Page 91 of Girl Anonymous

Maarja slowly sat up. The washcloth slipped into the water. She swiveled to face Dante. Remembering his earlier conversation with Connor, she guessed, “She’s your…sister?”

“If only it were that simple.”

Maarja leaned her arms on the bath pillow and fixed her gaze on him. “Tell me.”

“What do you remember about your aunt after the explosion that killed my father?”

She clutched the pillow to her chest. For the first time, she tried to grasp the fragments of memory that eluded her…or she had ignored. “We lived in an apartment. It was okay. It was nice. We didn’t go out. Ever. It wasn’t safe. Aunt Yesenia hugged me. She cried with me. She…” From her four-year-old mind, she dredged recollections that had meant nothing to the child she’d been. “She couldn’t hold me in her lap. I told her to sit back in her chair, but she laughed and her voice broke.” Maarja closed her eyes to bring the memory forward. “She was pregnant.”

“Yes. She was pregnant.”

Maarja’s eyes sprang open. “With Serene?”

He nodded.

“Your father was her father?”

“There’s no doubt. Saint Rees had her DNA done.”

“Serene is found? She is dead?”

“Yes. And yes. She didn’t survive her contact with the world of art theft.”

Maarja didn’t feel grief for the cruel young woman. As far as she was concerned, Serene deserved her fate for her betrayal of Saint Rees and her treatment of Alex. After assembling the truths Dante had presented her, Maarja said, “Your father sought out Aunt Yesenia, my mother’s sister. She spoke of him so bitterly I thought she was angry because of the devastation he’d rained down upon my family. But he wanted information, so he romanced her.”

“A sound assumption. Actually the old blond bastard couldn’t keep his cock in his pants and if he could actively ruin a woman’s life while screwing her, he counted that as a win-win.” She’d thought Aunt Yesenia was bitter. When Dante spoke of his father, he was dark chocolate bitter, the cooking kind with no sweetness to lighten the horror.

Maarja was still thinking through the scenario. “He romanced her with the intention of convincing her to give up information about my father, the last surviving male Daire and the object of Benoit’s obsession. He succeeded, because my father was ambushed and killed. My mother realized what had happened and she created her plan to destroy Benoit with the clear knowledge she would die with him, and she forced Aunt Yesenia to promise to rescue and raise me.”

In an emotionless voice, he said, “The results of the DNA test are all the proof we have of anything. Everything else is speculation.”

She shot him a stern glance.

He conceded, “I believe you’re correct.”

“My aunt was pregnant, and some months after the explosion, she gave birth to Serene and gave her up for adoption.” Maarja sank deeper into the tub. “No wonder she turned vicious. Herbaby was gone, and all she had was me, the child who she’d had to give up her life and hopes for.”

“No! She had you, the child whose parents she had betrayed, and she didn’t want to pay the price of reparation.” He leaned forward, spoke in her ear, a fierce no-nonsense man who understood human motivation all too well. “No, Maarja, feel no guilt or pain for your aunt. She promised your mother to raise and protect you. She resented that promise. When she abused you, when she abandoned you, she betrayed that promise.”

“I know, but—”

He was uncompromising. “She was weak, and she produced a daughter who traced her roots—probably another DNA test. Serene was determined to exploit her connection to you and Benoit Arundel, and she was so morally bankrupt she relished the opportunity to leave a trail of pain behind her.”

“Still, I wonder what Serene’s upbringing was like? Were her foster parents indifferent? Abusive?”

“I don’t care. We all make our choices. Her choices were cruel and manipulative, and she’s dead because of them.” He stood. “Time’s up. Let’s get you out of the tub.” Reaching in, with his hands under her shoulders, he pulled her to her feet, helped her out of the tub…and smiled a pained and crooked smile.

“What?”

“You have flowers in your hair.” With a light hand, he ran his fingers through the short ends around her face and behind her head. Still smiling, he brushed herbs and blossoms off her shoulders, her breasts, her thighs. And finally he used his thumbs to stroke blossoms out of her pubic hair. “There,” he said unsteadily. “All clean and relaxed.”

He had a funny definition ofrelaxed.

Stepping forward, she pressed her wet body against his, ran her fingers through his hair, down his shoulders, over his chest. “Sadly, you seem tense all over. Let me see if I can help.” She kissed his mouth until he clutched her and rolled his hips againsthers, demonstrating how unrelaxed he was. He was a man driven by desires, and she embodied those desires.

Pleased with herself, feeling like the femme fatale he seemed to think of her as, she took a bath towel off the heated towel rack. She dried herself, one careful part at a time, well-aware he watched as if he couldn’t look away.

“There’s a word for women like you,” he said.

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