Love Me (WITSEC #3)(2)
“You want to have an adult conversation, then let’s have a conversation,” Knox said in a voice that dared Logan to say otherwise. “We should go over why you decided that it’d be okay to drug your niece. You know, for the young mind to comprehend it clearly.”
Creed glanced at me with wide eyes. We both knew Knox was about to tear into Logan and he’d do it calmly and brutally.
“Shiloh told you that she didn’t want to be relocated, which you refused to accept because you think you know better. Fine, I’ll humor that. You were her guardian for a year, and I’m sure that in the year you watched over her as she drank and smoked and ran herself into the ground rather than face her grief, you gained some extensive knowledge and experience on what it is to be a parent.” Knox’s words were like verbal assaults, each knocking Logan down a peg and leaving us all stunned. “Because of her unwillingness to leave and the fact that you trained her to protect herself so well so she could live on her own without you around to protect her all this time, you knew you couldn’t force her. Am I right so far?” Knox didn’t wait for Logan to answer. “So you decided to drug her without sparing a single fuck that she had been drugged and almost raped less than a month ago, or that men have repeatedly come into her life and tried to strip away her consent. But you figured you’re allowed to do that, right? You’re protecting her because she can’t do it herself? Did I get all that correct?”
Logan’s clenched jaw and lack of response was answer enough.
I could sense the anger pouring off of Knox, but he only let a tiny bit show with a shake of his head. “You can’t have it both ways,” he said. “You can’t leave her behind, deeming her capable of protecting herself if X showed up, and then return and treat her as if she’s not.”
Logan and Knox fell into a stare-off, both glaring at one another until Knox finished with, “Unless you never really thought that, which begs the question…why did you leave her alone in the first place?”
I had to hand it to my brother. He was a perceptive bastard, especially when it came to Shi.
“Shi will never be safe as long as X is out there,” Logan gritted as if that justified leaving his niece, who’d been spiraling and needed someone to be there for her.
“We understand the danger X is to Shi,” I said, though I knew my words were a waste of breath. It was obvious his vision was tunneled from desperation. Nothing I or anyone could say would reach or reason with him. But that didn’t negate the fact that we did understand, at least the best we could.
When Shi had admitted she was in witness protection because there was a man out there who had stalked her for years, murdered her family, and almost killed her, too, we had been shocked. Of course, at the time, the twins had already been halfway, if not all the way in love with Shi and had said it hadn’t changed anything for them. I wished I could have said the same, that my growing feelings for Shi or how she had become a part of our family made the danger of X showing up not matter. But that hadn’t been the case for Knox and me. I supposed we were more jaded—too experienced with loss to throw caution to the wind when it came to our family. So Knox and I had made sure all four of us talked about it extensively…the implications of her being in our lives.
As we’d gotten more information from Shi later that same day so as to not rush her, because we understood how difficult it was to talk about the night her family had been murdered, we’d researched X as much as we could. We had found Maryland news articles that reported what had happened that night. They hadn’t given much detail. Just that X had broken into their home while she and her family had been out of the house, nailed every window and door shut on the first floor, apart from the front door, then waited for the family to return and butchered them throughout the night. Strangely, everything we had read about that night had no mention of Shi. It was as if she hadn’t existed, and we assumed that it had to do with her being in WITSEC. Then we had learned X was connected to the murders of multiple young women that had happened in the past year. Young brunette girls around Shi’s age.
With the research, the twins had seemed to take the implications more seriously. It still hadn’t changed their minds about being with Shi, but Knox and I had seen the momentary consideration flash in their eyes of what if. Seeing that and knowing all four of us were on the same page, it had made it easier for me to accept that we could keep her around and I could allow myself to embrace the feelings I had for her without guilt. Surprisingly, Knox, who had been the most difficult about Shi coming into our lives, hadn’t protested to her staying, either.
Proving my assumption about him correct, Logan scoffed, “You don’t understand shit.”
Knox glanced at me then, and with that look, I could tell he had come to the same conclusion as well. Dragging Creed with us, we headed for the door. There was no point in arguing with someone who refused to listen. We may not have lost people we loved in a violent way, the way he and Shi had, but we understood loss and we knew what it looked like when someone was being ruled by their grief and fear.
“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” Logan snapped.
Ian, surprisingly, stepped out of the way so we could walk through the front door. Not trusting either of them, I purposely walked out of the house last.
Logan grabbed my arm. “You’re not going anywhere until you tell me where my niece is.”