Page 72 of Darkness of Mine
I stare down at my sneaky little profiler, pride a warm glow in my chest despite my anger. “Fine,” I say. “We can stay and talk to her.” I move my hand from her hip and close my fingers around her slender throat. “And then later, my darling, you and I will talk.” I press my thumb under her chin and tilt back her head. “If you wanted to be punished,” I say against her lips, “all you had to do was ask.”
32
FREYA
Ishudder under River’s touch, anticipation thrumming through my veins. I want him to follow through on the threat more than I care to admit but I wasn’t lying to River, I came here for more than one reason. And one of those reasons is sitting in the other room with my sister and my grandparents. Blood relations that I don’t quite know how to callfamily.
Reluctance a molten heat in his eyes, River lets me go and guides me into the living room. We’d only been here for about ten minutes before the guys arrived and Angelica has already peppered our mother with a dozen different questions. Even now, she leans forward on the blue armchair, her green eyes, identical to mine, set on Hannah. “Do you like cotton candy? Freya does, but I can’t stand it because it just tastes metallic.”
Hannah folds her hands into each other, the barest hint of a smile on her lips. “I’ve never had it.” She glances at her parents who are sitting side by side on the same long couch as her. “The Dying Angels insisted on a healthy diet.”
My grandmother fails to hold back a wince and Peter reaches out, curling his hand over his wife’s. It didn’t take me long towork out that she still carries guilt for raising her daughter in a cult.
My grandparents left the Dying Angels after their daughter was banished and I know from what Jack said on the drive over that they searched for my mother for years before giving up hope. When River asked him for help protecting Hannah, he’d been able to track down her parents and reunite them. They’ve been living here, in an FBI safehouse, ever since.
It's a small home but big enough for the three of them and I suspect it’s my grandmother’s touch that’s managed to make the house feel like a home.
Wicker baskets hold blankets at the end of the couches and photographs line the windowsills and side tables. Pictures of my mother as a child fill almost every frame. She’s dressed in the white cotton slacks all Dying Angels wear, but she’s smiling. Laughing.
The timid, detached woman sitting before me looks nothing like the carefree child in those photos.
There’s more space in the living room than in the kitchen but we’re still short on seats. Oz is sitting on a footstool, and Jude perches on the arm of Allie’s chair. I want to stay standing between River and Eli but my mother’s eyes keep drifting to me and I know if I’m going to get any information out of her, I need to make her feel at ease.
I pad into the room and sit cross-legged on the carpet, facing Hannah without getting too close.
I’ve noticed proximity gets her guard up.
She’s still so fragile, I almost don’t want to tell her why we’re here. All of those questions I didn’t think I had rise to the surface. I want to ask her about the limited time we spent together when I was a child. I want to know whether she’s always rubbed the heel of her palm against her thigh when she’snervous because I used to do that too. Until Maxwell trained it out of me.
Allie’s question from a few days ago has stuck in my mind and I realize more than any of that, I want to know what our mother named us. Were we always both Angelica?
The question is on the tip of my tongue when Allie asks, “Do we have any other siblings, as well as Zach?”
For a second the whole world stops moving. Air catches in my lungs. It never once occurred to me that we might have more siblings and I don’t think I can handle finding out we do, but Hannah shakes her head. “Just you two and your brother.”
I close my eyes, settling myself as best I can. When I open them again, Hannah’s watching me and I realize that it doesn’t matter what she’s been through, she deserves the truth.
“Zacharius has kidnapped a young girl,” I tell her.
Mary’s hand covers her mouth, but Hannah stays blank.
“Do you know where he might have taken her?”
Hannah shakes her head. “He distanced himself from me his last couple of years at home, then when he left to find your father, I never heard from him again.”
“Is there anywhere you took him as a child? Relatives? Friends?” Oz asks.
“No. Only to Arthur’s place. He got obsessive about going there before I stopped taking us.”
Jagged, angry claws thrash inside of me at the thought of why Hannah stopped visiting. It took discovering what her son was doing to me to finally stand up to Maxwell. I shouldn’t hate her for that but a part of me does. The child in me wonders why she couldn’t just have taken us with her and gone far, far away from the evil that was Arthur Maxwell.
Jude’s soft gaze lands on me like a feather, dusting away the bleak thoughts. I turn to him, just holding that contact for a moment. Even as he lounges on the stool, his arm in a sling, Iknow this man will do anything to keep me safe. I want to run my fingers through his curls and sprinkle kisses over his warm brown skin. I want to let him hold me in his gaze where I can languish under the heat, far away from the cold, murky edges of the world.
“Could he be there?” Peter asks. “Could he be at that man’s place?”
Reluctantly, I turn away from Jude.
River shakes his head. “No, we’ve had eyes on all property linked to Maxwell. Zach’s not there.”
