Eliana waited for Maizie to laugh off the fake surprise, but it didn’t happen. “Right. As if no one in the family knows any of this. You don’t need to lie and act shocked, Maze.” She dumped the bags of veggies on the counter and got her big knife. If shemade an extra-large salad, she could take some to Patience for lunch tomorrow.
The background behind Maizie moved, then a door closed. “I feel like we need to break things down.”
“We really don’t. I’m in Chicago, and obviously Mom and Dad think it’s permanent since they had Carlos transfer to the police department here just so he could look out for me.”
Maizie shook her head. “You haven’t told anyone else where you are?”
“Not even Zeyla.” Eliana chopped the end off the head of lettuce and attacked it.
“She and Ramon are on a job in Chile.”
“Guess I shouldn’t ask about that.” Auntie Zeyla had told her plenty of crazy stories. She always said she changed the names to protect the innocent, but there were often details in the stories that told Eliana who Zeyla was talking about.
But how on earth were all those stories true?
Maizie said, “Girl,Idon’t even ask what they’re up to. Otherwise, I’d probably have to report them to the Miami PD where they live.”
Eliana caught a tomato before it rolled off her cutting board.
“Dean doesn’t count because we’re married,” Maizie continued. “He and I tell each other everything. But he still doesn’t ask about open police cases because that isn’t something I can talk about. Not even at home.”
“Point made.”
“Is it? Because I can go on…”
Eliana rolled her eyes. Maizie had worked hard over the years not to act like another mom when Eliana needed a sister. Maizie was nineteen years older than her and now had gray threaded in her blond hair. Still, she looked about ten years younger than she was.
Maizie had grown up the captive of a sick man who had abducted her to be his bride. At seventeen she had finally escaped, making contact with Eliana’s mother. Kenna and Jax had kept her safe and eventually adopted her.
Eliana looked like her mother. Spitting image, everyone who knew them said. Which led anyone who knew her parents to ask if she’d followed in their footsteps. The answer was always no. They’d given up that life as much as they could, and when they weren’t able to avoid it, they left her under someone else’s protection.
Now that she was an adult, they seemed to be taking more and more cases, though. And Eliana was supposed to be fine with them putting their lives in danger?
“So if no one told Carlos where you were,” Maizie said, “how did he happen to transfer to where you’re living?”
“Pretty coincidental if you ask me.” Eliana didn’t want to think she’d been set up. After all, Maizie didn’t even know there had been a murder. “He just showed up where I am.”
“I’ve resisted the temptation to find out everything about you through…other means. Including adding location services to all our phones. I chose to respect your privacy.”
As if that was so huge Eliana should be grateful. The family lived as “off the grid” as they could, which meant no GPS. “He wasn’t surprised to see me. He knew I was going to be there.” She bit her lip and noticed her sister wasn’t looking at her.
“How was piano?” Maizie asked the girls.
Eliana went back to her chopping, listening to her nieces talking to their mom. Absorbing the light chatter of the nine-year-old twins, so different than the day she’d had.
The scene she’d come across was enough to make her want to call her mom and ask how she dealt with seeing dead bodies. Eliana had chosen to accept the job she’d been offered and come to Chicago. To use her savings to rent this shabby apartment.Eventually, she would know everything there was to know aboutDominatus, and the real, unvarnished family history.
Maizie turned back to the screen. “I could call you back later, after the girls are in bed? Dean had a surgery today, so he won’t be home until tomorrow.”
“I’m going to bed early. I’ll talk to you another time.”
Maizie looked like she wanted to say more. “Love you, Ellie.”
“Love you too, Sis.” Eliana ended the call and put the knife down.
The screen flashed, indicating the time duration for the call. An email notification with a receipt for the payment she’d been charged for the video call showed on the screen for a second. She swiped it away and opened the app she used to stream TV shows, then entered her PIN. In her most recently viewed category was the documentary from ten years ago aboutDominatus, broadcast to coincide with the opening of the museum, that her parents had refused to participate in.
She’d watched it a hundred times and could almost quote the show. Her parents had declared it mostly fabrication and told fifteen-year-old Eliana not to watch it. She’d seen it just a few weeks later on a sleepover with Luci, Carlos’s big sister.
