Page 61 of Twisted Hearts

Quickly and with precise movements, I followed Shawn up the stairs, and once the door to my apartment closed, Shawn spun, hand on hip and a dark look in his eyes.

My breath skipped a beath. “What happened?”

“What do you know about MaryAnne?”

“MaryAnne? Daniel’s mom?”

I knew nothing about her. She rarely made appearances unless they were for her husband’s political campaign events, but other than that, she’d always been in the background, I supposed you could say. The few times I went to dinner at Daniel’s when he insisted, his mother never ate with us. She’d barely been at our rehearsal dinner the night before I took off, but before that, I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d seen her other than her being on stage at an event with her husband.

“Yeah.” Shawn tossed keys to the kitchen table and removed his jacket. Beneath, that shoulder holster with the gun on his right side was a blaring reminder of who he was, what he could do. I’d never seen a gun in real life until he had stripped out of his coat the night before. “What do you know about her? You spent a lot of time with him, right?”

“Um…yeah, but only when I had to, and it wasn’t like I hung out at his house with his parents.”

He pulled his phone out of one of his back pockets and slid that to the table along with everything else he had in them: change, wallet.

“You didn’t?”

“No.” I pressed off the door and added my purse to the growing pile of mess. “I was forced to date him, but I knew a long time before that what kind of guy Daniel was. There had always been rumors of how he treated girls, girls who tried to come forward in high school but were either silenced or somehow disappeared.”

Two thick blond brows yanked together. “What do you mean, disappeared?”

A rush of something cold slithered through me. “Nothing. They were just…gone from school. I figured the mayor paid them off or something and they transferred to public schools.” I stepped toward him cautiously. Whatever he was thinking was screaming loudly at me, only I didn’t understand the language.

“Shawn—what’s going on?”

He rubbed his hand across forehead before pulling it down his face and sighed. “MaryAnne. You really don’t know anything about his mom? Your parents—your mom—never spoke about her?”

“No, but you’re freaking me out, so why don’t you just tell me.”

He walked to the kitchen, every muscle in his back coiled tightly.

I waited until he reached into the fridge and pulled out two bottles of water, offering me one once he stood and shut the door. “Jaxon’s found out a lot of stuff with his searches, so far mostly through a long chain of money.”

I took a seat at the bar and spun my bottle in circles. “I’m not following.”

“We think—well, we know your dad started stealing money from Matthew Johanssen's account.”

“What?” I almost fell out of my seat. “My dad? He stole from them?”

“Yeah. Pocket change here and there mostly, but slowly worked his way up to four figures monthly.”

My dad was athief? I had a hard enough time wrapping my mind around that, and then Shawn managed to almost throw me on my ass as he said, “And we think when he got busted, that was about the same time he forced you to start dating Daniel.”

“Okay. So?” I’d think later about my dad stealing not only from his clients, but from one of the most influential men in Charleston.

“So? I just said your father essentially forced you to date a guy or, most likely, lose his job, and you’re okay with this?”

“No. I’m in shock, but I also always wondered why it was so important to my dad and why they all refused to let me break up with him, so that kind of makes sense.”

Shawn came around the corner of the counter and set the water bottle down on it. He braced one hand on the counter, and all of his features softened.

It was the softness that had me sitting up straight, alarms ringing in my head, screaming,Warning. Warning. Bad news is coming!

“Tell me, Shawn.” My voice shook.

His blue eyes, so full of emotion, looked at me with a mix of pity and worry.

I reached out and squeezed his arm, maybe to comfort him, maybe to prepare myself, and he said, “They didn’t force you to date him…they sold you.”

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