“Gena?” I asked, pausing before ripping open the next box. “I didn’t tell you her name. How did you know?”
“Teddy told me,” Hugh answered after clearing his throat and returning to the box he was digging through.
I shook my head and moved across the room. “You’re lying. I want the truth, or this stops here and now.”
Hugh lowered his head and rested his hands on the box. “I know Gena’s name because that kid shared Teddy’s eyes… Well, he’s my nephew. Teddy is my brother.”
I stepped back.
“Were you ever in prison with him?” I gawked.
“No,” he said, lifting his chin. “But I did visit him, and he did tell me all about you during those visits.”
“You lied to me.” I shook my head. “Are you really a cop or did you lie about that too?”
“Yes, I’m a cop.” He said as if irritated he needed to explain.
“Did you lie about Victor?”
“No,” Hugh said. Abandoning the box, he moved toward me. “Everything else I told you is true. Teddy kept a ledger for the six months before he got busted. He told me he left it at your place. He said there was enough information in there to bring Victor down and that it contained a detailed listing of the accounts he’d used to launder the money. He didn’t steal it to pay for his retirement. He stole it as proof of what Victor was doing.”
My heart clenched. I don’t know why I was shocked that Hugh had lied. That Teddy wasn’t just the common criminal I believed, but he’d been trying to do the right thing.
“How can I believe you?” I asked, searching his gaze. “He never told me he had a brother. He told me his entire family had died.”
“To him, we had,” Hugh said and ripped open another box. “Teddy ran away at the age of sixteen. Did he tell you that?”
“He said he ran away from his foster family,” I said.
“My parents adopted him after his family died. They loved him like he was their son. They hired PIs to find him and bring him back, and each time he left again. It wasn’t until he was older that he reached out to my parents trying to put things back together again.” Hugh’s jaw clenched. “By then, my father had died, and I wouldn’t let him near my mom. He’d broken her heart and her spirit when he’d left. I wasn’t about to let him do it again.”
My heart ached at the thought. Teddy had been hurting all those years and was trying to make things right.
“It wasn’t your choice to make.”
“I agree,” Hugh said, tilting his neck. “I told my mother about Teddy reaching out, and she was mad I’d kept it from her. She wanted to see him, so I went to arrange it, and that was about the time Teddy was arrested.”
“Did she get to see him?” I asked, needing to know.
“She visited him in jail four times a week until the day he died. I visited the other three days when she couldn’t go. That’s when he told me about you.”
I covered my mouth with my hand. My stomach churned.
“He drove me away on purpose.”
“I already told you that he was protecting you.”
I shook my head. “No, he wasn’t protecting me.” I swallowed hard and crossed the room, ripping open a box. I took out one of my journals and handed it to him. “He was keeping me from meeting you.”
“I don’t….” Hugh said, opening my journal. His voice trailed off as he stared at the picture I’d tucked away inside. A picture of my future. A picture of a guy kissing me. A shirtless guy whose tattoo was visible.
“I’d told him once about the man in my dreams that I visit each night via astral projection. I showed him that picture of that man, which my sister drew and claimed I would marry one day.”
Hugh remained quiet even as he lifted his gaze.
“It’s you.”
Hugh lowered his gaze to the picture again and ran his finger over the tattoo that matched the one on his shoulder. “Teddy and I designed matching tattoos at the age of ten that we were going to get when we old enough to do it. I told him I was going to get mine, but he never did.”
