We are in your government, your law enforcement, your military. William Keyes was a man who believed in building alliances. He despised President Nolan. And now the president was in a coma.
“Daughter,” I heard myself say. I never missed a beat in the conversation, though my mind was whirring.
“Excuse me?”
“On the video they released of Daniela naming Walker as the father of her baby, she said that Walker was her father. It’s a girl.”
“What does it matter,” Keyes countered, his voice rising in volume, his words snapping out like a whip, “if the child is a boy or a girl? What has Ivy said about the mother? What is this group’s endgame with her? What is their endgame with Walker Nolan?”
The full intensity of William Keyes’s stare was a powerful thing. I felt like he was thumbing through my innermost thoughts like they were nothing more than index cards.
I wondered what would happen if he didn’t like what he saw there.
“There’s a theory,” I said, matching the intensity of the kingmaker’s stare with my own, “that Daniela has been emotionally compromised, that her own people may have come to see her as a liability.” I held his gaze and wondered how much of Tommy—and how much of himself—he saw in me. “And now you’re asking me where she’s being kept, what the government intends to do with her.” My throat was dry, but I didn’t back down. “Why do you want to know?”
I waited for him to hear what I was really asking. I waited for him to tell me that he wasn’t working with Senza Nome, that he had no interest in dethroning kings.
His jaw clamped down, and he said nothing.
“I shouldn’t have come here,” I said. “Ivy shouldn’t have sent me.” I grabbed my bag off the floor and went to move past him.
“Not. Another. Step.” The kingmaker turned. “Is this what we’ve come to?” he asked me. “You fleeing my presence?”
A Keyes doesn’t flee. A Keyes doesn’t back down from a battle. In other circumstances, I could see him telling me those words.
“Ivy sent you here because I have the resources and the manpower to protect you.” He took a step forward. “I am also,” he said, “not inclined to indulge childish tantrums or impulsive acts the way she might.” He walked toward me. I pushed down the urge to step back. “You, my dear, are not leaving this house anytime soon.”
“I have school on Monday,” I said.
“And to school,” the kingmaker countered, “you will go.” The hand on my shoulder went to the side of my face. A moment later, he cupped the back of my head, his touch gentle. “I apologize,” he said, “if my questions frightened you.”
“I’m not frightened,” I said. “I’m just wondering what you’re capable of. If there are lines you won’t cross.”
“What must you think of me?” Keyes said, his voice soft and deadly, “to ask that question?” He ran his hand gently over the back of my head, then squeezed my shoulder. For a moment, I didn’t think he would let go.
But he did.
He let loose of me, and he turned and walked over to the nightstand. He picked up a picture frame, then returned to my side.
In the picture, I could make out two young boys and their mother. Theresa Keyes. The woman I’d been named after, the woman who’d decorated this room.
Keyes stared at the photo, stroking his thumb along the frame. “You’re right to be suspicious of me,” he said, staring at his dead wife, at the boy my dead father had been. “I have my motives. I always do. But they’re not what you think they are, Tess. There are lines I would not cross.”
“Then why?” I said hoarsely. Why pump me for information about Daniela Nicolae? If you’re not with them, if you’re not one of them—why do you need to know?
I felt something shift in the room, in him.
“Walker Nolan is my son.” The kingmaker stared at the photograph a moment longer, then looked up. “My wife didn’t know. Adam doesn’t know. Walker doesn’t know.” The kingmaker walked over to the nightstand and set the frame gingerly back down. “No one knows,” he said. “Except for Georgia and me, and now you.”
Georgia Nolan and William Keyes . . .
Adam had implied that they’d been involved, before either of them were married. When Keyes had found out that Walker had come to Ivy, he’d shown up on our front porch, demanding answers.
Demanding to know what kind of trouble Walker was in.