I swallowed a groan and motioned her back so I could exit the guest room. Quietly closing the door behind me, I started for the family wing of the house and my own bedroom so I could change. “How upset is she?”

“Well, Felicity told her that Ryan was sleeping peacefully, so they are downstairs drinking coffee and talking about everything but you. I thought it was kind of amusing until I realized that your mom is actually pissed.”

I froze outside my bedroom door. “Wh-why would she be pissed?”

Cali shrugged. “I have no idea. She’s just gotten steadily more tense and curt with Anya since her arrival. Honestly, I was so in awe of being in the same room with Anya that it took me a moment to realize Felicity’s mood. I mean, hello, Anya is intimidating as fuck, so I was already nervous, you know?”

I wrapped my arms around myself, but I nodded. “Yeah. I understand completely.”

“But I think I’m more scared of your mom than I am Anya at the moment.”

I could feel a headache beginning to pound behind my eyes. “And I understand that too.” Felicity Hannigan was the sweetest, most gentle woman I’d ever known. Yet once you got her pissed, she was…dangerous. I wouldn’t compare her to Anya, because Anya had skills that were deadly. But Mom wasn’t a meek little kitten who needed others to fight her battles. I didn’t doubt that she would pull a gun and pop someone between the eyes.

Cali stayed with me while I quickly got dressed. I’d showered sometime in the night with Ryan, but he’d only gotten me dirty all over again once we were back in bed. I should have taken another shower, but there wasn’t enough time. Mom and Anya had already been alone too long as it was.

Not exactly alone, though. When I entered the family room, Mom’s favorite room in the house, Dad and Cristiano were sitting beside their wives. The two of them were doing most of the talking, but from the set of their shoulders, I could tell they felt the tension between the two women.

Anya’s and Cristiano’s backs were turned to me, but Dad saw me as I entered the room, and his whole face transformed. I hadn’t spent much time with him the day before, but he’d more than made up for leaving me behind. With everything that had been going on at the time, everyone’s emotions were scattered. We were all damaged from what had happened, and I was learning that my experience was the lesser evil of the ordeal.

But while my experience might not have been as fucked up as what they had gone through, my emotional trauma had messed with my head and made me think that everyone abandoned me. Now I knew that if my dad had thought for even a moment that I was still alive, there wasn’t a force on this earth that would have kept him from getting to me. I didn’t know how Sheena had accomplished it, but she’d gotten even Ryan to believe that the girl he’d seen was me, and it was his belief in my death that had convinced my parents I was gone.