Orion’s face slackened with shock. “Your daughter?”
“Yes.” Thorn’s hand fell from her face. “She is mine.”
Dizzy supposed she should find comfort in his public acknowledgment of her. He could have easily refuted her lineage.
Vicious looked downright angry. “You abandoned a female child on a planet where most women don’t even see their fortieth birthdays? Where childbirth deaths are nearly forty percent?”
Thorn took the criticism in stride. “I didn’t even know she existed until a few days before the embassy bombing in The City. I should have known. There’s no excuse for the way I abandoned sweet Lina.”
At the mention of her mother’s name, Dizzy finally found her voice. “How did you know my mother?”
Thorn sighed heavily and glanced at Torment. “Did you tell her?”
The Shadow Force operative shook his head. “I felt it was best to hear this type of truth from you.”
Thorn motioned to a nearby chair. Dizzy gratefully sat down, certain her legs wouldn’t hold up through the story she was about to hear. Her father leaned back against a table and gripped the edge with his hands. She spotted the bright-red cuff encircling his thick wrist. It was similar to the white cuff Vicious wore on his left wrist—a cuff that matched Hallie’s collar.
“You’re married?”
Thorn nodded. “Yes, but that came after your mother—and you.”
She guessed that was better than the alternative.
“You know that your mother was a stewardess with Cross Colony Air, yes?”
“I do.”
“What you don’t know is that Lina was recruited as an asset for the Shadow Force within weeks of gaining employment there. Her position with the airline gave her a good clean cover for ferrying information to undercover agents. It allowed her to complete secret surveillance on passengers we suspected of being Splinter sympathizers or terrorists themselves.”
Dizzy’s mind reeled. What had Danny said at the wedding reception? Hadn’t he mentioned something about the Shadow Force cultivating contacts and assets in this sector for decades? “My mother was an agent for your government?”
“A very good one,” Thorn confirmed. “People saw that beautiful face of hers and immediately discounted her as being nothing more than a pretty girl. She used that to her advantage.” His mouth curved in a wistful smile. “They had no idea how incredibly brilliant and talented she was.”
Dizzy tried to reconcile this new information with the memories of her mother. She couldn’t believe that a woman who ran a muse agency had been a highly skilled operative for a foreign government. “How did you two…?”
“At the time, I headed a small forward operating base on Safe Harbor. That was my official cover. Truthfully we were running a covert operation to build the foundation of the Shadow Force in this sector. We sensed the small Splinter movement gaining ground at the time would soon spiral out of control. This end of the solar system was so wild and unknown. We believed it would be the one place they would look to hide so we wanted boots on the ground and agents in play. Your mother was one of those foundation agents.”
Thorn’s gaze skipped over her shoulder. He seemed to be reliving the memories of her mother as he spoke. “I tried to ignore my attraction to her but it was futile. She ensnared me with one smile.”
Dizzy hoped he wasn’t going to get very specific about their affair. She didn’t think she could handle that much truth.
“I loved that woman.” He caught and held her gaze. “You are never to doubt that you were created in love. You weren’t a mistake or an unwanted inconvenience. You are the natural product of a love so deep and so strong it spanned decades.”
Dizzy blinked as tears welled in her eyes. “If you loved my mother so much, why did you bail? Why weren’t you around when I was a baby? Why am I only meeting you now?”
“Our love was forbidden. Operatives are never supposed to cross that line—and I damn sure never should have crossed it with a subordinate and a native. When I was promoted and moved to the front lines, I couldn’t take her with me. I didn’t have enough points. If I had taken her as my mate they would have demoted me or bounced me out of the force entirely.”
“So you chose your career over my mother?”
“At the time I planned to come back for her when I had the points. By then though, she had married Jack Lane. Once I learned she had married, I stopped digging and Grabbed a mate from a different planet. I didn’t ask about any children in their marriage. It wasn’t until I came to this sector with the Indefatigable that I learned you even existed. I realized then that she had married Jack to protect you.” Thorn hung his head with such deep shame. “I won’t stand here and make excuses. I own that mistake—and it was a mistake. It’s the biggest regret of my life.” His mouth slanted with sadness. “Not that hearing that makes any difference to you.”
“Not really,” she said crossly. “For what it’s worth, my dad—my real dad—more than made up for your absence.”
Thorn flinched. “I’m glad to hear that he was the man I couldn’t be.”
“Touching as this family reunion is,” Orion carefully interjected, “we are in the middle of a Splinter attack. If this can wait—”
“It can’t,” Torment interrupted. “What General Thorn hasn’t told Dizzy is that her mother was never deactivated as an agent. When she married Jack Lane and moved to The City, she continued to operate as an in-country asset for the Shadow Force. Her position as a wealthy banker’s wife and as a business owner allowed her to mix and mingle with the government and social elite of Calyx.”
“My mother was spying the whole time?”
Torment nodded. “She correctly projected that the League of Concerned Citizens would develop as a front for the Splinters. Over the years, she mapped out the connections between members of your government, the Sixer gang and the Splinter forces. So much of the intelligence framework for our current mission came through Lina. When she was killed, we scrambled to fill her spot. We needed someone who could keep his finger on the pulse of the Splinter movement, someone with the right connections.”
Dizzy’s mouth gaped as it all started to make sense. “You used my dad.”
“He didn’t know,” Torment explained. “Not exactly,” he added. “We used one of our other undercover assets to provide him with the seed money to start his black market operation. We were able to keep tabs on the Splinters through the movements of supplies along his chain. He’s been incredibly useful to us—until now.”
She narrowed her eyes at Torment. “What does that mean?”
“It means I made a colossal mistake,” Thorn answered instead. “A few weeks ago, Jack tried to contact me. We hadn’t spoken since you were in the infirmary aboard my ship. When we parted, it was not on good terms.”
“Meaning?”
“He told me that I owed it to you to give you a better life but I didn’t know how to do that without hurting my wife so very much.” He gulped. “She had recently lost a child and I didn’t know how to tell her that I had a daughter down on the planet. I couldn’t reveal your existence without revealing everything about Lina and my earlier connections with Shadow Force.” He shook his head. “And then it was too late. You had been discharged to Jack and I convinced myself you were better off never knowing the truth.”
Dizzy’s stomach pitched. For a man who insisted she was created with love and not something he considered a mistake, he sure as hell had taken every opportunity to deny her very existence.
“Jack’s most recent messages to me were mishandled and jumbled. I thought he was trying to blackmail me into giving him money. What I realize now is that he was being blackmailed by someone who knew that I was your father. He needed money to pay them off and get the heat off you.”
“Selling my lottery number was just a smoke screen, wasn’t it? He wanted me off the planet. He wanted me to be safe.”
“Yes,” Thorn agreed. “Jack knew that if you were Grabbed our link would be discovered during the intake physical. He knew I would protect you.”
Dizzy kneaded her temples as the horror of it all hit her. “What were they blackmailing him to do?”
“Jack was making inquiries about hiring a transport ship for a cargo run between Calyx and a planet called Ryzina,” Torment explained. “It’s a planet inside Splinter territory. Our man on the inside doesn’t know the details but he confirms the transport arrangements were made. If we fail to recover the fuel rods before they’re moved to your planet, we must be able to intercept them before they reach Ryzina.”
“Well—what the hell do you want me to do?” Dizzy gawked at Torment. “I haven’t spoken to my dad in weeks.”
“Jack has gone off the grid,” Torment said. “No one can find him, not even Danny. After the wedding, he tried to touch base with Jack but he had vanished. The letter Terror passed to you reached him through four or five sets of hands. If Jack is still alive, he’s only going to reveal himself to you.”