Page 84

27

Blaise

“Let’s go pay our boy a visit.”

I glance sidelong at my father. Do we have to? It’s the loudest thought in my head, drowning out my excitement at seeing my handsome husband dressed to the hilt in his form-fitting business suit.

The moment we returned from our “honeymoon,” Maddox went back to his routine. Work in the morning. Time at the gym afterward. Dinner with me. During the week, we go for a nightly swim, then make love. On Saturday, we stayed up all day and went clubbing all night. He touches me. Makes me feel so alive on the dance floor with his eyes and hands on me only. He’s the only one I let touch me.

I stare out the passenger-side window. The scenery of debilitated buildings, streets riddled with garbage, and guys my age smoking in front of the store fronts passes by in a blur. This week with Maddox has been great. I look forward to our next two months together. But what will happen when his fascination with me fades?

Will he replace me with Evie?

“Blaise?”

“Sure, Cillian. Should I let him know we’re coming?”

“Nah, sweetheart. We’ll surprise him.”

Why do I have the gut feeling visiting Maddox at the site of his newest project is about something other than the element of surprise?

“Have you thought over what you’d like for your birthday? Twenty-one. I can’t believe my little girl is all grown up.”

“What’d I like is the truth, Cillian.”

“Will you ever call me Father or Dad?”

“Someday.” After I go through the grieving process of losing my parents, Jack and Violet Lexington, a second time. I was so certain they were my biological parents.

“Fair enough. Ask your questions.”

“Why didn’t the authorities inform me the corpse inside the coffin with me was Maya? It would’ve been easy to identify her using dental records or her DNA.”

At least I believe it to be so. I watch a lot of true crime shows. Something else Maddox and I have in common.

“Bribery.”

“You paid people off to keep the truth from me? How could you?” I turn in my seat. Have this urge to shake the living daylights from him for messing with my life.

“I had a handful of ex-colleagues to deal with before I could risk exposing your identity and Maya’s. Granger came to me. Demanded the truth. Said he was indebted to you for saving his life.”

“Staged. What you did was stage a drive-by shooting that didn’t happen between gang members who didn’t exist except for in your imagination. You orchestrated the meeting between Granger and me. Nothing was left to chance. It was all planned.”

He has the nerve to clap.

“You can call what I did anything you like, sweetheart. The fact of the matter is, you and your brother are my flesh and blood. He protected you all these years for me, his father. In memory of the mother who was taken from him too soon.”

“You left him to be beat and starved in those homes the state sent him to.”

“You’re wrong, Daughter. He learned to use his fist and his head. He is stronger for the experience. If he wasn’t, he’d be dead, and that, my dear, would be a tragedy and make him no son of mine. Same goes for you. You could’ve wasted away in despair. Refused to eat. Died a shadow of your defiant, independent self. Instead, you rose out of the flames like a phoenix. From the ground, buried alive in that coffin, you are reborn.”

I sigh.

“Are you done?”

He laughs. “You’re unimpressed by my impressive speech.”

“I’m tired of your manipulation.”