Chapter Twenty-Four
SHELLY’S HOUSE HAD honey-colored hardwood floors and wooden furniture with thick knobs and fat legs painted white. The sofa was made from a soft kind of corduroy, so lush I wanted to sink into it and never leave. I had always found it deeply restful.
Less so now.
She went directly to the kitchen, which opened to the sitting area. She pulled out a pot and filled it with water. “Chai?” she asked.
“Yes, please.” It was my favorite kind of tea, and Philip’s expression turned speculative. I wasn’t sure he knew we’d maintained a friendship after those dark times.
But then if he’d been watching me, he knew everything about me.
Luke turned a chair away from the kitchen table and sat, elbows on his knees, his hands steepling in front of him. “I heard that you were taken from someone who’d been at the scene, that you hadn’t been found. I was hoping Philip would do the right thing. Especially with a warrant over his head.”
Philip appeared unrepentant. “That warrant is bogus.”
Shelly came to sit while the water heated. “Raine called to tell me he may have inadvertently sent you to me, that someone was targeting Ella because you knew her. At least it made sense why you’d been at her dorm, protecting her.”
Philip said nothing to that.
The uncertainty must have been visible in my eyes, because he gave me a half smile. There was a challenge there, daring me to push him away. And there was enough vulnerability that I couldn’t.
I took his hand in mine, so large and powerful and scarred.
A sense of possessiveness grabbed hold of me, stronger than anything I’d imagined. He said that I was his, but the truth was that he was mine too. He had come to that dorm room to protect me. “Thank you,” I whispered.
After a long moment he said, “There’s too much piling up. Too many coincidences. First someone attacks me on my way to you and then—”
“So you were coming to me,” I said softly.
His expression grew dark. “Yes. I wouldn’t have let them touch you.”
And I would have been taken, I realized. Without Philip’s presence, I would have been kidnapped just like my brother had been. As much as it pained me that it had happened to Tyler, I couldn’t help my relief that I had escaped it. I had barely survived the first time. I didn’t think I’d be so lucky a second time.
“Someone knew where you were going,” Luke said quietly.
Shelly moved to the kitchen and returned with a mug for me. I inhaled the spiced aroma with pleasure and took a sip. The creamy liquid slid down my throat, warming me from the inside. Philip studied my face, almost mesmerized.
He tore his gaze away as if fighting himself for focus.
“That’s right,” Philip said finally. “It was a trap.”
My eyes widened at the implications. I was the trap. “That’s…horrible.”
Shelly sat on a plush ottoman on the opposite side of Philip. She looked him in the eye. “I have never told anyone about you except for Luke. And I never would.”
Philip stared at her for a long moment, distilling her words for truth. Then he said gruffly, “All right. I had to check.”
She nodded, not offended despite the clear insult. “There are others who could know. If you kept tabs on her, had investigators…” She offered me a small smile. “Sorry, but I know how he works.”
“Me too,” I said quietly.
And I was beginning to understand as well, both the things he had said and the things he could not. Control was about more than guns and fists. It was about desire. It was about obsession. That was what he’d meant in the car, the words he’d been able to speak.
There was more, though. Words he couldn’t say yet, about love.
“I’ve been careful,” Philip said slowly. “But clearly not careful enough. I’ll find the leak.”
“And the brother?” Luke asked. “My contact didn’t mention another kidnapping. They wouldn’t know that it’s connected.”
“There hasn’t been a hostage demand,” I said quietly. “Not yet.”
Luke’s eyes darkened with sympathy. “The cops can help setup the drop.”
“They won’t go to them.” My parents would follow any ransom demands to the letter, including leaving out the cops. They wouldn’t have done anything to jeopardize my brother’s life. And they already knew how little the police could do against men like this—nothing, in my case.
I was their test run. Their throwaway. Only the people in this room had ever seemed to think otherwise. That I was worth saving, worth loving.
Only Philip had wanted me the way a man does a woman, even knowing every dark thing about me, but had the cold integrity to hold himself back. And I thought I’d always loved him for it, even when I was just a broken little girl. Always loved and hated him for it, just the way he had loved and hated me.
*
“ELLA, WAIT.” SHELLY stopped me as I was leaving.
Curious, I followed her back into the house, leaving Philip outside. I glanced back, where he stood silhouetted by the moon, his figure tall and proud like some kind of lone cowboy. And that was what he was, I realized. He didn’t answer to anyone, except maybe nature—the crux of the city. He forged his own path.
“What’s up?” I asked when we were out of ear-shot.
She glanced around, looking… guilty. Then she pulled something out of her pocket. “Maybe I should have given you this a long time ago.”
In her palm was a delicate gold necklace with a pale green jade stone pendant. It was innocuous and pretty, but the sight of it sent shivers down my spine. “Is that yours?”
“No.” She bit her lip, looking younger than me. She was only a few years older, but she seemed wise beyond her years. Except now, when she seemed mostly nervous. “It’s yours.”
“I don’t understand.”
“When that shit happened a few years ago… God, Ella. I didn’t want to tell you. You had gotten back safely, you were with your family. I wanted that for you. Peace. Happiness.”
I had never found peace or happiness in my adopted home, but I didn’t tell her that. “I’m fine,” I said instead, softly, knowing she still worried about me.
“It’s from your mother.”
My breath stuttered, stopped. I stared at the pretty jade pendant as if it had suddenly come alive, a snake in her hand. “Why would you have that? You met her?”
The worry on her face answered me. “She gave it to me. I met her… She was a…”
“Don’t,” I said sharply. I knew what the odds were, a mother who had given away her child, a city full of danger and sin. And it explained how Shelly had met her, either through her network or at the shelter. My birth mother was a prostitute.
That part wasn’t particularly shocking. It wasn’t particularly hurtful.
No, the hurtful part was knowing that my mother had learned who I was, where I was, enough that she could pass something to me via Shelly—and still had opted not to meet me herself.
“Throw it away,” I said.
“Ella…”
“She didn’t give it to me herself, did she? She didn’t call me up, ask to meet me. She doesn’t care about me, so tell me—why should I care about her?”
Shelly’s lower lip trembled, and I felt bad for putting her in the middle of this. She had done nothing but protect me, but this felt like a betrayal. But I wasn’t the one putting her in the middle of this. My birth mother was, this faceless woman who wanted to give me a necklace instead of love.
“I almost did throw it away,” Shelly said, her voice almost pleading. “So many times. I wanted to. But then I couldn’t. The same way I can’t throw away the stones from my mother’s jewelry. Legacy is a powerful thing, Ella.”
The necklace wasn’t a legacy. It was a curse.
But it was my curse. I took the necklace, still warm from Shelly’s hand. And I walked away, unable to respond to her whispered apology, unable to answer Philip’s questioning expression.
Of course he didn’t accept my silence.
“What did she give you? A listening device?”
“God. Are you always so paranoid? How do you live like that?”
“Very well,” he said, not the least bit cowed.
I clenched the metal and small stone in my fist until it hurt. “Not everything is about you.”
“What is it about then?” he challenged.
Family. “Legacy.”
He smiled faintly. “I thought you said it wasn’t about me.”
And because he was being so cocky, because I wanted to tear him down a notch—because I thought he would shrink away from any real intimacy—I told him the truth. “It was my mother’s,” I said, and then realized what I’d done.
Too late, I realized I had exposed a weakness to a man who would exploit it.
A man of opportunity, he called himself.
Without another word I crossed the gravel driveway and climbed into the backseat. I folded my arms and stared straight ahead, impatient for him to join me. Being Philip, he took his time. He made me wait.
When he finally deigned to join me, he climbed into the seat facing me and shut the door.
The SUV didn’t move.
“You dislike it,” he said, his voice no longer smug, no longer challenging.
And only because of that could I tell him. “I hate it. If she wanted to meet me, to know me, she could have sent a message instead. A cell phone number. An email address. But this… this is, what? A pity gift?”
Philip said nothing.
“What?” I said, angry now. “You don’t agree?”
“What I think doesn’t matter.”
“That’s a first,” I muttered.
“If you don’t want it, throw it away.”
Except it wasn’t that simple, and he knew it. “Tell me about the ring, the one you wear on a chain,” I demanded.
I expected him to refuse me, and I was looking forward to the fight. He wasn’t the person I was mad at, but he was the only one here, in the shadowed backseat of the vehicle. Luke and Shelly had gone back inside their house, doors locked, lights off. The privacy divider was up, blocking Adrian from view. We were alone.
“It was my mother’s,” he said. “Her wedding band. I keep it as a reminder of what happens if I’m not strong.”
“Oh, Philip.” My heart clenched. “It wasn’t your fault, what your father did.”
“She died because I didn’t protect her.”
“How old were you?”
“Twelve.”
“God, Philip. You can’t—”
He rapped twice on the roof of the car, and it immediately glided forward. “What I can and cannot do is not the question. The question is, what are you going to do with that, now that you have it?”
And the sad truth was, I just didn’t know.