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Leonardo stared at me for several heartbeats, his face a haunting mask of grief. “I was not the one who killed your mother.”
I wasn’t sure what to make of that. Yes, the situation had seemed a little odd. He’d remained with the body, been arrested without a fight, and had never said a word about that night since. Was it possible he was telling the truth?
I tightened my grip on the phone, staring the man dead in the eye. “Explain.”
He glanced around, then leaned closer, even though thick glass separated us. His voice was low when he spoke again, his pain reflecting in his eyes. “You have to understand, I’ve never told another soul about that night. I had no plans of saying anything today, either, until I saw your face and figured out exactly who you were.”
I didn’t say anything, not wanting to stop him if was ready to spill his long-held secrets.
“Your mother and I…our relationship was complicated.”
“Relationship?”
He nodded. “I cared deeply for her. While I wasn’t the one who killed her, she was killed because of me. If I’d never met her, it never would have happened, so…in a way, I am responsible for her death.”
I glanced over my shoulder at Evan. Even from five feet away, I knew he could hear the conversation thanks to his heightened shifter senses. His jaw was tight, his eyes fixed on me, ready to swoop me out of there the minute I gave the sign. But I was here for answers, so I turned back around and faced Leonardo head-on.
“How did you know my mother?”
He sighed. “It was pure happenstance. A random meeting at a bar. But I was immediately taken with her. It didn’t take long for me to fall hard.” He cleared his throat. “Before I met her, I’d heard about some deals going on. Super shady, super lucrative. That was what I was about in those days. Anything was on the table for the right price.”
I thought I saw a flash of regret on his face, but I couldn’t be sure.
“When your mother found out what I was into, she freaked out and told me I was going to end up getting myself killed if I wasn’t careful. Somehow, she managed to convince me to stop, to get out.” He gave me a wry grin. “I would have done anything for that woman.”
I wrinkled my nose, not able to understand how he was so devoted to my mother, a woman who had always only cared about herself. “What were you doing?”
He looked me dead in the eye, not even a hitch in his voice when he said, “I was hunting down humans who carried shifter genes.”
My blood turned to ice in my veins, and I felt Evan’s dragon surge forth. When I looked back at him again, his eyes were pure gold, his jaw ticking. He looked like he wanted to scoop me up and get me out of here as fast as possible. Part of me wanted him to. This man…he’d been hunting people like me.
“I swear to you, I didn’t know about you when I first started dating your mother. I had no idea she even had a child.”
No surprise there, but it still seemed too farfetched. Too much of a coincidence.
“I don’t know that I believe you.” I was impressed at the steady, steely tone of my voice, when part of me felt like I might lose my composure at any second.
“You don’t have to believe me, but this is the truth. Once I found out about you, I didn’t think much of it. Not until she began speaking of your father one night when I asked about her past. You see, she knew I was a shifter, and I suppose she thought I might be interested in her story. She told me your father had descended from a shifter. Someone in his family from several generations back.”
I closed my eyes. So, she knew. My mother had been aware of my father’s heritage. My heritage.
Tomas hadn’t been lying about that.
“He’d been fascinated with shifters, it seemed,” Leonardo continued, his gaze fixed on me. “Hated that he wasn’t one when it once ran in his family’s blood. According to your mother, he’d been willing to do anything to become a shifter. He’d even known a man who was talking about a serum that could turn the common man into one.”
Nausea welled in my stomach. I shook my head, not wanting to believe what I was hearing. I’d been just shy of ten when my mother disappeared for the last time. If Leonardo was talking about Tomas—and who else could he be talking about?—then this scheme had been in the works for decades.
“Your father was willing to give up everything he had for this serum. That’s how desperate he was to become a shifter. He bankrupted his family, lost everything in pursuit of it. Ultimately even his life.”
“This… man,” I said tentatively. “With the serum. Do you know anything about it?”
“I know he believed it could be achieved if they found a human with dormant shifter DNA. He was looking for people like that, to use their blood to make the serum. Your father would’ve been a good candidate.”
I felt a sense of urgency radiating out of Evan, and my fingers gripped the phone tightly as I asked the question I knew was burning inside of him.
“Why should we believe you? No one has ever heard of a shifter and human having children. It shouldn’t be possible.”
“And yet here you are.” There was a question in his voice, and curiosity in his eyes. All the things he was saying, all the things he knew… there was no way it could line up unless it was true.
