Page 94 of Severed By Vengeance

“Maeve and I always knew we wanted to have children. But having our own just wasn’t in the cards. However, over the years, we gave a home to many young boys and girls in need.”

I simply nodded. Sleazy or not, what they’d done for all those kids was truly an amazing gesture of love. Though a part of me worried about the young girls in his care, irrational as it was. Maybe I was jumping to conclusions in the worst way. I was an adult woman. He was a man. It was unfair to assume he was anything but fatherly to the underprivileged girls in his care.

“You sure have grown, Eva.”

That comment had my full attention. “Excuse me?”

He moved closer and reached out to grab my left wrist. My eyes followed his movements as if in slow motion, and I didn’t make a single effort to stop him. Turning my hand over, he used a finger to trace the faint vertical scar of the surgery I’d had as a child.

“Your father Franco and I go way back. Before Derek.” The rhythm of my heart accelerated. “I ran into him one day at the grocery store. You were with him, a bright pink cast on your arm.”

I stared beyond Ronan, the images of that morning returning to me like a movie reel.

“I was seven,” I said, still focused on the memories inside my mind.

“And missing a couple of teeth. You were quite chatty and just about the cutest damn thing I’d ever seen. I went home that night and told my wife I was ready to adopt. To be a father to an adorable little girl just like you. And that’s exactly what we did.”

Setting my arm down, his eyes were like a magnetic force, drawing me to lose myself in them, in the images of that stranger from so many years ago. I remembered being intrigued by the tall man in a navy-colored suit, but the memories that struck me the most were of my father. In hindsight, I could see how his reaction to Ronan wasn’t normal. The way he pulled me close, placing himself between us while exchanging awkward pleasantries. The slight tremor of his hands as he continuously tried to keep me out of sight and prevent me from talking.

“I knew you looked familiar. But how do you know my father? He’s never—I’venever seen you since that day.”

“I always knew you’d turn out to be beautiful,” he said, ignoring my questions. “Small world, isn’t it?”

His phone vibrated from somewhere inside his jacket. As Ronan read the name lighting up the screen, out of my view, his jaw twitched, but he composed his features in the next breath.

“It was so nice to see you again, Eva. Now that you and my son are friends, I hope to see more of you. And maybe I’ll pass by and catch up with Franco.”

He was dismissing me.

“Yes. You’ll have to tell me more about you and my dad.”

A Cheshire Cat grin spread across his face. “Of course.”

His gaze burned at my back as I exited the office. Alexa’s intuition about Ronan had been spot on.

CHAPTERTWENTY-NINE

DEREK

One of Kai’s legs hung over the side of the couch while Diego was curled on a cushion above his head. Both asleep. I searched for signs of Evangelina, but the house was dark and quiet. It was just past midnight, so I could only assume she’d gone to bed. Everything inside me was itching to find her, but I needed to be prepared. Have my story straight.

“Hey. Wake up.” Kai stirred, then sat upright in a flash, the barrel of a Glock pointed at my face.

“Shit, D. I’m sorry. I wasn’t expecting you.” He cursed under his breath, setting the weapon on the coffee table and rubbing rough hands over his eyes.

I wouldn’t have batted an eye at the gun in my face—wouldn’t have been the first or last—but what if it had been Eva? Kai read the tension on my face and put both hands up in his defense.

“Fuck, Derek. I said I was sorry. You snuck up on me while I was asleep. What’d you expect?”

I rubbed my knuckles over the pressure point between my eyes. “Where is she?”

“Probably in bed. I’d be exhausted too after the day she had.”

“What happened? What did he say to her?”

Kai regarded me with confusion. “Ronan?”

When I received Kai’s text that our adoptive father had dropped by and was speaking to Eva in private, I damn near jumped on the next flight back to Philly.