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STAR

When I took a seat at the dinner table, my lower body protested the move.

I wasn’t exactly ready for one of those inflatable ring things, but goddammit, my ass felt as if I’d been doing deadlifts/squats/lunges on repeat for the last twelve hours.

The orgasms had been worth it, though, and they came with an added benefit—I was less worried by Lorelei’s passive aggressiveness and more focused on the aches in my muscles.

“Star?”

I blinked at Savannah. “What?”

“Pass the dinner rolls?” she drawled, but her eyes were spitting at me. I just had no idea what she was spitting.

The problem was, the bread was here and she was there and that meant reaching over to give her the rolls.

For how my ass and inner thighs ached, she might as well have been in the Gobi Desert.

Conor, seeming to sense my predicament, acted like a gentleman and did the deed for me. Then, in an aside, he murmured, “Dagger asked what you’ve been up to the last couple years.”

Oh.

That was why Savannah had been glaring at me—she’d thought I was blanking her dad.

That had me turning to the head of the table to find her father shooting me a wary smile.

Ah, Dagger, ever the peacemaker.

“I’ve been focused on bringing down the organization that enslaved me, Dagger. It hasn’t been a picnic.”

To give him his due, he didn’t cringe away from my answer. “I think you should speak with Lorelei’s publisher. The world needs to read your story.”

“Why? Do we want to make the world manically depressed? Mine has a happy ending, but ninety-eight percent of the women like me didn’t have a happy ending in sight until I escaped.” I glanced at Lorelei. “I’d appreciate reading an advanced copy of the manuscript before you send it to the publisher.”

Savannah’s mother studied me over her wine glass, and while I saw the dislike she had for me in her eyes, she surprised me by stating, “That’s only fair.”

“A biography would be good exposure for the charity,” Savannah mused, her tone thoughtful. “I could write it for you.”

I sighed—no matter what I said, she’d tell Rachel, who’d never shut the fuck up until I did it.

Allowing these two harridans to meet to discuss the upcoming gala and the coverage Rachel wanted Vana to write in her new column in the City Times was the stupidest thing I’d ever done.

“If she doesn’t want to revisit it on the page, you shouldn’t pressure her, Savvie,” Aidan stated.

Savannah just hummed, which told me she was going to ignore Aidan no matter what he said. “Where’s Misha, Aspen?”

Aspen narrowed her eyes. “Why are you asking, Savannah?”

Like a cat poised to strike a mouse, Savannah pinned Aspen to the ground. “We’ve brought our significant others. I was just wondering why you didn’t bring the Forgotten Boy with you.”

“The what?” Lorelei queried, her confusion genuine.

“Forgotten Boy, Mom,” Savannah chirped.

“Is that like a Peter Pan thing?”

I hid a snort but Aspen took control of the situation surprisingly fast. “Mom, it’s nothing. Misha and I had a fight.”

“I warned him not to hurt you,” Aidan rumbled as he stared down at the pastry rose on his plate like it was a puzzle in need of solving. “Just give me the word, and I’ll break his balls.”

“You mean bust them.”

“I know what I said, Savannah.”

“Just use your fingers, Aidan,” Lorelei encouraged, mimicking how the, well, whatever it was should be eaten.

“To break Misha’s balls or to eat the canapé?”

As Lorelei scowled at her eldest daughter, Aspen argued, “Misha didn’t hurt me. His balls don’t need to be busted or broken. Anyway, can we not talk about this right now, please?”

I picked up my own appetizer, took a bite, and sighed in delight at the harissa-infused meatball. “This is delicious, Lorelei. Thank you.”

The other woman didn’t look at me, just nodded. “You’re welcome.”

“I don’t understand why this is so awkward.” Camden skewered his mom with a glower. “It’s Star. Star . Why are you making it weird? It wasn’t like that when Vana, Star, and I got together.”

“ I don’t understand why we weren’t invited,” Paris muttered.

Aspen sniffed. “Just another instance of us being excluded.”

I rolled my eyes. “Don’t be brats.”

As the twins turned toward me and began bickering, I almost missed Aidan telling Conor, “Need to speak with you later.”

“Sure. Whatever.”

“We are so not brats! You hurt our feelings,” Aspen declared, sounding exactly like Vana—I’d tell her that later. It was sure to piss her off.

“How could we do that?” Camden retorted. “We didn’t invite cameras to the get-together, Paris. You didn’t miss out on a scoop for your stupid reality TV show which is all you care about now anyway.”

“No one takes us seriously in this family,” Aspen spat.

“For good reason,” Savannah drawled. “All your wins are achieved on our backs.”

Paris hissed under her breath. “That’s not fair, Savannah.”

“Did you, or did you not, ask me to write about the show in my column?”

“You’re our sister! It’s the least you can do!”

“Paris, I didn’t ask Camden or Dad for scoops when I was starting out,” Savannah ground out. “I worked my way up on my own. Sometimes, being a nepotism baby is the hardest thing you can be because you expect everyone else to do you a favor.”

“Savannah,” Lorelei chided.

“What? It’s true,” Savannah retorted. I noticed her cheeks turn pink when Aidan…

Aidan did something with his hand on her knee.

I didn’t think even Savannah was kinky enough to want to be fingered at her family dinner table though, so I assumed he was trying to calm her down.

Savannah didn’t get along great with her sisters at the best of times, but something was definitely going on here…

Bubbling away beneath the surface.

“Your sisters are trying to find their way. Not everyone is as focused as you and your brother,” Lorelei said with a sigh, clearly trying to play the role of peacemaker.

“We’re plenty focused,” Aspen reasoned. “Just because we’re not trying to bring down a secret society or have won more Grammys than anyone else in the universe doesn’t mean our project isn’t worthwhile.”

Because I’d heard this argument when they were kids and were trying to use Dagger’s name to sell Girl Scout cookies, I didn’t take much notice, just shot Conor a glance to see how he was taking this.

Meals with his family were a lot less fraught with sibling rivalry…

That was when I saw he was blindly eating his appetizer, his gaze flickering between the ‘kids’ as if this were a sitcom and he was glued to the screen.

My lips twitched—trust him to be fascinated.

I didn’t know if it was because this was Dagger’s family and he was eating at one of his idols’ tables or if it was because this was new territory for him.

Knowing Conor, it was probably both.

“Your project is important, but maybe Savannah’s right, Aspen. I can’t keep going on that damn show.”

“But Daddy!” Paris whined. “You promised!”

He heaved a sigh. “I did promise.”

I chuckled. “You haven’t changed, Dagger.”

He cut me a look. “We’ve all changed, Star.”

As our gazes tangled and held, I tipped up my chin while he pursed his lips.

That the first ‘reprimand’ came from him was a surprise.

“Where’s Katina?” Savannah queried quickly, changing the subject.

“With Aoife for Sunday dinner with Ma,” Conor answered, just as quickly.

Not unlike sharks, they scented blood.

“Who’s dragging who along for the visit?” Savannah teased.

I snorted because as much as Aoife had taken my words to heart, she still found it tough to hang out with Lena—for good reason.

“I’d have liked to meet her. Savannah’s told me a lot about her,” Dagger said, his voice gruff. “She sounds as if she’s a cheeky little thing.”

I hummed. “She is. I didn’t feel comfortable bringing her for this first meeting.”

“Understandable,” Camden grumbled. “If the atmosphere in here is anything to go by. I just don’t understand why you wouldn’t reach out sooner.”

“Because I had different priorities.” My focus settled on him, but I shot him a smile. “Now, my priorities are more family-oriented.”

Camden huffed as he sank back in his seat. “Good.”

“You’re barely around anymore, Camden,” Paris groused. “You can’t judge Star when you’re worse than she is.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Paris’s right,” Aspen defended. “You’re always a no-show whenever we call.”

“Because you turn up with cameras! Is it so weird to think that I don’t want one in my face when I’m not working?”

She sniffed. “Last week, we wanted to meet up for lunch. You said no.”

“Because, I repeat, you bring cameras with you wherever you go.”

“We promised we wouldn’t,” she bickered.

“Camden, if they promised, then you should have met up with them!” Lorelei scolded.

“That’s a promise they never keep,” Camden muttered. “Anyway, I wasn’t in the city. I was in Florida.”

Dagger’s brows lifted. “You were using the studio?”

“They have a studio in Florida?” Conor whispered in my ear.

Dagger, overhearing the question, chuckled. “It’s a private one, Conor. On my estate. Camden uses it more than I do these days.

“Most people want rehashes of the same old noxxious tracks rather than new material. Never been the same without Gerry’s songwriting.”

Overwhelmed at being the center of his idol’s focus, Conor gaped at Dagger for a full thirty seconds.

“Conor, stop being weird,” Aidan clipped, slouching back in his seat. “Talk to Dagger. He’s a regular human being before he’s a guitarist.”

As I chuckled, hero worship filtered into Conor’s expression. God, he was so fucking cute. “But he’s Dagger Daniels.”

“Who you’ve met before,” Savannah remarked, sounding more amused than she had at any point throughout this interminable meal.

“Yeah, but, he’s Dagger fu—” Conor sucked in a breath and shot Lorelei an apologetic smile. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to swear at the table.”

Lorelei laughed. “Your mom keeps her children in better line than I can.”

“No,” Savannah argued. “They swear around Lena. He’s just trying to impress Dad.”

When Conor glowered at her, she stuck out her tongue and grinned when Aidan kissed her cheek.

“You’ll get used to who I am, Conor,” was Dagger’s friendly retort. “Like Aidan said, I’m just a guy who plays guitar.”

“For one of the bands that got me through my childhood,” Conor quipped.

I squeezed his knee and shared a look with Aidan. It was probably the first time Aidan and I ever really had a moment, so it was both strange and… nice .

Ugh.

Was this my life now?

Describing emotional connections as ‘nice?’

Before I could vomit in my mouth, Lorelei mused, “Let the boy crush on your rock god self some more, Dagger. It’s always good for your ego after you go on the girls’ show.”

Dagger’s nose crinkled. “That’s demoralizing.”

“Our audience loves you, Dad,” Paris trilled.

“They love him a little too much,” Lorelei said lightly, an odd combination of annoyance and amusement lilting her tone.

“What happens on set?” I queried, curious enough to ask him.

“Girls as young as Paris and Aspen come on to me like I’m not happily married,” he said with a huff.

Savannah chuckled. “That’s because most ‘rock gods’ would enjoy having girlfriends as young as their daughters.”

“Ew,” Aspen said with a shudder.

“ You don’t need to get your leg over an old man to make money,” Savannah retorted.

“Savannah!” Dagger barked, his tone tougher than usual.

She merely arched a brow at him. “Tell me I’m lying. Nepotism babies?—”

“Savvie, I’m sensing a lot of unresolved tension building between you and your sisters,” Lorelei stated as she picked up one of the savory pastries on her plate.

Savannah sniffed. “No unresolved tension here.”

“We only asked if we could talk about Camden’s addiction problems on our show, Mom,” Paris whined, making me shoot a concerned glance at Camden who, unsurprisingly, had tensed up like he’d been shot.

For the first time, Lorelei’s calm demeanor quivered. “You wanted to feature Camden’s addictions on your reality TV show?”

“I don’t understand why it’s such a secret. Everyone already knows about that stalker who broke into his rehab facility?—”

“That’s the exact goddamn reason you should understand, Aspen,” Lorelei snapped.

Camden’s chair scraped against the dining room floor, but Savannah grabbed his hand and dragged him to a halt. “Over my dead body will they talk about my problems on a fucking TV show!”

“You should have brought this to us, Savannah,” Dagger growled, his eyes growing narrower as he pinned his twin daughters in place with a stare. “Of all the insensitive… You know how delicate a topic this is for our family. You know how your brother and I struggle every goddamn day, and you think our addictions are?—”

“Fodder,” Savannah supplied when he hesitated.

“ Fodder, ” Dagger agreed, “for your show?”

Apparently sensing she’d gone too far, Paris swallowed. “We didn’t mean any harm by it.”

“To even ask was to mean harm. I’m just grateful you broached the subject with me first,” Savannah snapped.

Lorelei carefully replaced her cutlery on the table. “I understand how difficult it is for you to find your place in this world. You’re the daughters of a man who’s internationally renowned, you’re the siblings of a star who puts your father’s career in the shade, and Savannah’s reputation in her field is just as solid as Camden’s.

“But you’ve used your family enough to find your footing. No more, girls. No more. We’ve humored you long enough. Your father has been more than generous with his time, but if your show is still performing poorly, then that’s something you’ll have to face without leveraging us anymore.”

“But Mom?—”

Lorelei whipped her head to the side. “No, Paris. No. Our family has been through enough tragedy as it is. I won’t compound that by letting you try to weasel your way into getting what you want. How could you even think we’d—” A sob bleated through her words, freezing them forever on her tongue. “—after all the problems we’ve had because of drugs and gambling and alcohol!”

“Lorelei,” Dagger rasped, jerking to his feet and moving around the table to reach her side. His hand fixed on her shoulder the moment he was at her back, and something about the picture they made had me sucking in a breath.

This was love.

What they had.

They’d survived several tragedies and they were still standing.

Still there, fighting together, persevering, and striving.

My hand blindly sought Conor’s, and though he didn’t realize the epiphany I’d just had, his fingers knotted with mine immediately. Like always, he squeezed twice. Just two pulses, but they were our code.

I love you.

God, I wanted what Lorelei and Dagger had—with Conor.

No one else.

Suddenly, it made sense to me why I’d never needed another guy for anything but fucking and why I’d used men for sex and had abused their eagerness to screw me to get what I wanted.

I’d been waiting.

For my Dagger.

But someone who was uniquely meant for me.

Conor O’Donnelly.

“Look what you’ve done,” Savannah spat at her twin sisters, breaking into my epiphanic moment.

Paris doubled down on that by releasing a sob and shooting away from the table, Aspen scuttling after her, leaving us in their wake.

Lorelei had turned her face into Dagger’s belly, but I still heard her loud and clear when, in the deafening aftermath, she hissed, “I bet that makes you happy, Star. Seeing our family torn apart?—”

“Mom!” Savannah and Camden argued at the same time.

“Lorelei,” Dagger chided, but he continued petting her hair as if she were a dog that needed stroking to calm her down.

“That’s uncalled for,” Conor rumbled.

My brow furrowed at the blatantly unfair accusation. “Not particularly,” was all I said, reaching for my glass of wine with my free hand. “I take no joy in your misery, Lorelei. Not when I’ve always considered your family to be mine too.”

She sniffed and turned her angry gaze on me. “If that’s the truth, then why is this the first time I’ve heard from you in years?”

“Serving overseas and then being undercover in the CIA wasn’t conducive to weekly phone calls with my father’s girlfriend,” I murmured, aware my words had more of a bite than before. “Then there was the little problem of being locked up in a cage in Lebanon—my owner didn’t allow me to make phone calls back home either.

“And, afterward, when I was bought and was forced to fuck for food, Lorelei, you weren’t my priority then, either.

“And if you’re asking why I haven’t called in the years since I escaped captivity, then that’s probably because I’ve been focused on bringing down a global trafficking-slash-terrorist organization that has infiltrated every government on the planet.

“Throw in the fact that I knew you’d give me this welcome, it’s safe to say I didn’t feel like reaching out.

“And, hell, phones and emails work both ways. I don’t remember you reaching out to me.”

To punctuate my speech, I let go of Conor’s hand, placed the wine glass beside the table setting, picked up my cutlery, and carefully settled a bite of chicken in my mouth.

As I chewed, Dagger staggered around the table and took a seat where Paris had been. Once he swiveled to look at me, his hand moved to my shoulder. “That really happened to you, Star?” he rasped, his tired eyes crinkling at the corners in concern.

“No, Dad, she just thought she’d make it up,” Camden snapped.

Dagger blinked. “I-I didn’t realize. I just thought you were like Casey.”

Curiosity had me asking, “And how was my mom?”

He swallowed. “Flighty. Never able to settle. It’s one of the reasons we were so often on tour when you were youngsters.”

“I used to think she was encouraging your dad to tour because of the money we earned. The record company got the bulk of the royalties from record sales, but the band picked up the lion’s share for ticket sales,” Lorelei admitted, her voice low as she studied me as if I were a freak at the circus.

I speared her with a glower and jabbed a finger in the air. “ That is not why I told you what happened to me. I don’t need your pity, Lorelei.”

She licked her lips but graced me with a soft nod. Her background in psychology was doing us both a favor at that point.

Conor cleared his throat. “You were saying you were working in your studio in Florida, Camden?”

I shot him a grateful smile for changing the subject even as my mind was ticking—Mom had wanted to tour for reasons that were shaped like the Brotherhood…

As Camden nodded, answering, “Making new music,” I was typing under the table:

Me: When my mom first got with my dad, what was her mission?

The story went, after all, that they met at the US Embassy in Madrid.

That wasn’t the coincidence the Daniels believed it to be…

“I didn’t think you’d be able to get much work done,” Dagger admitted. “The neighboring estate has been getting noisier and noisier. I wish I’d never built the studio on the west plot.”

“It was quiet over there, actually. No parties.”

“I thought you’d be the first to attend.”

Camden flipped Vana the bird. “I don’t like it over there. Haven’t gone to one since the early days.”

“You attended a party on the neighboring estate?” Dagger clarified, his shoulders still hunched as he plunked one elbow on the table.

“Only the one. The women…” He pulled a face. “I’m ninety-nine percent certain they were drugged. I didn’t realize at first because most of the attendees were high, but safe to say, it skeeved me out enough to get the hell away from there and to never go back.”

“And you didn’t report it?!” Lorelei demanded, her hands slamming against the table, making the cutlery and glassware rattle.

Anton: If memory serves, it was related to the Lockerbie bombing. noxxious were on a world tour. The dates were, shall we say, opportune. Why?

Me: No reason. Just curious.

Hmm.

“Who could I report it to?” Camden argued, bringing my focus back to our conversation. “I did call the cops but they said they sent a patrol car to investigate.

“They never stopped the party, though, and haven’t intervened since. The parties haven’t been as frequent as they used to be anyway. There wasn’t even a single one while I was down there.

“I just figured the owner had stopped visiting.” He chewed on the inside of his cheek. “I wasn’t disturbed by any noise. Got a new album partially written. Music is always a proactive way to process my… struggles.” His nose crinkled. “But, fuck, after Star’s admission, I’m feeling fucking petty for struggling, period.”

My shoulders straightened. “Why?”

“Why? Because I’m a poor little rich boy who can’t deal with the bright lights he sought out years ago. What you went through, Star, was hell. Absolute fucking hell.”

The sound of a chair scraping startled me enough to have me hunting for the source of the noise.

When I saw it was Lorelei, when I watched her round the table, when I realized she was approaching me, I froze.

Then, she leaned over me and dragged me into her arms.

For a moment, I didn’t understand what the hell was going on.

Then, she whispered, “I’m sorry, Star. So sorry.”

My mouth trembled.

Once.

Before I tightened it.

Before I let myself be hugged.

Before I experienced the loving embrace of a woman who’d been a surrogate mother to me my whole childhood.

Acceptance felt strange.

But good.

It was like I could breathe easier. As if my shoulders weren’t as weighed down as they’d been just five minutes earlier.

Over Lorelei’s shoulder, I saw Savannah watching me, tears in her eyes.

Somehow, that made this real.