He chanced a glance and his heart broke a little. Her eyes had filled with tears. She was hurt. Unmistakably. “Don’t cry. Please. I didn’t want to tell you because I didn’t want you to worry.” He sighed. “And because there are things I never wanted you to know.”
He’d told Rafe some things. He’d told Rafe, his partner, and that forensic investigator more things. He’d told Daisy everything. He’d only told Daisy everything.
But he owed Irina and Karl the truth. They were his family. They’d loved him from the moment he’d first entered their home. He could live with not sharing all of this with the FBI. He couldn’t live with keeping this from his family. “Where is Zoya?” he asked.
“At her friend’s house doing a school project,” Irina said. “Why?”
“Because I don’t want to fill her mind with things she doesn’t need to know.” Gideon hesitated. “And because I don’t want to burden her with a secret that she’s too young to be asked to keep.”
Daisy cuddled Brutus under her chin with one hand and held on to Gideon’s hand with the other. She gave his fingers a hard squeeze. You got this, she mouthed.
God, he hoped so. He drew a breath, let it out. “My mother was a prostitute in San Francisco. Until she met a man who told her about a place called Eden.”
He told them everything, ignoring the gasps when he told them that he’d been tattooed at thirteen, that the girls were given lockets and married at twelve. But the power of speech deserted him when he came to his encounter with Edward McPhearson on the evening of his thirteenth birthday, because Irina began to sob, noisy, hiccupping sobs that she couldn’t suppress.
“Mama.” Sasha got up and walked around the table, wrapping her arms around her mother from behind, rocking them. Sasha was crying, too, silently but steadily.
Karl sat with his eyes closed, his face grown pale.
And Frederick’s eyes had clouded with compassion.
Daisy gave him a gentle nudge with her shoulder. “You need to finish the story, Gideon,” she murmured. “She thinks McPhearson . . . was successful. That he assaulted you. Hey. Look at me.”
He opened his eyes, not realizing he’d closed them. Her blue eyes were clear and full of gentle understanding. “They love you. They will understand. You need to trust them.” She brushed a quick kiss across his lips. “Don’t leave Irina hanging like this. It’s cruel.”
Gideon grabbed her hand as she started to pull away, pressing it to his mouth for just a moment. Just long enough to gather his courage.
Then he turned to Irina, who’d covered her face with both hands, sobbing like her heart would break. Because it was. He gently gripped her wrists and pulled her hands from her face, holding them tightly. “Irina. Listen to me. Please.”
She dragged in a shuddering breath. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m supposed to be strong for you and here I weep like a child.”
“No,” he said softly. “Like a mama bear whose cub is hurt. But he didn’t hurt me, Irina. Not him.”
She held on to his hands, her breath coming fast and hard. “No?”
“No. I fought him. Fought him hard.” He swallowed, but his throat had closed and he felt like he was going to be sick. He’d told Daisy somehow. But this . . . Telling Irina was killing him. “I pushed him and he fell.” He closed his eyes. “He hit his head. And died.”
There was absolute silence in Irina’s kitchen. Then a chair scraped back and a strong arm hugged his uninjured side from behind. Karl. “Good,” Karl rasped. “Because I was going to kill him myself.”
Gideon opened his eyes, twisting around to stare at the man who’d been his father since Rafe had brought him home, sixteen years ago. “What?”
“He touched you,” Karl growled. “He would have hurt you. What did you think we’d say, son? Did you think we’d blame you? Report you? Make you leave?”
Yes. That was exactly what he’d thought. And the admission shamed him. The Sokolovs had never shown him anything but love and acceptance.
The grip on his hands disappeared, Irina’s hands lifting to cup his cheeks. “You are ours, Gideon,” she said firmly, herself again. “Nothing you’ve done to survive, nothing you will ever do, will change that. You belong to us. To this family. To me. Do you understand me, sinok?”
Son. He pursed his lips, trying to keep the tears at bay, but they fell anyway. “Yes,” he said hoarsely. “I understand.”
He understood that he was the luckiest bastard on the planet.
A glance to his left showed a smiling Daisy. “I told you so,” she whispered.
He looked up at Sasha, who still held on to her mother. “You’re an idiot, Gideon,” she said, but she was smiling, too. “They’ve always liked you best of all of their kids.”
Irina sniffed. “He was the only one who did what I said without argument.”
Sasha kissed the top of Irina’s head. “That’s fair.”
Karl hugged him hard, then stepped back. “There’s more.” Not a question.
“Yeah.” Gideon sighed. “It kind of goes downhill from here.”
Irina braced herself. “Okay. I am ready.”
That made him chuckle. “I’m not.” He sighed again, then told them about the chase, the fight with Ephraim Burton. The beating he’d received at the older man’s hand, the knife he’d plunged into Ephraim’s eye.
The ride from Eden in the middle of the night, the whispered words from his mother. And then waking up in the hospital.
Karl looked confused. “She left you there? Alone?”
“She had to return to her daughter,” Irina said softly. “Truly a Sophie’s choice.”
Gideon nodded. “Yes.”
“But your sister escaped, didn’t she?” Irina asked. “You were reunited with her.”
“How?” Frederick asked. “How did she escape? How did she find you?”
“My mother smuggled her out, too.” He wouldn’t speak of the abuse Mercy had endured. That was Mercy’s story to tell. “But when our mother tried to get out of the truck, the driver shot her.”
“Oh, Gideon,” Irina murmured.
Daisy threaded her fingers with his. “Breathe, Gideon.”
He sucked in a breath, realizing he hadn’t been. “Thank you.”
She rested her head on his arm. “You’re almost done.”
He nodded. Just a little more. He could do this. “My mother died. Mercy saw it.”
“Oh.” Irina covered her mouth with her hand. “She was in shock when she was our patient. Just rocked herself all day. Wouldn’t talk to anyone.”
“His sister ended up in your hospital?” Frederick asked quietly, and Irina nodded.
“We’re the only level one trauma unit for miles. She wasn’t my patient. I never actually met her. I only heard about her locket. And I’d seen the same design on Gideon. His tattoo.” Irina closed her eyes. “The one you had covered. I should have known it symbolized something painful.”
“How could you know?” Gideon asked sadly. “I never told you.”
She shook her head. “I should have known.”
Frederick turned to Gideon, his eyes calm and kind, and even though they were brown and not blue like Daisy’s, Gideon saw the resemblance between them. It was that look. That serenity that Daisy seemed to summon when Gideon needed it most. But not when she needed it for herself.
It was hard to reconcile the man who sat across from him with the man who’d dragged his family across the state into isolation. But in that moment, it was easy to see why Daisy loved him.
“How did you find your sister?” Frederick asked.
“Irina told me that she’d heard of a girl wearing a locket that matched my tattoo. I called the hospital, told them I was family, and they put me in touch with the social worker. It took forever, but I finally got to see Mercy.”
He couldn’t let himself remember how she’d looked that day.
Like I could ever forget. Her eyes had been empty and haunted, and she’d rocked herself, over and over. It wasn’t until Gideon had shown her the tattoo that she recognized him. And then turned her face away, staring at the wall. Only nodding when he’d asked her if their mother was gone.
“She . . .” Gideon shook his head. “She was still in shock when I found her. We don’t have a strong relationship. I’m . . .” He sighed. “I’m a reminder.”
“I’m sorry,” Frederick said softly.
“Thank you.”
Karl wore a puzzled frown. “So how did you know to go to Redding?”
“That’s where Gideon and I intersect,” Daisy said. “When I was attacked last week, I inadvertently pulled a chain from the man’s neck. It was a locket, just like Gideon’s sister’s. It had a wedding photo inside and the remnants of a second photo, cut into slivers. The full wedding photo showed a young girl named Eileen. She was Gideon’s friend.”
“She escaped, too,” Karl murmured. “And you were found at the Redding bus station, Gideon, so you figured she’d go there, too?”
“It seemed like the best guess,” Gideon said, “or at least the place to start. I know the compound is somewhere within a hundred-mile radius of Mt. Shasta.”
“Redding is the closest big town.” Karl nodded. “Smart thinking. And then?”
“The ticket clerk remembered her,” Daisy said. “Gideon had the photo of Eileen age-progressed. She’d come into the bus station with a man who’d bought her ticket. He lives in Macdoel. He was a Good Samaritan. He bought her a ticket to Portland.”