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She held up the slip of paper. “Have you seen this?”
“No.”
“Would you like to?” she invited huskily.
“I don’t need to.” A choked sob seemed to catch in his throat, deep grooves etched into his cheeks. “There were no clear photographs of you available when I gathered the security information on you. If there had been, maybe I would have realized sooner… You look so much like Beth that I… You’re my daughter.” His voice quivered with emotion. “You’re my Emily. I have no idea how you’re here, alive and so, so beautiful, but I know without a doubt that you’re my daughter.”
Her real name was Emily? Emily Wynter?
It didn’t seem possible.
It felt unreal.
Surreal.
Even though she was holding the DNA evidence in her hand.
Mia turned to Darius. “Did you know about any of this?”
“Absolutely not.” His arm tightened about her shoulders. “I would never have let you walk into an ambush.” He glared his displeasure at Nikolai.
Who looked totally unperturbed by both the verbal and visual admonishment. “Once I had my suspicions and the evidence confirmed them, I thought the best way to deal with this was to—how do they phrase it?—tear off the Band-Aid as quickly as possible. From the moment I met Mia, I knew she looked familiar to me, and yet I had never met her before. It’s the unusual color of her eyes, of course…”
“What about them?” Mia raised a self-conscious hand to place her fingers above her cheekbones.
He turned to Rufus Wynter. “Could you step forward and remove your sunglasses, please?”
The man did so, placing them in the breast pocket of his jacket, the paleness of his gaze remaining fixed on Mia as he slowly approached her. As if he was afraid she might disappear if he moved too quickly.
Mia’s breath became lodged in her throat once he was close enough for her to be able to see his eyes clearly. They were an exact match for her own: that same unusual green with a turquoise ring about the iris.
Because Rufus Wynter was her father?
The piece of paper in her hand said that he was, yes.
She leaned heavily against Darius before lifting her chin. “If all of this is true, why did you abandon me when I was six months old?”
“I didn’t!” Rufus choked, tears starting to fall silently down his cheeks. “I would never have done that. Never! Nor would your mother. We both loved you very much.”
“Then where is she?”
His throat moved as he swallowed. “She died twenty years ago. In a car accident. You were in the car with her. I thought—we all thought you had died too.”
“YouthoughtI was dead?” she accused incredulously. “Shouldn’t my body have been in the car if that was the case?”
“Mia,” Nikolai admonished gently, waiting until she had turned a glare on him before continuing. “Elizabeth Wynter’s car was involved in a multiple-vehicle crash on a motorway. The car in front of her crashed into an oil tanker that had skidded across all the carriageways. Three more cars were involved before the traffic managed to stop. One of the cars must have pierced the barrel of the tanker, because when one of the vehicles caught fire, it blew up the oil tanker too, engulfing all the vehicles in white-hot flames. None of the fire engines could get close enough to do anything but contain the fire and wait for it to burn itself out. Afterward, they discovered the body of the tanker driver and those traveling inside the immediate cars had been more or less vaporized by the intensity of the heat. You set out in the car with your mother that day, and so it was presumed by the police and Rufus that you had died too.”
“For twenty years, I’ve believed that’s what happened,” Rufus groaned achingly.
Mia gave a puzzled shake of her head. “But how did I survive?”
“I have no idea how you’re now standing in front of me, alive and so like your beautiful mother. My Beth.” His voice broke. “Right now, I don’t care how it happened,” he added strongly. “All I know is you’re here, you’re alive and safe, and that’s all that matters.”
Mia stared at him, unable to believe… Unable to comprehend…
* * *
Darius swung Mia up into his arms as she swayed. “I hope you’re satisfied, you fucking drama queen,” he told Nikolai accusingly as he carried Mia across the room to sit on the sofa with her seated on his thighs. “You couldn’t call and give me a heads-up, could you. Oh no, that’s beneath the arrogant Nikolai Volkov. Instead, you decided to just stride in here and shock the shite out of everyone, Mia especially.” He looked up at Rufus. “If all of this is true…?”
