Passion is the Divide Between Hunger and Need: A Tears of Shame Novel

Chapter 23: Confrontations

**Important message... in the last chapter, I mistakenly named Anna as Aria's mother... when infact she was x & ronan's mother who was murdered. Aria's mother was named Lia... I know it's confussing, but I tried to make the distinction between the 2 Lias notable in this chapter***

Sorry for the wait... this was an incredibly hard chap to pull together... Please enjoy because this is perhaps the longest chapter I have EVER written and it's the return of Xavier's POV!!

Comment & vote too, or I will bw so freaking sad =(

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Recap chap 22 :

“I’ll get an update on your gramps okay?” Ez suggested softly. The concern on his face wasn’t hard to have missed. He hid it well. It only faintly overshadowed the calm expression he wore.

I nodded my approval. I knew I wasn’t up to a long meeting with my dad or Ronan. The two people who had hurt me most, but perhaps I had also needed the most, during this trying time, apart from Ezra. I promised to meet them later in the day, after I had taken the time I needed and sifted through my thoughts and feelings about the many surprising circumstances that popped out of the wood work in the past 24 hours.

He hastily dressed and placed a quick tender kiss on the lips before he took his leave and delved into a complicated situation that was out of all of our control.

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Chapter 23: Confrontations

Xavier POV

There was an unexpected knock on the door of my office. I hadn’t expected anyone so I was curious as to who would have been so bold as to have disrupted my worry. I was fretting relentlessly over Lia’s whereabouts and the facts of what Ronan had discovered at Stefan’s home. I uneasily made my way to the door an opened it, only to have been surprised by who stood nervously on the other side.

“Ezra?” I questioned and greeted in the same confused tone that mirrored the mystification in my mind.

He was supposed to have been searching for my wayward daughter, and if he had found her, it would have been considerate of him to have let me in on the information a bit earlier. I gestured for him to enter and take a seat, which he reluctantly accepted. He seemed apprehensive, not to mention a little scared. What the hell happened? Was he unable to locate my feisty and impulsive child after all?

“Xavier, I found Lia and she’s fine, well, relatively speaking.” He answered my unasked questions but with a hint of sorrow and worry. Again I wondered what the hell happened to have put him in such a mood. He was always happy, maybe a bit concerned when we discussed Lia, but never before had he seemed so nervous and upset.

“Ezra, what does that mean? What happened? Where has she been? Why didn’t you come to me earlier to ease my worried mind? Do you understand how worried I’ve been?” I shot a myriad of questions his way, all of which it seemed he was unprepared to have answered.

“Relax Xavier. I would have come to you sooner, but Lia was in quiet a state when I found her last night, and I couldn’t leave her alone that way. Please forgive my callousness.” Ezra almost begged me, appeared very guilty by the look that passed in his eyes. I wondered just what the hell happened to cause her to have been so distraught that he couldn’t have left her alone for two minute to have contacted me.

That was when I remembered the letter. It must have stated exactly what I feared, and now she hated my brother, if not me as well for having kept the truth from her. I settled into the comfy chair behind my oak desk and searched for the proper words to explain the situation, but none had come to me. I was unimaginably saddened, remorseful and stricken over the truth of our betrayal.