"There was no judge. I didn't contest the petition for custody. I couldn't."
"I don't understand. Why not?"
My fingers shook as the truth hovered on my tongue. It wasn't that I didn't want to tell Lex, it was just that I'd never uttered the words out loud. "She's not mine, Lex."
"I don't—"
"Emma isn't my biological daughter. Serena cheated on me and got pregnant. But she told me the baby was mine. I didn't find out until a few years after Emma was born. She fell out of a tree house and cut her arm pretty badly. The hospital typed her blood. Serena and I had the same blood type. Type A. But Emma was type B. When I confronted Serena about it, she told me the truth."
"Gideon," Lex said softly.
"It didn't matter," I said. "I'd raised her. I’d loved her from the moment I'd seen her on the sonogram. She was mine. Nothing was ever going to change that." I paused before adding, "When I talked to a lawyer about getting custody of Emma from her mother, he told me I'd have to take a paternity test. It was just standard procedure. As much as I didn't want Emma to find out that I wasn't her biological father, I'd been willing to risk it to get her away from Serena. But when Serena died and Emma blamed me, I knew I couldn't let her find out the truth. I didn't want her to feel like she’d lost two parents…"
"So you let Emma keep blaming you for what happened. For wanting the divorce. You didn't fight her grandparents for custody because you wanted to protect her from finding out that you weren’t her real father and that her mother had lied to all of you."
"Yeah."
"What about Bethie?"
"She was mine," I said.
Lex didn't say anything, but he leaned in and put both arms around me. I took strength from his comfort. "After about six months, I knew I'd made a terrible mistake. I contacted a lawyer to see if I could get Emma back. He thought I had a good case. I wanted to give Emma's grandparents a chance to talk about some kind of custody sharing arrangement, but they refused to even consider it. My lawyer filed the motion, but it didn't matter."
"Because they took her and ran," Lex murmured.
"They saw me as the monster responsible for their daughter's death. And it wasn't like we’d been on great terms before Serena had died either. I didn't really have a lot of options at that point. The courts didn't recognize me as Emma's legal guardian and my lawyer doubted the judge would file any kind of restraining order against Serena's parents since I wasn't her biological father. The lawyer said it could take years to even get a court to hear my case and act on it. Serena's parents had enough money to stay lost for as long as they wanted."
"So you spent every penny you had on private detectives to try to find them," Lex said.
I sighed. Apparently, King had really done his homework.
"There were some leads at first, but none of them ever checked out. I still have a guy keeping an eye out, but I think he's just going through the motions so he can collect his monthly fee."
"King said when your grandparents left you this house, it was paid off. Did you take a loan against it to pay the private investigator?"
I couldn't even be annoyed with King. It was all information I would've told Lex eventually. But then a dark thought went through my head and I turned toward Lex and grabbed his face. "Lex, I swear to you, I was never going to ask you for any kind of loan or anything. Or to pay off my debts. I don't need or want your money—"
Lex leaned forward and kissed me hard. It wasn't until I began kissing him in return that he pulled back and said, "I never thought that, Gideon."
I looked him in the eye and knew instantly that he was telling me the truth. I breathed a sigh of relief and then pulled him forward and wrapped my arms around him. "I guess I'm kind of understanding why your brother beat the shit out of me. On paper, I probably look a lot like Grady."
"Grady was a selfish asshole who just wanted to make a quick buck. You’re nothing like him." Lex held on to me for a moment longer and then he was leaning back. The furrowing of his brow that I’d become so familiar with had returned.
"What is it?" I asked.
"Gideon, King found something while he was looking into your background."
"Okay," I said. Since I'd pretty much told Lex everything about myself, there really wasn't anything he could've shared that would've surprised me.
But, of course, I was so very wrong.
"He found Serena's parents, Gideon."
I stared at him in disbelief. Hope flared to life in my chest as my sluggish brain processed what he was telling me. "You found them? You found Emma?"
The relief was instantaneous and swept through my entire body. Although I'd known Emma was safe with her grandparents, not knowing where she was had still taken its toll. After hearing about the god-awful things that Lex's nephew had been through, I'd started to imagine something like that happening to my daughter and I’d been oddly grateful to Serena's parents. Thankfully, I'd only had to spend one night imagining Emma enduring what young Gio had. I couldn't even fathom how Gio's father had survived it.
"Thank you!" I breathed as I wrapped my arms around Lex. I'd intended to ask him if he could use his computer skills to help me try and find Emma, but I'd wanted to wait till the thing with Gio had settled down a bit more.
Lex returned my embrace, but his silence began triggering alarm bells. Why wasn't he celebrating with me?
"Gideon—"
"No," I instantly said as I began shaking my head. "No!" I repeated as the worst kinds of thoughts began assaulting my brain one by one.
"Gideon!" Lex shouted and then he was grabbing my hands and squeezing them hard. "She's alive! Emma is alive and she's okay!"
I was afraid to believe him and I was afraid not to. I felt like I was on the worst kind of roller coaster ride imaginable. One that went up and down but had no end in sight and no way to get off. "Lex," I choked out because I just couldn't take it anymore.
"She's alive, Gideon. But she's not with her grandparents anymore."
"What are you talking about?" I asked.
"From what King can tell, Serena's parents took her to South America for a while. Apparently, Serena's mother was from Argentina."
"Yes, she was. I had PIs searching for them down there, but they never found anything."
"They didn't stay down there long. They moved back to the US about a year ago. King had a guy go down there—they're in Louisiana. King's guy sat on them for several days, but he never saw Emma with them. King gave him the go-ahead to break into the house when Serena's parents were gone for the day. There was no sign of Emma except for some boxes in the basement with her name on them. There was no room set up for her."
"Where is she, Lex?" I whispered. He’d said she was okay and I believed him, but I was back on that fucking roller coaster when all I wanted to do was get off and see my kid.
"She’s still in Argentina, baby. I swear to you, she's okay. It seems that, for whatever reason, Serena's parents kicked Emma out or she left on her own. She's staying with a friend whose parents seem to have taken Emma in. King's already got a guy who lives down there keeping an eye on her."