Page 84 of Midnight Legacy

Cassandra had said she’d go to Tuscany, but I knew by her expression over the past few days that she was reconsidering our agreement. I needed to make our home as secure as possible for my family.

I would terminate any threat to them before it reached our door.

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Chapter Twenty-Three

Cassandra

The fact that they didn’t exit via the back door told me there were bodies there that they didn’t want me to see.

When Xavier left with Ash and Lucas, Jordan calmly began to collect all the things I’d selected.

“If there’s anything else you need or want, this is the time to collect it,” he told me.

My emotions were numb, my mind blank. “Such as?”

His lips lifted in a sad smile. “When my parents died, my grandfather removed every trace of them, almost as if they never existed. I found a photograph of my mother years later, but that’s all I have.”

Using what little time I’d been given, I raced to my mother’s craft area. She kept framed photographs there that I put into one of her homemade bags. I crammed as much of her stuff as possible in there until there was no more room. Jordan watched from the door and silently handed me another bag.

By the time the men returned to the library, we were laden down with sentimental stuff to put in my new home. Xavier cast an eye over it but didn’t comment. He merely started lifting stuff before ushering us to the door.

A memory jarred free in my head. “Stop!” All eyes turned to me.

I ran back to the library with Xavier following me. Long ago, I’d been sleeping on the old leather sofa and woke up to see Uncle Dan with a wooden panel removed. He’d put his finger to his lips and winked, telling me it would be our secret.

The panel looked like every other wooden panel in the room. I pointed to it. “There’s a safe behind there. I think the numbers Uncle Dan whispered may be the combination. He knows that I saw where it was when I was little.”

Xavier was on his knees in an instant, his fingers feeling around the edge until the panel fell forward onto his knees. “Quickly,” he urged.

Fourteen, fifty-nine, twenty-one. The door clicked and my eyes met Xavier’s. There was a metal box sitting inside that I lifted out. Xavier closed the door and spun the combination dial around, before he set the panel back in place.

“Are we good to go this time?” he asked.

I nodded and we returned to the others in the front hall.

Ash raised an eyebrow, but Xavier shook his head. “I’ll tell you later.”

The helicopter took us high above the small, sleepy village Dad called his home from childhood. I didn’t ask any questions since I didn’t want to know the answers. Whatever they did was to protect me, so I chose not to know.

Xavier’s finger traced over the still throbbing area to the side of my face. His expression was so dark that it felt like midnight descending on us. There was no doubt in my mind that that man was now dead, his evil spirit travelling to the depths of the underworld. The look on Xavier’s face when he dragged him out of that room was enough to freeze the lakes of molten lava in hell.

Every minute took us further away from that place filled with death. Every mile was closer to home. Before visiting my childhood home, I was willing to go to Tuscany to hide from those searching for us. Today, I realised the importance of a home. If Mum and Dad had stayed at home that night we may have all survived. Nothing good ever came from running and hiding.

No, I would stay in the home Xavier had created for us and face whatever life threw at us.

The helicopter landed at an airstrip a few miles from our house, so no one would be able to trace the helicopter to where we lived.

“Sorted?” Xavier asked Jordan as soon as we were in a car.

“Yeah, my own personal clean-up crew are en route. They wanted to know if we needed a division in that area.” Jordan continued typing on his phone.

“I think maybe that house has seen enough death,” I replied in a low tone. “The ghosts should be left to rest.”

In my head, Kimberley still sat beside the pond and played in the apple trees, Mum pottered about the kitchen, and Dad sat in his study surrounded by his beloved books. They would continue to live there, their ghosts walking the corridors of my childhood home.

I expected to sense their presence, feel as if I’d returned home. For years, I’d wanted to walk through the door and trail my fingers over Dad’s books like I’d done as a child. Instead, all I wanted to do was leave and find my way back to a place that had been redesigned with my new family in mind, created from love.

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