He held back. I saw it in his face: that urge to protect me from my own past again.
“Daniel.” I stepped closer, lowering my voice. “Who was my dad?”
“His name was Richard Summers. The private investigator I hired told me that he’d died of an overdose in prison.” He paused. “I’m so sorry.”
My legs gave way, and I dropped onto the bed. My face sank into my hands again. My fingertips dug into my scalp.
My mom really knew how to pick them, didn’t she?
Daniel sat beside me, slowly and carefully. He placed a hand on my shoulder, light as a feather, waiting to see if I’d flinch or shove him off.
I didn’t.
The disgust I expected never came. Should it have? Maybe. Probably. But it didn’t. Even after all this, I still loved him. That felt like the sickest part of all.
I’d never loved another man in my life, not as far back as I could remember. And maybe I’d loved him my entire life too. Loved the sad, beautiful little prince in his lonely mansion. Even loved him when I was a child. Loved being the knight who protected him.
But none of this was normal.
None of this looked like the kind of family I’d ever dreamed of having.
Chapter 27
The rain had stopped, and the clouds had finally let up. Daniel reached out to pull me into a hug, but I stood before he could.
“We have to go downstairs. Check on...” My words faltered.Check on Mom?“Check on Cynthia,” I said instead.
He rose with me. “What are we going to do about her?” he asked.
“I don’t know. If Hudson dies—”
“He won’t,” Daniel said quickly. “They said it looked good. No artery was cut.”
The tension in my chest loosened, but not by much. This wasn’t like what she’d done to Daniel’s father. This was a clear attempted murder of a good guy, even if Cynthia had been under active psychosis triggered by the storm.
I stood frozen in the hallway, staring at the front yard staircase.
“We told the ambulance that Hudson cut himself with a tool while fixing the generator.”
“What if he wakes up and confesses it all? Tells them Cynthia killed your dad and now did all this? Won’t you get in trouble, too?”
“For what? I was just a kid back then. I can say I never saw anything. I was in my room when my dad went missing. I’ll hire the best lawyers money can buy. Pull strings. Money usually buys a not guilty verdict. The right amount of money, of course.”
A chill ran up my back. It wasn’t just the cold, damp air that filled the corridor. It was the way Daniel said it—so calm. So used to covering up terrible things.
“But Hudson won’t talk,” he continued, already walking toward the yellow door. He pulled a set of keys from his pocket, unlocked the connector, and slid open the first basement lock.
“How can you be so sure?”
“Hudson and Cynthia grew close over the years, especially after I left. He became my guardian when I went to boarding school. I couldn’t stay here after you were gone. This place suffocated me.”
The last lock clicked open. Daniel stepped in front of me and gently nudged me behind him, shielding me as he peered into the dark stairwell below.
“What happened down there?” he asked. “Did she try to hurt you?”
“I don’t think she realized what she was doing. She was in psychosis. When you left, she knocked me out. Dragged me down here to...”
I stopped. He didn’t need the rest of the sentence. He got the idea.
