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It's time.
Darren looks emotional, and I can see he struggles to find strength for this complicated conversation. But I have no sympathy left in me. It has been sucked out of me too. The negotiations with Lester and their attempt to block me from exchanging myself for Cassandra and the twins wiped me clean.
“You should start from the beginning, Darren. When your brother betrayed his little baby boy.” I try to make it easy for him, and by the way his face pales it makes me believe he didn’t expect me to know the truth. And it bothers him to speak about it.
“He told you . . .”
I nod, and he watches me with sympathy that I don’t need.
“Tell me how you saved us. How did you manage this enormous rescue mission?” If it would be this easy to hire military for such operations overseas, anyone could have done it, even me.
“Since we found you, we worked with several government agencies, trying to unravel Belington’s illegal operations. He was already on their radar, and since your father was involved with him, our family was also on their blacklist. I made a deal to help them to gather enough proof to seize Belington and unravel his network. It took us a decade and a half to get here.”
“All this time, you let me believe you were sleeping with the enemy.”
Darren sinks to the chair as if his legs are filled with lead, rubbing his tired face. For the first time, I notice his sunken eyes from stress and how much weight he lost. He looks old and drained.
“It wasn’t safe to tell you the truth, son. You were very angry in your teens, and later you grew to hate us. We couldn’t risk you doing something reckless and ruining it.”
“I resented you for not caring about what happened to me,” I point out.
“We needed him to trust us, to let us in on his operations,” he counters, and I try hard not to judge his decisions, but it weaves inside of me like venom. I see regret written all over him, digging into me. “After he killed our son, we needed to act quickly. It helped that Cassandra couldn’t remember the accident, just flashes of it. We buried the evidence and hoped Lester would forget about you. Except his hate ran way deeper than we thought.”
“He killed Logan because you took Mark, and he was his payment for allowing his wife to leave with your brother and ten million dollars,” Cassandra harshly reminds him, and Darren’s cheeks blaze, reacting to her accusations. “Eye for an eye, that’s what he told us.” A silent tear slides down his cheek as he no
ds, not negating her words.
“For some time, Lester didn’t show any interest in you, not until you two started working together. He couldn’t stand the thought of you being happy, or gaining more power.” He locks his gaze with mine. “It was only a question of when he’d try something like this. We needed him to believe we’d have no problem sacrificing any of you. It was the only way the agencies agreed to help us if we played him back. They needed evidence to put him in jail.”
Cassandra’s mom clasps a hand over her mouth to muffle the cries lodged deep in her throat. She didn’t know about this world and how perverted it is. Neither did her daughter.
“By allowing them to kidnap us?” Cassandra stares at Helen, who must have known this plan since she passed her a tracker just a day earlier. That’s how we knew where she was. “You knew he was watching you, and since you didn’t know who to trust, you seeded an idea that you resent me for surviving. You made me feel worthless, a toy to be paraded around. But to Mark, I was everything, and that sealed my fate.”
A strange look passes Darren’s eyes, but before I can decipher it, it disappears.
“Lester was so pleased with himself when he got me, my money, and my beloved woman. And when he made you betray us by saving your grandkids,” I utter in disbelief they actually didn’t, “he didn’t see that he was the one in the cobweb of your making.”
“I’m sorry for all that you went through, but this was inevitable. We couldn’t renegotiate the terms. We couldn’t tell you it was a trap. So, we planned for all the exit strategies and the abolishment of Lester’s reign instead.”
“What are we doing here?” I ask because Cassandra goes still and her fingers dig into the sofa, reacting to his statement. “We aren’t safe yet, are we?”
“Not until everyone’s charged and jailed for their crimes. For now, I want you to stay here until we know how successful this operation was. Your new IDs are arranged, as are your funds. No one will be the wiser to know what happened to you.”
We sit in heavy silence after we’re done talking, still coping with what they told us, still trying to wrap our minds around what almost ended in tragedy.
Cassandra springs to her feet. “I need some air.”
I find Lucas in the corner, separated from everyone else. His gray eyes catch mine, and I nod at him, grateful he was the one who stormed the island and brought us home.
~Cassandra~
I feel her presence before she sits next to me. “I don’t have a lot of energy to spare, Helen.”
“I know.”
“You believed in that lie.” I watch the trees slowly dance to the winds, bringing a sense of deceitful peace to my battered heart, choking inside my rib cage. “It wasn’t just an act.”
“Do you know how many times I wondered if you’ve never met, would he be alive?” She looks so regal, like a queen with righteousness as a cloak around her delicate shoulders.
