Rett nodded. “As is mine.”
“You say that the Ramseses and Boudreaux ruled together?” My questions felt as if I were discussing fiction, not an alternative reality.
“They had. On that fateful night, Isaiah was left without an heir to fight for his position.”
“Abraham had an heir—you.”
“As I said, it takes more than blood in your veins to rule, Emma. I’d been preparing for that day—or should I say night—for a long time. The opponent my father and Isaiah underestimated wasn’t the other; it was me. This city is now mine, and I won’t allow the man now calling himself Isaiah Boudreau II to stake his claim as the king or co-ruler.”
My head shook. “I still don’t understand. Kyle’s accident was over four years ago. Why does he want to kill me now? Why not kill me with our parents—if he’s really alive?”
“I don’t know.”
My head tilted. “Really?Youdon’t know? There’s something the great and powerful Everett Ramses doesn’t know?”
“I was made aware of this coup approximately eighteen months ago. In learning about Isaiah, a.k.a. Kyle, I learned about you. The O’Briens adopted both of you at the same time.”
“Kyle was adopted too?”
Our mother would tell us that God had answered her prayers with not one but two children, a boy and a girl. She never mentioned the fact that I was adopted. It was the tidbit I learned through the attorney after my family was gone. “I barely have any of the particulars on my adoption. Our parents never mentioned it. I had no reason to doubt that Oliver and Marcella O’Brien were our biological parents. After their deaths, the attorney gave me the records on my adoption but not on Kyle’s. I didn’t know he was also adopted until right now.”
“The parents who raised you never told you or your brother that you were adopted?”
Swallowing the hurt that came the day the lawyer handed me the documentation and I read the truth, I shook my head. Standing again, I gestured toward Rett’s phone. “Greyson is dead. Are you saying there’s a connection to me? Does he work with Kyle?”
“We believe he did. Mr. Ingalls was at the restaurant last night—the same one where you sat with Mr. Underwood. Ingalls had been tipped off that you were in the city. Yes, Emma, you were his target.”
My memories went back over time. “We got along—Greyson and I.” It was true. “I mean all of Kyle’s friends were a year older than I, and in their eyes, I was the annoying little sister.”
A flicker of humor came to Rett’s expression.
“What?”
“Nothing. I’m going to need more information. Whatever you can remember.”
“I don’t remember. I have spent the last four years not remembering. I moved on and put that life behind me.” I paced to the blocked window, the one that was no longer my main concern, and back. “Rett, it was difficult, agonizing, whatever adjective you want to use as a label. I’d lost my entire family only to learn that I wasn’t biologically related to them. For my own sanity, I had to make the effort to move forward. My only other choice was to let the sorrow pull me down, and then, if I would have done that, I would have died right along with them.”
When I turned, Rett was right in front of me. His large hands came gently to my shoulders. “Emma, you did that. You are a survivor. You’re more than that. You were conceived and born to be a queen. I wouldn’t ask you to do this, to recall everything you can, if I didn’t believe that it was important. You have knowledge of Kyle that you’ve forgotten, information that could be vital to our cause.
“Your life is in danger. My city is threatened. Over the last eighteen months, my people have worked and infiltrated Isaiah’s—I mean, Kyle’s, men. What we know without a doubt is that for his plan to work, he must be the sole heir, which he isn’t. You are. He needs you out of the picture.”
“I don’t understand why? I’ve never claimed to be Isaiah’s daughter or Jezebel’s.” Rett’s words from earlier came back, saying I was the daughter of a king and a whore. My chest felt heavy. “Is that why the shutters are closed so that no one can see me here?”
“The shutters work to keep what is within private.”
I swallowed. “I can’t live in a box, Rett. I want out of this suite, and I need sunlight.”
Letting go of my shoulders, Rett went to the bookcase. I watched as he silently removed a book and turned it on its side as if to begin reading. When he opened the cover, I saw that what he held wasn’t a book. It was a remote with buttons within.
Stepping closer, I asked, “What is that?”
“I was going to wait, but you’ve been helpful. I told you if you did as I asked, you’d be rewarded.” He pushed a button and my face snapped up toward a new sound...and ceiling.
In the tall ceiling that I hadn’t realized would move, a panel shifted to the side, revealing a large skylight now filled with blue sky and sunshine. Closing my eyes, I kept my face inclined, yet there was no warmth. The glass was tempered. And then there was a second sound and the glass moved. Warm, humid New Orleans air infiltrated the room as my cheeks warmed from the sun’s rays.
Rett’s hand moved around my waist until he had me pulled against him. “You are exquisite when you smile.”
I hadn’t realized my expression had changed.