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“That’s right, Dad.Myworld. I don’t think it’s a secret any longer where I came from and what I am.”
“Wes would have found out eventually. Comes with the territory.”
“Why don’t you tell me a little bit about what happened to my real mother when you murdered her?” My lips thinned and I balled up my fists.
“That’s enough!” he roared, baring his teeth with a ferocious scowl. “Do you think I asked to take out a woman with a child? I never knew who my victims were until I arrived on their doorstep, and by then, it was too late to back out. I’ve never done a woman before or since. But don’t press your luck, because I just might decide a reunion is in order.”
I gasped.
Maizy’s expression was stoic, and it terrified me to see her withdrawing from reality.
“Get outside,” he said, pointing to the atrium.
“I’m going with you.”
“The hell you are. I don’t care if you are grown,” he said, actually unbuckling his belt like he was about to let me have it.
When it slid out of the loopholes of his pants, he expertly folded it with one hand.
“Think you scare me?”
His brow arched. “Maybe not, but I’ll sure scare the hell out of this one.” He gave Maizy a shake and I tethered the wolf in me from lunging—afraid I would hurt her inadvertently.
“Your own daughter?”
“She isn’t mine. No child of mine would ever steal from me.”
“Wes stole your alcohol all the time.”
Dad still got a facial tic when he was angry. “And my son isn’t here to defend himself and call you a liar, now is he?”
“What is this about?”
“The diamonds.”
I scratched the back of my neck and lowered my eyes to the floor. “Don’t you have them?”
“I had them the night I took your mother. After I dropped the excess baggage on the curb, they were gone,” he said, referring to Maizy. “By the time I noticed it the next day, I was too busy dodging a bunch of Shifters who were on my tail.”
I dropped to my knees and softened my voice. “Sweetie, did you take any pretty rocks from this man? If so, you need to give them back. Please, Maze, listen to Lexi and give him what you took. I know you didn’t mean it, and you’re not in trouble.”
Her lower lip poked out and I knew she’d taken them. At this point, I couldn’t have cared less if he ran off a rich man; I just wanted him to get out and leave us alone.
“I don’t got ’em anymore.”
My dad swung her forward and backward, making her shriek as she was flung around like a rag doll. “Then what did you do with them?” he bellowed.
“Stop it! You’re scaring her.”
Dad dropped the belt and pulled something from the back of his pants. He aimed a gun at me, and Maizy started to cry. “Think she’ll tell me if I put a hole in your leg?”
That’s when I truly saw my dad for the man he was. As he stared down the barrel of the gun, it allowed me to see the very last thing his victims saw. How many? Were they innocent? I thought about my mother in hysterics, trying to protect her young baby from harm. Was he holding me at the time so I could watch?
“Why did you have to kill my mother?” Pain surfaced unexpectedly in my words, slicing across my tongue like razorblades as I felt sorrow for a woman I would never know.
His gun slightly lowered and a memory flickered in his eyes. “It was also supposed to be you. My orders were that no one be left alive. She twisted around to cover you up, so I shot her in the back. I thought the bullet went through and killed you too, but she just fell over you, bleeding. I rolled her off but didn’t have it in me to kill an infant. You were covered in blood, and hell, your mother always wanted a girl.”
Maizy’s face was distraught and her words were barely a whine as they came through her tears. “Lexi, I want Mommy.”
