by K. M. Scott
“Shut up!” I screamed with everything I had left in me. “Just kill me already and get it over with so I don’t have to listen to your fucking crazy-ass babbling anymore!”
“Tsk-tsk, Jordan. That’s not how we play this game. I told you. Quid pro quo. You tell me how you got Gage Varo, and I’ll tell you why you can’t live anymore.”
My emotions swirled inside me. First anger pushed me to lash out, and then frustration sent the signal to my brain that it was time for me to cry. I struggled to hold back the tears as I answered, “I don’t know what you want. I found a way to talk to him every day, and then one day he came to my apartment and we began seeing each other.”
“So you chased after him? How very modern you two are. I had him pegged as an old-fashioned kind of guy.”
Gage was exactly that kind of guy, but I didn’t want to discuss him anymore with her. “I told you what you wanted to know. Now why are you going to kill me?”
She closed her eyes and inhaled a deep breath before looking down at me again. “It’s interesting, you know. I felt just like you most of my life. Restrained. In the dark about so many things. And then one day, it all became crystal clear. The problem was I couldn’t do much about it.”
Damnit, I hated the way she talked in fucking riddles. I wanted to tell her to just shut up and forget explaining anything. It wasn’t worth it trying to decipher what she meant if these were going to be my last minutes alive.
But she continued to talk.
“Then I found out I wasn’t the only one. At first, I was happy. I’d always hated being an only child. I had these fantasies that when I finally found her we’d be like best friends. You know, because we had a shared history. But then I found out how much better it would be if I was an only child again.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” I asked, completely confused by her ramblings.
My question appeared to tear her out of a daydream, and she frowned at my interruption. “You, dear Jordan. You.”
“Me? Me what? I’m not an only child. I have a brother and sister, so whatever the hell you mean about the only child thing doesn’t have anything to do with me.”
“I always thought you’d be more like—” The sound of a door opening distracted her and for the first time her eyes flashed pure panic.
I turned to look toward where the sound came from and saw people I’d never seen before. Hailey took one look at them and turned to run, but the four men were on top of her in a flash before she could get away. I watched in absolute glee as they slammed her down and pinned her to the hard floor, thrilled Gage had figured out where I was and sent in the cavalry.
One of the men untied the ropes holding my wrists and ankles. Dressed in a dark suit, he wore a tie that reminded me of the expensive kind Nina bought for Tristan. He smiled down at me as I watched the scene in front of me unfold like a dream and said in a soothing voice, “Are you hurt?”
Shaking my head, I looked around him as the three other men dragged Hailey off kicking and screaming about who she was and how much trouble they’d be in. “I’m okay. Where’s Gage?”
The man looked down at me with a blank expression. “I don’t know, but when we get to the house, I’m sure all your questions will be answered. Do you need me to carry you, or can you walk?”
“I can walk,” I said as he helped me up from the chair. The house? Whose house? Was he talking about Nina and Tristan’s? Had they been a part of helping him find out where I was being held?
I had the sense the man guiding me out of the garage wasn’t going to tell me. All I knew was Gage had done exactly what he always promised to do. He’d protected me when I needed him most.
And as soon as I had the chance, I was going to show him just how much I appreciated that part of him.
* * *
Blinking, I slowly opened my eyes and as they adjusted to the light, I realized there was someone next to me. I sat up and saw I was on a bed surrounded by decorative pillows. Where was I and whose bed was this?
The room was huge, with high windows and deep red shades pulled halfway down. An enormous mahogany chest of drawers stood on the wall to the right of the bed and on the wall in front of me sat a matching dresser. The bed was a four-poster like the kind that would have a canopy I always wanted when I was a little girl.
Looking to the side, I saw an older woman smiling down at me. She had a grandmotherly look with her grey hair up in a bun. She wore glasses that accentuated the lines near her eyes and gave her a wise look.
“Good afternoon, dear. My name is Helen and I’m just making sure that nothing serious happened to that pretty head of yours. If it doesn’t seem crass, I would love to know what conditioner you use sometime. Your hair is just stunning,” she said with a genuine smile I liked.
Her comment may have been bizarre, but after all that I’d been through, I had to smile. “It’s an argan oil based conditioner. I guess it does what it promises.”
“Argan oil? I’ll have to get some. Now you just stay here and rest. It doesn’t look like they did anything serious harm when they got you. You’re safe now.”
The way she said that, so comforting and gentle, made me believe her for a moment. However, that same sense of foreboding I’d had for days came rushing back.
“Where am I? Why hasn’t Gage come to see me yet? What’s going on here?”
“You’re in my home in the beautiful city of Austin,” a male’s voice said from the doorway to my left. I turned my head to look at him and recognized him immediately.
“I’m Dalton Spear, but judging by the look on your face, you already know that,” he said as he moved closer.
“No, don’t take another step,” I said as I pushed myself back on the bed toward the nightstand to grab the lamp. “You think I don’t know that it’s your fiancé who’s been trying to kill me? I don’t know what you have against me, but I swear to God you take one step closer and I’ll crush your skull with this lamp.” Hopefully, my strong words would somehow get me out of whatever new and hellish situation I found myself in.
“Jordan, please, I only just found out what Hailey was doing. I put an end to it. Helen was right, you’re safe here. When I received word that Hailey was doing these despicable things, I made sure it all ended,” Dalton replied with a pleading tone.
Something about the pain in his eyes and his body language told me he wasn’t lying. I looked to Helen for confirmation, hoping she really was the grandmotherly type and not just another person I had to fear.
“He’s telling the truth, dear,” she said with a smile. “I promise you’re safe here.”
“I want to see Gage now. Where is he?”
Dalton smiled and shook his head. “I don’t know. Hailey won’t say where she sent him. I’m sorry.”
Unable to stop the tears from coming, I buried my head in my hands and sobbed, “Did she kill him? Is that what happened?”
“I don’t know. I wish I did. For now, I hope you’ll come with me. There’s someone who wants to speak to you.”
Someone who wanted to speak to me? Who?
I lifted my head and dried my eyes. “If you’re talking about that crazy bitch you’re planning on marrying, forget it. I have nothing more to say to her.”
He shook his head again and sighed. “No, it’s not Hailey. I’m getting tired, so I have to sit down. I hope you’ll come and join me. I think it’s time we all talked.”
“We all who?” I asked, but he ignored my question and simply turned slowly toward the door before leaving.
Helen gently pried the lamp from my hands and placed it back on the nightstand. “I hope you’ll do as he asks, but whatever you do, I’m glad I got to meet you, Jordan. You’re quite the young lady, and if I do say so myself, you remind me of me when I was your age.”
She didn’t stay long enough for me to even say thank you for taking care of me. Left alone in a strange bedroom not knowing where Gage was or even if he was okay, I sat there on the bed and hun
g my head. I had no idea how I’d get home or even why I was there in Dalton Spear’s home. Looking around the room, I saw no phone I could use to call Nina either.
I didn’t have a choice. Whether I wanted to or not, I had to talk to him and whoever he had waiting for me. Since I had likely lost everything I loved already, why not?
Chapter Twenty
Jordan
I followed him to a room down the hallway and saw it was a sitting room of some kind. Much brighter than the bedroom I’d been in, it was decorated in pale blue and white and had a soothing feel to it. I just hoped this conversation he wanted to have would be as relaxing because I didn’t need any more horror added to the nightmare my life had become.
Dalton sat in a high-backed dark blue chair and motioned for me to sit on a white couch across from him. I took my place there and wondered who would be sitting in the matching chair next to him.
“So who is this person you want to join us and what are we talking about?” I asked sharply as I scanned the room, feeling on edge and worried that at any moment Hailey might jump out from behind the door.
“It’s me, honey,” I heard a familiar voice say and saw my mother step out from next to a bookcase.
“Mom, what are doing here? Did Gage send you? What’s going on? Nobody here will tell me anything.”
My mother sat in the chair next to Dalton and folded her hands in her lap. I’d seen her do that exact motion every time in my life when she had something she had to say that I wouldn’t like. The day we found out my grandfather was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. The time when my sister broke my favorite necklace trying to walk her turtle. Every time she disliked one of my boyfriends.
“Honey, we need to talk to you about something. I want you to try to understand. Sometimes people do things they later wish they hadn’t. Do you know what I mean?”
I looked from her to the man sitting next to her and back to my mother again. “Yeah, I guess. I mean, okay. What’s going on here? How do you know this person? I’ve never heard you or Dad talk about knowing one of the richest men in America. That seems like something I would have heard before now.”
Dalton cleared his throat. “I’ve known your mother for years. Twenty-six, I believe.”
I stared at him in complete confusion. “You’ve known my mother since before I was born, and I’ve never heard of you, not even once?” Turning to look at my mother, I asked, “What is this? Mom?”
“Honey, I’m sorry. We should have told you years ago. I thought about telling you, but I didn’t want things to be confusing for you. Dalton is your father.”
I shook my head violently, hoping I could get rid of the words sinking into my brain. “John Wright is my father. Why would you say this man is my father?”
“Because I am, Jordan. John Wright is the man who raised you and clearly did a good job, along with your mother, but I’m your father,” Dalton said in a low voice barely above a whisper.
I fought to stop the tears, but they came in a rush, spilling down my cheeks. “How? What do you mean you’re my father? Mom, tell me what he’s talking about.”
My mother pressed her lips together and then began to explain the truth of who I was. “Jordan, we were both very young. Too young, I guess. Things were so different then. We were different people. When I found out I was pregnant, I knew that wasn’t what Dalton wanted for his life.”
“Don’t make excuses for me, Michelle. She deserves to know the truth.”
Jerking my head to look at him, I asked, “What excuses? What truth other than the fact that you’re my father and I’ve never met you before today?”
Dalton frowned and cleared his throat again. “I was a spoiled rich punk. There’s no other way to describe who I was back then. My family had money, and I had anything and anyone I wanted. Your mother and I dated when I was in college, but when she told me she was pregnant, I told her I wanted nothing to do with a baby. I’m sorry, Jordan. I was selfish.”
My chest felt like someone had just placed a hundred pound weight on it. “So you didn’t even want to know I existed?”
Reaching across the coffee table, my mother took my hands in hers. “It wasn’t like that, honey. He had a life and that didn’t include a child. I accepted that, and when I met your father, he loved you from the first time he held you in his arms, so I didn’t worry about you not having Dalton in your life.”
I pulled my hands from her hold and wrapped my arms around me. “So you never once even thought about me? You got my mother pregnant and never bothered to even find out what your child was like?”
Shaking his head, Dalton answered, “Not until a few years ago when your mother let me know you wanted to go to school in New York and asked me to help.”
“Is this true, Mom? You never told me about him, and then you took his money to pay for my school?”
I’d always wondered how my parents, who were typical middle class, could afford to send me to school in New York and pay for my room and board too. God, I’d been so blind!
She sat back, her shoulders sagging. “You had your heart set on that school, and I didn’t want to see you disappointed, so I contacted Dalton and asked him to help your father and me pay for it.”
“How could you lie to me all my life? And how could a man have a child out in the world and never even want to see her? Jesus Christ, I’m the product of a liar and a heartless bastard!”
“Jordan!” my mother shrieked.
“Don’t talk about your mother like that,” Dalton said, coming to my mother’s defense. “I gave her little choice but to lie.”
I stood from the couch and began pacing in front of them. “Oh, okay. So I’m just the daughter of a heartless bastard. That’s great. All my life I thought I was the oldest child of John and Michelle Wright and loved, and now I find out that I’m the daughter of some guy who didn’t want to do the right thing and marry a woman like my mother but is the fiancé of a woman who has been trying to kill me. You sure do have some great choices going there, Dad.”
“Dalton, what is she talking about? Do you know who has been trying hurt our daughter?”
I stopped and waited for his answer. “Yeah, tell my mother how Hailey, your bride-to-be has been chasing me across the country to kill me. At least now I know why. She certainly wouldn’t want some long-lost heir popping up now that you’re dying. Dear Hailey is nothing if not a gold digger. I mean, she’s barely older than me and she’s got her mitts on a man twice her age.”
Dalton raised his eyebrows in surprise at my outburst, but he knew I was right. And then he spoke, and I found out I’d been so off the mark about that crazy bitch.
“I asked Hailey to marry me. That’s true. I had just found out I had stage four cancer, and she was kind to me. Call it a foolish act by a dying man. I knew next to nothing about her, except that she appeared one day as a nurse sent by the agency. I had no other family to rely on, so I put some of the business in her name to help her take care of things. After all, she was going to inherit it when I died anyway.”
He stopped for a moment to take a breath and then continued. “I didn’t find out until recently that she’d been stealing from me to the tune of nearly a million dollars or that she wasn’t just some nice young woman who cared for a dying man. I guess I should be thankful that my illness made having a physical relationship impossible because she’s my daughter just like you are.”
My mouth dropped, and I stood there staring at him stunned by what I’d just heard. “So she’s not a gold digging woman but another child of yours? How many of us are there and will they all be trying to kill me?”
His eyebrows shot up again, but this time he smiled. “I wish I had met you before this, Jordan. You’re exactly the kind of person I can respect. To answer your question, I only have two children, you and Hailey. Now that she’s going to jail, you won’t have to worry about her anymore.”
All I could do was shake my head. What had happened to little old me, the elementary schoo
l teacher who just wanted a life with the man I loved and a few nice things to go with it?
“I understand if you can’t forgive me, though. I am truly sorry all of this happened.”
I took a deep breath and tried to get my head around everything that had happened. “So you had nothing to do with why she was trying to kill me? I thought you did.”
“No, I wouldn’t do that, Jordan. I’ve been a son of a bitch all my life, but I never knew what she was doing.”
“Hailey and Justin forced me to marry him in South Carolina and sign a document I’m sure was meant to make sure I had no right to anything of yours. I don’t want to be married to him. If you’re really wanting to make this right, help me get out of that.”
His face lit up. “My lawyers will have that document torn up in one court date. Don’t worry about that at all. I am sorry about all of this, Jordan. I wish I had known all these years what I was missing. From what your mother’s told me, your father provided for you and gave you love. I know I can’t make up for what I did and not being around all those years, but I can do what I’m good at in the little time I have left.”
It was hard to stay angry at the man. I wasn’t ready to start doing father-daughter brunches together, but he really did seem sorry. If my mother had been able to forgive him, maybe I could too. I’d have to forgive her as well, but somehow that felt easier. My parents had lied, that was true, but they had also been damn good parents and that had to count for something.
His cell phone rang and after he listened to the caller say something in his ear, he said, “I’d like for you to see something. I think it will make you feel much better. Come with me.”
My mother took my hand and smiled as we followed him out into the hallway to a grand staircase. At the bottom of the stairs, one of Dalton’s servants was opening the door for the police.
