All Chapters of Icing The Heart: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

The silence that followed Evelyn's revelation felt alive.Every person in the apartment seemed frozen inside the same moment.Agent Cole.Marcus.Jaxon.Me.Even Evelyn herself.The words lingered in the air long after she spoke them.**The condition wasn't inherited from the Kane family.****It came from Rory's bloodline.**I stared at her.My mind struggled to process what she had just said.Hours earlier, I had believed my biggest problem was a leaked pregnancy.Then I discovered my father had been murdered.Then I discovered a federal investigation was unraveling around the Titans.Then I learned Jaxon's father had spent years secretly protecting me.Now someone was suggesting that whatever genetic condition had haunted the Kane family wasn't actually connected to the Kane family at all.Somewhere in the middle of all that, Lena Brooks had been kidnapped.At this point, reality felt more like an aggressive personal attack."What are you talking about?" I asked quietly.Evelyn look

The room exploded into motion.Agent Cole was already speaking into his radio.Marcus grabbed his phone.My mother looked like someone had drained every drop of blood from her body.Rory sat perfectly still.That terrified me more than everyone else's reaction combined.Fear usually looked dramatic in movies.Screaming. Crying. Panic. It was really very dramatic and loud. Real fear looked very different on the other hand. Real fear looked like Rory Callahan staring at her phone while her entire body went completely motionless.The message remained on the screen.The child belongs to me now.Six words. Six fucking words. Six words powerful enough to transform an already catastrophic situation into something infinitely worse.I crossed the room immediately. My hand found Rory's shoulder.Warm. Solid. Real.For a second, she didn't react. Then she blinked. Slowly.Like someone returning from very far away. "Rory."Her eyes lifted and met mine.The fear in them nearly brought me to my

The entire room seemed to be waiting for my reaction.Federal agents. Investigators. Lawyers.A kidnapped public relations director who had apparently escaped her own abduction through sheer force of annoyance.My future child's father.All of them were watching me.Expecting something. Agreement perhaps.Acceptance. Gratitude. They were just expecting something profound.But I did not give them something profound.Instead, I laughed in response and the sound echoed through the operations room. It was a long, disbelieving laugh that grew stronger the more I thought about what Agent Bennett had just said.Federal protective custody.Of course, it was federal protective custody.Why stop at conspiracy, murder, corporate corruption, genetic experimentation, media scandals, pregnancy leaks and billionaires behaving badly when we could add witness protection to the list?The universe had clearly committed itself to excess.Agent Bennett remained perfectly calm as he spoke. "I understand th

Sleep never came.The federal apartment was quiet, secure, and probably safer than any place Rory and I had been in weeks and yet my mind refused to settle.The city stretched beyond the floor-to-ceiling windows in a sea of lights. Barges drifted slowly along the Hudson. Traffic crawled across distant bridges. Somewhere below, thousands of people were ending ordinary days and preparing for ordinary tomorrows.Ordinary felt like a luxury.I stood alone in the kitchen shortly after three in the morning, staring into a mug of coffee that had long since gone cold.The name kept replaying in my head.Amelia Kane-Callahan.My sister's name. Rory's surname.Connected.Somehow.How in hell was that possible?The archive had never contained coincidences. Every file Richard Kane created had purpose. Every note. Every contingency. Every hidden recording.Which meant my father had deliberately written that name.The implication refused to leave me alone.A soft sound drew my attention just then a

The message sat on my phone like it had been carved there.Ask Evelyn why she knew your mother.For several seconds, neither Jason and I spoke.The secure apartment had gone too quiet again. That seemed to be its favorite trick. It allowed small moments of warmth to settle, allowed laughter to appear cautiously, then ripped the floor open with one sentence from a man who should have already been in handcuffs.Jaxon stood beside the table, staring at my phone with a frozen expression. The soft amusement from remembering our childhood meeting had vanished completely from his face, replaced by the controlled, dangerous stillness I had once mistaken for arrogance. His eyes had gone flat and cold but I knew him better now. The colder he looked, the more violently he was feeling underneath.I looked down at the photograph again.Victor had Lena.Or at least, he wanted us to believe he had her.She sat beside him in the image, her shoulders straight, her chin lifted, her mouth pressed into a