Girl of Vengeance Read Free Page B

was she. Richard Thompson was traveling much of that spring, back and forth to Central Asia. Your mother and I fell in love.”
    In the back of Dylan’s mind, the worst ran through his head. Why the hell didn’t you protect her, then? He didn’t say the words out loud. It wasn’t his place. But he hoped Andrea would ask.
    “And so Carrie was conceived,” Andrea said.
    “Yes.”
    “And what happened after that?”
    “I didn’t know about Carrie for many years after that. I … in May of that year … I’d just returned from a trip to London. She broke it off with me … with no explanation. I didn’t see her again for twelve years.”
    Andrea gave him a pained look. “Did she tell you later?”
    “Yes, when we encountered each other in China. We were both a little older and wiser then. But Adelina … it was tragic. He’d destroyed her spirit. The bright, courageous woman I’d known had become a mouse in public, never contradicting anything her husband said. She told me that the reason … the reason…”
    George-Phillip’s face twisted in pain.
    “Da?” Jane said. “What hurts?”
    George-Phillip placed his left hand on Jane’s shoulder. And his right hand on his chest. “My heart hurts, Jane. My heart.”
    Jesus , Dylan thought.
    George-Phillip said, “Jane, I think it’s time for you to go see Adriana.”
    Jane’s eyes watered. “I want to be with my new sister.”
    “I promise you can later. Right now, we need to have some adult talk.”
    She climbed down from her seat, as always looking precarious—as if she might any instant go flying in one direction while the chair went in the other—then walked around to his chair the long way around the table, passing Andrea and Dylan along the way. She stood on her tiptoes and gave the sitting George-Phillip a kiss.
    “Play with me later?” she asked.
    He nodded and said, “Yes, of course.”
    “Will you play with me too, sister?” she asked Andrea.
    Andrea might be distrustful of George-Phillip, but it was clear she held no reservations about her six-year-old half sister. Her eyes went glassy, and she nodded and said, “Yes, I’d love that.”
    A few minutes later, after the little girl had left the room, George-Phillip continued. “While I was out of town, out of the country, Adelina had realized she was pregnant. And she believed that Richard would kill her, or Julia, or possibly her brother Luis, if he found out she was pregnant. She believed he was a complete sociopath. I don’t know if that’s the case or not, but she provoked him into attacking her. So that she could convincingly make him believe that Carrie was his.”
    Andrea winced. Seemingly without volition, she reached out and grabbed Dylan’s hand.
    “I tried to persuade her to leave him. I did. I’d have gladly given up my career and taken her hand in marriage. I wanted that more than anything else in the world.”
    “But you didn’t,” Andrea said.
    George-Phillip gave her a sad smile. “I didn’t. When we met again in Beijing … many years had passed. Your mother and I … resumed our affair. But with very strict rules that she set. You see, a great deal had happened in the years we didn’t see each other. Richard began to suspect that Carrie wasn’t his child, because she was so incredibly tall. He took her to a lab and had them both tested. And when he found the results, he beat Adelina almost to death.”
    Andrea winced. She didn’t say anything, just listened. She hadn’t touched the food.
    “Later, she told me what those years were like. Your family moved a lot—based in San Francisco, then Belgium for three years, then China. Your father had the perfect deep cover—he was Central Intelligence Agency, but as far as the world was concerned, he was a diplomat. That gave him license to operate anywhere. As the years went by, he kept her off balance. Randomly he would terrorize her—keeping her anxious and confused. That just got worse as the years went