Page 57 of Midnight Legacy

“It’s fine, Cas. You don’t need to open it now.”

My eyes finally came up to meet his. “I never had the strength to do it on my own. But I’m not on my own anymore.”

His fingers threaded through mine on the table. “You never will be again.”

It was a tiny box but felt like it weighed a tonne when I lifted it. Kimberley and I used to play with her jewellery and make-up when we were young. Emotion formed a ball in my throat even as I tried to swallow the tears that were beginning to form.

A perfect pale pink stone surrounded by diamonds that also ran into the start of the band. Her wedding band was platinum with stones inlaid to match the pale pink stone.

“Fucking hell. Yeah, that’s recognisable.”

My eyebrow arched in question.

“That’s a pink diamond, a big one. Worth more than a house.”

“Oh.” My lips formed a circle. I’ve never considered what the stone was before.

“Anyone who’s seen that would know it was unique and who owned it.” Xavier continued. “If you were changing your identity, then leaving something like that behind would make sense.”

My fingertip traced over the stone, a tear falling down my cheek as I remembered it on my mum’s finger.

“Cas, there’s something else you need to know.”

I tried to blink the tears away, stilling as Xavier brushed them away with his knuckles. If I didn’t look at him, then he wouldn’t erode another memory of them.

“The reason the Council didn’t know they were dead was that the family in the car that night were not Frank and Elise Jenkins and their daughter Kimberley. They had new names and passports. It was probably why the authorities never knew there should have been another girl in the car that night.”

They were running from an unseen enemy, my father taking us away to start a new life far from something that he feared. That fear had been warranted considering that they ended up dead.

“There are newspaper reports from the time about the family dying in a freak one-car accident. They weren’t driving your dad’s car, and were carrying fake documentation, so no one in the village knew it was them. Your dad’s business partner seems to have taken care of everything else, including the funerals. He was the only one I can find who knew that your dad was escaping. The gravestone went on a few years after their deaths.”

A vague memory of standing at the fresh graves flitted through my mind. He was right, there hadn’t been a stone to tell the world who was buried there. The next time I visited, I was an adult and the stone had been present on their grave.

“We’re doing the same as my parents,” I replied in a low tone.

Xavier’s hand still cupped my face from wiping my tears away. “Your dad was a businessman, Cas. He understood a boardroom and accountancy books. The guys and me were taken in by my Uncle Lucas and moulded into something different. He knew the dangers of our world and gave us the tools to defend ourselves. I’m not afraid of the Council, but they should be fucking terrified of me.”

The heat that blazed in his eyes and the determined tilt of his chin told me he was telling the truth. My hand covered his and I squeezed. “There’s been times I wanted to go back and change places with Kimberly.”

“We can’t change the past, but I can guarantee you that I will do everything in my power to keep you safe. Uncle Lucas is coming over to make sure you’re protected when I’m not there.”

I dragged in a staggered breath and nodded.

“Why don’t you take it with you?” Xavier asked, nodding at the box. “You can put it in the safe back home.”

Home. He said it so easily, but the last time I had a home was when my parents had still been alive.

“Maybe I will. Mum would want me to wear her jewellery. She hated keeping her stuff in boxes, always leaving her jewels where the sun could touch them to energise them.”

Xavier put the boxes into his backpack, slipping the box with the engagement ring into the inside pocket. We sealed the safety deposit boxes and handed them back to the security guard as we left.

The day felt warmer when we got outside, the air clearing my dark thoughts.

Two more boxes were visited in different locations, every one revealing another crumb left by Uncle Dan. He’d removed nothing from the boxes, only adding documents for me to view. They meant nothing to me, but on a few occasions, the way Xavier’s eyebrows went down, told me it wasn’t good news.

The last visit of the day was to the box I’d never been able to access before since it required two keys. Xavier possessed one and I carried the other one.

Jordan stood outside, his face grim. “There are eyes around here that are making me nervous,” he hissed when we approached.

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