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“You know about his adoption?” Her lips part, letting the tears stream inside her mouth. “Don’t tell me you shadowed his life all this time?”
“No, of course not. I’ve never met him, but after I heard about the incident, your father and I asked Rai to find him a better home. Her sister does a lot of social work and she agreed to sponsor him. He was soon adopted by European parents and left the States.”
I was glad the innocent boy would have a better life and that the nightmare was finally out of our lives. I never liked the media play I later found out that Adrian had conducted, or the way he dragged Richard and his family through the mud because he considered death by so many stabs was too little of a punishment.
I just never thought those European parents were actually English and that we’d send our daughter straight into the boy’s path.
“He must’ve found out the truth,” Anni whispers, her voice spooked. “That’s why he’s been ignoring my texts.”
“There’s no way for him to know,” I soothe. “This event is a mystery to everyone except for our family. Even his adoptive parents weren’t given the full recounting of events, and from what Rai disclosed about them, they’re people of great status and wanted to erase that part of his origin. I doubt they would tell him anything.”
“But he has to know. He’s been searching for the truth for so long.”
“You will not meet with him, Annika.” Adrian slides into the frame again. “It’s dangerous.”
“But—”
“No buts. We’ll see you back home in a few days.”
And then he ends the call.
“I didn’t finish talking with her,” I protest, dabbing at my eyes with the back of my hand.
“Anything you offer her would be an excuse that she won’t understand in her current state. She needs time to process what she’s learned, and hopefully, she’ll come to the logical conclusion that whatever she had with the boy is ill-fated.”
“The boy had nothing to do with what his father did. He was only a toddler back then.”
“No, he didn’t, but the truth remains that I was the one behind his parents’ deaths and his family’s demise. He’ll only look at Annika as my daughter, and I will not allow him to put her through such torture.”
“She’ll hate us…”
My husband’s large hand cradles my cheek and he strokes gently, causing tiny shock waves to erupt on my skin. “A few years down the line, she’ll know we did this to protect her.”
But at what price?
Adrian has always been methodical and solution-oriented, so he doesn’t care much about feelings, but I do.
And I know, I just know that we might have accidentally killed a part of Anni that we’ll never be able to get back.
28
CREIGHTON
There was a plan all along.
The universe’s.
My parents’.
Landon’s.
Everyone had a course of life and a path to follow from the beginning.
The universe decided my biological parents didn’t deserve to live and destroyed my life in retrospect.
Mum and Dad thought any information about my past was unnecessary so they went to immaculate lengths to hide it from me.
Landon needed me as his instigator of chaos, the variable that he used to have the Heathens and Serpents clash without getting the Elites involved, so he withheld information.
