47. Chapter 47
47
Luca
She’s curled in my lap gripping hold of my shirt in her fist. I reach forward and open the top drawer and pull out a square of grey silk material.
“That looks familiar,” she says, sitting up and taking it from me. “Mine’s full of your come though. Did I ever tell you how deplorable and unhinged that was?”
I smirk as she climbs off me and sits on the desk, her legs part and she pulls me forward, grabbing my chin and tilting it up to her. She wipes at my face, running the material over the fake wound.
She works silently, and I let her, taking in her soft features, her pale complexion. My fingers reach out and dance across the place where her grandad had struck her a few weeks ago and she pulls a tight smile.
My sunshine looks exhausted. Her tongue darts out and wets her lip as her face is a mask of concentration. She wipes, folds the cloth, then wipes some more.
“I need to tell you something,” I say, she pauses. “The other woman in the picture, I know who she is.”
“Who?”
I pick up the picture. My mother, young and beautiful, her stomach round and full as she carried what should have been my baby sister. She’s talking with another woman, sitting on a bench in what looks to be one of the London parks, but in fairness it could be any park and any bench.
“I need to rethink that whole answer to fate, Layla.” I pass her the picture and she looks down at it. “The woman your mother is talking to is my mother, Katrina Knight.”
“What?” She gives a slight head shake, confusion masking her beautiful features, her forehead wrinkling into a frown. I reach up and wipe at the crease lines.
“John’s sister.”
Her eyes widen.
“From what I can gather, or at least hazard a guess from everything you have found and that your grandad added to over the years, our parents were working to bring down the Covenant. And they unearthed information that the corruption had seeped into the government.”
“How do you know that?”
“I don’t. But it makes sense. Why John was so interested in you, why Levi attempted to blackmail you.”
“Levi tried, not your uncle though.”
“Who do you think pulls his strings?”
“You think it was John?”
I nod, taking a sip of my whiskey. “I do now. After the gala dinner a contract was put out on you.”
“Contract? Like—to kill me?” Her voice is shrill and I hold her thighs as she tries to stand.
“You're safe, Layla.”
“Safe? You’ve just told me that there is a contract to kill me! Who put it out? John, or Terry Peyton?” She takes a breath and looks up at the ceiling, muttering to herself. Then glances down at the picture.
“You were an unexpected loose end, sunshine.”
I can see the turmoil, I can see the fear, I can see every emotion play out on her beautiful face, followed by question after question.
“Why, what are we going to do? What about grandad? And Katy.”
All valid questions, but it sends me reeling. She’s being targeted, and I’ve been played.
Fuck.
I stand and launch the glass against the wall.
I’m fucking spinning.
She flinches on the desk, her shoulders rising in shock at my outburst, she pulls back. I breathe through my nose and drop my head, she reaches forward and runs her hands through my hair.
That feels good.
She tugs at the roots then drops them to my shoulders and I clench my eyes shut as betrayal rips through me like a fucking bullet.
“I always had a sense there was more to my mother’s disappearance. You don’t just disappear in our world. I always thought it was the Russians … My mother was hit by a couple who had lost control of their car. I’d never even thought it could be linked to your parents. There was never anything in the news.” I look into those stunning ocean blue eyes.
“You think he killed his own sister?” she asks, and I nod solemnly.
“And your parents.”
“I swear to God, Luca, you put a bullet in his fucking head, or I’ll do it myself.”
There she is.