Burned Hearts (Burned 3)

It’d been orchestrated from birth until this very second.

* * *

I drifted in and out of sleep while Dane scoured more paperwork, agonized, analyzed, internalized. I couldn’t even begin to fathom what churned through his system at this point, while he spent hours grinding over every little tidbit unearthed.

I had known from the age of five what my mother was all about and what my home life would be, how the interactions would play out, and what to expect. As hostile as the environment had been because of her, at least it was predictable.

Even as shitty as my childhood had been when all of my father’s money had gone to Maleficent and he hadn’t been able to continue to compete professionally because of his shoulder injuries and everything in our life had turned dark and dismal, there had been a huge amount of certainty.

That certainty had all been centered around the fact that my mother was a selfish, money-hungry bitch. There’d not once been any proof otherwise, and she hadn’t put any effort into correcting the image or our opinion of her over the years, the decades. If anything, she’d found creative ways to exemplify and perpetuate the role she apparently loved playing.

Unfortunately for Dane, he’d never had a demon staring him so squarely in the face—that demon being the society he’d believed in. Vale Hilliard and Wayne Horton had come damn close to tearing him apart with their Machiavellian plots against me and the Lux, but this was Dane’s parents we were talking about.

Chances were very good his father hadn’t crossed to the dark side along with Ethan or anyone else. For the most part, all evidence pointed to Bradley doing exactly as Dane had done when he’d discovered things had gone horrifically wrong—finding a way out.

Yet Dane had no one to confront, no one to question. If there’d been a generation of Bax men who’d occupied a seat at the table, they were long since dead and buried. Dane couldn’t consult them. And it wasn’t as though he could ring up Ethan and ask him, right?

Not blatantly at any rate. Not without repercussions we were not at all prepared to deal with at the moment, as we acclimated to this new scenario. This new peril.

To that point, I grew infinitely agitated as we showered and got around the next morning, after packing up all of the documentation Dane had collected and we put the vault back together.

I didn’t like being away from Amsel for so long. It made me even more nervous since Dane and I had encountered additional sinister doings. Dane spoke with Amano and assured me all was well back home, but I’d never fully accept that until we were in Sedona and my son was in my arms. So, with no other reason to hang around Philly, we flew home.

Dane was abnormally quiet. Not that he talked much on a regular basis. He was a brooder by nature. I could easily amend that and consider him a ruminator by nature, because he was deep in thought, as usual. I didn’t interrupt. I couldn’t offer anything to tip the scales for him, so I flipped absently through magazines while he mentally debated everything we’d discovered, his jaw and his fists clenching from time to time.

Dismay set up permanent residency low in my belly, keeping me unsettled.

The matter of what had really gone on between 1978 and 1983, what the Bax family’s involvement was with the society, and what had truly happened to his parents were confounding enough. But one other issue reared its ugly head in my mind.

If Ethan discovered we’d pieced the puzzle together, what then?

If he was in cahoots with the corrupt members who’d conspired to destroy the Lux, who’d executed attacks on me, who’d do anything to get what they wanted or thought they deserved or were owed, then all of this wasn’t over. We’d just added another layer to the danger that darkened our doorstep.

“Don’t look so worried,” Dane finally whispered as he leaned toward me and kissed my cheek.

“I can’t help it. There are roots buried deep that neither of us ever considered, because you trusted Ethan and didn’t know your father’s connection with him or the society.”

“I’ll figure this out. We’ll deal with it.”

“Dane.” I shook my head, let out a long breath. “If Ethan’s been the puppet master all this time, for over three decades … What’s going to stop him now?”

“Not what. Who.” He gave a solemn look. “Me.”

My eyes closed briefly. “I just got you back. You did everything asked of you, everything you could do in order to bring down the society. And still it’s not enough.”

I felt the tears build, but I pushed them back. I was angry, hurt, scared. And so very, very tired. I just wanted everything to be normal. Everything should be normal. Dane had gone through hell to make sure justice was served. Yet he still wasn’t free of the corruption. If anything, he was trapped further. Like there was no escape for him. For us.

“This is crap!” I blurted.

“Yes. But I’ve got some ideas.”

“Do I even want to hear them? Why can’t you just be done with this?”

“Because it’s not done, Ari. Understand, I can’t just let this drift.”

I shook my head.

He pulled me to him, tucking me against his rigid body. “Just sleep, baby. You need to sleep.”