Lisa Childs – Persecuted (страница 3)

But Myra hadn’t fought to keep Elena. She’d signed away her parental rights. Until Ariel had found her, Elena had thought she’d been the only one their mother had given up, because of who and what she was. But Myra hadn’t kept any of her three daughters. Ariel believed it was because of the McGregor vendetta, that she’d been trying to protect them. Elena wasn’t convinced. She was a mother; she couldn’t imagine giving up her child for any reason but most especially if Stacia were in danger. No one would fight harder to keep a child safe than her mother.

That was why Thora had found Elena twenty years ago and brought her to this house, to give her son a reason to fight for his life. After a car accident paralyzed him, he’d wanted to die…until he’d met his daughter. He hadn’t known about her existence until that day, but he’d immediately loved her. If not for her father, Elena wouldn’t have stayed. She would have run away the first chance she got.

Growing up in this mausoleum had made Elena feel like a grasshopper trapped under a glass, powerless to escape and totally at the mercy of the person who held her captive. When she’d left for college, she had never intended to come back, but then her father had had one of his bouts with pneumonia. Thora had made certain Elena knew just how sick he was and how much he needed his daughter. So she’d been sucked back under the glass.

She curled her fingers into a fist but didn’t lift it to knock. Not yet. Before she could, the door opened.

“Elena.”

Although she closed her eyes, she recognized the deep voice and wished for many reasons that she could disappear. Joseph Dolce wasn’t her favorite person, probably because since her father died, he was her grandmother’s favorite. Thora had trusted him enough, despite his relative youth and inexperience, to make him CEO of her corporation, stepping down herself from the position of power she had held since her husband died, from a heart attack, over twenty-five years ago.

Rumor was that Thora owned most of Barrett, the midsized city in the southwestern section of Michigan. Elena knew the rumor to be fact; she’d seen the business records since inheriting her father’s shares of the company. Jones Inc. owned car dealerships, trucking companies, hotels and restaurants.

Now a thirty-five-year-old who’d grown up on the streets was in charge of the multimillion-dollar corporation. To his credit, Joseph had managed, despite some juvenile scrapes with the law, to go to college instead of prison. He’d also run a couple of those businesses under the Jones umbrella before running the whole thing. As Thora’s CEO Joseph was at the house often, far too often for Elena’s peace of mind.

“Mr. Dolce,” she finally acknowledged him.

“Joseph,” he corrected her. He’d been telling her to use his first name for the year since he’d become CEO, and she had yet to use it.

She probably never would. She didn’t respect anyone who worked for her grandmother, even though at one time she’d used business to try to gain Thora’s acceptance. When her father’s health had compelled her to return, she’d asked Thora for a favor, the chance for some respect. But despite her MBA, her grandmother had refused to give her anything, let alone the role Elena had wanted running the company. She realized now that she’d been foolish to even ask, to give her grandmother more leverage with which to hurt her.

Her husband worked for Jones Inc., though, far beneath Thora and Joseph’s level. Is that what had changed him from the sweet, fun-loving boy she’d met in college eleven years ago? Elena doubted anyone could stay sweet and fun loving around Thora, least of all someone as weak as Kirk. Because he was weak, she couldn’t fathom why he had chosen to fight the divorce. Why now, when she wanted him gone, did he refuse to leave?

She closed her eyes, as a headache nagged at her temples. Her divorce was the least of her concerns in light of her visions. The dissolution of her marriage was trivial in comparison to someone’s life. Irina? Had her baby sister been the woman in the fire in Elena’s first dream the previous night?

She refused to think about her second, trying to wipe it from her mind even as her body pulsed with frustration in the way it had ended. Too soon.

“Elena, are you all right?” Strong fingers closed around her arm, offering support.

Her heart lurched. Just with surprise, she told herself. Joseph seemed more the type to shake someone than hold her. Curiously enough she’d always respected that about him, that he wasn’t the type to coddle anyone, that he was so strong that he demanded strength from those around him.

When she opened her eyes, his head was close. He had to be leaning, because he was tall, well over six feet with wide shoulders and a chest so muscular it strained the buttons on his gray shirt and suit. His deep green eyes softened with concern. Elena wasn’t used to a man looking at her like that, not since her father died. But underneath the concern was something that unsettled her even more, an awareness that hummed between them; another reason she could never use his first name. For them, it would be too intimate.

Like her dream.

She resisted the urge to tremble and lifted her chin instead. “I’m fine.”

“Yes, you are,” he agreed, his voice deepening with innuendo as he teased her. He always teased her.

Her palm itched to slap him. He didn’t know that she’d filed for divorce. She’d told no one yet. For all he knew she was a happily married woman. Didn’t anyone respect marriage anymore?

Heat warmed her face, as an image from the dream tugged at her memory. Arms and chest rippling with muscles, wrapping tight around her, pulling her close so that skin brushed skin. She drew in a shuddery breath. But that had been just a dream, not a vision. She was never going to make love with him. She would make certain of it, and if she could change that part of her future, she could change more.

She was here, in her grandmother’s wing, because she couldn’t keep ignoring her visions. They weren’t going away; they just kept getting worse. Not for her, but for the people she saw in them. She had to help. Like that ancestor who had so long ago warned about the lightning that would cause the house fire and begin the vendetta, Elena had to take the risk—even if she was the one who wound up getting burned.

“Excuse me,” she said, stepping around Joseph. “I need to speak to her.”

Then she closed the door, shutting him into the hall and herself into her grandmother’s rooms. The parlor, a profusion of Victorian roses and fragile, antique furniture, misled the visitor into thinking Thora Jones a delicate, old-fashioned woman. Nothing could be further from the reality.

Double doors led off the empty parlor into the den. Without knocking, Elena opened those doors into her grandmother’s real sanctum: dark, heavy woods, dim light and the faint, lingering odor of pungently sweet cigars. Elena had never caught her smoking them, but she suspected it was one of her grandmother’s many vices.

The woman lifted her gaze from the files on her desk, which was cluttered with more picture frames than work. Most of the photographs were of Elena’s father, Elijah Jones. The only ones of Elena were snapshots taken with him. Thora’s parlor also had several pictures of him, among the gardening ribbons and plaques, but this room with its faint light and solemn atmosphere felt more like a shrine to him.

This was where, since his death, Thora worshipped her son.

Elena turned her attention from the framed photographs to the woman behind the desk. Her grandmother’s hair was as blond as Elena’s, her eyes as eerily blue. Despite her seventy-three years, very few lines marred her pale complexion. Sometimes Elena wondered if her grandmother had sold her soul for beauty or immortality, but that thought was ridiculous.

Thora had sold her soul for vengeance.

Chapter 2

The older woman leaned back in her chair. But Elena suspected the nonchalance was feigned; tension emanated from Thora’s trim body. “So…you’re finally paying your grandmother a visit? How sweet.” From her sarcastic tone, she considered it anything but.

So did Elena. “We need to talk.”

Thora expelled an exasperated sigh. “I hope you’re not going to bring up that foolishness of moving out again. It’s your home, too. Your father saw to that in his will. And I think we’ve done very well these past six months at staying out of each other’s way,” she pointed out, then added, “until now.”

“I’m not here to talk about moving out.” Although she intended to, once her divorce from Kirk was settled, this house had never been her home. But she had something far more important than moving to discuss. Because Elena had yet to tell her grandmother about Ariel, because she wasn’t certain that she should, she said, “I have to find them.”