I stared at him and wondered if I was a little dazed from blood loss or if I was actually hearing him correctly.
“Dad caused the rift between us, Tiernan. He did it purposefully. He couldn’t stand that we were close, and he knew how to drive us apart. He had plans for us both and he didn’t want brotherhood coming in the way of that,” Carter said, each word strong, perfectly enunciated with a hint of British crispness he must have picked up overseas. “I’m not willing to let it continue. I heard about what you had put into motion. I heard about what he was planning to do. And I decided enough was enough.”
“What are you saying?” I asked. “If you came here to help me, can you fucking explain to me why you were at his side waving a damn gun in my face an hour ago?”
Carter eyed Henrik and Walcott, lips pressed tight. “This is Morelli business.”
Neither Henrik or Walcott moved an inch.
“I’m not a Morelli,” I said for the first time in my entire life. I’d been so worried voicing the words would give them some extra truth, some irreversible power. Instead, they were a release, the value open to release the poison I’d been harboring for years.
I wasn’t a Morelli.
I was a McTiernan. Head of The Gentlemen. Guardian to Bianca and Brandon Belcante.
“I’m not a Morelli,” I said again with dark relish. “And these men are better brothers to me than you and I have been to each other. So they’ll stay.”
He considered me for a long moment. “You’re different than I thought you’d be.”
“You don’t know me so that’s not surprising. And if you want that privilege, Carter, tell me the truth. What were you really doing with Bryant?”
A fissure cracked through his features, something like a grimace that cut into his cheek and made him look suddenly young and heartbroken. He stared down at the floor, hair falling into his face as he finally murmured, “I stayed away too long. I let things fester between us for far too many years. I want my family back. I want my brother back. I came here to try and fix things with you. To repair what he broke.”
He sighed then looked up at me with those Morelli eyes in a face that looked so much like mine and said, “When I told Bryant I wanted to come home, he told me I had to earn my place with the family again.” A bitter smile. “He told me his darling son, Tiernan, was plotting behind his back and he needed a new right-hand man. So I fooled him into thinking I’d help him, just so I could be there for the confrontation.”
I told myself it didn’t matter, but Bryant’s careless ability to discard me burned through me more painfully than the bullet hole in my flesh.
“I had no intention of harming you or the girl,” Carter continued, head lifted high, once more the haughty son of a well-born man. “But I’ve learned by experience that the best way to build a bridge is by extending your hand, not your fist. Bryant’s used you for years. Why do you think that is?”
“Keep your friends close and your enemies closer,” I murmured as I thought about Bianca.
God, I’d hated her. Before I even laid eyes on her, she and Brando became the symbols of everything I hated. And then, from the moment she opened the door to that decrepit little home in Bumfuck, Texas, I’d hated her with more passion than I’d ever possessed for a single person, even Caroline and Bryant. Her wholesome beauty, inherent grace and self-assuredness were insult to injury. I’d expected someone meek and easy to hate, young and brash and foolish at the very least.
But no.
Fate had thrown Bianca into my path not to punish me, but to awaken me.
In keeping my enemy close, I’d…
Not fallen.
Not love.
But something like it. Something soft and foreign that sat in me too large and too heavy. Something that rearranged my insides.
“Exactly,” Carter agreed. “Despite what you may think, Tiernan, I’m not in Bishop’s Landing to hurt you. I’m here for both of us. Someone told me once that healing starts by admitting your own mistakes. I made one with you. I shouldn’t have waited so long to talk to you. I should have been here for you. I’m trying to do that now.”
“I’m supposed to believe that you’re suddenly willing to help me and go against your own father?” I asked blandly, still not sold on this switch from rival brother to beseeching ally.
Carter stared at me for a moment, gaze hot on the scar bisecting my cheek. “You remember how much we loved to play pranks on Nanny Haus? If I recall correctly, it was your idea to feed her Mom’s toy poodle’s dog treats.”
Beside me, Walcott stifled a bark of laughter with a cough.
I only arched a brow at him.
“You and Lucian loved to wrestle,” Carter pressed. “Leo would referee because he was the only one who dared to get between you when you took it too far. You were the only one patient enough to sit for Daphne when she wanted to sketch us. You and me…” he drifted off, looking around the dark interior of the two-story foyer, utterly quiet and still as he searched his memories. “We used to fill the house with our laughter. All of us did. And then Bryant took it all away from us.”
“Some things are too broken to be fixed.”
“And some things mend,” he countered, jerking his chin at me in a way that indicated my scar. “It might not be what it was, but maybe it’s stronger for it.”
“I tried,” I told him coldly, because I could count each time I’d begged him for forgiveness, each time I’d tried to reach him and the others despite Bryant’s instance on keeping me separate. “The truth is, I don’t need you anymore.”
Carter looked skeptical, and Henrik shifted slightly beside me because he thought I was lying too.
But the truth was, I didn’t need Carter.
Not the way I thought I did.
If he wanted to form some kind of…connection again, I could do that if he was willing to meet me halfway. But I was done with working hard for people who didn’t care about me or didn’t love me in the right way.
Done with Bryant.
With the fall of the Constantines to get his approval or to win back the love of my siblings.
Even with my mother, who loved me like she did her booze and pills, as a crutch and not a child.
“What do you need then?” Carter asked, genuine curiosity in his tone.
“Tiernanny,” a small voice cried from the top of the curving marble staircase.
Brando grinned at me as he flew down the steps, his Hulk figurine in one hand and Picasso running at his heels. Blond curls flew back from his cherubic face and his smile was so bright, it made me blink rapidly as if I was looking into the sun. Momentarily blinded, I let him dart across the foyer and crash into my good side, hugging my waist as tight as he could.
I looked down at that halo of hair and thought of the child who’d been stolen from me by Bryant. I thought of the way Bianca prioritized this little man before everything else in life when normal seventeen-year-old girls focused on trendy clothes and school gossip.
And I got it, how she could do that so easily in spite of the demands of her age.
Because this kid was pure sunshine casting light deep into the shadow recesses of my soul.
My throat closed and breath refused to leave my lungs.