I shoved my helmet back on and twisted the accelerator, leaving a plume of white smoke behind me.
I might be wrong, I told myself silently as I passed mansions in a blur. Liam might not be here at all. He might be at the gym, taking out his frustrations on a boxing bag. Or maybe he’d gone to his mother’s place. For all I knew, he was having a fucking cup of tea with her over their little kitchen table.
I hoped one of those were true. I’d never set foot in a church in all my life, and yet I prayed for that to be the case.
But I knew what I would have done in his situation. I knew how that darkness pulled you in and made you think listening to it was the only way out.
I turned onto Liam’s grandparents’ street and knew instantly which house was theirs.
Liam’s car was parked silently outside.
A rising sense of dread urged me on, and I hit the accelerator harder instead of slowing down.
Something was wrong. I felt it in my gut.
I rode the bike straight up over their perfectly manicured lawn, leaving a dirty tire trail behind me. I threw the bike down at their front steps and pounded on the door with one hand while I yanked off the helmet with the other. “Come on. Come on.”
The door eventually opened, and an older woman stood behind it, her clothes too expensive, her hair too neat to be the hired help. “Can I help you?” Her blue eyes were sharp, taking me in carefully but without judgment.
“I’m a friend of your grandson. Is he here? I need to speak to him. It’s very urgent.”
She opened the door a little wider. “Liam? Well, yes, he’s in the den with his grandfather.”
I didn’t wait for her to invite me in. I stepped over the threshold, forcing her back. “Where is that, please?”
She pointed down a corridor, and I had to hold myself back so I didn’t run. But I sure as fuck didn’t dawdle, waiting for the older woman to catch up either.
Halfway down the hallway, the shouting led me to the den.
“You’re a liar.” Liam’s shout was hoarse with the accusation.
I hesitated, knowing he needed to say his piece.
“Your mother is the liar. That cheap whore could never tell the truth about anything.”
I bristled at the slur. Liam’s mother had been nothing but sweet to us. And she’d kept my identity a secret.
The woman, Isadora, cleared her throat uncomfortably. “It seems it isn’t a good time—”
Liam’s roar of anger and frustration bellowed back to us, cutting his grandmother off midsentence.
I blinked at the ferocity of it. It set off every alarm bell in my head and confirmed for me that I’d been right. Liam wasn’t in the headspace to have this conversation rationally. Maybe he never would be, but I wasn’t letting him do this without backup. He needed someone in his corner, and fuck if that wasn’t going to be me. I threw open the door.
Isadora gasped behind me.
Liam’s gaze didn’t turn my way for a second.
He was fully focused on the gun held to his grandfather’s temple.
The older man sat behind a beautifully carved mahogany desk. I imagined he’d made many a deal from that position, leaning back in his padded chair, powerful and experienced in his job. He was the sort of person who would have had a cigar in one hand, a whiskey on ice in the other, while he commanded an entire room.
Right now, he was none of that. He was a frail, terrified old man, whose sins had finally caught up with him. He sat trembling on his seat, his hands raised, not daring to look at his son.
“Don’t you ever, ever speak about her like that. You don’t even deserve to say her name after what you did.”
“Liam? What is this?” Isadora asked, trying to edge around me. “Where did you get a gun?”
For the first time, Liam seemed to notice that there were other people in the room. He swung the gun in our direction, and I stepped in front of Isadora, not willing to have her hurt.
Liam barely registered me. But he turned the gun back on his grandfather who had been too frozen to move. “Did you know?” he yelled at his grandmother without looking at her. “Did you know what your husband did?”
She stifled a sob. “We love you, Liam. Why are you doing this?”
He let out a bitter laugh, but behind it was the agony of a broken man. “She doesn’t deny it. Of course you fucking knew. You knew everything that happened in this house. Every party I ever threw. Every girl I ever snuck in. I used to think you had spies. Is that how you found out what he’d done?”
“Your mother was a very promiscuous young woman. She—”
Liam slammed the gun down on the desk.
An earsplitting shot echoed through the room.
Isadora screamed.
My ears rang.
Liam stared down at the gun like he had no idea what it was.
I moved in quick. “Liam. Give it to me.”
His fingers went limp. Relief fueled me as I took control of the gun, putting on the safety and shoving it into the back of my jeans.
Liam’s gaze transferred to the bullet hole in the plaster wall.
His grandfather stared at it, too, and then at me. There was a flash of recognition in his eyes, and then confusion, like he was trying to place me.
And that’s when I knew the entire thing was about to come crumbling down on top of us.
Shit. I’d taken my helmet off and shown my face. Exactly what I’d promised Rowe I wouldn’t do. I hadn’t even thought about it, I’d been so intent on getting to Liam.
But I couldn’t care about that right now. I grabbed the back of Liam’s shirt and hauled him out of the den. Isadora reached a hand out to her grandson.
“Isadora!” his grandfather snapped.
Her hand fell limply at her side, and she stepped away, letting us leave. I shoved Liam through the house like I was his bodyguard. His grandparents’ expensive things flashed by in a blur, until we were out on the porch again.
“What are you doing here?” he mumbled.