narrowed. If she wanted to stall for time while she thought up another lie, that was up to her, but I already knew the results—I just wanted to know how Mother could have gotten pregnant by the archbishop.
“Someone took samples from Thomas Neapolitan, Mr. Burgh, Cameron Liddell, the Liddell’s lawyer, and the archbishop and sent them to a lab with my DNA. My father isn’t Thomas Neapolitan, nor is it Mr. Burgh.”
Mother made a sniffing sound. “Are you calling me a liar? That man raped—”
“Tell me the truth for once in your life, or I’ll come down tonight and ask Billy.”
“Lilah,” Mother hissed. “If he ever found out—”
“Then tell me right now.”
For the next few moments, the only sounds from the speaker were her rasping breaths. Mother tended to brood. When things got awkward, she went silent, erecting a wall around her nobody could penetrate. When things went beyond that, she turned to gin.
Not today.
Some crazy bitch wanted me dead and another wouldn’t leave me alone. And the key to discovering why was Mother.
Gideon leaned forward and widened his eyes in a silent question of what was taking so long. He was bloody right. Mother probably wasn’t gathering her words but stalling.
“Alright, then,” I said. “Tell Margaret to put another roast in the microwave. I’m coming down to Richley.”
“Wait,” she rasped.
“What?”
“Thomas did ambush me on that school skiing trip. I wasn’t lying when I said he was your father. It had to be him because…”
I gulped. Because he held her hostage for hours and—I shook my head. Boys my age needed next to nothing to get hard after climaxing. He probably raped her the entire time she was his hostage. Nausea rose to the back of my throat, and my eyes filled with tears. How could I keep pushing her to relive that terrible ordeal?
An apology rolled to the tip of my tongue, but I clicked my mouth shut. Mother had done it again. She’d distorted me with the situation with Father Neapolitan, just so I wouldn’t ask about my true father.
“Then what happened?” I asked.
“What?” she asked with a gasp.
“The DNA test said he wasn’t my father, so who?”
Mother’s wracking sobs filled my ear. Every instinct told me to stop pushing her because as soon as she hung up, she would drown herself in gin to blot it out. I clenched my teeth, hardening my heart against the pain I was causing Mother, but if I dropped the subject, the Liddells would do something else to ruin our lives. Then, I’d be back to Mother, asking the same question and tearing open the same wounds.
“Lilah, please don’t—”
“The girl Lady Liddell sent after me used a bloody gun. If my boyfriend hadn’t stormed in when he did, she’d have blown off my head.”
“Nothing good will ever come of uncovering this,” she said with a moan.
“Nothing good ever came of covering up the truth,” I said. “You sent me up to Templar—”
“Because Sammy wanted to wring your neck.”
“Well, now I need to know what’s so terrible that the Liddells want me dead.”
We went around in circles until the battery on my smartphone went down to five percent. Gideon plugged me in at the mains, and I sat on the floor, waiting for Mother to finally talk.
“Alright,” she whispered. “But you’ve got to swear never to tell Billy.”
“I won’t.”
“The morning after, Thomas let me go and warned me not to speak of this to anyone.”
“Okay,” I whispered.
“Miss Gabbage confronted me at breakfast, saying my roommate reported me missing that night.” Mother’s voice hardened. “When I told her what had happened, she just laughed and called me a social-climbing slut.”
“Right,” I snarled. Because a former Home Economics teacher who had somehow managed to ensnare Lord Liddell wasn’t a social climber herself? One day, I would punch the silicone from her lying lips.
“So I went…” Mother’s voice hitched, and her words became a jumbled mess of sobs.
“Slow down, Mum,” I said in my gentlest tone.
Her rapid breaths filled the speaker, making my heart pound. Part of me, the corner of paranoia in the back of my mind that always thought of the worst case scenarios, already knew what she would say. I shoved those thoughts away and waited.
“I told the headmaster,” she blurted.
“Mr. Burgh?”
“Father Liddell was the headmaster when I was your age,” she said, her voice bitter. “He called me into his suite, gave me painkillers and hot chocolate, and told me everything would be alright.”
My stomach dropped. “Oh.”
“Only I got drowsy. I