I just stare at him, not really taking in a word he’s saying, or maybe I am and I’m just in too much shock to really hear him. “So, if these people really are my parents, and this is all real, your precious Dynasty were the ones who killed them?”
Carver shakes his head. “No, it’s a little more complicated than that.”
“Then explain,” I snap, being sick of not understanding.
Carver lets out a breath, trying to work out how to best explain something that probably doesn’t make sense in the first place. “Like I said,” he starts, “your parents were one of the seventeen families that made up Dynasty, just as your father’s father was before him and just like my parents and all the boys’. We’re all in it, even you. Around the time of your parents’ murder, the families were all in disagreement. There was a lot of fighting and nothing was getting done. It was practically good against bad, and eventually, the bad won, resulting in your parents’ murder—but that’s off the record. A good portion of Dynasty believes it was an accidental fire that killed them, while the other half … they know damn well what happened.”
I fall back into the armchair feeling an information overload and trying to keep up with everything. “So, these bad families who are a part of Dynasty killed my parents, and then what? I just get shipped off to live in the foster system and forgotten about?”
Carver lets out a sigh and I realize that I’m right on the money. “Dynasty has kept track of you this whole time, followed you from home to home, and we’re even responsible for when you had to leave those homes, but most of the time you managed that all on your own. The boys and I have grown up hearing all about you, knowing that once you turned eighteen, they’d bring you back to take your rightful place.”
I meet his stare. “Dynasty was responsible for bringing me back here? For putting me with Kurt and Irene?”
Carver’s gaze falls to his hands and he slowly nods. “Look,” he says slowly. “Dynasty is old money. They’re a bunch of old families with too much power and not enough morals. You’re the only living survivor of the Ravenwood family and that’s all that matters to them, just the name. They don’t care who you are as a person or what you stand for, just that you have Ravenwood blood pumping through your veins. That’s why they paid five million dollars to keep you out of that sex trafficking ring, not because they care, but purely because they need you alive. Don’t be mistaken, Winter, they don’t care about you, though they’re sure as hell going to pretend.”
Not wanting to hear more, I pick up the book and look over the papers once again, coming back to my birth certificate, the one thing I thought I never had but was sitting in this big house all along.
I scan over what must be my real birth date again—February 25th. 0225.
A scoff pulls from deep within me. “Are you kidding?” I ask, ignoring the fact that it’s already March, meaning I missed my eighteenth birthday last month. “The code for all these big-ass gates is my birthday.”
Carver nods again and I let out a huff. If I have to see his guilty little nod again, I’m going to knock his head right off his shoulders. “Yeah, it was supposed to act as some kind of reminder of when you were being brought back to us. We’ve been looking forward to your eighteenth birthday for a very long time.”
“Wait,” I say, looking up and meeting his eyes. “The 25th of February. The day I supposedly turned eighteen; that’s the day I first arrived at Kurt and Irene’s place.”
Carver nods his freaking head again with a stupid smile on his face as though he’s proud that I’m starting to put the pieces together.
I fall silent as I flip back to my only family photograph. “So, this really is my house?” I ask, remembering how no one had stopped me from barging in here and how Cruz, the prick, had told me to make myself at home.
“Yeah,” he whispers. “You don’t have to stay at my place if you don’t want to. You’ll be just as safe here as you are with me, but I figured because all your parents’ things are here ... nothing has changed since the day they died. We’ve just looked after it for when you came home.”
I meet his eyes and nod, not really sure what I want to do. It’s a lot to take in and a big house to properly explore. I have a family, at least I had one, but now that I know who they were, I’d like to get some idea of what kind of people they used to be, how they lived their lives, and what made them tick. Were they nice, or horrible people? Were they pushovers, or were they strong like me? More importantly, I want to figure out which of the sixteen remaining families were responsible for taking them away from me, and I want to make them pay.