Free Sweetest Taboo by J. Kenner

expectantly.
    “Don’t go. Please, please don’t go.”
    I shift back toward the door. “I’m not interested in lies, Colin. I came for answers. If you’re not going to give them to me, then I’m just wasting my time.” I grasp the knob again, and this time I turn it. I give it a tug, and it swings open a fraction of an inch.
    “I didn’t want to! Oh, god, Jane, I made a mistake. The most horrible mistake!”
    His words slice through my heart, and I squeeze my eyes closed.
I will not cry. I will not cry
.
    What I want to do is race from this room and into Dallas’s arms. What I do instead is close the door, slowly turn around, and walk back to the table. I keep my eyes on the ground, though. I’m not prepared to look at him. Not yet, anyway.
    Once I’m seated, I blink and swallow as I take a mental inventory. I don’t want him to see on my face how much his sideways confession has hurt me. I don’t want this man to see me cry. “All right.” I lift my head. “Tell me.”
    “Ortega approached me,” he begins.
    “How did you know him?”
    “I didn’t. I’d never met the man. But I’d heard of him. Through, well, some of my other business connections.”
    I raise my brows at the word “business,” but say nothing.
    “He—well, he was connected. Intimidating. He—he had his fingers in a lot of things. We overlapped on the smuggling, and he got my name somehow. Said I was on his radar. I don’t know why. He didn’t say.” He raises his hand as if he is going to reach for his face, but the motion is aborted by the cuff and chain that keep him attached to the table. Irritation flashes in his eyes, and I get the impression that he’s lost his stride.
    I wait.
    Colin fidgets, then continues. “He said that he’d been watching me, and that led him to watching Eli. And Eli’s bank account. He said that he learned about what your mother did, and Eli. About how they took you away from me.” His voice cracks with emotion. “I was wrecked then—I tried not to show it to you, but losing you just about destroyed me. I was hurt. Angry. Everything. I lost my way, sweetheart.” A fat tear spills from his eye. “Totally lost my way. And then Ortega said he’d had his eye on Eli as a mark—that he wanted to snatch Dallas and hold him for ransom. I was horrified—I was!—but then Ortega said that he wanted my help. That taking Dallas would be a way to punish Eli. To punish Lisa. To twist the knife in them the way they’d twisted it in me.”
    I’m fighting not to cry—I can’t believe that he would even think about doing that, much less go through with it.
    “I was angry. Hurt. I wanted to get back at her. At Eli. I wanted to punish them, and I shouldn’t have. Oh, god, I shouldn’t have.” He dropped his head into his hands, his shoulders shaking as he sobbed.
    “How did you help?” My words are hard. Cold.
    Slowly, he raises his head. “I—I told him where Dallas went to school. I answered questions when he planned and hired the men. But that was all. I swear, that was all. And I needed the money—you remember how bad off I was—I needed the money and he said that just for that information I’d get half.”
    “They—they took me, too.” I hate the way my voice cracks. I don’t want to show emotion. I don’t want him to see just how much he hurt me.
    “I know.” His tears come in earnest now, and he has to bend his head down almost to the table to wipe them. There is a box of tissues on the far side of the room, but I don’t get up to bring them to him. “He told me afterward, and I flew into a rage. You weren’t supposed to have been there, and I begged him to let you go. But he said it was a perk. More money. And when I told him he could have my share of Dallas’s ransom if he just set you free, he laughed and told me I was a fool. Jane, Jane, sweetheart, you have to know I would never do that to you.”
    But I don’t know that. I don’t know anything anymore.
    “Were you