? Her mother, who had made her distaste of Dennis perfectly clear? One of her three sisters, all of whom had told her—in front of Dennis, no less—that she could do better? The only one safe was her brother.
Dennis pulled his mobile phone from his pocket and held it up for her to see the screen. Lily stumbled backward until she ran into the counter of the small bar in the kitchen when she saw her brother’s face.
In the four years she had been gone, Kyle had developed into a fine-looking young man. He was her father’s pride, the only son of five children, and the baby of the family.
“Kyle is quite funny,” Dennis said, a knowing look in his blue eyes. “We’ve become very close, he and I. It started out innocently enough by telling him I was trying to get you to come back to the family.”
Uncontrollable rage welled up inside Lily. For the first time in her life, she wanted to hurt someone. No. She wanted to kill.
Dennis, the charmer who had wooed her so effectively four years ago had now wormed his way into her brother’s life. Why? She hadn’t even been at Dreagan then. None of it made sense, but it didn’t matter.
“Focus that hate, Lily,” Dennis said as he closed the distance between them, leaving the screen of the mobile phone up so she couldn’t look away from her brother’s smiling face. “Use it against Dreagan.”
“I will kill you for this.”
Dennis chuckled. “You? I doubt that, darling. Kyle is such a clever lad. He wants to make a name for himself, you know. He doesn’t want to use the family name to do it either. He wants to prove to your father he can do it alone.”
Lily gripped the counter behind her and wished the knives were closer so she could plunge one into Dennis’s black heart.
“You hate that Kyle and I have become close, don’t you?” Dennis asked. “How do you feel about us spending weekends together? It hasn’t been easy explaining your continued absence, but Kyle is so hungry for a companion near his age that he isn’t thinking about you as I show him how to do things.”
“What things?” she said through clenched teeth.
Dennis’s smile was slow, taunting. “It was so easy to lie to you all those years about what I really do. I work for one of the most dangerous men to walk the earth.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Do you recall that trip to Japan I took? I really went to France. I’m sure if you think back you’ll remember reading how a wealthy businessman was killed. That man tried to cheat my boss.”
“And you killed the businessman?” Lily’s body went cold, because she did remember reading about a man being murdered in France while Dennis was supposed to be in Japan.