Page 110 of With a Vengeance

Wentworth keeps smiling. “It certainly would have made things easier for me.”

“They’re about to get harder,” Anna says. “Because there’s proof of what you’ve done. It shows who did what and how all of it was your idea. Don’t ask me how I got it, because I won’t ever tell you. What I will say is that it’s now in the hands of the FBI. They’re waiting for us in Chicago. And if this train is even five minutes late, I’m certain they’ll start looking for it. If they haven’t already.”

Anna thought it would feel good to say all that to Kenneth Wentworth. But what should be a moment of victory is undercut by rage, grief, exhaustion, and the knowledge that not everyone who wronged her will experience true justice.

Or maybe she doesn’t feel triumphant because Wentworth doesn’t look defeated. His smile never wavers, even as it flickers into outright bemusement.

“I always wondered what my son saw in you,” he says. “All those years ago, when he mistakenly thought he was in love with you. You take after your father in that regard. Utterly unimpressive.”

Anna touches the pin on her dress. Wentworth was wrong about her father. Just like he’s wrong about her.

“I know that’s why you did it,” she says. “I know it’s because you hated my father.”

“I didn’t hate him,” Wentworth says. “I just wanted what was rightfully mine.”

“You mean my mother.”

Anna touches the pin again, thinking of the real Margaret Matheson. The resplendent woman with the irrepressible sparkle that lit up every room.

“I know you were in love with her,” Anna says. “I don’t think you ever stopped loving her. Not even after she left you for my father.”

Wentworth’s smiling façade melts away, revealing something sadder and meaner underneath. “She didn’t leave. He took her.”

“Helovedher,” Anna says, thinking about the way her father had looked at her mother. That beam of adoration. “And she loved him in return. Far more than she ever loved you. That’s why she chose him over you.”

“No, he stole her,” Wentworth seethes. “He stole the life I was supposed to have with her. The family I was supposed to have with her. The son that should have been mine.”

“Dante? He’s been yours the whole time.”

“I meant my other son,” Wentworth says.

Anna goes still with shock. She thinks about her parents’ whirlwind courtship, speedy marriage, early bundle of joy that should have caused a scandal. It didn’t because Anna’s father was respected and her mother was beautiful and they were so happy together that it didn’t matter to people when their first child was born.

The only person who cared was that child’s real father.

“Tommy,” she says, unable to keep herself from searching Wentworth’s face for hints of her brother. They’re everywhere. The smile. The eyes. The easygoing grace.

Dante shares many of those traits, which is why Anna thought it was her brother she saw roaming the Phoenix. But it wasn’t Tommy she kept seeing.

It was his half brother.

“I guess you didn’t know everything after all,” Wentworth says.

Anna stares at him, shaking. From shock or anger, she has no idea. “How long did you know?”

“I had my suspicions. Maggie never told me she was pregnant, but the timing always struck me as odd. Your father pretended Tommy was his son, even though anyone could see, if they looked long enough, that he bore no resemblance to plain Arthur Matheson. I certainly noticed it the one and only time I was allowed to meet my son.”

Anna knows exactly when that was. Her family’s final Christmas party. The same one where she had met Dante. While the two of them bantered, fueled by undeniable attraction, Kenneth Wentworth was speaking to his other son for the very first time.

Pain presses against Anna’s temples. A headache brought on by both surprise and rage. Kenneth Wentworth took her brother from her once. She refuses to let him do the same to his memory.

“Tommy was the son of Arthur Matheson. Maybe not biologically, but in all the ways that matter. And he was my brother. I loved him, and you took him from me.”

“I loved him, too,” Wentworth says. “But I wasn’t allowed to act like he was mine. I wasn’t even allowed to speak to him. And whenmyson died, I wasn’t even allowed to mourn him.”

Anna recoils. An instinct she can’t control. Nor can she stop the tears that are forming. Angry ones so hot they sting her eyes. “You caused his death! You didn’t deserve to mourn him!”

“I didn’t know he’d be on that train,” Wentworth says, his own eyes now glistening. “And he shouldn’t have been. Your father should have kept him from going. He should have kept him out of the war entirely. But he didn’t and my son died and that’s why I had to kill him.”

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