Chapter 27
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CLOVER
The new safe house is a murder motel, and I can’t even bring myself to appreciate all the story inspiration.
I miss the Sugar on Snow Inn and the rustic seclusion the mountain cabin afforded us.
Typically, a murder motel would be fodder for days, with the peeling paint and questionable characters, but almost getting blown up by your boyfriend’s mother has a way of really dismantling everything you thought you knew.
Boyfriend? Bodyguard?
I have more holes in my story than Swiss cheese.
This entire day has made me realize how much I’ve gotten wrong in all my stories over the years. I probably owe my readers a big fat apology because I’ve explained the feeling of terror with Band-Aids and glue, not the full-body visceral reactions it causes in real life.
And here I was, thinking I knew terror intimately.
Poor, naive Clover.
Roman secured three side-by-side rooms on the second floor within an hour of leaving the compound. I don’t know why he chose this place, and I didn’t ask. In fact, I haven’t asked a single question since I got into the car.
I’m too numb to do much of anything.
One of Roman’s men is collecting Wrecks from the last safe house and will deliver him tomorrow. I miss him—the warm, furry reminder that something in this world is simple and good. Wrecks will hate traveling with a stranger, but that cabin isn’t safe either.
I almost laugh.
It’s funny that we thought anywhere would be safe.
I’m sitting on the edge of a bed that smells like bleach, staring at my hands. At least I’m not shaking anymore. Not visibly, anyway. My tremors seem to have burrowed deep inside me, where they’re much more devastating—those serve as a reminder that I can still be broken.
The radiator clanks and hisses like something’s trapped and trying to escape. A car door slams in the parking lot, and my heart lunges for my throat. I don’t settle until I hear drunken laughter fading into the night.
It’s not Terra. Not yet.
“Honeybee?” Valen’s been hovering since we arrived, checking me over for injuries I don’t have. Those are all on the inside, where no one can see.
“I’m fine,” I lie. As upsetting as this is for me, it must be so much worse for him.
I mean, it was his mother who tried to blow us up.
“You’re not, and that’s okay.” He sits beside me, lowering himself in slow motion. He’s close, but not touching.
Space is not what I need today.
“I am though.” Numb is my happy place.
He tilts his head, giving off the cute golden retriever energy I crave.
“How’s being fine working out for you? Because from where I’m sitting, fine looks a hell of a lot like coping mechanisms you rely on so you don’t fall apart.
We all need to crash sometimes. It’s not weak.
It’s not a character flaw. It’s human nature. ”
Slowly, deliberately, he reaches for my hand. “But you keep hiding your true feelings behind a wall that you reinforce every time something spooks you. It scares me to think what will happen when you can no longer stretch enough to hold it all on your own.”
I open my mouth to argue, but I can’t.
He’s right.
I’ve been fine my entire adult life, and I’ve never felt more broken.
“She blew up our tree.” There’s no inflection in my tone. It’s flat, unfeeling. Dead.
“I know.”
“She wants us dead, Valen. That second explosion— If you hadn’t—” My voice cracks.
“But I did.” His hand squeezes mine and stills the shaking. “And we’re okay.”
“For now,” I whisper, echoing the thought that plays on a loop in my mind.
A knock at the door has my body locking up in preparation for another explosion, even if it’s only in my mind. My legs kick out, and then I’m curling them into my chest—a sitting fetal position with my head resting on my knees as I wait for what comes next.
“Fuck.” Valen drops to his knees in front of me, rubbing his hands on the outside of my thighs. “It’s my cousins, Honeybee. They won’t allow anywhere near us. They’re staying on either side of our room, and we have people positioned in front and out back.”
“It’s us,” Grant calls from outside. There’s a control in his words that’s all business, but it’s edged with fear. They may be reasonably used to threats, but I doubt they’re used to this kind of nonstop danger. It has us all on edge. “Can we talk?”
Valen squeezes me once, and when I lift my head, he takes a long beat to scan my eyes before standing and opening the door.
Grant, Chief, and Sterling file in, each more grim than the last. Chase follows, carrying a duffel bag that clanks when he sets it down.
“Weapons,” he says with an apologetic shrug when I frown. “Just in case.”
Just in case.
Because everyone is aware that Terra could burst through the door at any moment.
Maybe she will.
Roman enters last with a tablet in hand. “The perimeter’s secure. I’ve got eyes on all entrances.” He looks up, and whatever he finds in my expression has him softening his militant stance. “We’re as safe as we can be for tonight.”
“What about tomorrow?” Though it’s not intentional, the eerie, detached tone of my youth is back. “Or the day after that. She’s proved she can get to us anywhere. Anytime. How is she doing this?”
“That’s what we need to talk about,” Grant says. He pulls over the room’s single chair, spins it around, and straddles it backward with his arms folded over the back. It’s so unlike the stoic Grant I’ve been getting to know that it throws me sideways.
Is he trying to appear relaxed? In control? I think I like his bossy big brother energy better.
The others arrange themselves around the room while I ponder Grant.
Valen sits down next to me. Giving up control must be hard for him. He’s spent his life planning and executing these types of missions. I can’t imagine being on the receiving end is easy for him.
“What did you find?” Valen asks.
Grant removes his phone from his pocket, then hesitates as he stares at something.
My internal tremors ratchet up to a level eight earthquake.
“What is it?” Valen is good at masking his emotions, but even he’s struggling to control his tone.
“I’ve been going through Mom’s files for the last few months. The…” He glances up, but his eyes are cloudy with emotion. “The encrypted ones I don’t think she intended for us to find. That’s how we found Clover. There’s—” He’s holding back. Is he scared? “There’s a lot we didn’t know about her.”
“Besides the ability to fake Terra’s death and then imprison her?” I still can’t wrap my head around that. How does a banking heiress have the wherewithal to accomplish something like that?
She would’ve made a badass heroine.
“That’s part of it.” Grant casts his weary gaze in Valen’s direction. “But it’s more…complicated than that. Mom wasn’t just a businesswoman. She used her wealth, her connections, to dig into a world she simultaneously attempted to shield us from. That’s how she was able to save you both from ROS.”
I’m angry. Livid. Pissed off at the unfairness of it all. Who would I have been if I wasn’t brought up by the cruelest hands?
Would I be as brave as Valen? As playful as Chase?
What’s stopping me now?
“What world?” I ask.
“Our mom grew up with your parents, Clover.” Grant’s choosing his words too carefully.
“Your dad’s family ran…programs for women and children…
Victims. Survivors. That’s what ROS started out as.
We think your parents were there to shut her down when they died, because Terra had already turned ROS into something…
corrupt. From what we can tell so far, your parents death allowed Terra to continue operating ROS however she saw fit because the funding for it came from a trust.”
“How did Terra even get connected with ROS in the first place?” Valen asks.
“From what we can piece together,” Sterling says, “Terra connected to ROS through her stepfamily.”
“What family?” Valen croaks. He didn’t know anything about his mother’s past when he knew her. He probably knows even less now.
“The O’Connell family,” Grant says cautiously while staring at me as though it should mean something. When I don’t react, he frowns. “Clover, do you know who Calla was?”
My heart riots as though my body is under siege. “Terra said—she said it was me—but I don’t know.”
“What about Dahlia? Do you know who she was?”
The breath catches in my lungs. “Dahlia was my mother.”
“That’s right,” Grant whispers.
Suddenly the room feels as though it’s closing in as they all move closer.
What the hell is happening?
“Do you know what your parents’ last names were?” Sterling is so quiet, the hairs on my arms stand on end.
I need a weighted blanket, and I need one now.
“Styx.” The word hums across my lips. It stings and burns. It’s poison but the only name I remember—drilled into my subconscious the same way I learned the sky is blue.
“No, Clover.” Roman steps forward with his palms facing me. “Before they visited ROS, your parents were Brooks and Dahlia O’Connell. You are the last remaining heir to the O’Connell fortune.”
Valen jumps to his feet while I process what Roman’s saying.
“Are you telling me that my mother was related to Clover’s father? We’re fucking related?” Valen shouts, and my stomach heaves.
This can’t be right. It cannot be right.
“No, Valen. No,” Grant says, attempting to de-escalate the situation with a placating smile that comes out as a grimace.
“Brooks and Dahlia O’Connell were Clover’s parents, and Dahlia was Terra’s stepsister—though Terra was never formally adopted.
There’s no blood relation between you and Clover, and Terra’s mother passed away long before you were ever born. You are not related.”
My stomach cramps. O’Connell. O’Connell. It can’t be true. If it were, I’d remember…something, anything. Wouldn’t I?
“We think our mother found out that Terra was blackmailing Clover’s parents—that’s why they were at ROS in the first place.
But they weren’t there for long before their accident.
” Grant’s using a tone that’s best suited for a children’s show about sharing.
“We also found the original accident report. It showed that their daughter, Calla O’Connell, was in the car at the time. ”
The air in the room evaporates, leaving behind thick, cloying stickiness that clings to my skin.
Calla. Dahlia. Brooks.
“We think the records were forged to pronounce you dead alongside your parents,” Grant says. “Just before our mother became ill, she found a witness account of you being removed from the vehicle…by Terra.”
I was in the car.
I was in the car when my parents died, and I don’t remember any of it.
Calla. The name had hit me hard when Terra said it. Like a last breath that wouldn’t fully reach my lungs.
Am I Calla O’Connell?
“Our mother was best friends with Dahlia growing up,” Chase explains.
“And she had her suspicions that Terra was in love with Brooks, but he had chosen Dahlia, your mother, when they were teenagers. That’s why Terra latched on to our uncle Edward—but never let go of her idealization of Brooks.
By the time your parents died, our mom had already used her position in the family to force her brother Edward—Valen’s father—out of ROS and away from Terra, so she had no one to put eyes on you. But then…”
“Then I fell in love with a little girl with sad eyes,” Valen says gruffly.
“Calla,” I echo the name, but all it recalls is a sharp pain deep in my chest. “I always knew Terra hated my mother, but I’m the reason Terra hated Vivi too.”
Valen frowns, and I continue. “From Terra’s perspective, Vivi was the last person standing in the way of the life she wanted.
The power. The money. She blamed Vivi for taking your dad away from her and ROS before he died, then she took you too.
According to Grant, Vivi was also trying to protect me.
Terra said as much at the tree. Whatever Terra wanted me for, Vivi was attempting to stop her. ”
“But why not just turn her over to the authorities when Vivian shut down ROS? She had a contact within the FBI, and she must have had enough ammunition to put her away,” Chief says. “That’s who Grant’s been working with, right?”
“I don’t think she could without endangering one or all of us,” Grant says. “It all comes back to whatever information Terra has.”
“Exactly,” Roman says.
“Our mother believed that if something happened to Terra, whatever Terra knew would be delivered to the wrong hands.” Grant stands.
Pacing must be a family trait. “Our mother had been paying for her silence and depending on Miriam to control her, but that’s all we know so far.
Mom went to great lengths to keep this from us—it’s been nearly impossible to decipher it all. ”
“Which means we have to access that information before turning Terra over to law enforcement,” Sterling says. “We have to know what our mother was protecting us from, or there will always be a guillotine over our heads—”
“When Aunt Vivi died,” Valen interrupts, “the payments must have stopped, right? Is that what started all this?”
“Well,” I add, “and Miriam died. Her death would have afforded Terra a freedom she hadn’t had in years.”
“What are you thinking?” Grant asks.
My mind whirls with storylines and plot holes. “Miriam is the only one who was ever able to reason with Terra. If Vivi was able to keep Terra contained all these years, it would’ve only been possible with Miriam’s help.”
“Whatever Terra knows,” Sterling says, “it’s connected to the O’Connell’s, and it’s something that terrified our mother enough to break the law multiple times. But we’re forgetting something—Terra isn’t the only one with knowledge of the O’Connell family.”
The entire world narrows to a pinpoint, and I fear I might black out.
“What do you mean? Who else?” Valen asks. His furious energy saturates the room as though he’s electric, sending shockwaves into us all.
When I lift my gaze, I find everyone else staring at me.