“I’m sorry you had to kill her,” I said in a soft voice. “I know how much you cared about Deirdre.”
Finn shrugged. “But she didn’t care about me, did she? Not one little bit. No matter how much I wanted her to.” His voice dropped to a low rasp, hurt and longing rippling through his words. After a second, he cleared his throat. “I’m glad it was me. I think that Dad would have wanted it to be me.”
“Why would you say that?”
He looked at me out of the corner of his eye. “After Santos got control of the bank and tied me to that chair, I asked Deirdre why she was robbing the bank. She told me everything. How she’d manipulated Dad into killing her parents so she could get her trust fund and then how she’d used me to get access to the bank.” He paused. “She said that I was an even bigger fool than Fletcher had ever been, because you’d warned me about her, and I’d refused to listen to you. She was right about that.”
I shook my head. “She was your mother. Of course you wanted to believe that she’d come back to Ashland to be with you. She was counting on it.”
He sighed. “Yeah, and I fell right into her trap. I hurt you because of her. And Bria and Jo-Jo too. I’m sorry about that. Sorrier than you will ever know. And I’m going to make it up to you, all of you.” His mouth hardened, and his hands tightened around the steering wheel. “But for right now, I’m just glad that bitch is dead.”
His voice was cold, but hurt still flickered in his eyes. Finn might have killed Deirdre to save me, but he’d be feeling the bitter bite of her betrayal for a long time to come, just like Fletcher had.
We rode in silence for a couple of miles before Finn spoke again.
“Tell me about the shipping yard,” he said. “What did Tucker want with you?”
I filled him in on everything that had happened. Everything Deirdre had said and everything Tucker had threatened, including that there was some sort of secret group that really pulled the strings of the underworld and everything else in Ashland.
“Who do you think they are?” Finn asked.
“I have no idea, but Tucker wanted me to work for them. To be their front woman, their puppet. Just like Mab, who he said had been working for the group all along.” My hands curled into tight fists in my lap, my fingers digging into the spider rune scars embedded in my palms. I drew in a breath and forced out the rest of the words. “Tucker claimed that my mother was involved with them too, although I don’t know how. He said that this group, this Circle, gave Mab the okay to murder her.”
Finn’s eyes widened, and he looked at me. “Do you believe him?”
A wild sob rose in my throat, and I wanted to scream that of course I didn’t believe Tucker, that of course it couldn’t be true, that of course my mother couldn’t have been working with him, with this group.
That my mother couldn’t have been a monster like Tucker and Mab and Deirdre.
But I couldn’t force out the denial, no matter how hard I tried, so I ended up shrugging instead. “Why would he lie about something like that? He was either going to blackmail me into working for him or kill me outright. He had nothing to gain by lying.”
I cleared some of the raspy emotion out of my voice. “Whether everything he said was true or not, there’s something going on here, and I’m going to get to the bottom of it.”
Finn reached over and placed his hand on top of both of mine. “We’re going to get to the bottom of it.”
I tightened my fingers around his. “You’re damn right we are.”
*
Just before noon the next day, I was standing in Jo-Jo’s kitchen with Finn and Owen. The dwarf had healed me, and I’d spent the last several hours resting and recuperating. Jo-Jo had packed up her supplies to go help a client who was in a beauty pageant, and Sophia was covering the Pork Pit for me. Finn and Owen were sitting across the butcher-block table from each other.
“I said I was sorry for everything I said to you at the Pork Pit that day.” There was a wheedling note in Finn’s voice. “What more do you want from me?”
Owen crossed his arms over his chest and glared at my brother.
I rolled my eyes. Finn had been apologizing to Owen for the last five minutes, and Owen had been pointedly holding a grudge. I ignored them and went back to layering pasta sheets, spicy marinara sauce, and mounds of mozzarella and Parmesan cheese in a large casserole dish for my homemade lasagna.
Finn snapped his fingers. “Ah. I know what you want.” He got to his feet, went around to Owen’s side of the table, and held his arms out wide. “C’mon, Grayson. I’ll give you a free shot at me. Surely that will make you feel better.”
Owen frowned, but he made no move to take Finn up on his offer. Finn waggled his eyebrows in invitation, and Owen huffed in response.
“Fine,” Finn muttered. “If that’s how you want to be—”
Owen surged off his stool and plowed his fist into Finn’s jaw.
Crack!
Finn staggered back against the counter, a dazed look on his face.