heard the gunshots outside the church,” he replied. “Somebody tried to kill me again.”
Her hand trembled against his cheek, and she sucked in a shaky breath before asking, “Again?”
He groaned as if in regret at his slip or embarrassment of her concern. “Mom...”
Stacy’s lips twitched at how close Logan Payne came to sounding like a petulant child. Even when he’d been a child of just seventeen at her father’s trial, he had already seemed like a man. Strong. Intimidating. Independent.
“You don’t need to be concerned,” he assured his mother. “I’m putting a stop to it now. That’s why I’m here.”
“How is coming here putting a stop to anything?” Mrs. Payne asked, her usually smooth brow furrowed with confusion.
“You know how,” he said.
“No, I don’t.” She shook her head.
“It’s one of them,” he insisted, but his gaze focused on Stacy.
“I don’t understand,” his mother continued. “Did you see one of them with the gun?”
Logan shook his head now.
“Then you have no business coming here today of all days,” she said, “unless you’ve come to express your condolences and pay your respects.”
“Is that why you’re here?” he asked, his deep voice vibrating with betrayal. “Are you here to pay your respects to the man who killed your husband...who killed my father?”
Stacy’s heart lurched with the pain in his voice. He was wrong about who’d taken his dad, but he’d still lost him, even sooner than she’d lost hers. At least she had been able to see her father the past fifteen years even though it had been behind bars.
“I am here for Stacy,” Mrs. Payne replied, and her arm came around Stacy’s shoulders.
She’d tried so hard to be strong—to be tough like her brothers and like Logan. But Mrs. Payne’s warmth and affection crumbled the wall she’d built around herself so many years ago. Her shoulders began to shake like her knees had earlier.
“Is it okay with you that I’m here?” Mrs. Payne asked. “If it’s too difficult, we’ll all leave...”
“That would be best,” a woman chimed in.
Stacy glanced up to see her aunt and uncle walking down the aisle toward them. Aunt Marta was tall and thin with frosted blond hair and a frosty personality. Uncle Iwan’s hair had thinned while his body had widened. He was a big, imposing man, but he smiled at her. Aunt Marta glared. That look wasn’t meant for Mrs. Payne but for Stacy. She’d been on the receiving end of it many times, but she was not yet immune to the coldness and shivered.
Mrs. Payne wrapped her arm more tightly around her, as if protecting her. She had done that in court fifteen years ago. A new widow then, she had still found sympathy for the daughter of the man convicted of killing her husband. Mrs. Payne had attended other court dates in Stacy’s life—offering her support when Milek and Garek had faced their charges.
Stacy clutched at the older woman’s waist. “Please,” she murmured through the emotion choking her, “please stay...”
Mrs. Payne nodded. “Whatever you need, honey...”
Logan reached out a hand for his mother as if to tug her away from Stacy. He did not have Mrs. Payne’s forgiving soul and warm heart. He was full of hatred and bitterness. But then his fingers curled into his palm and he pulled back his hand.
“We’ll discuss this later,” he said.
Stacy knew he spoke to her, not his mother, and his words were a threat. He still considered her and her family responsible for the attempts on his life. And she wasn’t entirely convinced he was wrong, especially with the way her brothers eyed him. He wasn’t the only one in that church who was full of hatred and bitterness.
For the next hour those feelings were put aside, though, for grief and loss during the funeral mass and burial. While the others left for the funeral luncheon at what had been her father’s favorite pub, she stayed behind at his grave site.
But she was not alone. She stared down at the fresh dirt covering her father’s grave. A light breeze fluttered the leaves in the trees and tumbled the loose soil across the grave. She shivered at the cold, but it wasn’t the breeze chilling her. It was the loss.
“I’m sorry,” Mrs. Payne said. She hadn’t gone with the others to the pub. She had stayed behind with Stacy, continuing to offer her support and sympathy. If only Stacy’s own mother was as loving and affectionate...
But she was like Aunt Marta—she loved money and herself more than anyone else. Even her own children...
Stacy shook her head. “You have no reason to apologize.”
“I am apologizing for my son,” Mrs. Payne explained.
Knowing how much Logan would hate that, Stacy smiled and finally pulled her gaze away from the ground to face the older woman. “He’s thirty-two years old. His mother should not be making apologies for him any longer.”
Mrs. Payne smiled, too. “She has to when he’s too stubborn to do it himself.”
“He doesn’t think he has a reason to apologize,” Stacy pointed out. “He thinks he’s right.” He always thought he was right.
“You are not responsible for those attempts on his life,” Mrs. Payne defended her.
The woman’s faith in Stacy warmed her heart. Not many other people in her life had trusted her so fully.
“No, I’m not,” she said. Just like her father, she was not a killer.
Mrs. Payne’s eyes were warm and brown but they had the same intensity of her son’s blue eyes as her gaze focused on Stacy’s face. “But you’re not entirely certain someone in your family didn’t fire those shots.”
Stacy sucked in a breath of shock. Had Mrs. Payne really been offering her support, or had she been manipulating her into betraying her brothers?
“I can see your doubts.”
Like her, they blamed Logan for their father’s death. He hadn’t put the shiv in him, but he had made certain that he stayed in prison long enough that someone else had. Her brothers had even suggested that Logan might have hired the other inmate to commit the murder. She didn’t believe that; she knew Logan hadn’t wanted her father dead. He’d just wanted him to suffer. And he hadn’t cared that she’d suffered, too. Her brothers had cared, though—maybe too much.
But in reply to Mrs. Payne’s remark, Stacy shook her head again in denial. She would not betray her brothers. She owed them too much: her life.
“I don’t expect you to admit it,” Mrs. Payne said. “You’re too loyal for that—too protective of them.”
She wasn’t nearly as protective of them as her brothers were of her. They had sacrificed so much to keep her safe. She would do the
