Shameful by May Dawson
44
Legacy
That evening,I leafed through Teresa Kate’s diary by candlelight, trying to unravel the secret of what happened here. Judging from the articles about them, some people believed Teresa and her children had been killed by her husband’s enemies, who had never been brought to justice. Some people thought they’d been killed by her husband himself. And some people thought that thieves had reached the island, ended up killing the family to protect their identity and fled carrying only Teresa Kate’s jewelry.
Some people even thought Teresa killed her own children, then drowned herself. That rumor bothered me; if Teresa had gone mad and murdered her kids, it would explain why she was such a violent ghost now. But if it weren’t true, it was the cruelest lie, slandering a murdered mother a century later.
“I’m going to leave tonight,” I whispered, telling my secrets to the darkness. I was still forming my plan in my mind, and I wasn’t quite ready to talk to the guys. I wasn’t sure if I would. Maybe I should go alone rather than drag them into the fight with Tobias; the memory of Killian’s unconscious face would haunt my dreams. “But I’ll come back, I promise.”
The guys thought that Teresa and her children were trying to hurt us, and maybe they were. But they were innocent too. Someone had hurtthem.
Rhett said it was too late for justice, but I wasn’t sure I believed that. They should’ve had their lives to live, but uncovering the truth still mattered.
Killian stood in the doorway to the library, carrying his own candle. “Rhett’s made dinner.”
“It’s not flank steak and jicama, isit?”
“It’s hot dogs and beans. Again.”
“Great.” I closed the book, left it on the long, ornate table, and made my way toward him. He rested his hand lightly on the small of my back to usher me in front of him; it was a move that always made my heart flip-flop.
“Killian.”
“Mm?”
I didn’t know how much I should trust him. He’d kept Rhett and West imprisoned here when they might have successfully escaped. I trusted that he would want to do the right thing; I just didn’t trust that we would agree on what thatwas.
“Do you think you’d ever runaway?”
The words hung between us. I could barely see his face in the shadows, and I was tempted to push the candle higher so I could see his face better.
“Someday, you and I are going to walk back into that pack, Legacy,” he promised me. “I promise you. We’ll go back home, back to our families. And no one will be able to doubt we belong.”
My stomach fell, but I nodded.
I’d have to do this my ownway.
The four of us ate dinner together in silence, all of us lost to our own thoughts. The flickering light of the candles illuminated the formal dining room, where Rhett had decided we should start to eat our meals. We clustered at one end of the long, ornate table.
When I looked around at their handsome faces, I hated the thought of leavingthem.
But tracking down Tobias Bentley—and figuring out why Cyrus had really exiled us all here—was the only way to savethem.