Zane broke every speed limit on the way to Ella’s house, but nothing he said could console her, and she shied away from his touch. In her mind, she was the devil incarnate and deserved to be put on the fastest route to hell. Demons chased after each other in her head and fear grabbed hold of her chest, making it hard to breathe, especially as her eyes and nose were so clogged.
Pain throbbed at Ella’s temples when she confronted her half-siblings. They were waiting on the driveway. Luke’s face, drained of colour, reflected the harrowing twenty-four hours since their mother had been arrested. With moisture-filled eyes and in desperate need of a tissue, Ella tried to grasp everything Luke told her.
She couldn’t. She collapsed to her knees, only vaguely aware that Zane lifted her into his arms and carried her inside the house. Luke’s words ran around and around her head, not making sense.
She kidnapped you …
… when you were a baby.
Your father sent the police here …
… already has the paperwork to extradite her to America.
How could her father have done this? The same person who’d hugged her goodbye and claimed he wanted to keep in touch? How deceptive was he? Did he truly believe she would fall in line while her mother sat in jail? His behaviour was foreign to her. It was so two-faced that the implications of being related to such a person made her skin crawl.
While she lay limp in Zane’s arms, she doubted her tears would ever stop. Somewhere in the depths of her being, a tightly wound coil of anger twisted itself into a tighter spiral. It turned and wound, unyielding. Her tormented mind tried to justify her motives. Except, as the coil of anger grew stronger and stronger, she could find no reason to defend her actions. She’d wanted the fairytale ending to finding her father. Instead, she’d created a nightmare, and it didn’t look like it’d end any time soon.
All the what-ifs inched closer and crowded her head. What if she’d never started the search for her father? What if she’d never met Zane? What if Zane wasn’t so damn good at his job? What if she’d talked to her mother about the truth? What if Zane hadn’t insisted they go to Boston? If, if, if circled her mind in torturous cycles and left her with only one option. It hurt like hell to suggest it, but she saw no other way.
She had to end it with Zane. She had to fix what she’d broken and focus on her mother. Nothing else mattered. Her impatience and recklessness had outdone itself this time, and she would regret it for the rest of her life if she didn’t make amends. As much as she loved Zane, she had to let him go but wouldn’t blame him. They’d argued long and hard over meeting her father, but she’d brushed his concerns aside, determined to do things her way. She’d been confident that the worst that could happen was that her father would disown her.
She grimaced, ashamed of how naïve she’d been. How could she ever look Zane in the eye again if her mother rotted away in jail? She doubted she could ever contemplate kissing him again, let alone lie with him. This was her punishment for having such a bloody fabulous week. God was peering down at her and having a good belly laugh.
She shrugged out of Zane’s hold and he released her. She turned to face him. “I need to leave for Boston. Right now.”
“I’ll come with you.”
She backed away on jittery knees and collided with Lily, who was sitting on the couch. “No, I don’t want you to come. I want to go alone.”
“Like hell you will.” His chest puffed out and his hand ploughed through his hair. “You’re not going alone.”
She straightened her backbone. It was more symbolic than necessary, but she needed to appear strong and capable. She stared him down, determined to stop her lip from trembling. “Zane, I don’t want you to come. What we had has to end now. I’m sorry, but it was all a mistake. We made a mistake. No—I made many mistakes, and now I have to fix them.”
“Bullshit.” Zane reached her in two strides and grabbed hold of her arms. “You’re upset, you’re angry. God help him, I’m so bloody angry I want to go back and wring his neck. But you’re not going by yourself. He’s a bully and he’ll hurt you.”
She wrenched herself free. Her determination grew stronger by the minute and her reasons for needing to do this alone made more and more sense. “No, you’re wrong, Zane. I’m going to do this my way. I won’t drag you through this. I’m not going to blame you, because this is all my fault, but you have to forget me. I’m sorry, but I want you to leave.”
“Are you crazy?” he hissed, his lips drawn in a straight line. “You want me to forget everything we’ve done together? Just like that.”
Her head wasn’t functioning properly, but she didn’t miss how his eyes glazed over with a crazed look, the stare of a desperate man.
Clearly on the verge of shouting, he added, “You think an ‘I’m sorry’ is all you need to say to make it okay?”
Something snapped. The earlier throbbing behind her eyes exploded. She couldn’t hold the angst in any longer. “Yes,” she cried, “an ‘I’m sorry’ will have to do. If we hadn’t found my father, hadn’t gone to Boston, my mother would still be here. She’s being extradited to a foreign country, and now she has to fight for her freedom, all for taking care of her baby like any mother would.” She sucked in a couple of hasty breaths, doing everything possible to hold her tears in. She needed to be strong.
She took a gulp and added, “Every time I look at you, I’ll be reminded of what’s happened to her. Of where she is, alone and away from her family, all because of what I decided to do behind her back.”
Victoria came up beside her and wrapped her arms around her shoulders. “Ella, how about we sit down and talk it through first?”
But Ella’s chest ached, so, so much. Talking was the sensible thing to do, but a shaft of anger so great, caused by her father, pierced the outer layers of her heart. This was her doing. It was wrong to blame Zane. She’d started the ball rolling and she alone would save her mother.
She shrugged out of Victoria’s hold and shook her head. “No. He has to go, now. I’ll explain everything, but I need to be on the next flight to Boston.”
Ella managed to raise her eyes until her gaze clashed with Zane’s. Turbulence spiralled in his, changing them from chestnut brown to a black abyss.
With his arms across his chest, his hands bit into the muscled flesh above his elbows. He clenched and unclenched his jaw, as though struggling to find his next words. When they came out, he spoke through gritted teeth with forced restraint, his facial muscles tightly wound up. “You do what you must, but this is not even close to over between us. You can fly to Boston alone if you want, but I’ll be right behind, and don’t you forget it. You’re not doing this on your own.”
He spun on his heel and stormed away. When the door slammed shut, she sank to the floor and curled into a foetal position. The time for tears was over.
Zane couldn’t believe how tired he was as he scraped a hand over his face. He’d almost made it home. Had almost reached the sanctuary of his bed, where he planned to have a good bawl followed by a solid sleep.
Sadness warred with a deep anger. As he drove, his stomach muscles hardened each time he thought of Thomas Van Der Meeliko. If ever he’d thought himself capable of murder, it was now. What a bastard. He’d sucked up to both of them while knowing that when their plane lifted off the ground, he’d take care of a hidden agenda.
The tightness in his chest was close to blowing out, and when he was only a couple of streets away from his home, he fishtailed and turned his vehicle around. His good intentions had changed in an instant. There was only one person who had to help him now.
Heading in the direction of the freeway, he needed to hold his emotions in long enough to reach the Sunshine Coast, but hell, his head ached, the tension in his shoulders wouldn’t ease and his chest burned with more pain than what he wanted to think about. There was no way he’d let Ella deal with this alone. They were in this together, and if he had to raise the Titanic to make her see sense, he would. Knowing that she could write off what they had was agonizing. As he drove the last stretch to his parents’ home, he planned and strategised ways to convince her she was wrong.
It was only a mere couple of weeks ago that he had to find her father to win her trust. Now, to win her back, he had to rescue her mother. Surely with his contacts in both the police force and the private eye world, he’d be the best man for the job. But—he pinched his lips together—he knew better. They were dealing with laws in another country and a man with enough money to silence anyone, any time he pleased.
Fear for what Ella’s father was capable of ricocheted through him. An extradition didn’t happen within a couple of days without a lot of power behind it. Ella’s mother was already on her way back to Boston; the full force of Thomas’s influence was abundantly clear. They were going up against a man with millions of dollars, where it wasn’t unheard of to buy favours at any price.
If the bastard hurts her, I’ll hurt him back. Zane made the promise to himself as he blinked back the moisture beginning to build up. He could do this. He would do this. Ella was upset. He got that. She was angry. He got that. But how could she dismiss what they had? He didn’t get that.
The thought of losing her wound him up. His hands clenched the wheel so tightly he struggled to turn corners, his movements jerky and dangerous. Heat flushed his body and he couldn’t stop his muscles from quivering. It was time to confront his mother with the truth. He prayed fervently, like never before, that this wouldn’t be the end of his family as he knew it.
He slowed down once he reached his parents’ street and eased the car into their driveway. With the car lights shining at the windows, his parents would know a visitor had arrived.
Zane swallowed, trying to slow down his pounding heartbeat. He feared everything would irrevocably change the minute he stepped out of the car. He dreaded needing to do this, but his feelings for Ella overrode everything. With his shoulders curled forward he shifted on his seat, pulled the handbrake and closed the windows.
His father opened the front door, shadowed by his mother. Both wore worried frowns. He grimaced. Their night was about to get a whole lot worse.
With difficulty and a weighted chest, he opened the door and forced his tired body from the car.
“Zane, darling, we weren’t expecting you.” His mother—always concerned, always caring. He hadn’t phoned to let them know he’d arrived back in Australia.
“Son, is everything okay?” His dad—the very rock of his existence.
“Mum, Dad …” And he felt like an arsehole. A complete arsehole.
The ache in his throat got too much and made breathing difficult, which brought on a bout of dizziness. He took one step, then an unsteady one. His legs must’ve folded beneath him, because the next thing his brain computed was the touch of the soft grass cushioning his cheek and a shriek from his mother.
As he lay on the front lawn, his heart tore open and the tears finally came.
Hercules himself could not have stopped them.