Lover Avenged(211)

Returning to the desk, she put the drawers into their slots, pausing when she got to the one that held all the newspaper articles.

Maybe it was the fact that she didn’t have her father to worry about. Maybe it was the fact that she had some free time.

More likely, she was just having a weak moment in fighting back the need to know.

Ehlena took all the papers out, opening the folds and spreading them across the desk. All of the articles were about Rehvenge and the ZeroSum bombing, and no doubt when she cracked today’s edition, she would find another to add to the collection. The reporters were fascinated by the story, and there had been a ton of coverage on it in the last month-not just in print, but on the evening news as well.

No suspects. No arrests. Skeleton of a male found in the rubble of the club. Other businesses he’d owned now run by his associates. Drug trade in Caldwell brought to a halt. No more murders of dealers.

Ehlena picked up an article off the top. It wasn’t among the more recent ones, but she’d looked at it so much, she’d smudged the newsprint. Next to the text was a blurry picture of Rehvenge, snapped by an undercover police officer two years ago. Rehvenge’s face was in shadow, but the sable coat and the cane and a Bentley were all clear.

The past four weeks had distilled her memories of Rehvenge, from the times they’d been together to the way things had ended with that trip she’d taken to ZeroSum. Instead of time dissolving the images in her head, what she remembered was becoming even clearer, like whiskey strengthening over time. And it was strange. Oddly enough, of all the things that had been said, good and bad, what came back to her most often was something that female security guard had barked at her as Ehlena had been on her way out of the club.

…that male has put himself in a rat-hole situation for me, his mother, and his sister. And you think you’re too good for him? Nice. Where the hell do you come from that’s so perfect?

His mother. His sister. Herself.

As the words banged around her head yet again, Ehlena let her gaze wander around the study until it reached the door. The house was quiet, her father busy with Lusie and the crossword puzzle, the staff working happily.

For the first time in a month, she was by herself.

All things considered, she should take a hot bath and cozy up to a good book…but instead, she took her laptop out, cracked the screen open, and fired the thing up. She had the sense that if she followed through with what she wanted to do, she was going to end up going down into a deep, dark hole.

But she couldn’t help herself.

She’d saved the clinical record searches she’d done on Rehv and his mother, and as both of them had been declared dead, the documents were technically part of public record-so she felt less as if she were invading their privacy as she called both files up.

She studied his mother’s records first, seeing some familiar things from having previously scanned it, when she’d been curious about the female who had birthed him. Now, though, she took her time, searching for something specific. Although God knew what it was.

The recent notes that had been entered were nothing remarkable, just Havers’s comments on the female’s yearly checkups or her treatment for the occasional virus. Scrolling through page after page, she began to wonder why she was wasting time-until she got to a knee operation that had been performed on Madalina five years ago. In the pre-op notes, Havers had mentioned something about the degradation in the joint being a result of chronic-impact injury.

Chronic impact? On a female of worth from the glymera? That sounded more like what you’d get on a football player, for chrissakes, not Rehvenge’s high-bred chatelaine mother.

Made no sense.

Ehlena went back farther and farther through more nothing-specials…and then starting twenty-three years from the present she started to see the entries. One after the other. Broken bones. Bruises. Concussions.

If Ehlena didn’t know better…she’d swear it was domestic violence.

Each time, Rehv was the one who brought his mother in. Brought her in and stayed with her.

Ehlena went back to the last of the entries that seemed to indicate a female who was being abused by her hellren. Madalina had been accompanied by her daughter, Bella. Not Rehv.

Ehlena stared at the date as if some sudden breakthrough were about to come from the line of numbers. When she was still fixated five minutes later, she felt like shadows of her father’s illness were once again moving across the floors and walls of her mind. Why the hell was she obsessing over this?

And yet even with that thought, she followed an impulse that would only make her obsession worse. She cracked open the search on Rehv.