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I’ve done part of that, Devon. I found someone who needed me, but it wasn’t Eric. Her name is Lucy. She’s Eric’s stepdaughter. I need you to keep her safe for me. She has no one left…Eric took her mother from her. Worse yet, Lucy witnessed it and she’s suffering.
He’ll kill her if he finds out she knows the truth about how her mother really died. I took her to protect her, but if you’re reading this letter, I’ve failed. I can only hope Lucy got away. You need to find her, Devon. Please. Take care of her. The enclosed phone belongs to Lucy – she was able to record her mother’s death with it. Use it to prove to the world Eric isn’t the hero they believe him to be. Set Lucy free from the fear of being hunted.
If you can’t get the phone fixed, there’s evidence of Eric’s crimes in my safe deposit box at Meridian Bank – it’s a few miles from my hospital. I put you down as an authorized user of the box so they will give you the key when you show them proof of who you are.
Devon, the stuff you’ll see and hear in that box…just remember that he can’t hurt me ever again. And know that I was working to get free…to come home to all of you. To tell you how sorry I was for choosing him over you. I know now that it never should have been a choice. I deserved to be with someone who would have loved my family as much as me.
Tell Mom and Dad that I’ll never forget what they did for me and that I will always be with them. Tell Garrett and Eden I’ll be watching over them as they start their own families. And to you my brother, thank you for taking on this final burden for me…I was the luckiest little boy to have had you for a big brother. I know you’ll be strong for our family as they try to get through this. And know that I’ll be watching over you too…I’m strong enough to do that now.
Take care of Lucy.
I love you all very much.
Ethan.
I watched as Ethan’s eyes shifted from the letter to me and back again. I’d read the damn thing three times already after I’d managed to coerce Devon into letting me look at it while he called his family. I’d been so disturbed after reading it for the first time that I’d had to find Ethan just to reassure myself he was okay. That had been thirty minutes ago.
It shouldn’t have surprised me that he’d fallen asleep because as far as he’d come in the last two weeks, he was still struggling with his injuries. He moved easier and faster, but he tired easy and I often saw him flinching in pain if he turned or stepped wrong. His bruises had finally started to lighten and fade, but I still didn’t really know what he actually looked like in person. I’d been so desperate to know what his face would look like without all the swelling and bruising that I’d actually gone online after he’d told me, Ronan and Phoenix his story just so I could look at his picture.
I’d already thought him beautiful, but the picture had confirmed it. The fact that I’d even thought of him that way was eating at something inside of me. I’d passed off my attraction to him as some strange fluke, but I knew it was bullshit. I was attracted to him.
Desperately so.
But it wasn’t just his physical appearance that was drawing me in like a moth to a flame. His strength, his kindness, his ability to trust after everything he’d been through…his ability to trust me did something to me on a level I couldn’t explain.
It had been brutal to watch him with that little bag of potato chips on the plane. I felt like I’d been given a glimpse of what Ethan was truly running from. The psychological damage Eric had inflicted upon him was so much worse than the bruises that would eventually heal.
I wasn’t sure what had possessed me to tell him the truth about my own parents. Maybe it was because early on when I’d first encountered him in that cabin, I had subconsciously been comparing him to my mother. Like Ethan, my mother had been well-educated with a good paying job when she’d married my father. I had no doubt that my father’s abuse had begun early with my mother, but for whatever reason, she’d never left him. Not even after bringing five children into the world who’d had to helplessly watch their mother endure the most brutal of beatings along with the declarations of love that always followed. But unlike Ethan, my mother hadn’t stood up for her children when the time had come.
