Chapter 30
“L ogan, good to see you again,” Jonathan says. While I’d much rather be in bed holding Cora while she sleeps, I also know if she finds out a meeting about Abigail’s future was happening and I missed it, she’d have my balls for dinner.
So here I am, seated on the sofa opposite Jonathan’s desk with Jack beside me, eyeing Logan like he’s the enemy as Jonathan leads him to a chair beside us. I can’t blame him. Logan doesn’t exactly scream ‘son-in-law.’ He’s the kind of guy you warn your daughter to stay away from. He’s huge, both in height and muscle, with even more tattoos than me. Everything about him screams hardened criminal. He’s forsaken the traditional suit for business meetings, instead opting for dark jeans, biker boots, and a black T-shirt that does nothing to make him seem approachable. As he takes a seat in the chair beside the sofa and the offered glass of whiskey, the room suddenly feels too small to contain both him and Jonathan .
“Thanks for agreeing to meet with me so soon. I’m sure you have things to sort out on your end, which is why I thought it important to share what I know about my father’s activities before proposing this…arrangement.” He struggles with even saying the word ‘marriage,’ which makes me wonder why he’s doing this if he doesn’t want to. As the new head of the Clan, thanks to taking out his dad, he can do whatever the fuck he wants.
“The girls thought they were to be auctioned off. What I’d like to know is what you meant when you said he was probably doing what he did to your mum. What he tried to do to Helen.” The thought of Angus having anything to do with Helen makes Jonathan look like he wants to murder dead things. I don’t blame him.
“My father was a pathetic excuse for a man. He got a huge power kick out of hurting women and children. He beat Mum for the entirety of their marriage, and he would rant and rave about how she was just a stand-in. He was mixed up with a lot of scumbags who had more money than morals, and eventually, someone came up with the idea of hosting these auctions. Which was the worst idea ever if you ask me. That led to him attempting to kidnap Helen and later selling Mum off.”
“Did you ever manage to find her?” The last I heard, he was hell-bent on finding her, but the look of devastation on Logan’s face answers me before he shakes his head.
Cursing, Jonathan paces the room, a clear sign he’s trying to process this messy state of affairs.
Jack asks, “How does my daughter play into this?”
“Some still have Angus’s way of thinking. They believe I’m a fool to have killed him, that there’s no way a twenty-five- year-old bachelor would have a clue about what he’s doing. I’m hoping that by getting married they’ll settle down long enough for me to reform the whole Clan, and in return, I think the best way forward is for us to merge.”
Merging would mean submitting to Jonathan, something I never imagined someone as headstrong as Logan would want to do. Sure, he’d have control over the Clan, but at the end of the day, he’d have Jonathan to answer to and would essentially be another branch of the Four Points. In other words, he gains a bride, and we gain a whole army of men.
Jonathan asks, “What’s in this for you? You can’t want a bride that much.”
“Resources. I have a hunch that could be explosive if true, but so far, I’ve had no luck proving it. I’m going to need the help of one of your Butcher brothers and Owen for it.”
“Well, come on, man. Spit it out.” My patience these days is non-existent. Every second I spend away from Cora is a second too long.
“I have reason to believe that the hit-and-run that killed Helen didn’t actually kill her. The driver was on our take and a close friend of Angus’s, who mysteriously disappeared afterwards. From what I understand, when Cora had to identify the body, there was too much burn damage from the car explosion, and they had to use dental records?” At Jonathan’s nod, he continues, “Leaving ample opportunity for it not to be her.”
As Jonathan remains frozen, my mind races. Cora never actually saw the body. No one did. It was a closed-casket funeral. And if no one saw the body, then there’s every chance it wasn’t her. Dental records are all too easy to manipulate, after all. Meaning she could be alive.
“We can’t tell her,” I rasp, drawing their attention to me. “If we tell her and it turns out not to be true, it’ll destroy her. I’ll work with you. I’ll do anything it takes to get to the bottom of it, but we can’t breathe a word to Cora until we have concrete evidence.”
Locking eyes with Logan, it’s clear he understands what I’m not saying. Just because she might not have died in the car crash doesn’t mean she didn’t die afterwards. And to tell Cora her mum might be alive only to later find out she did, in fact, die, would be beyond cruel.
With that, we all share looks of understanding before down- ing our drinks and getting signatures on the contracts, cement- ing both this marriage and the merger.