hold me close forever book 2 of Keller series

Genevra POV:

"The alliance cannot be broken, Genevra. But you are no longer marrying Kingston. Brinley is taking your place as his bride."

Brinley was my stepsister.

My father, Darrell Daugherty, did not even look up from his mahogany desk. He leaned back into his leather chair, the state senator seal on his gold signet ring catching the dim lamp light. Heavy cigar smoke hung thick between us in the second-floor study of the Daugherty estate.

"And to keep our alliance with the Marshall bloodline alive," Darrell continued coldly, flicking ash into a crystal tray, "you are leaving for California before sunrise. You will marry his cousin, Erik."

"So you're handing my fiancé to your stepdaughter," I said, tilting my head with a razor-thin, venomous smile, "and shipping me off to marry a paralyzed warlord rotting in an outlaw clubhouse?"

My voice was calm, mocking, and completely devoid of the trembling obedience he was used to.

Darrell slammed his open palm onto the polished wood. The crystal tumbler beside him rattled violently.

"Drop the insolent attitude, Genevra!" Darrell roared, veins bulging along his neck. "Three days ago, the paramedics had to drag you out of a pool of your own blood in the master bath! You locked yourself in, swallowed half a bottle of sedatives, and slit your wrists like a hysterical madwoman—all because Kingston told you he was choosing Brinley! The ER team shocked your chest three times to drag your pathetic pulse back from the dead! The entire southern syndicate was laughing at us!"

He leaned forward, glaring at me with raw disgust.

"You disgraced this family over a broken heart! And now you stand here acting like you have a say? Our pact is sworn to the Marshall family, not just Kingston. Kingston needs Brinley to anchor our political power here in the South, but the old blood pact still demands a Daugherty bride. You are going to California to fulfill that debt with the Iron Skulls MC. End of discussion."

The Iron Skulls MC was the most ruthless one-percenter outlaw motorcycle club on the West Coast. Their President, Erik "Grim" Marshall—Kingston’s estranged cousin and the true, feared warlord of the Marshall clan—was a legendary killer who had reportedly taken a blast during a turf war last month. Word on the underground wire was clear: shattered spine, complete paralysis, rotting away in his own compound.

"You want me to play the dutiful widow to a dying cripple so Kingston can keep his hands clean?" I asked, my voice flat as ice.

A figure shifted in the shadows near the leather couch. Kingston Marshall stepped into the light. He wore a tailored charcoal suit, the small gold skull stud in his left earlobe gleaming.

"Genevra... please, don't do this to yourself," Kingston murmured, stepping forward with that familiar, sickening patronizing pity in his eyes. He genuinely believed I was acting out of sheer heartbreak, that my suicide attempt had been the ultimate proof of my desperate devotion to him. "When they called me from the ICU... when they told me you flatlined on the table clutching my memory... it broke me. But the family comes first. With Erik incapacitated, I have to secure the South. You know my hands were tied."

He took two slow steps toward me, sighing with theatrical regret as he raised his hand, reaching to touch my face.

I took half a step back.

His manicured fingers caught nothing but empty air, freezing awkwardly between us.

"Clutching your memory?" I looked him up and down with the clinical detachment one might reserve for a dissecting specimen. "Kingston, when someone takes out the trash, they don't mourn the garbage bag. If my heart stopped on that operating table, it was from pure disgust at the thought of having ever let a bottom-feeder like you touch me."

Kingston’s handsome face flushed a violent, mottled crimson. "Genevra, watch your mouth—"

"Look at yourself," I cut him off, stepping into his personal space, my eyes locking onto his like twin gun barrels. "You wear a bespoke suit bought with dirty kickbacks, strutting around like a king, yet the moment your cousin Erik is taken out, you scramble to carve up his table with a second-rate stepdaughter. You're not an outlaw, Kingston. You're just an insecure errand boy who spent his entire life trembling in Erik's shadow, playing dress-up in cuff links."

Kingston choked on his own breath, his polished facade cracking into humiliated rage. In all the years he had strung me along, I had never spoken a harsh word to him. Now, standing right in front of him, I had stripped his ego raw in three sentences.

I turned my back on him completely, dismissing his existence, and looked straight at Darrell.

"I will go to California," I said coldly. "On one condition. Sign the release on North Street Medical Logistics. Remove your senatorial hold and clear my mother's operating accounts. You claim it's a bleeding shell—so sign it and let me leave."

Everyone present clearly hadn't expected me to agree so readily.

Darrell narrowed his eyes, stunned by the sheer, unyielding command in my tone.

"That shell company has been bleeding money for three years," Darrell sneered, trying to regain his footing. "Take it. You'll be dead in California before you can even use it."

He grabbed a transfer deed from his drawer, signed it with a heavy scrawl, and tossed it across the desk along with a pen.

I picked up the pen and signed my name in one smooth, unwavering line.

"A pleasure doing business with you, Senator," I said, dropping the heavy brass pen. It hit the mahogany with a sharp, dismissive clatter. "Do try to keep your seat in the Senate. It would be a pity if the public found out the great Darrell Daugherty built his entire career on my dead mother's trust fund."

Darrell froze, his face draining of color. Before he could bark an order, I had already turned on my heel and walked toward the door.

I pushed the heavy oak door open.

My stepmother, Evelyn, was lingering in the hallway, her arms crossed, waiting to gloat over the broken wreck she assumed was leaving the study.

"Pack your bags, poor girl," Evelyn purred, her lips curling into a smug, venomous smirk. "Let us hope you last more than a week among those filthy, grease-stained savages in the desert."

I stopped in front of her. I didn't rush past. I stood tall, letting my cold gaze rake over her from head to toe until her smug smile began to falter under the weight of my silence.

"Keep smiling while you can, Evelyn," I said in a soft, lethal whisper. "You spent twenty years scheming to steal my mother's leftover husband, and your daughter had to settle for my discarded trash just to secure a name. Enjoy the scraps. Because when I come back for what is mine, I won't leave either of you with enough dignity to beg."

Evelyn gasped, stepping back as if she had been slapped across the face, her manicured hand clutching her pearls in genuine shock.

I didn't spare her another second.

I walked down the east corridor, reached my bedroom at the far end, and pushed the door open.

The room was quiet. A world away from the pathetic, venomous vipers down the hall.

The sharp, hurried click of high heels echoed down the hardwood floor, moving fast and aggressive toward my room.

The bedroom door flew open with a violent bang.

Brinley stood in the doorway, her bleached blonde curls bouncing over her shoulders. She held a leather riding crop in her right hand, tapping it rhythmically against her thigh, her green eyes blazing with spiteful triumph.