“I heard enough.”
“What did you think of her reaction?”
Quentin leaned back slightly, his gaze narrowing—not with suspicion, but with caution. “I think your mother knows more than she’s willing to say. And I think she’s spent the last thirty years pretending she doesn’t.”
A chill ran over my skin. “You’re saying it’s not just an old fling?”
“I’m saying,” he said slowly, “that people in my line of work aren’t hired just for their resumes.”
I blinked. “What does that mean?”
He looked at me for a long moment, then gave the faintest shake of his head. “It means your father didn’t bring me in just to keep the gates locked and the press away. He brought me in because of who your mother used to be connected to. Who she might’ve stayed connected to.”
I sat up straighter, pulse rising. “Connected how?”
He hesitated. “I can’t tell you what I don’t know for certain. But back when I was recruited for this job, Byron Dane’s name was still showing up in classified files. Ones that weren’t supposed to exist. And your mother—she was one of the only people who ever walked away from him.”
My heart thudded. “She walked away … or she was let go?”
“I don’t know,” he said quietly. “But whatever it was, it still haunts her.”
A voice cut in from the doorway. “It should.”
I turned, startled, to see my father standing there, a glass of bourbon in one hand and a gaze sharp enough to cut stone.
He walked into the room like he’d been listening for longer than I’d realized.
“Daddy—” I started, but he held up a hand.
“I didn’t know,” he said calmly, eyes on Quentin. “About how serious it was with Byron. She told me she’d dated him briefly. That was it. That was always it.”
Quentin stood as a sign of respect, but my father waved him back down, then sat on the armrest of the nearest chair.
“But I did know enough to hire someone like you,” he continued. “Not just for show. Not just to protect the gates.”
He looked at me then. “There were things I didn’t want you exposed to. Not because you couldn’t handle them, but because once you open a door like that, it doesn’t shut again.”
“Then why now?” I asked.
He sighed, swirling the bourbon in his glass. “Because Charlie Dane blew the damn door off its hinges.”
Silence fell again, but this time it crackled.
I stared at him. “So you’ve always known there was more to this than Momma let on?”
“I’ve suspected. But I respected her privacy, and the deal we made when we got married.”
“What deal?”
He met my gaze squarely. “That the past stays buried.”
My throat tightened. “Except it’s not buried. Not anymore.”
“No,” he said. “Not with Charlie around. Not with the Danes circling back into our lives.”
I sat back, stunned.
Charlie hadn’t just shaken things up. He’d unearthed something.
