Page 13 of Crossed By the Stars

Betrayer.

To Kaida, who was all about the organization and all but idolized my father, it would seem that I was one. But she hadn’t been there when I’d been a mere child. When my father had betrayed me first.

He’d left me to the wolves, and they’d come for me.

Dax’s fingers tightened on mine.

“Are you okay?” he asked. “Do you want to go home, or do you still want dinner?”

“You trying to get out of buying me dinner, Armaud?” I teased, forcing a lightness into my voice that I didn’t feel.

The worry in his eyes was real, and the rigidness hadn’t disappeared from his shoulders. The lights from the streetlamps and storefronts made it easy to read him. Once upon a time, I might have loved the concern he was wafting in my direction. I might have fallen for that look, but now I couldn’t. Wouldn’t. Even though my body called for me to do just that.

I pulled my hand from his.

“Dinner it is, then,” he said.

From the shadows, Cillian emerged. He and Dax shared a look, and then the four of us headed toward the restaurant.

“You knew Cillian was there?” I asked, surprised.

Dax gave me a small smile. “Yes.”

“How?”

“Signals. We have a list of unspoken ones that we’ve had for years.”

Rana had handed me a list of signals when I’d first hired her. I’d thought they were ridiculous and hadn’t bothered to learn them. Now, she sent me a knowing look. I could tell we’d be revisiting them, and I was suddenly okay with it.

Once we were seated back in the restaurant, Ilan brought us a new appetizer and a new bottle of wine, as if the wine had also been ruined by waiting for us. Or maybe he’d drank it after the room had been cleared of knives and tension.

My body was still overflowing with the anxiety from the discussion with my father. My thoughts whirled, trying to put together the cluesOtosanhad laid out for me. After a moment, I gave up and turned the topic to one I could get an answer to.

“You have an aunt?” I asked Dax as we shared the pastry puffs filled with mushrooms and cream.

Dax stilled. His normally easy-to-read face became a mask that somehow reminded me of my father. I hated it. I didn’t want that look on Dax’s face—ever. I wanted him all grins and suave one-liners. Dax had a smile that lit up the room. That lit me up. It had since we’d first met, with my pubescent self drooling over fifteen-year-old Dax in a fitted tux. He’d been larger than life in my thirteen-year-old, hormone-driven brain. Tall and lean with those lined eyes staring at me.

Dax’s words drew me back from the memory of our first meeting.

“Out of all the things your father said, that’s the thing you lead with?” There was a forced lightness to his tone.

“I’ve known you over twelve years, and I’ve never met an aunt. So, I’m kind of thinking something hinky is going on,” I told him.

He snorted. “Hinky?”

I shrugged.

Dax played with the clasp on his watch, and I wondered what there was about an aunt that could possibly make him nervous.

“I never knew her either. She died before I was born,” he replied cautiously, as if he was thinking carefully about each word, guarding them as they came out. It only heightened my desire to know more.

“Was she younger or older than your father?”

“She was his twin.”

I dropped the fork. “Your father had a twin sister. That died. That my father knew?”

Dax nodded, words tearing from the depths of him as if it was a dark secret he was revealing. “They were all at Oxford together.”