Page 9 of Mad Love

“We found the clothes beneath your bedroom window. Taped to the window was the note.”

My kidnapper somehow made it to my third-floor window?

“Security images?”

“There is none from that side of the house,” Rylan says. “It was Grandfather’s request.”

A considerate act.

Grandfather didn’t pry or demand I see a therapist. Instead, he gave me space, leaving the door to his heart open for when I was ready to talk.

The talk never happened.

How could I burden him with my trauma when he gave me nothing but freedom and room to grow as a person? Had I told him what my kidnapper did to me, he would’ve blamed himself, chalking it up to giving me too much leeway and indulging his only granddaughter’s independent streak.

Until evil almost took my life.

“He never told me.”

As soon as Grandfather was given keys to the estate, he had Rylan and his team set up the security system. That was two years ago.

“Your life is viewed enough through a microscope. Grandfather didn’t want images of you from your place of privacy,” Jakob adds.

Jakob is my age. At thirty years old, Roman is the oldest. Next is Edward, twenty-eight. Rylan is twenty-three.

“What are his demands?” I expect nothing less from my kidnapper.

“Leave the authorities out of his personal vendetta against you; otherwise, he’ll take your life. And, we must renounce your ties to the Lexington family or he’ll expose your father’s secret,” Rylan says.

I’m less concerned about my safety than I am about my father’s good name.

“And what is that, exactly?”

I push back my chair, stand, and look each man in the eye. Years ago, I overheard Arthur beg Grandfather to tell me who my parents were, but I thought he meant my parents as individuals before they became a couple.

“You’re not Jack Lexington’s daughter, Blaise,” Arthur says with a mixture of relief and sadness.

To think he might have held on to this secret for twenty years has my heart hurting for him.

“You are Cillian McCabe’s. He and your father were rivals. Your father was desperate for a child. He gutted Cillian’s woman’s belly and stole the infant. He stole Cillian’s child, Blaise.”

My world shifts off-kilter.

“You’re wrong. My father would never do such a horrible thing. He was the kindest, most gentlest man.”

“A desperate man on the brink of losing the love of his life will do anything. Your mother went through a deep depression after she had a miscarriage.”

My poor mother. “Did she know?”

“No, sweetie. Your father told her he secured you from a young mother who wasn’t in a place financially or emotionally to care for you.”

“Did my supposed mother have different-colored eyes?”

“Cassandra didn’t,” Arthur answers.

I direct the rest of my questions to him. He’s the one who has held on to this secret for my father and my grandfather. If what he claims is true.

“And the members of their families? Do any of them have one eye blue and the other green?”

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