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“As we all are. Who would want to kill Stefan? And why did Stefan suddenly wish to bring Harlee out in the open when he had hidden her for so many years?”
Harlee wished she knew the answers to all these questions, or at least knew who the real daughter of Stefan and Amelia was. She felt guilty for perpetrating such a fraud on these people, but what choice did she have? As an agent for the government, she was duty bound to do her job, which meant gathering information on the lycans and vampires. Still, she couldn’t help the discomfort that accompanied her lies.
“Would this beauty be my cousin?”
Harlee peered around Adrian and Duncan to see a mirror image of Lester, only much younger.
“Harlee, this is my son, William. Your cousin.”
Harlee stood and William came over to embrace her. “Welcome to the clan, Harlee.”
“Thank you. This is all a bit strange.”
He grinned and the room lit up. The man was extremely handsome. “I’ll bet it is. I can’t even imagine having your entire world changed in the blink of an eye. Can’t be easy for you.”
William was as warm and welcoming as Lester, making her feel relaxed and comfortable. “It hasn’t been, but I’m trying to adjust.”
“We’ll try to make it easier for you,” William said. “I don’t have brothers, sisters or any cousins, so you’re the first for me. I’ll just think of you as a sister,” he said with a grin and a wink, then kissed her hand.
Harlee caught Adrian’s rolling eyes and Duncan’s glare. Clearly something about William bothered them. Either that or they were both jealous that she was getting attention from another man, even if that man was her “cousin”.
Something about that thought made her smile.
“Let me show you your father’s rooms,” Lester suggested, standing and reaching for her hand.
Harlee stood and walked with him down the hallway and up a staircase that led to a private suite. Within it was a separate apartment that Lester explained belonged to Stefan. Harlee wandered around the expansive rooms, absorbing the quiet of the wood floors, the excellent taste in art work and furnishings that Stefan collected. When she wandered into a study, she was drawn to a framed picture on the uncluttered desk. She picked up the picture of a woman who looked very much like her.
“That’s your mother,” Lester said.
The picture was similar to the one Robert had showed her earlier. Again that strange pang of loss, of memory, of seeing a picture of someone who looked so much like her it was uncanny. This whole story couldn’t be true, could it? Wouldn’t she somehow have known it, felt…different? She traced the figure of the young woman in jeans and a long man’s shirt, her hair unbound and flying in the breeze of night. She appeared to be standing on a balcony.
“It was taken when she and Stefan ran off together. It’s the only memory he had of her, other than a few things he kept in a locked box here.” Lester took a box out of a desk drawer and handed it to her. Inside were bundled letters, now yellowed and tied with a ribbon. She ran her hand over the letters and looked up at Lester.
“Stefan and Amelia wrote poems to each other,” he said, smiling. “The box also contains her hairbrush and a few of her other personal things. The box is yours now. You’re Amelia’s daughter and I’m sure he’d have wanted you to have it.”
Harlee placed the letters back in the box and closed it, feeling the urge to shove it back in Lester’s hands, knowing she had no right to these things. Intimate things between two lovers whose time had been cut all too short.
“Thank you,” she whispered, feeling guilty again for letting him believe she was Stefan’s daughter. These lies were getting harder and harder every step of the way.
“These mementos were all he had left of her. Other than knowing you were out there, of course.”
She stared at the picture of Amelia. The photograph mesmerized her, filling her with questions she wasn’t certain she wanted answers to. She placed the picture back on the desk and wandered around the room, trying to shake off the feeling of melancholy.
“That’s a picture of my father and your father,” William said, pointing to a painting over the fireplace.
The painting showed two young men, very similar in appearance, dressed in vintage clothing and standing in front of what looked like a castle. Had to be somewhere in Europe. Harlee stared at the painting, easily differentiating Stefan from Lester. Again, that feeling of familiarity struck her as she looked at some of Stefan’s features.
They had the same chin. Or was she just imagining the resemblance between her and Stefan and Amelia? Had this whole thing taken on some kind of dream-like fantasy?
Shaking off her ridiculous thoughts, Harlee moved around the apartment. When she reached for a door handle down the hall, Duncan’s hand covered hers.
“That’s Stefan’s bedroom.”
“So?”
“He was murdered in there.”
“I want to see.” She didn’t know why, but it had suddenly become important for her to know what had happened to him.
