CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
Balor
T here’s only one reason a father pounds on a man’s door the way Corvin Snow is beating on mine right now.
He knows.
Either that, or he’s the stupidest motherfucker on the planet if this has to do with anything other than me sleeping with his daughter. For that, he gets a pass.
My brothers are fathers now. I get it, and pity the men who will show interest in my nieces in the future. Lachlan’s daughter in particular.
I roughly throw on jeans and a T-shirt. Once Ella is fully dressed, I grasp her hand and walk down the steps with her.
I now get the massive flaw in the design of this townhome. It doesn’t have a vestibule. The front door, made of all glass inside black-leaded panels, gives a perfect view of the stairs to anyone standing at it, as Snow is now. I should have put a curtain panel on the door or changed it to a full wooden craftsman door.
Too late now.
I won’t hide my relationship with her. I will offer a bare-bones apology for not telling him sooner that I met her on the plane and that my interest started on that flight.
That’s the damn honest truth. It was always her.
“Let me handle this,” I say to Ella.
“He’s my dad.” Her voice is even, not demanding, and perhaps it’s because she doesn’t know how he’ll react.
If he’s smart, he’ll be fucking thrilled a billionaire mafia boss loves his daughter and will protect her for the rest of her life.
Love...
Fuck, I do love her. Staring her father down, it’s so clear to me. While I want to admit that to her first, if it diffuses the situation, if Snow is so off the rails in anger, I will use my admission to calm him down.
“Please, let me handle this.” I kiss her forehead, knowing he can see me.
Her eyes are nothing but pools of panic. She ran circles around what Wesley had done to her. Managed him. Managed her father. Managed her job. All to keep her secret. God, that must have been so fucking exhausting for her.
I reach for the doorknob and make a point to look Snow right in the eye. He’s not the man I’m trying to destroy right now. He’s the father of the woman I love. A man she loves. A man who I’ve seen no evidence of hurting her.
My only beef is that he didn’t kill Brennan when he found out. But when she came to him for help, he gave her shelter for six months. They were in Australia all that time and putting a hit on someone twenty-thousand miles away would leave a trail.
Even for him.
He had other things on his mind, though. Like robbing the richest people on the planet. He didn’t steal from us. But he damaged our firewalls.
Which begs the question I consider for the first time, where is all that money he stole?
“Corvin,” I say, leveling a stern glance at him. “Can I help you?”
His eyes fall on our linked hands and then up to Ella. “Estella? Do you have something to tell me?”
Everything inside me screams to take control of this. It’s what an O’Rourke does. But seeing her father’s expression, I realize I can’t devalue Ella. Even to her father.
“I do.” She glances my way. “I planned to talk to you when you got back tomorrow .”
“I took early flight. ”
“Come in, Corvin. Let’s discuss this.” I turn my back on the man, expecting him to follow me.
Something hits me in the back of the head, and I whip around. Hundred-dollar bills lay scattered all over my kitchen floor.
The money I paid Ella.
“What in the hell is this?” He shoves the old note I wrote and left for Ella under my nose.
My scrawling mess speaks to how out of my mind I was that night:
Butterfly, I’ll pay you another twenty grand to suck my cock again -Balor.
“Dad, I can explain.” Ella steps in front of me.
“Explain how this man mistook you for a whore and paid you all this money?” He points to all the cash on my floor. “What else did you do to my daughter that you paid so much money?”
“Dad!” Ella shouts. “Talk to me. I’m right here. I’m an adult. I led Balor to believe I was an...escort.”
“And it was not hard to convince him since that is who he fucks , Ella.”
I go rigid at how easily Corvin spills my kink. The mastermind hacker knows me inside and out.
At least my sexual preferences were only escorts. Were . I’m done with all that.
But this mess with Covin... I need to clear it up immediately.
“I know, Dad,” Ella keeps talking. “He was just a handsome stranger on a plane. I wanted to live out a fantasy. After so many months, I wanted to feel something. Something that didn’t terrify me.”
“ Exactly,” Corvin snaps through clenched teeth. “After what you’d been through with Wesley, how could you be so stupid?”
Snow’s anger and insults might be rooted in parental terror, but no one speaks to my woman like that.
“Do not call her stupid or any other derogatory name. It will be the last thing your tongue ever does. Got it, Snow?” I seethe and claim her hand. “I know exactly what she’s been through. And now that it’s out in the open, we’re going to have a conversation about that motherfucker and how we punish him. Something you should have done.” I roughly poke him in the chest. “I caught him watching her at school.”
“What?” Ella shrieks.
“School? What school?” Corvin cries out.
“Dad, I took that part-time job at Fredricks. I want to teach. Not be a personal assistant.”
“He was school resource officer there. That is how he and Ella met,” Snow says, seething at me.
Rage heats my blood that Ella didn’t tell me this, that she let me walk into that fury without warning.
“And why didn’t you do anything about him?” I yell at Snow.
Ella steps between us. “Stop. Both of you. I love...” Her breath staggers. “You’re the most important men in my life, and I know you both want me safe. Can we please discuss this without blame?”
“No problem.” I kiss her forehead, “You’re mine now. I will handle Brennan.”
“I... I saw him one day at school, too,” Ella confesses. “That was it. Once. Before break. I should have told you.” She clears her throat. “Balor, I worry he can make trouble for you. For your family.”
“My family can handle it.” I level a gaze at Corvin, reminding him who he’s fucking with.
“None of this changes the fact that you slept with my daughter, who I asked you to hire and protect,” Snow keeps fighting me. “You breached my trust.”
“I will apologize for any perceived trust you think I’ve broken,” I argue. “But Ella is an adult. This didn’t happen again right away. What happened between us originally was two consenting adults in one moment of time. I admit, there was a miscommunication about who she was. Once it all came to light, I put my feelings aside to give her a job, like you asked.”
“Dad...” Ella breaks in. “I’m crazy about Balor. He’s everything I want in a man.”
When her eyes drift to me with a quivering lip, I know she’s about to pour gasoline on this fire...