Page 341 of Romeo

That was the thing that broke me.

There had been a time when I waited for someone. After my parents died and the state couldn’t find any family, some part of me kept imagining they had simply missed somebody. An aunt who lived far away. A grandparent no one knew about. Someone who would eventually hear what happened, walk through a door, and say my name like they had been searching everywhere.

No one came.

Eventually I stopped waiting.

Except someone had been looking.

They were just looking for Kaitlyn Grace.

“I was right here,” I whispered, pressing my face into Jasper’s chest when the tears started again. “I wasn’t hiding. They just didn’t know Fiona existed.”

“I know, Cher.” Jasper held me tighter, his hand moving slowly over my back. He didn’t tell me Angel was my father now or that Banshee was suddenly family in some emotional way. He let me cry over the only thing I could understand. Someone had looked. Somehow, that mattered more than I had ever known it would.

When I could finally breathe again, I asked whether Angel and Banshee knew Carly had found me. Jasper told me no. He confessed that when King figured out we had disappeared, he’d chosen not to tell Angel or Banshee. He ordered Jasper to disappear with me until King told him it was safe to come home.

“If St. James learns Kaitlyn is alive and connects that name to you, she’ll think you’re Steele’s daughter. That could make you important to whatever the fuck she’s tryin’ to rebuild.”

“Why?”

Jasper took a deep breath. “Sylvia St. James was Steele’s aunt. She’s desperate for someone with her blood to take over the Society.”

“The SUV.”

Jasper nodded. “I still don’t know who was in it. I’m not gonna tell you it was Sylvia when I can’t prove that. Somebody followed us. That’s all I know.”

Oddly, the danger felt smaller than everything else.

I looked down at Granny’s ring again. My parents were still my parents. Granny was still Granny. Frank and Georgie were still my brothers. Nothing Jasper had told me changed the family I already had. It simply added people to a beginning I hadn’t known existed.

“I don’t know what they are to me,” I admitted.

Jasper kissed my temple. “You don’t have to figure that shit out today.”

For most of my childhood, someone else had decided what happened next. Social workers, foster parents, judges. This time, nobody was putting me in a room with strangers and announcing they were family because blood said so. King hadn’t called them. Jasper hadn’t called them. Everyone was waiting.

The choice was mine.

“Do you have pictures?” I asked.

“I can get them.”

My heart kicked harder. A photograph felt manageable. A photograph couldn’t call me daughter, niece, or sister before I knew whether I could hear those words without breaking apart again. “I want to see them,” I told Jasper. “But I don’t want them told yet. I’m not ready to talk to anyone.”

“Then nobody tells them.”

I leaned against my husband and closed my eyes while the bayou moved quietly beyond the screens. Kaitlyn Grace Ward still didn’t feel like my name. Fiona did. Fiona was the daughter my parents had wanted, the girl Granny chose, Frank and Georgie’s sister, Charlie’s aunt, and Jasper’s wife.

But somehow, Kaitlyn Ward didn’t feel like a stranger anymore either.

She was the baby Kaylah had named, the little sister Kyllian remembered, the daughter Angel had learned survived, and the niece Banshee was still trying to find.

I wasn’t ready for them to know their search was over.

But I wanted to see their faces.

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN