Page 107 of Reckless Dynasty (Knight's Ridge Empire 9)

“Gianna is Alex and Daemon’s mum,” Toby tells me as he lowers me to the bed beside Mum.

I immediately fall into her open arms, and the emotions I’m trying to keep a lid on erupt once more.

“Come on, Toby. Let’s go fix them some breakfast and give them a few minutes.”

I’m vaguely aware of them both leaving and the door being closed, but I’m too lost in my meltdown to really register it.

“I’m so sorry,” I force out through my sobs. “I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you. I’m sorry you had to go through… that,” I say, not really knowing what she had to endure to keep him busy, distracted while I escaped upstairs.

“I’d do anything for you, sweetheart.” She takes my face in her trembling hands and wipes my tears with her thumbs.

Her eyes are swollen and bruised, and she has a sore-looking cut on her lip. But she’s been cleaned up and the cut on her arm bandaged.

“Anything,” she repeats. “And I knew he’d come for you. That boy loves you something fierce. We just had to bide our time and find a way to let them know where we were.”

I nod.

“You did so good, baby. You saved us.”

“I—” I hesitate. “They saved us.”

“Consider it a group effort.”

“Where were we, before I woke up back at home?”

Mum lets out a pained laugh.

“Next door.”

“W-what?” I blurt, hardly able to believe it.

“He’d been planning this for a while, it seems. He—someone—had knocked through the cupboard in the spare room and he dragged us through it.”

“He… He’d made it look like a replica.” She nods. “Why?”

“Other than because he was mentally unstable?”

“Well…” I wince.

“It was all a game, Jojo. He was trying to play God, and he failed.” I swallow the lump in my throat as I hold her eyes. “But it’s over.”

I bite down on my bottom lip, not wanting to ask my next question but knowing I need to.

“Has he ever hurt you before?”

“Not physically, no. But I knew he was capable of it. His anger always had a very loose switch and he could flip on a dime. But he was controlling. More so than I think I ever really saw. But having him back in front of me, watching him try to poison your mind with lies about Toby, I saw it. I saw all of it for the first time. All the things he’d convinced me to do over the years that were seemingly for my own good. None of it was for me. It was all for him. A way to hide the person he really was. I may have known about his other life, his wife, but that was all I knew. He worked very hard to keep us as far away as possible.”

“I wish you’d gotten us out earlier. You deserved a better life than that.”

“I’ve had a good life, Jojo. Despite all of that, things could have been worse—”

“You could have been Maria,” I interrupt.

“Yeah,” she says sadly. “It’s time for a new start, baby. You’ve got your place at uni, an amazing boy out there who would go to the ends of the earth for you. Everything is going to get better.”

“What about you? You’ve just lost everything,” I say sadly, mourning all the memories that were held inside that house.

“They were just things, Jodie.”