Page 80 of Shattered Vows

I yank my hand from her grip and stand on my own, the patches of destroyed skin stinging with my movements. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m here to take you home, away from this evil man. Surely by now you know who he really is.”

“You’re right. He did tell me.” I glance around quickly. There’s no one within sight.

“Then let’s go.” She reaches for my hand, but I step back from her, and her hand falls through the air. “What are you doing?”

“What are you doing? I’m not going anywhere with you.” I scowl.

She blinks rapidly, clearly surprised by my reaction. “After everything I’ve done for you your entire life? I’ve only ever tried to protect you.” Tears prick her dark eyes.

She’s laying it on thick and doing a good job of it, I have to admit. If I hadn’t already seen what I did, I might even let her guilt me into leaving with her.

Instead, I fist my hands at my sides. “I already told you, I’m not going anywhere with you.”

She frowns. “I thought it might come to this. This is for your own good, remember that.” She brandishes a knife from somewhere in her uniform and holds it out in front of her.

Unlike when Kol was holding a knife in front of me, the sight of this one fills me with terror.

I don’t even think, I just run. As fast as I can and to the first thing I see, which is the opening to the hedge maze, the most terrifying place on earth to Kol. But at this moment, it will be my refuge.

I need to get away from this woman—because from the papers in Kol’s office, I know that the woman chasing me is not my mother.

Chapter

Thirty-Three

KOL

THREE HOURS EARLIER…

Itake another swig from the bottle and stare at the papers I removed from the safe in my room as a result of the phone call I just received. The same papers that have been plaguing me lately.

Maybe I’d have been better off to have left it alone rather than listening to my instincts when they kept telling me something was amiss.

It dawned on me that for Rapsody’s mom to disappear so quickly after she confronted her daughter about our engagement, she had to have already been somewhat prepared to leave at the drop of a hat. Why? What average citizen has the resources and the ability to change their identity unless they thought they might need to at some point? You don’t get fake IDs that will pass inspection at your local corner store.

That, coupled with her mom’s story of having no pictures of her pregnancy and the first eighteen months of Rapsody’s life, didn’t sit right with me. How does a woman like Rapsody’s mother—one who is so hyper focused on her daughter’s life and so controlling—not have photos of her daughter as an infant? Even if she was sexually assaulted, and it resulted in a pregnancy, how did she swing so far from one extreme—not wanting any pictures at all of the child and not connecting with the baby—to the other, becoming overbearing, heaping on the guilt to control her daughter?

Something felt off. I always trusted my instincts when I was in the military, and I wasn’t about to ignore them now.

So after Rapsody’s accident when I patched up her forehead in my bathroom, I took some of her blood from the cloth and had it tested. My private investigator who located Rapsody and her mother in the first place followed her mom around for a few days until he could get a sample to test against Rapsody’s.

And then the results came back, proving that the woman I love is not the biological daughter of the woman who raised her. And I’ve been struggling with what to do about that since.

But there’s no way I can keep the truth from Rapsody anymore. After last night, it might be the final nail in the proverbial coffin for us, but she deserves the truth. I was just afraid that if I told her, she’d take off in search of her birth parents, leaving me, which is a selfish fear.

I bring the bottle to my lips again, taking a hefty swig. I want to dull the edges of my emotions right now. Telling her is the right thing, but the idea of losing her is like a black festering pit in my chest.

She’ll leave me now. Because I found her birth parents. And I know Rapsody—she’s going to want to know them and the siblings she didn’t know she had. And by confessing the truth last night, I made it even easier for her to walk away from me.

My phone rings beside the papers I’m still staring at, but I ignore it. I don’t want to talk to anyone, unless it’s Rapsody.

She’s made no effort to come talk to me today. I swore to myself that I’d give her time to consider everything I said last night without pressuring her. She deserves that much at least.

The phone stops ringing, but seconds later, it rings again.

“What the fuck?” I grumble and pick it up without looking to see who it is. “What?” I bark into the phone.

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