Chapter 10
The church was unlocked, as Luke had known it would be.
He held the door open, and Jenna stepped past him into the quiet interior. He followed her in and let the door fall shut behind them. The street noise disappeared almost immediately, replaced by the hushed stillness of the sanctuary.
Jenna stopped just inside and looked up.
Luke followed her gaze and tried to see the space as she did.
He’d forgotten how beautiful it was in here. The building was small as far as churches went, but someone had put real care into the design.
The sanctuary had dark polished woodwork along the pews and the balcony rail. Light fell through stained-glass windows in panels of deep blue, amber, and green. A simple wooden cross stood at the front.
The place wasn’t ornate or excessive . . . just a room that had been built by people who believed what happened inside it was important. Vital, for that matter.
“This is beautiful,” Jenna murmured, her gaze still scanning the place in awe.
“It is.” He looked around a moment. “My brothers attend here. And Naomi. Rowan when she’s in town. She’s been traveling back and forth from Hollywood. She’s there this week, wrapping up a few things.”
Luke would probably attend this church also if he lived closer. Instead, he and the kids had found a great church in Charlottesville. His mom was a member there with him.
He and Jenna made their way down the center aisle and settled into a pew, leaving a comfortable distance between them. The stained glass threw a band of indigo light across the floor at their feet. Somewhere near the front a candle burned, its small flame steady in the undisturbed air.
Luke looked at the wooden cross, and something loosened in his chest.
He always felt better when he came here. Not this church building in particular. Just church in general.
For a moment, his thoughts shifted to his wedding to Jenna.
It had been a church very much like this one—the same quality of light, the same smell of old wood and candle wax, the same hush.
He’d stood at the front and watched Jenna come down the aisle.
He’d thought he was the luckiest man alive and that whatever happened from that day forward he’d never forget watching her walk toward him.
For many years, he’d thought of that moment as the happiest day of his life.
He looked at Jenna now, sitting an arm’s length away on this pew with her hands folded in her lap and a small bandage above her eyebrow.
He no longer knew what to do with that memory. He didn’t know whether it still counted. Whether happiness that had been built on something incomplete—on a woman who’d kept pieces of herself locked away from the beginning—was the kind of happiness that held up under scrutiny.
He didn’t have an answer for that.
Jenna stared at the cross at the front of the church. Whatever she was thinking about, Luke couldn’t read it, and he’d spent more than a decade learning to read her. That, more than anything, told him how much he didn’t know.
He couldn’t imagine what she was about to say. He couldn’t imagine any explanation that would rearrange the past two years into something that made sense.
But Jenna was here, and Luke was here, and their children had asked questions at the dinner table that he hadn’t been able to answer.
Whatever was true, he deserved to hear it.
He folded his arms and waited.
Finally, Jenna drew in a long, slow breath. “I guess I should start at the beginning.”
Jenna licked her lips, knowing she just needed to get this conversation over with.
“My real name isn’t Jenna. It’s Ellie. Ellie Johnson was the name I grew up with.” She paused. “Then I got married and became Ellie Barone.”
Luke’s eyes widened with surprise, but he said nothing.
“I grew up in Chicago,” she continued. “I was twenty-one my path crossed with Roderick. He was charming and attentive, and I knew I’d never met anyone like him before. I didn’t know then what that meant.”
She looked again at the cross at the front of the church and prayed for strength to continue. This wasn’t a story she wanted to tell, but it was her story.
“We got married less than a year later. For a while I was happy. Then I started noticing things. Late nights. Phone calls he’d take in the other room.
Associates who made my skin crawl.” She paused.
“There was one man always around in those days. Sutter. Roderick’s driver, his shadow—the one who handled everything for Roderick. He always put me on edge.”
“Sounds terrifying.”
She nodded slowly. “It was. I told myself I was overthinking things. But eventually I found out the truth. Roderick wasn’t who he said he was. He was born into a crime family—the Barones. They were known for many things including extortion, money laundering, and . . . contract killing.”
Luke went still beside her.
“Before I could figure out what to do with that information, an FBI agent cornered me in an elevator at work.” She could still feel the lurch of the car stopping between floors, still feel the surge of fear she’d experienced.
“He told me they’d been investigating the Barone family and that I could be charged as an accessory if I didn’t cooperate with them. ”
A frown flicked at his lips. “In other words, he backed you into a corner.”
“I suppose you could say he used whatever leverage he could to make me see things his way. I was terrified, and I had no good options. So I agreed to help them. I became an informant. I fed them information for months until they had enough to build a case.”
“Was Roderick the head of the organization?”
She shook her head. “Not at first. His father, Vito, was. But Vito got dementia. Before the FBI could pursue any charges against him, he moved to somewhere in South America and disappeared.”
“What happened then?”
“Then . . .” She paused. “Then I finally collected enough evidence to send Roderick to prison. I don’t think anyone saw it coming. The whole organization seemed to collapse.”
The candle flame at the front of the church wavered then steadied.
“Once the trial was over, I had to disappear. That was the deal. I’d start a new life and go into hiding. We knew there were still people in the Barone organization who’d come after me when they learned about my betrayal.”
“You went into witness protection . . .” Luke muttered.
“I did. I was given a new name. Jenna Jones. They placed me in Charlottesville and helped me establish a new life on paper—new identity, new address, new history. New . . . everything.” She exhaled slowly.
“I gave up my job as a physical therapist. It would have been too easy to trace credentials. Instead, I took an administrative position at a nursing home and tried to make myself as invisible as possible.”
Luke said nothing, but Jenna knew he was absorbing every word she spoke.
“I’d been there about six months when I met you.” She kept her voice even. “I wasn’t supposed to get involved with anyone. I knew better. I had very specific instructions about keeping a low profile.” A smile tried to tug at her lips despite everything. “But you were persistent.”
She glanced at him and saw his eyes warm just slightly.
“I told myself I could keep my distance,” she murmured.
“I was wrong. You broke down every defense I had. One day I realized I’d stopped looking over my shoulder quite so much.
I thought I was safe. I thought maybe life could be normal again.
I thought I could just be Jenna King and that would be enough. ”
“And what happened?” His voice dropped low at the question, showing the intensity of what he was feeling at the moment.
“I had twelve good years as Jenna Jones then Jenna King. I let myself believe it was going to last.” Her voice dropped. “Then one afternoon I was in town doing the weekly grocery shopping, and one of the marshals who’d been assigned to me showed up.”
“What did he say?”
“He told me Roderick escaped from prison. They were still searching for him, but he told his cellmates that his only goal was to find me and make me pay for what I’d done to him. They believed someone—they had no idea who—may have given him my new name.”
Luke’s gaze was intense as he waited for her to continue, a swirl of emotions battering his eyes.
“He gave me twenty-four hours to decide what I was going to do,” she said. “That was all. And I had no idea what the right thing was. I only knew I had to keep you and the kids safe.”
That was all she’d ever wanted . . . but would Luke ever really understand that?