Bitter Truths (The Denton Family Legacy 3)

Maddox grabbed a chair and dragged it over to her. “I take it you’re aware who we all are?”

“Yes.”

“Good. We won’t get stuck on the in

troductions.” Maddox sat back, staring at her. This was the last thing she thought he’d do.

“You planning on boring me to death?”

“Not at all.” He sighed. “We didn’t kill your family.”

She snorted. “Try telling me something else.”

“You’re an annoying girl.”

Glaring at the man in front of her, she wondered what the hell his game was.

“Your mission was to kill one of us at a time. Would you come after my wife? My daughter?”

“Only if they got in my way.”

“We looked for you,” Maddox said.

“Yeah, wanted to kill of the last of the Santos.”

“Wow, this woman is determined to twist words around,” Gideon said.

“I know the truth,” she said.

“You know nothing,” Maddox said.

The door to the room opened, and Charlotte walked inside. “Hello, Ruby.”

Ruby frowned as she looked at Charlotte. She did remember her, vaguely. Actually, she remembered Charlotte a lot. As Charlotte took a seat beside her, Ruby saw Maddox tense.

“Charlotte—”

“When you deal with your men, I don’t interfere. Ruby is not one of your men. I’m going to talk to her.”

Charlotte smelled like cupcakes and cinnamon. The scent struck a memory, and it shook Ruby to the core.

“You remember me?” Charlotte asked.

At that moment Ruby was being swamped by all sorts of different memories, and it was destroying her. Moving away from Charlotte, Ruby curled her legs against her, hugging them to her body. “I don’t want to deal with this,” she said.

“Sweetie, we didn’t kill your family.”

“They mentioned you. I heard them.”

Charlotte cleared her throat, and Ruby looked toward her. In her lap was a file. “We tried to look for you, sweetie. When we found out that your parents had been killed, we tried to find you, not to hurt you, to take care of you. To love you.” She handed over the file. “We’re going to leave you alone for a little while, and I want you to look through, and understand what we tried to do for you.” Charlotte stood and herded all of the men out, including Oliver.

“Why shouldn’t I just tear this up?”

“You can. Of course you can, but then you’ll never know the real truth of what happened.”

Ruby watched as they all left the room, leaving her alone with her thoughts. She was close to tears, and she didn’t understand it. Closing her eyes, she took several deep breaths.

I can do this.