Jenna brought Dylan inside and guided her to the empty desk chair. "Tell me what this is about."
"I just went through everything in that box. At the bottom, I found a sealed envelope. This was inside it." She placed the piece of paper on the desk. Something was written in the upper right corner in loopy, buoyant handwriting: Zael. Mykonos, '75. Dylan stared up at Jenna meaningfully. "I was born the following year."
No question what she was getting at. "But your mom and dad were already married, I thought. You have two older brothers."
Dylan nodded. "And in 1975, my mom left for a few months. She went to Greece all by herself, just picked up and left. She told me a few years ago that she'd wanted to divorce my dad, but he begged her to take him back. But she never told me about this. She never told me about him."
Dylan flipped the piece of paper over. It was a close-up photograph of an impossibly beautiful man, bare-chested and tanned golden brown, sitting on a white sand beach. His sensual mouth curved in a knee-melting smile for the person who took the snapshot, presumably Dylan's mother.
"You think she had an affair with this guy?"
"Yeah," she said. "I'd say the odds are pretty damn good."
Jenna picked the photo up so she could look closer. Purely for clarification purposes, of course. She stared transfixed at the flawless, muscular body and the mane of copper-shot blond hair. His face was unlined, ageless. His dark-lashed eyes were piercing blue, the color of tropical, turquoise waters. Wise and unearthly.
And slung around his strong wrist was a tooled leather band with a hammered silver emblem affixed to it ... a teardrop suspended over the cradle of a crescent moon.
TAVIA'S STOMACH LURCHED as the black helicopter swooped down over the sunlit water toward an isolated, tree-choked island several miles off the coast of Maine. Twenty minutes after the Minion at the police station had contacted Dragos, the dark-suited pilot, also Minion, arrived to take her to a private helipad at the top of a Boston high-rise.
She absorbed every detail of the journey, cataloging landmarks and locations in case she needed to pass the intel along to the Order. Although none of it would matter if her plan to kill Dragos failed and she ended up dead in the next few hours.
The pilot put the helicopter down on a slab of cleared concrete behind a fortresslike residence. It was the only building on the forbidding crag of granite and tall pines. No way off the island on her own, unless she wanted to swim a freezing Atlantic current or sprout wings. "This way." The Minion climbed out of the cockpit and waited for her to follow. They crossed the yard against a howling, brittle wind, and up toward the back of the sprawling house. The door opened from within, and another Minion, this one bristling with a semiautomatic rifle in his hands, motioned for her to enter.
She thought she'd been prepared to face Dragos, but the sight of him waiting for her inside the house put ice in her marrow. "Miss Fairchild. This certainly is an unexpected pleasure."
He was flanked by four Gen One assassins, dressed in head-to-toe black. They had weapons too, guns and knives at the ready, strapped across their hard chests and fastened to their muscled thighs. But it wasn't the arms that gave them their lethal air, nor their severe, shaved heads and black UV collars clamped around their powerful necks. It was the lack of mercy in their eyes.
The lack of any emotion whatsoever.
They were killing machines, and any hope she had of ending Dragos's life swiftly on her arrival was stalled by the understanding that these four Hunters would see her dead in less than an instant after she made the first move.
As threatening as the group of them was, it was Dragos's presence in front of her that put a shudder in her bones. Something about him had chilled her instinctively when she first met him at the senator's office. Now, understanding the depth of his depravity and evil, she was physically repulsed. She used the faint convulsion to effect fear and relief. "I had nowhere else to go. Thank you for allowing me to see you."
Dragos eyed her suspiciously. "You've been with the Order all this time."
Not a question, an accusation. "I didn't think I'd ever escape them."
"And here I'd guessed you'd gone willingly," he replied, guarded, scrutinizing. "I thought perhaps Sterling Chase had found a way to charm you."
"Charm me?" She forced an affronted scoff. "He abducted me. Interrogated me. He ... beat me."
He studied her bruises and the lacerations that were already healing. Nostrils flaring, he sniffed slightly, testing the scent of her against what she was telling him. "Did he seduce you?" She couldn't hope to deceive him completely. He could smell the truth on her skin, she knew that much without a doubt. She hung her head as if in shame. "He used my body against me. He made me drink his blood."
"Hmm." He sounded satisfied with her answer but displeased with the facts. "That is unfortunate, Tavia. The bond is unbreakable."
"Only by death," she replied, the words catching in her throat, though not out of regret as she hoped he would be tempted to believe. He lifted her chin and she forced a cold hatred into her eyes - not so hard when the hatred was reserved for the vampire standing before her. "Why didn't you tell me who I was? Why did you keep the truth of my origins a secret from me?" He backed away, out of her reach. His icy eyes narrowed in calculation, that spark of suspicion visiting them again. His Gen One guards inched forward, ready to protect their creator.
Tavia's heart rate sped as she fought to keep Dragos engaged, to keep him intrigued enough to trust her. This was her only chance; she couldn't give him any room for doubt.
"Why did you keep me weak when I could have served you so much better if I was strong?" The vehemence of her determination to win him over made her eyes flash with hot amber. "I could have been something more to you if you'd only allowed me the truth."
His dark brows rose slightly. A slow smile put a faint twist to his mouth. "You served me very well, Tavia. You were more than useful. And I would have told you everything - I would've freed this glorious part of you - when the time was right."
"Instead you left me defenseless. You didn't give me any chance." She played to his ego, and to the obvious attraction she felt radiating from him as her disgust for him made her Breed nature spike to life inside her. "You had to know the Order held me. You had to know they would question me about you, abuse me. They refused to believe me when I told them I didn't know who you were or where they could find you."
"And if they'd known the truth about you, they would have killed you for it," he replied evenly. "I would have, if I'd been them."
Cold words from a cold, black heart. She believed him, and it took all her strength of will to force the next words from her lips. "You were the first person I thought of after I escaped. I sought you out because you're my creator. The only one I can turn to. You are the only one strong enough to defeat the Order."