Chapter Six
The world tilted.
For a second, Jessa couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, couldn’t process the words still hanging in the space between them.
Her mother, Lauren, had been murdered.
It didn’t compute. Couldn’t. Her mother had died at home after a failed round of chemo. Cancer had stolen her breath. Cancer had taken her heartbeat. Cancer had taken everything.
Except apparently it hadn’t.
Deacon reached across the table and took Roman’s phone from his hand. He studied the screen, jaw tightening, eyes scanning line by line as Roman stayed silent.
While she waited for Deacon’s take on this, Jessa’s heart pounded so hard she thought something inside her might crack.
Roman dragged a hand over his face. Then he turned toward her, eyes steady but lined with something raw. “It wasn’t the cancer, Jess.” His voice was low, controlled, but thick with fury. “Someone administered a toxic compound to her. Slowly. In tiny doses.”
Jessa blinked hard, trying to force the fog back long enough to focus. “What kind of compound?”
“The lab found trace amounts of a cardiac glycoside in her preserved tissue samples. Most likely digitalis or a derivative.”
Her breath hitched. “Digitalis?”
“It mimics organ failure,” Roman explained. “Heart irregularities, weakness, nausea, confusion. Everything her doctors believed was the cancer advancing.”
Deacon looked up from the report, meeting Jessa’s gaze with something like horror simmering behind his calm expression. He nodded. “Roman is right,” was all he said.
“This…” she whispered, her hands curling into fists in her lap. “This was deliberate?”
“There’s no other explanation,” Roman assured her. “The doses were small, microdosed over time. Enough to accelerate everything. Enough to make her collapse look natural. And the standard toxicology testing they ran during her autopsy never screened for cardiac glycosides.”
Jessa swallowed hard, her throat burning. All those days when Lauren was suddenly more fatigued… when she couldn’t keep food down… when her heart rate spiked then crashed… when the doctors said it was “normal progression”…
A cold wave crawled through her veins.
Deacon set the phone down slowly. “Jesus, Jessa…”
Her breath shuddered out of her. Someone had murdered her mother. Someone had taken away the chance Jessa would ever make things right with her. Someone had stolen the last of Lauren’s life. And beneath the pain, beneath the shock, something dark and fierce began to rise.
Deacon’s voice cut through the fog, low and tight. “Who did this to her?”
Roman dragged in a breath, slow, controlled, as if he was holding back a storm. “I don’t know. Not yet. But Wynn and Corbin Knox both had access to her. Both were around during the last few weeks. And a quick internet search could teach anyone with half a brain how to microdose digitalis.”
Jessa’s pulse hammered painfully. Wynn. Corbin. Either one capable of cruelty. Either one capable of obsession.
But Roman wasn’t done. “And Lauren…” He paused, his jaw clenching even more than it already was. “She’d been dealing with Shade.”
Jessa’s head snapped up. “What? Why?”
Roman’s expression darkened, shadows sliding into the blue of his eyes. “She reached out to him because someone hacked into her files. She thought it might’ve been him.”
“Shade hacked Lauren?” Jessa whispered, disbelief curdling into anger. “Why would he do that?”
“Could’ve been doing Wynn’s bidding,” Roman said. “Or he could’ve been looking for something else. Information. Secrets. Leverage.”
Deacon folded his arms, studying Roman. “You said he’s in debt to the wrong people.”
“He is,” Roman confirmed. “Deep. A hacker with that kind of pressure? He’d dig for anything he could sell. Anything that could save his ass.”
A sick feeling twisted in Jessa’s stomach. “Are you saying he might have been blackmailing her?”
Roman hesitated just long enough to tell her the truth hurt him to say. “Possibly.”
Jessa swallowed hard. Shade sneaking through her mother’s files. Shade digging for leverage. Shade handing out information to whoever paid.
Deacon frowned. “If he was blackmailing her, why kill her?”
Roman stared down at the phone. “Maybe she figured it out. Maybe she confronted him. Maybe she threatened to turn the tables or send Wynn after him.” His eyes lifted, cold and lethal. “Or worse, send Noah or me.”
The idea hit Jessa like a punch.
Her mother, sick, dying. And maybe having to threaten a hacker to stop him from exploiting her. And someone had answered her strength with poison.
Roman’s voice took on a harder edge, each word dropping like a stone into her gut.
“If Wynn did this,” he said, “his reasons might not be complicated. He could’ve killed her if he thought she’d rebuffed him.
If he was jealous she’d once been with Noah.
Or if he convinced himself she’d fallen for someone else. ”
Jessa closed her eyes for half a beat, bile rising. Wynn had worshipped Lauren in his own warped, obsessive way. Loving her. Stalking her. Guarding her. If he thought she’d lied to him or loved someone more than him, he could have snapped.
“But,” Roman continued, “if Wynn didn’t kill her… that might explain everything that’s happening now.”
Jessa lifted her gaze. “Explain what?”
“Why he’s coming after us,” Roman said. “Me. You. Our people.” His jaw ticked. “Maybe he thinks you killed her.”
Ice shot down her spine. “He wouldn’t—” Jessa started, but the truth cut her off. Wynn’s rage since Lauren’s death. His fixation. The venom he’d spat in those last confrontations before he stopped speaking to her entirely.
“Maybe he’s convinced himself you’re to blame,” Roman went on. “That your argument with her pushed her over the edge. That you broke her heart. Or worse.”
Jessa’s hands curled into fists. “So he used Deacon to lure me out?”
“Maybe,” Roman admitted.
Deacon had gone very still across from her. “If Wynn wanted Jessa, then why not just kill her outright? Why the games? Why come after me first?”
Roman looked at Jessa, then at Deacon, expression unreadable for a long, breathless second. “Because maybe he wants to punish her first,” Roman said. “Make her suffer. Take away the person she loves.” A beat. “Loved,” Roman corrected.
The word hung there, loves, like a live wire between them. Painful. Electric. Exposed.
Roman cleared his throat, looking away as if giving her a sliver of dignity. But Deacon didn’t look away. His eyes were on her.
Searching.
And in that split-second flash, it hit her that Wynn’s twisted logic wasn’t just dangerous. It was personal. Deadly personal. Wynn believed she’d broken Lauren. And now he wanted to break her right back.
Deacon’s voice broke through the weight of Roman’s words. “I heard something about some kind of inheritance problem popping up five years ago.” His eyes locked onto Roman’s. “Could that be part of this? Could that be why Lauren was murdered? Why someone attacked us tonight?”
The mention of the inheritance hit her like a fist to the ribs. Jessa’s breath left her in a slow, pained exhale. Roman’s reaction was far less subtle.
His scowl snapped up instantly, sharp and dangerous. “You told him?” Roman bit out, his voice a low growl.
Jessa closed her eyes for a heartbeat, then met her brother’s glare head-on. “I told him what little I knew, which wasn’t much.”
Roman shook his head, frustration cracking through his composure. “You shouldn’t have told him anything.”
“He asked,” she shot back, heat rising in her chest. “And the inheritance is tangled up in Lauren’s secrets, in what Wynn thinks, in what someone might be trying to expose.”
Deacon leaned forward. “If someone thought they had something to gain, or lose, because of that inheritance, it could be motive. For Lauren’s poisoning. For tonight.”
Jessa’s throat tightened. She knew he was right. Roman knew it too. He just hated that this had come to the surface with Deacon around. No way was Roman going to forgive Deacon for arresting Lauren and him.
Roman’s jaw tightened until the muscle in it twitched—his tell. The one he couldn’t hide, no matter how composed he pretended to be. “The inheritance problem,” he said slowly, “it was connected to Shade.”
Jessa certainly hadn’t expected him to say that. “Shade? How the hell is he involved?”
Roman gave a clipped nod. “He found the false documents. Your birth records. The ones Mom altered when she brought you into the family.” His eyes darkened, voice dropping. “I had to hide them. Bury them. Before he could sell them. Or use them.”
Deacon’s brows shot up. “Hide them? Meaning what, exactly? Roman, did you break the law?”
Roman met his stare without flinching. “I bent it.”
“That’s not much better,” Deacon muttered.
Roman didn’t bother arguing.
Before Jessa could ask what “bent” entailed, Roman’s phone buzzed. He glanced at the screen, and his whole expression darkened further.
“Dammit,” he growled under his breath, and something harsher following it.
“I have to go,” he said, sliding the phone back into his pocket.
His voice was calm, but it carried the crackling heat of barely leashed fury.
“But listen to me—” He caught her gaze, pinning her in place.
“I will find who murdered our mother. No stone unturned.”
Jessa’s heart twisted. “Roman…”
Deacon stood too, wincing from his stitches. “Stay within the lines on this one, Creed.”
Roman turned toward him with a humorless smile. “I won’t make that promise.”
Of course he wouldn’t.
He looked at Jessa again. And for all his hard edges, there was a flash of something deeper. Fear for her. “Someone is gunning for you,” Roman reminded her. “Be careful. You want to come back to San Antonio with me? I’d prefer it.”
Jessa didn’t get the chance to respond.
“I’m not letting her out of my sight,” Deacon insisted. “She’s in my protective custody.”
Roman’s expression cooled. “That wasn’t a question.”
“Neither was mine,” Deacon shot back.