She shook her head and walked into the formal living room. It was one of the few public rooms on the front of the house with windows looking down over the sidewalk. Not that she could see much between the trees and darkness, but it didn’t stop her from trying.
Carrigan hadn’t come home yet. She glanced at her watch, a diamond MICHELE that she’d gotten on her sixteenth birthday from her parents. Most days it felt more like a shackle than a way to tell time. Two a.m. Too late.
She knew something had happened at the wedding, but she didn’t know what. Not that she was surprised about her family’s unwillingness to talk about it—they never had been free with their information unless forced. All she knew was that it involved Carrigan and had whipped both Cillian and Aiden into a fury that still hadn’t abated two days later.
And now her sister had pulled another of her disappearing acts.
Sloan touched the glass, as if that would do something to draw her home and to safety faster. Things were happening too quickly, spiraling out of control. She sighed. Even though it had been banishment for all intents and purposes, she craved the simplicity of their house in Connecticut. When they were there, the drama and worries that populated daily life in Boston seemed worlds away. She could almost believe they were normal people who didn’t believe in arranged marriages and who didn’t do unmentionable things on the illegal side of their operations.
But it was a childish dream. Just like her hope for one day marrying a man she loved—and who loved her. And her wish to be a schoolteacher. And countless other things that had fallen by the wayside as she turned eighteen and had to face the facts—she was expected to marry a man of her father’s choosing, and to devote her life to making him happy and giving him children. There was no room there for a career of her own. And love? Love wasn’t even on the radar.
Movement below drew her attention to where Carrigan and Liam appeared from beneath the tree directly in front of the town house and hurried up the steps to the front door. A few seconds later, the sound of it opening and shutting whispered through the near-silent halls. If she hadn’t been waiting for it, she wouldn’t have known that it’d happened.
Sloan walked back through the hallway to the top of the stairs, reaching it just as her sister did. “Carrigan.”
“Holy shit!” Carrigan jerked back, her hand on her chest. “I didn’t see you there.”
Which was the point. Her mother had already lectured her about how unseemly her nighttime wanderings were. So she made sure that Aileen didn’t know about them anymore. The thought of spending the night locked away in her room had panic fluttering in her throat. She was already locked up in every way that counted. She couldn’t be locked in physically, too.
She frowned at her older sister. “What’s wrong?” She hadn’t come home from some nameless club like Sloan had originally suspected. Not wearing that green dress that Carrigan would consider respectable, and certainly not with her makeup done up for the day, rather than nighttime. It was more than that, though. Usually when she rolled home in the small hours of the night, she had an expression like a cat who’d stolen the cream. Not tonight. Tonight her eyes were shining, and there were little tremors working their way through her sister’s body that she could see from several feet away. “Carrigan?”
“I…” She wrapped her arms around herself, the shaking getting worse.
If there was one thing Sloan recognized, it was a person on the verge of a complete breakdown. She’d danced along that edge herself too many times to miss the signs. She slipped an arm around her sister’s waist and guided her to her room, carefully shutting the door behind them. “It’s going to be okay.”
“It’s not okay.” The shining in her eyes overflowed, a tear slipping free. “Nothing’s ever going to be okay again.”
She froze. Carrigan was crying? She could count how many times she’d seen her older sister cry on one hand and still have all five fingers left over. What in God’s name is going on? “We can talk about it.”
“I’m marrying Dmitri Romanov.” More tears fell, as if that first one had broken a dam and now they all rushed to fill the new space. She stared into the distance, seeing something that wasn’t in this room. “I have to. I don’t have a choice.”
“Carrigan…” There was nothing she could do. She couldn’t tell her sister that she had a choice—she didn’t. Their father wouldn’t think twice about dragging her bodily down the aisle himself if she tried to protest. She could run, but he would find her. He had all the resources that came with more money that most people could dream of. If Carrigan left the fold, all of that would become focused on finding her and bringing her back.