Soft footsteps draw me into awareness. Hunter? Or maybe Ronan, though neither of them usually smell so sweet. Like flowers. My nostrils wrinkle and I open my eyes, prepared to issue a weak attempt at humor.
New cologne?
I blink, registering the glow of blond hair, but the figure is too slim. Too small. Her delicate features catch the sunlight streaming in through my window, which gives her a reflective gleam like that of a porcelain doll.
“Ms. Hollings?” she asks softly. She creeps closer and smooths the skirt of her cream-colored sundress with one hand while brandishing a bouquet of fresh daisies in the other—the source of the smell. “I don’t mean to intrude,” she adds, revealing the hint of an accent I can’t place. “Blake asked me to come.”
She places her offering on my bedside table, seemingly oblivious to how I stiffen. My gaze cuts to the doorway, seeking out any trace of his hulking shadow. All I find are clinical white walls.
Still, I’m rendered speechless as Masha casts an appraising glance around my room. Then she reveals another object cradled in her palm.
“He asked me to give you this.”
An envelope. Every cell in my body urges me to refuse it—scream, shout, protest somehow before she can place it beside the flowers. My lips flutter apart, but no words come out.
“I’ll let you get some rest,” Masha says gently with a weak smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. The two wide, curious eyes she can’t seem to take off my bruised, battered face.
I expect her to walk to the door backward, but she surprises me by turning away. Near the threshold, she pauses, her mouth trembling with a question she can’t seem to repress.
“Forgive me, Ms. Hollings, but can I ask you something?”
All I can do is nod. Dread has robbed me of my voice and left me little attention to focus on anything but the envelope.
“How do you know my brother?”
The universe stops spinning in the wake of her words. Brother. Her brother. How do I know her brother?
Brandt Lloyd was an only child. It’s why his father resented him so much; his sole heir actually had a soul. What a waste.
“Ms. Hollings?” Poor Masha sounds worried.
But I can’t bring myself to answer her. Confusion and terror claw through my chest as I contemplate the impossible. Was he telling me the truth all along?
I’m not him…
My fingers tremble and I remember the envelope within my reach. It tears easily, but inside, I find two pieces of paper. One is painfully familiar: a list of numbers named Hollings account, only this time, my name is at the top of the figures beside the title recipient. Hope forms a painful noose over my throat—but it barely has the chance to grow before I realize that it’s unsigned. Unfulfilled. So much money but no way to access it without Blake Lorenz’s signature.
The next page doesn’t hold the answer. It’s a different texture: a photocopy of a small document, so old that it copied barely legible. I have to trace its contents with my gaze for what feels like an eternity before I finally can make sense of it.
A birth certificate.
Brandt Harrison Lloyd was the child’s name. Roseanna Lloyd was the mother. But on the line designated for the father…
Instead of Harrison Lloyd, a painfully familiar name fills that space instead. I have to blink twice just to accept the chilling reality.
Blake Alfonse Lorenz.
My first instinct is to deny it. This is yet another twisted trick.
And yet…it makes sense to a part of me buried deep down. In a way, my beautiful boy told me the truth himself. He’s no father, Brandt murmured once, referring to Harrison. His smile betrayed a joy I hadn’t seen in him in so long. Father? He’s no father.
The truth hits with the crushing weight of the entire world pinning me down: for ten years, I’ve mourned a boy who, technically, never existed. The heir to the Lloyd fortune was never a Lloyd—and the pitiful Hollings brat who adored him was never really a Hollings.
I don’t know how to reconcile these facts. So I don’t. All I can do is focus on the cruel olive branch sent my way. Do I dare seek him out to fulfill it?
Or do I burn it?
I stare from the window and let the fiery sunset stretching across the sky give me my answer.
All I can do is endure.
And wait.
Because, as sure as the setting sun, Blake Lorenz isn’t finished with me yet.