Page 56 of Born Chaos

Roman gives a nod and holds my eyes, communicating a message without saying a word.

I’ll be right down the hall. I’ll be here in two seconds if you need anything.

I offer a small smile and a nod, hoping that he knows how genuine I’m being right now.

Roman walks to the door leading into the back of the church and pauses there. “If you need a place to stay, Jon, we have some extra rooms here or at the club. You’re welcome, either place.”

“Thank you, Roman,” Jon responds, just as genuine as my own response.

With one last nod, Roman steps out the door and closes it behind him, leaving us alone in the chapel.

My eyes slide back to Jon, and I shake my head. “I can’t believe you’re here.”

Jon stares at me, studying my face, observing in silence. So I take the time to study him as well.

I have his lips. His same brows. When I look at him, he seems familiar, and I know it’s because we share similar features.

This man makes up half of my DNA. I am genetically the way I am because of him.

“I know this is going to be heavy, but I’m not that good at shallow and fake and light,” he says. The look in those blue eyes darkens. Not in anger. But in regret. In dread. “But I’m dying to know, Juliet. I’ve been wondering for twenty-eight years. What happened to you? To your mother?”

I let out a hard breath between my lips. Maybe we share this in common, too. I kind of just want to get right to it. I hold out a hand, indicating the chair at one of the desks. He takes it, and I wheel another over, sitting across from him.

“I assume you knew what Ingrid was?” I ask, looking at him from beneath my lashes.

“A curse weaver,” Jon confirms.

I nod. “And I assume you realize she cursed you so you couldn’t find us?”

His lips spread out into a thin line, and I remember seeing it in Malcolm’s vision of my history. How they’d argued. How painful it had been for the both of them. But how scared my mother was that Archer would kill this man. Jon nods.

“She went on the run,” I continue, relaying the history I’ve witnessed. “I was born in Kansas. And she immediately went on the run again. But Archer was right on her tail. Her car ran out of gas, so she took me, and she ran through a field. But Archer was right behind her.”

I hesitate then, realizing that I have a decision to make. I don’t know Jon. I don’t know him at all. So how much do I trust him? How much can I tell him without putting myself in danger?

I’ve built walls around me to protect myself my entire life. Who do I dare let inside those walls?

“She cursed me in that field,” I say, my words sounding breathy. “She cursed me so that I couldn’t die. And when she knew Archer was just feet behind her, she snapped my neck.”

A curse slips from Jon’s lips at the same time his eyes well heavy once more. He rubs his hand over his mouth, barely containing his emotions.

“To Archer, I was dead,” I say through a thick throat. “So he ignored me. But he took her gift, and then he left, leaving her body there on the side of a highway, with a dead infant beside her. We were found a few hours later.”

The tears break free from Jon’s eyes. They roll down his cheeks, even as more well in his horrified eyes.

It’s better to keep ripping the Band-Aid once you’ve started.

“The authorities declared Ingrid a Jane Doe,” I push on. “I guess she didn’t have any ID on her, and her prints weren’t in any systems. So they buried her. And I was put into temporary foster care while they tried to find my father.”

This information would destroy just about any parent. And it’s evident that this is what is happening to Jon. He shakes his head, never once removing his hand from his face.

“I was kept under temporary status for a few years while they waited for someone to find me,” I move along. My throat is tight, my stomach is in knots. “By then, no one really wanted the bitter little kid with a snarky attitude. I stayed in the system until my eighteenth birthday. I took off that very same day.”

Jon curses again and finally removes his hand. His eyes are totally bloodshot, his cheeks stained with tears. “I’d gone back to Norway. When she disappeared on me, and I knew Archer was trying to track her down, I thought she had gone home to Norway. She had family there, family who could help protect her. But when I finally tracked them down, it was weeks past your due date, and they told me they hadn’t heard from her in months.”

It must have been awful. Loving someone so much and then having absolutely no idea where they’d gone. To not be able to find them. Ingrid literally cursed Jon so that he couldn’t find her. All to protect him from Archer King.

“I immediately went back to the States, retracing every place we’d ever been,” Jon continues. “I went to all the places we’d ever talked about visiting. I showed her picture to thousands of people, asking if they’d ever seen her.”

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