Page 37 of Old Secrets

Forgiveness only mattered if it helped me heal.

Jake’s mother might never receive my forgiveness for trying to tear Jake and I apart, but I had moved beyond the damage she had wrought. The burdens had become hers and hers alone to bear, and I was not beholden to her.

I did not have to forgive her so she might feel better while facing the consequences of her actions. The only time I would offer such a thing was if it put my soul at peace.

Unfortunately for her, I’d found a different way to claim peace and happiness for myself, although the road would be long to fully surpass the traumas we’d faced as a couple. We’d been broken, but we’d taken all the pieces and glued them together with gold until we became something more than what we’d once been.

I drew in a deep breath and investigated the smells. From Jake, I detected more than a little dismay, so I reached over, took his hand, and squeezed.

From my parents, my nose identified ancient grief, dulled from the passage of time yet still somehow fresh.

A mother who loved their child never walked away from mourning, not completely. The same applied to fathers who struggled to be a rock the rest of their family clung to in the midst of the storm.

With a start, I realized my time in the FBI had prepared me far better than anything else could for this moment, confronting the same sort of trauma I’d worked through day in and day out. In the case of my shattered family, there was no mystery left in the who or the why. The keys to those locked doors resided in the hands of the parents I hadn’t known I had.

Neither would replace my pa, but I would cram them into the gaping holes my ma had left behind.

A slow realization crept in, one that made sense in the turbulence of my life’s changed circumstances.

If Yamāntaka had wanted my parents to be gods for them to manipulate and use for their gain, my life had value beyond death as an infant. With time and patience, in the care of someone willing to murder her own son because of his faults, they could have cultivated me to be the figurehead they had needed.

The papers that had come with me to the United States—those I could believe had come from my aunt. But what if my ma had found something in them that had undermined Yamāntaka’s efforts?

What if those papers had been why my ma had cultivated me to be a force of good rather than a pawn of evil? What if Yamāntaka had known where I’d gone all along and had changed their course, lured into letting me live in the hopes I could be groomed into a vessel for their use?

Another possibility irritated me. What if the Greenwich group haunting us was the same as Yamāntaka, but a different branch, much like the Chinese Inquisition operated somewhat independently from the United States Inquisition? While the Inquisition within the United States held the most control over the rest of the world, the other branches had a great deal of freedom to operate as it wished.

To Yamāntaka, I would be important.

To those within the Greenwich branch, I would be an obstacle in the way of their goals.

One by one, the puzzle pieces fit together in a way I could understand and work with.

“You’ve figured something out,” Jake stated, and he squeezed my hand in return, rubbing my skin with his thumb. “Do you need more time to think it through?”

Even after everything that had gone wrong, Jake remembered.

Sometimes, I needed more time than most to process something. With a start, the why of that made sense.

With a lifespan potentially counted in the millions of years, I had the time to puzzle over everything until reaching a conclusion. I could afford to be slow and deliberate.

“I think there are branch groups. This Yamāntaka and the Greenwich group are just two of them, like the Inquisition is mostly operated by those in the United States but have branches all around the world. Greenwich has been plaguing us, but we aren’t important to them—yet we might be important to this Yamāntaka branch. What if Yamāntaka put my adoption into the hands of the Greenwich group to cultivate me?”

The idea of being groomed irritated the hell out of me, but I would bear the burden with grace—and with violence the instant I could get my hands on the bastards behind so much suffering.

“A talented FBI agent in their grasp would be a strong asset. We’ve seen that with our housecleaning efforts,” Jake replied, and he shifted his weight, changed how he sat, and dragged me on to his lap, wrapping his arms around me. “They just didn’t account for your stubbornness and ingrained ethics. You got that from your pa. So, you can think about it this way. Not even these bastards could defeat your pa. He cultivated you far more than any of their attempts through your ma. That doesn’t lessen what happened to him or you.”

Or us, although that would be a discussion for another day.

One day, I hoped thinking about my pa wouldn’t hurt so much.

“We were told about your custodians,” my father said, his tone neutral. “Your pa was mentioned as a kindhearted spirit, one who saw as much grief as we have. That the woman robbed him of a child, and then attempted to rob him of you as well. In the end, she cost him his life. I do not know if what we have heard is the full story, but we were told of trials and trauma.”

That was one way to put it. “I joined the FBI to investigate those who kidnap children so they can be returned to their family because they had lost a child. It was not until much later I learned she was the one who did it and why—and why my pa suspected but had never acted.”

“Because if he did, he would have risked you and the other children in his care. His is an honorable soul, and may he receive a true reward in his next life or the rest he deserves, whichever his soul wishes for above all else,” my mother stated, and in her tone, I understood she would allow no argument regarding her opinion.

Upon reflection, I agreed with her.