Page 93 of Stone
I’d allowed him to drive me away and had hidden like some misbegotten child.
Well, no longer. I was a strong woman and I knew what I wanted. I refused to allow the bastard to control me any longer.
“Kekoa. What did you find?” Stone’s voice had returned to the gruff sound I’d heard before. Even his muscles were tensed from anger and the need to crush whatever opponent had been stupid enough to try to defile everything we’d rediscovered.
And my life.
I rushed from the room, finding my purse on the floor where I’d tossed it. As expected, my father was calling. Without hesitating like before, I answered it.
“Dad. I’m going to tell you this one last time. Stay out of my fucking life. Thank you for arranging to save me, but you’re a cruel man forcing Stone to be the one to do so. What were you trying to do, grind salt into a wound that has never healed? Do you hate me that much that you couldn’t see what you weredoing to your own flesh and blood? Are you just a sadistic freak who enjoys inflicting pain on others?”
I took a deep breath, prepared to launch into him again.
He was silent, his breathing the only way I knew he was still on the phone. “I’m not calling to manipulate you, Dani. I need to tell you something before you find out.”
“What the hell could you possibly tell me? What? You’ve already tried to ruin my life more than once. You drove away the man I loved for what reason? Because you had a beef with Stone’s father? I know you two were close. I understand something terrible happened between the two of you that you’re trying to cover up.” I was shaking, yet I’d never felt so much peace in my life.
These were the words I should have said to my father a long time before.
“Dani. Listen to me. You need to listen. Okay?”
“I’m through with listening to you, Dad. I’m finished with playing your goddamn games. And I’m not certain I can continue being your daughter other than in name only.”
“What happened twenty years ago was a lie!” he shouted into the phone, shocking the hell out of me.
“Which part? That I shouldn’t love Stone or that you hated him? Or that you tried to bribe him with one million dollars to leave me alone? What? What the fuck could you possibly tell me that would matter in the least?”
I was exasperated, surprised when Stone stormed into the room heading for the front door. As he snatched his weapon into his hands, I knew we were about to face a crisis.
“Too late, Dad. I need to go.” Before I had a chance to end the call, my father shouted once again.
“It’s about the baby!”
I was driven into a fog as Stone threw open the door, immediately grabbing someone around the throat and dragging him in.
Kekoa and Akoni were behind the stranger, standing in the doorway like big security guards.
The phone slipped from my hand even as my father continued talking. But I heard his words. I knew what he was admitting.
And as Stone shoved the barrel of the weapon under the young man’s chin, I knew exactly who’d been watching us from the shadows.
“Who the fuck are you?” Stone demanded.
The young man with the whiskey-colored hair and luminous sea-green eyes shifted his gaze from Stone to me and back to the man I loved once again before he spoke.
When he did, my entire world was shattered.
“I’m your son.”
CHAPTER 26
Stone
Son.
The words hit me harder than anything anyone could have said to me in my life.
Without realizing what I was doing, I lowered my weapon, unable to fully comprehend what I’d just heard from the young man’s mouth. Yet as I looked at him, studying his height and muscular frame, the intensity of his eyes—the same vivid color eyes I’d been born with—I was struck by the truth.
