What the fuck? Before the fire? The fire changed everything, including me.
I don't respond, just continue up the stairs. Whatever Blaise overheard has shaken him. And now, despite my determination to maintain control, I feel it too. An unsettling sensation that I'm walking toward something that will change everything.
I push open the door to Keira's room without knocking. The sight of her stops me cold. She's sitting on the edge of the bed, still in her wedding dress, but she looks nothing like a bride on her wedding day. Her face is ghostly pale, eyes red-rimmed and haunted. Her hands tremble in her lap. Worse, the light in her eyes has dimmed. It’s like she’s already dead inside.
Something twists in my chest. This isn't the defiant woman who threw champagne in my face. This is someone broken.
But I won’t be manipulated. I can’t back down from the importance of today.
"What the hell were you thinking?" I demand, shutting the door behind me. "Trying to smuggle Brigit and her nanny out on our wedding day? Did you really think they wouldn’t be caught?"
She doesn't answer, just stares at me with those haunted eyes. The vulnerability in her gaze disturbs me more than any defiance could.
"Why?" I press, anger mingling with something that feels uncomfortably like concern. "What is Brigit to you that you'd risk everything?"
Keira's eyes widen slightly. "What were you told?"
My eyes narrow. Is this the secret? “That I should keep an open mind.” Maybe that will make her feel safe to tell me what the fuck is going on.
She takes a deep, shuddering breath, closing her eyes briefly as if gathering courage. When she opens them again, there's a new resolve. "Brigit is my daughter."
She couldn’t have hit me harder if she’d taken a sledgehammer to my gut. "Your… daughter?"
"Yes." Her chin lifts slightly. "Not my god-sister. My daughter."
The floor beneath me feels suddenly unstable. Her daughter. Not a god-sister, not a ward, but her child. Her secret.
"Your daughter.” It’s the pain that she’s been with someone else that hits more now than the anger, but I try to hold on to the anger. “All this time, you had a child and never told me?"
“I haven’t told anyone…well, except Jenna.”
"And the father?” I’m going to hunt that motherfucker down and kill him. "Who's the lucky man who gave you a child while my family burned?"
She stares up at me. For a moment, I wait, but then something shifts. I consider the age of Brigit.Eight? Nine?
Oh, fuck. "It's me. Brigit is mine."
Keira doesn't deny it. She just sits there, tears streaming down her face.
I sink down onto a chair, my legs suddenly unable to hold me. My daughter. I have a daughter. A child who has been living under this roof, who looked at me and told me I needed to be happier.
“What happened? I manage.
“I found out I was pregnant right before the fire. I tried to tell you, but my parents had already cut off all contact between us."
"Why didn't you tell me when I came back?" I ask, feeling like I’m in a netherworld.
"Look at what you've become. You came back with nothing but vengeance in your heart. Would you have believed me? Or would you have thought it was just another Kean trick?"
The truth is, I don’t know.
"All this time," I murmur, more to myself than to her. "All this time, I had a daughter."
The magnitude of it overwhelms me. Nine years lost. Nine years I can never get back. Nine years of her life I missed because of hatred and revenge.
And now what? What kind of father could I possibly be to her? A man who executes people in cold blood? A man consumed by vengeance?
"Does she know?" I ask. "Does Brigit know I'm her father?"
