Page 86 of Stolen Love

“College,” Dizzy says. “And there she fell in love with a prince. A beautiful and kind prince. One who was good and sweet. One who would go to the ends of the earth for her. The girl was so happy and in love. Everything was perfect.”

Her voice trails off and she wipes at her cheek.

“Dizzy?”

She holds up a hand to quiet me.

“They were happy.” When she speaks she’s quieter, sadder. This girl is the polar opposite of the Dizzy I normally see. “They got married. And they found out they were having a baby. They were so excited. I’m sorry, this is the part where my mom always cried.”

“She’d cry?” Over a children’s story? Or because this story was real. Everything Betty told us about West’s dad comes to mind. He sounded like a monster. If Dizzy’s mom was being abused… “Your dad is from a dangerous family.”

“That man is not my father.” She spits the words with pure hatred. “He was a monster and the best thing that ever happened to me was his death.”

“Dizzy, what happened? With the girl and the prince, I mean.”

“The girl ran into the boy from her past when his father died. He’d grown into a man and had a child of his own to look after. She missed his friendship and tried to comfort him. But the boy from her past had become a monster in the time they’d been apart. And when he saw the princess, he wanted her. So he plotted and he waited.”

The back of my neck is prickled and my heart is trying to crawl into my throat. “This isn’t some fairy tale, is it?”

She glances at me over her shoulder. “No, it’s not.”

“What did Robert Hawthorne do?”

“He waited until my mom had her baby and then he put his plan into action. He stole her out from under her husband’s roof less than two months after her first child was born. A beautiful baby girl. And he took her home to look after his six year old son.”

“West.”

“But what he didn’t know was she was already pregnant with her second daughter by the time he took her.”

“You?”

She nods. “My existence worked in his favor. He told her if she ran that he would kill me. If she fought I would reap the punishment. He gave her no choice but to stay.”

I clamp my hand over my face as my eyes grow wet. Poor Dizzy. My heart aches for what she’s been through. What her mother went through at the hands of that monster. What West possibly went through as well.

“Those stories always ended with the prince rescuing his princess and spiriting her and her daughter away from the evil. The prince would rescue the little boy too. Mother would create happy endings where I would have a sister. A beautiful sister with brown hair like our daddy and hazel eyes like our mother. She would be painfully shy, but we’d recognize each other instantly. Because we’d met once before.”

Her story makes me think of the woman with the white hair. The girl in the pink coat with her big blue eyes. “Dizzy, what are you saying?”

“She hoped he would come. Always. Every day that Robert Hawthorne held her captive she waited for our daddy to find her. She knew he would.”

“Our daddy? You think we’re…?”

“He was too late, Ivy. She was already gone by the time he worked it out. Nineteen years is a long time living with monsters. You know that as well as I do. By the time he found us she’d been in the cold, hard earth for a couple of years. But he came like she knew he would. He was trying to piece it all together. What happened. And he told me about my sister.

“He told me about you.”

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Rogue

My gaze darts from Rebel to West and back again.Well, this is fucking weird.

You’re telling me.Rebel glances from me to West.This fucker has our face.

“Not quite. The eyes are different,” I say. They’re darker. Colder.I’m not sure this guy has a sense of humor.

I’m not sure any of us do anymore.

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