Page 99 of Bound

“So they let you out…and you made no efforts to contact Tait at that time?”

Luna nailed him with her crossbow-tossing glare again. “I said they let me out of the box. Not anything else.”

Brick pivoted, purposely setting up his stance like a symbolic bridge. “Prisoners have to be grateful for mercy, in any small way they get it.”

Luna sent him a thankful nod before going on. “After a couple of weeks, they finally trusted me with a smart pad. Everything was blocked except for internet searches and some lame games. You want to know how strange it is to read about your own death between Google hits for Seattle’s best Italian restaurants and that girl from the wizard movie with the crazy glasses?”

“Rahmié Creacu.” Once more, Jayd’s rasp felt like the flow of warm compassion that the air needed. “I cannot imagine…”

“Well, I can,” Ethan objected. “But what I don’t get is why.” With Brick’s and Z’s nods of support this time, he drove an intense scrutiny into Luna. “These douche nozzles went through a lot of effort to keep you alive and reined in. For what?”

Luna’s demeanor straightened. She actually seemed grateful for the questioning now. “For keeping my mother in line.”

“Your mother?” Z demanded. “You mean the one who is also supposed to be dead?”

“Along with my father, yes,” she said. “Darlene and Owen Lawrence. My loving ‘parents.’” She air-quoted the word with hard finger stabs. “Their names are even on my birth certificate.”

“But they are not your maimanne and paipanne?” Jayd queried.

“Not according to the woman to whom I was finally introduced.” She stuck out her arm and swiped at the digital watch on her wrist. After two determined taps, a photo took up the screen. One swipe later, the device blasted the image onto the cave’s wall.

The photo of a semi-smiling Luna, her arms draped around a woman who could nearly be her sister.

“Damn.” Ethan and Brick muttered it together.

“What the hell do they put into the water around here?” Zeke added.

Luna rocked back, emulating her expression from the photo. “My maimanne is pretty awesome.”

“And…familiar.” Though a stitch in Jayd’s side broke up her voice, she was confident about the assertion. After an unsuccessful attempt to push to her feet, she stated, “She seems so familiar to me…but I cannot recall… Oh!”

The burst spilled from her as soon as Luna swiped her watch again.

There was another image of the dark-haired beauty who’d just been smiling in her daughter’s arms.

The woman was younger in the second shot. She was also standing by the side of an elegantly attired royal. After a few moments, Brick recognized the woman in the ornate clothes and sparkling tiara.

Queen Xaria.

With a somber look, Luna tapped her watch to kill the picture on the wall. With the same demeanor, she turned to fully face Jayd. “My mother, Elarah Lawke, was your mother’s closest confidante for years.”

At once, Jayd compressed her lips. Darkened her gaze. Dropped her hands into taut balls. “And the bitch who sold those tapes to Fortin and Trystan.”

Luna hiked up her chin. “No. The woman who was blackmailed into giving the tapes over—on top of other palais secrets those cocksuckers ordered her to fetch for them over the years.”

Jayd spurted a sound that started as a bitter laugh but ended as an agonized grimace. Again, Brick winced along with her. All of her actions and reactions were evidence of at least one cracked rib, but her pain billowed from deeper places right now. Places reflected in every new clutch in her throat and hitch of her shallow breaths.

“Why do I find it impossible to believe a word of that?” she finally spat.

“And why do I believe every last syllable?” Ethan said.

“Yeah,” Zeke uttered. “Me too.”

As they rendered the conclusions, Brick carefully watched Jayd.

She wasn’t happy, that much was clear. But her composure, regal and guarded, gave him hope that his tongue wouldn’t be ripped out when he offered his own take.

“She was blackmailed,” he reiterated. “And it worked—because you were the assholes’ bargaining chip.” He knew he’d hit the truth gong before watching it reverberate across Luna’s face. “They were likely watching you for years, probably as far back as your romps with dickwads like King and Mua—”