wanted the daughter to stay with her.
He’d been told that his mother had thrown him to the wolf.
Now Roman was the big, bad wolf.
“You look like her,” Roman accused, and there was no missing the anger that seethed in his words.
Once more, Dex moved his body. A careful, deliberate movement that put him between Roman and Lacey. He held the other man’s gaze and wanted to make certain that his message was absolutely, one hundred percent clear.
If you want to hurt her, you’ll have to go the hell through me.
Chapter Eleven
She wasn’t a coward. All right, fine. She wasn’t normally a coward. But when she’d told Dex that she hadn’t wanted to see Roman, she’d been afraid. Her brother? Roman was the son of the man who’d killed her mom?
Only there was more to figure out because…her dad wasn’t her real dad? God, everything was so confusing. Her chest ached—both from the impact of the bullet hitting the vest earlier and from the pain that grew straight out of her heart—and she just wanted to shut out the world for a little while. Jump under the covers of a bed and pretend that her world hadn’t been wrecked.
But running and hiding had never been her style. And she could not, would not, start now.
She led the way back into the suite. Dex followed at her heels, with Roman crowding behind him, and when they were inside, no one sat down. There was way too much tension for that. Roman stared at her with eyes that swirled with emotion, while Dex stood at her side. Dex was expressionless. Nothing showed in his eyes or on his face, but she could feel tension pouring from his body.
“I haven’t done a DNA test. Didn’t need to,” Roman announced grimly. “I still have a pic of my mother. Once you started throwing the shit in my face that you’d found her first…” He pointed at Lacey. “I acquired some info, dug enough to figure out that, yes, it all fit.” His lips twisted into a grim smile. “Though I’m sure you have done a DNA test, haven’t you, Dex?”
Throwing the shit in my face that you’d found her first…The pounding of her heartbeat was so incredibly loud even as the pain of betrayal cut like a knife.
She’d known that Dex was using her. Obviously. He’d been so adamant that she had to help him on this case. Saying he needed her special skills. Bullshit. She wanted to scream at him and rage and rage and rage.
But she didn’t make a sound of fury. Her control was too thin. She would not lose it. She needed answers. By God, she was going to get them. “Have you done a DNA test?” she asked Dex in a slow, stilted voice.
“No, baby, but…it fits. You fit.”
She wasn’t even sure how to interpret his words.
“I can do the test, if you want it,” Dex offered, “and I can have the results for you immediately. Say the word.”
A DNA test. When she’d first started investigating the death of her parents, she’d had no idea it would lead to this. “The results will tell me who my father is.”
Roman lunged toward her. “I know who your father is. I know who your mother is.” He jerked his hand toward his chest. “And I know who your brother is.” Bruises darkened the skin around his hairline, and a white bandage covered a section of his forehead. “I’ve always known you were out there. I didn’t have a name for our mother. She was a ghost in my life. A ragged picture I kept while I lived a world away. I didn’t even know about you until the old bastard died. You were the last thing he talked about. The daughter she’d chosen.”
Her temples pounded in tune with her heartbeat. She stared hard at Roman, trying to see a similarity, but there was none. His hair was blond. His eyes blue. She didn’t look like him. She looked like her mother. Her dad. Her mom had even told her—so many times—that she had her dad’s laugh and…
“Dex is using you. You can’t trust him,” Roman said quietly. He offered his hand to her. “Come with me. We should talk without him around us. Then you need to get the hell away from him, as fast as you can.”
She stared at his hand. Then looked into his eyes. The rage in his gaze made her uneasy. So much about this mess made her