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“That’s your mother’s last name. Her real last name. And your grandfather, he’s still alive. And he’s still looking for you.”
“What?”
“Your father has been lying to you all your life. He’s kept you away from your family. Told you they’re dead when they’ve never stopped looking for you.”
I drop to a seat on the edge of the bed.
“I mean, can we even be sure you’re his at this point?” he asks.
My head is spinning, and I barely notice Ethan bending down in front of me, forcing my feet into thetoo small shoes. My father kidnapped my mother? They were in love. Those are the stories I know. I have family, a grandfather who is alive? No. I don’t believe it.
“I’m sorry, babe. I promise to take you to meet them very soon.”
“Them?”
He pulls me to my feet, grips my arm hard and walks me out of the hotel suite. We have to walk slowly, and I can see he’s getting annoyed, but it can’t be helped. We don’t take the main elevator though. Instead, we get into a service elevator at the end of the hall that someone is holding for us.
“This can’t be right. I don’t understand.” My world is coming apart. First Silas, the house, then Ethan and the Foxes, and now this? My father lied to me about, well, everything? “Let me go, Ethan. Let me go.”
“I don’t think so,” he says, passing me off to one of the guards riding down with us as he pulls a syringe out of the breast pocket of his jacket.
“What the hell is that for?” I fight against the guard, whose grip is vise-like around my arms.
Ethan takes off the lid and makes a show of pressing some of the liquid out of the barrel. “It’ll make you more pliable. We need to get to the church. Choice is yours. Are you walking in or is he carrying you in?” He gestures to the giant at my back.
“I need to think. I can’t?—”
“Bring her,” he tells the guard whose grip tightens.
“No!” I’m struggling but I know just how limited my options are. “I’ll come. Put it away.”
“Good girl.” He pops the lid back on the syringe and makes sure I see he has more than one in his pocket. Not that he needs any of them. He can easily overpower me on his own, and he’s not on his own.
“Are you lying about my dad, Ethan?” I ask him as the elevator doors slide open. The man still has hold of me.
“Why would I lie about this?” His gaze moves over my face, my hair. “I fucking hate your hair like this. You know that, right?”
“My hair? You’re worried about my hair?”
“I don’t know why you taunt me.”
We walk out onto the loading dock of the hotel as a limousine pulls up. Ethan strolls confidently ahead of us as someone in the passenger seat climbs out and opens the back door.
“In,” Ethan says to me.
I peer inside, seeing a pair of legs in dark slacks. I look up at Ethan, very aware of the firm grip on my arms, the wall of the man at my back.
“Who’s in there?”
He doesn’t answer, instead, he gestures to the man who gives me a little nudge. I climb into the car before he can push me in because he will. There, in the seat facing mine, sits a man. He looks to be in his late forties. He watches me, his face impassive, unreadable, but also strangely familiar.
“Ethan?” I turn to climb out, but Ethan forces me back in as he enters.
“Chandler,” he says to the man as the door closes.
The man, Chandler, simply nods in greeting, never once taking his eyes off me. And his eyes, I know them. I see a gentler, paler reflection of them every time I look in a mirror.
“So this is my sister’s long lost Ophelia.” He draws my name out, rolling it around in his mouth. Testing it. Not liking it. He takes a deep breath in, cocks his head.
