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Justin assumed that Mr. B. was Brian Halloway, the boss. Referring to him as Mr. Halloway was probably confusing since there was more than one Mr. Halloway at the mansion. The angel had mentioned Richard Halloway, too.
The dog, curled up in the corner, perked his ears as the maid pushed the cart farther into the room.
Justin took a closer look at her, and when he did, his pulse jammed his throat.
Her hair, dark and rich, was coiled into a tidy bun, exposing the stunning angles of her face. Her bronze-toned skin appeared soft and touchable, and the greenish-gold color of her eyes enhanced what Justin called ethnic ambiguity. He had a similar look. People were never quite sure of his heritage.
She was what he imagined his angel to be. Sleek, sexy, exotic. But she was cautious and proper, too.
She moved around the room without disturbing him.
He wanted to catch her gaze, to force her to look at him, but she focused on her task, arranging the appetizers just so.
Was she the mystery lady who’d come to his room? Or was he grasping at straws? Wrongly evaluating the first woman he saw? Maybe if he heard her speak again. Maybe her voice…
“What’s your name?” he asked her.
She took an audible breath, and Leo frowned.
“If you’re itching for female companionship, we can get you a woman,” the security chief told Justin, not allowing the maid to answer.
Damn it. Justin cursed his mistake. He hadn’t meant to be so obvious, so openly attracted to her. “I’m not itching for anything, I just want to know her name.”
Leo gestured for her to respond.
“It’s Maya,” she said, keeping her eyes downcast and fussing with a silver coffee service. “Maya Reyes.”
Her voice didn’t trigger familiarity. But he couldn’t ask her to whisper, to talk in a softer tone, to mimic his angel. “That’s a pretty name.”
“Thank you.” She finished her work and left the parlor without meeting his gaze.
“She’s supposed to know her place,” Leo said. “All of our employees are.”
Irritated, Justin glared at the Hulk. “What’s taking this meeting so long to happen?”
Leo shrugged.
But several minutes later he announced that Brian Halloway had just entered the room. Tall and trim with graying blond hair, Brian carried himself like a corporate billionaire, exhibiting a commanding sense of style.
He extended his hand, but Justin refused to shake it, spurning him the way he’d spurned Leo.
“What’s wrong?” Brian asked, a humorous glint in his eye. “Were you expecting Tony Soprano?”
Justin remained silent. He knew the West Coast Family wasn’t an Italian outfit. They were equal-opportunity criminals.
“My brother asked me to apologize for his absence. Richard intended to be here, but he got called away on a business trip.” Brian remained standing. “He’s looking forward to meeting you.”
Justin snapped back. “I don’t care about your brother. And I don’t give a damn about you. I want to see my parents. And my sister, if she’s here.”
Brian made a perplexed expression. “I don’t understand.”
“Your security chief said my family was anxious to see me.”
“Your family, yes. Your parents and sister, no. Leo misled you.” Brian frowned at the Hulk, but the big man kept his cool. He didn’t even blink.
The boss returned his attention to Justin, playing the ultimate host. “Can I get you something? Crab canapés? Garlic and cheese bruschetta? Liver paté? You must be starving by now. This should hold you over until dinner.”
Screw the food. Justin didn’t care if he hadn’t eaten in two days. “I want to know what the hell is going on.”
“Then I’ll tell you, straight from the hip. I’m your family. Me, my brother.” The mobster held his gaze. “You’re not Justin Elk.” He paused for effect. “You’re Justin Halloway.”
Chapter 2
Justin glared at the other man. “What kind of game are you playing?”
“No game. Your mother was my sister, Beverly. She died without telling us that she’d had a child.”
His gut tightened, tying itself into ropey knots. “This has to be a mistake.”
“It’s the truth. I’ve got the DNA test to prove it. We swabbed you while you were sedated.” Brian reached into his jacket pocket and removed a sealed envelope. “You’re welcome to review the results.”
Justin took the envelope, but he didn’t open it. He wouldn’t give Brian the satisfaction. “If Beverly’s my mother, then who’s my father?”
The boss made a distasteful face. “Reed Blackwood.”
The man he’d been told was his uncle? He glanced at Leo. Reed was the once-upon-a-time friend the security chief had mentioned. “My parents wouldn’t have lied to me. They wouldn’t have let me think that I was their son.”
“But they did, Justin. Look at the report.”
“This could be a forgery.”
“You’re right. It could be, but it isn’t.” The mobster poured a cup of coffee and took a sip. “Being a Halloway is your legacy, your birthright. Whether you like it or not.”
“You drugged me. You kidnapped me.” Justin all but snarled. “What kind of legacy, what kind of birthright is that?”
“We got your attention, didn’t we? And no matter how much you try to deny it, we added some excitement to your life.” Brian had the gall to smile. “We know you were restless. That your daily routine was getting mundane. Besides, if the test had been negative, we would have returned you to Texas and never revealed ourselves.” He glanced at Lester, and the pooch wagged his tail. “We would have sent the dog along, too.” He smiled again. “And the Remington.”
Justin squinted. They would have given him a four-to-five-million-dollar statue for the inconvenience? Talk about having money to burn. “That sounds like a better deal to me.”
“What does? Not being related to us and going home with a costly consolation prize? Your inheritance is worth far more than that, nephew. And the Remington is yours either way.”
Nephew? “No harm? No foul?”
“Exactly.”
Except for his angel, Justin thought. The woman who’d already told him who they were. “I could press charges against you.”
Brian tilted his head. “Yes, you could. Kidnapping is a federal offense.”
How poised could the other man be? How calm? How sure of himself? “But you don’t think I will, do you?”
“No. I think you need us. That there’s an emptiness inside of you we can fill. And we need you, too. You’re all that’s left of Beverly. I can’t tell you how much we loved your mother. How special she wastous.”
Justin bent the corner of the envelope. He still hadn’t opened it, still hadn’t looked at the results. He nailed Brian’s gaze instead. “My mother’s name is Heather Elk.”
“Heather raised you, but she isn’t your biological mother.” Brian tasted the pate. “Do you know how we figured out that you might be Beverly’s son? My father, your grandfather, came across a newspaper article in the prison library about a dead baby, and it triggered his memory. Something from the past.”
Justin turned morbidly silent, as though he hadn’t heard about the infant before now.
Brian continued, “The police were looking for the public’s help to identify the baby. They offered all sorts of details. They said it was a newborn that had been dead for thirty years. A boy with Native American genetics. They can tell a lot about a corpse by its bones.” He finished the appetizer. “Dad knew he’d stumbled onto something. The location where they’d found the baby rang a bell. Thirty years ago, we tracked Reed, Beverly and Heather there.”
“Why?”
“To kill Reed and bring Beverly home. They’d run off to elope, and Heather was trying to help them. They all managed to escape. This was before Reed went into WITSEC. Witness Security,” Brian clarified.
“That still doesn’t explain my paternity.”
“Both women were pregnant. Of course at the time we didn’t know there was one baby, let alone two. Reed, Beverly and Heather were on the run for eighteen months. Even Michael had no idea where they were. When Heather and Beverly returned on their own, Beverly was terminally ill, and Heather presented Michael with a ten-month-old son.”
“Me?”
“Yes, you. As far as we can figure, their real child died and was secretly buried. It’s the infant that was found, the one Dad read about. According to the article, it was laid to rest with a toy, a windup pony. And guess what? We discovered that you had one just like it. We got a hold of old photographs. You used to cart that thing everywhere.”
Justin narrowed his gaze. It was obvious they’d been investigating every aspect of his life, past and present, making sure he was connected to the dead baby before they kidnapped him. “So Beverly came home to die, Reed struck a deal with the government, and Heather and Michael became my parents?”
“Only it was Beverly who conceived you with that traitor lover of hers.” A slight pause. A slight thought. “Did you know that Reed was a West Coast Family soldier? Besides being an ex-con and an accomplished thief, he had a genius IQ and built countersurvelliance equipment in his spare time. He impressed us at first, especially Dad.”
“What does that have to do with me?”
“We’re aware that you have a genius IQ, too.”
Meaning what? That he’d inherited his superior intelligence from a guy with no morals?
Justin finally opened the sealed envelope and looked at the contents. 99.9 percent positive. He wanted to crumble it, to trash it, but that wouldn’t change the results. He steeled his emotions instead.
The other man waited a beat, then continued, “When Reed seduced Beverly, all hell broke loose. She was a college student, the pride of our daddy’s eye. In the old mob way, you’re supposed to ask for permission to date the boss’s daughter.”
“So why didn’t Reed ask?”
“Because he botched up a job he was sent to do, and Dad stopped trusting him. There was no way he was going to let him keep seeing Beverly. He warned Reed to stay away from his daughter.”
“So Reed convinced Beverly to run away with him?”
“Exactly. And then Heather got dragged into it. She was naïve when it came to her brother.”
Justin gripped the back of a wing back chair. His mother rarely talked about Reed. Aside from admitting that he’d testified against Denny Halloway and entered the witness protection program, she kept her memories to herself.
“That bastard left you behind,” Brian said. “He could have taken you into WITSEC with him, but he couldn’t be bothered. You’d do well to hate him.”
“Don’t tell me how to feel,” Justin shot back, even though he was starting to despise Reed. “What’s the deal with Beverly? Why didn’t she admit to her family that I was her son? Why the big charade?”
“Beverly loved us, but she detested our lifestyle. I guess she thought you’d be better off without us.”
“I can’t say I blame her.”
“We’re different now.”
Justin blinked. “What?”
“We’re not involved in organized crime anymore. People still associate us with it, of course. But all of our businesses are legitimate now.”
Yeah, right. He might have been born under shaky circumstances, but he hadn’t been born yesterday. “You actually expect me to believe that?”
Brian laughed a little. “No, I suppose not. Not after we kidnapped you. But aside from that, we haven’t broken the law in years. Richard and I weeded out the bad blood in our organization. We made a conscious choice to change who and what we are.”
Justin glanced at Leo, but the security chief didn’t react. He stood like a sentry, gun clipped to his belt, with the sun illuminating his Hulkish form.
People don’t change, he thought. Not like that. “Whose idea was it to kidnap me?”
“Dad’s.”
“So he’s still calling the shots? Even though he’s locked up?”
“Dad thought it was important to expose you to the kind of power our family wields. Whether we’re criminals or not.”
“I don’t give a crap about your power.”
“Eventually you will. Once you get past the kidnapping, you’ll enjoy the entitlement that comes with being a Halloway. And you’ll admit that your life was getting boring. That we managed to spice it up.”
Screw this. “I’m going back to Texas.”
“What for?”
“Why the hell do you think? To talk to my mom and dad.” To rage, to vent, he thought. To fight the pain, the lies, the deceit.
“We were hoping that you’d spend the rest of your vacation with us.” Brian made a joke. “After all the trouble it took to get you here.”
Frustration hit him hard and quick. He wasn’t in the mood for petty humor.
The other man caught his scowl and turned serious. “Are you angry at your parents?”
Justin didn’t answer the question. He spun it around on his supposedly “reformed” mobster uncle. “Are you mad at Beverly for keeping the truth from you?”
“It’s tough to be angry at someone who’s gone, who died so tragically. But I wish she had allowed us the opportunity to know you when you were young. That she wouldn’t have robbed us of her son.”
“It could have turned out the other way. The other baby could have been Beverly and Reed’s child.”
“Yes, it could have. And we would have notified the authorities if that had been the case. We would have asked for its remains so we could give it a decent burial. I imagine Heather and Michael will want to do that. But the police will probably grill them. They’ll have to answer some difficult questions. According to the article we read, this is being treated like a homicide.”
