Chapter 39 #2
His eyebrows draw together, and he edges a couple of inches closer to me.
“Your parents were in trouble financially. I didn’t know it at the time, but after the building collapsed, I dug around into their affairs and discovered your dad had formed a gambling habit.
He owed money to some… well, pretty unsavory characters. ”
Flutters echo through my stomach, a horrible sense of unease crawling over my skin. “How much money?”
“A lot. He’d borrowed against every asset he owned. His business, your house. His savings were gone just keeping these guys off his back.”
“How did they hide this from us?” Or maybe just me. Did Arron know? No, he can’t have done. I’m certain he’d have told me.
“Unless you had access to their financial records, there’s no way you could’ve known.
On the outside, he and Grania appeared perfectly normal.
But the wolves were creeping closer to the door, so…
” He blows out a steady stream of air as if he’s centering himself, preparing for the killer blow.
“He began sourcing cheaper materials from… well, let’s just say they weren’t legitimate businesses.
Materials that never would’ve passed the strict production standards the law demands. ”
I frown. “I’m not following. How would that have helped him?”
“Because he falsified documents and invoiced me full price. I was so fucking distracted, I didn’t catch the error. If I had, none of this would’ve happened.” There’s an acidity to his voice that injects another burst of guilt into my veins.
“I’m so sorry.”
He runs a hand over his face. “No. Your parents started the ball rolling, but my inattention helped push it down the hill.” He gathers up my other hand, squeezing my fingertips. “I’m the one who’s sorry, Grace. If I’d done my fucking job, your parents wouldn’t have died.”
“And shoddy materials really made a building collapse?”
“No. I figure your mum had to alter the design to accommodate the changes, and under pressure, she made mistakes. I can’t know for sure, but that’s my best guess.”
My eyes glaze over. It’s a lot to take in. Too much. “What were they even doing there that night?”
“I don’t know.”
“And now we’ll never find out.” I pluck at a stray thread. “I presume Mum knew about Dad’s gambling debts. He’d have to have told her, right? Especially if she had to alter the building plans.”
“She knew.”
Jesus Christ.
I pull my hands from Christian’s and get up. I’m not sure why, only that standing makes me feel like I’m more in control.
“The health and safety report detailed all this, didn’t it? The one you buried.”
“Yes.” He gets up too. “I blackmailed the secretary of state to make sure the truth never came out.”
Whoa. The power this family yields is a constant surprise to me. It shouldn’t be, given what I’ve seen, but it is.
“But why? It wasn’t your fault. It was theirs.” It doesn’t occur to me to accuse him of making this up. Honesty bleeds from every pore. Despite that, it fucking hurts to think of my parents breaking the law, even if their actions had horrific consequences.
“Because…” He takes my hand again, and I let him.
“I couldn’t bear the thought of their kids thinking badly of them.
I lost a parent, and to me, she’s a fucking angel.
A woman who can do no wrong, even though none of us are perfect.
The idea of some stone-cold report coming along and ruining how you and your brother thought of your parents wasn’t something I could let happen.
Not when I had the clout to do something about it. ”
My vision blurs. “Oh, Christian.”
“Don’t.” He tucks my hair behind my ear. “I’m not the hero in this story, Grace. I also had skin in the game. A reason to bury the truth.”
I frown. “What possible reason could you have?”
He laughs, but there’s a bitterness to it.
“In this family, there’s no such thing as failure.
Or so I thought at the time, and have believed for many years.
The idea of sitting my family down and telling them how badly I’d fucked up was abhorrent to me.
I imagined all kinds of shit coming my way: disappointment, disbelief, anger, even.
Demands to know how I could’ve been so stupid, so blind to what was going on right in front of my face. ”
“You really think your dad would say that to you?”
“For a long time, yeah, I did. Our beliefs are funny things, often deep rooted without evidence to back up what we so vehemently believe. I’ve always known I’m not as smart as my siblings. I feared this would simply cement that deeper in my psyche.”
“What are you talking about? You’re incredibly smart.”
He pulls his lips to one side. “I’ve lost count of the number of meetings I’ve sat in over the years, where a subject is being discussed, and Xan is all over it like the fucking genius he is, and Nicholas would jump in with fifty suggestions off the bat.
Even Tobias and Saskia would be fully engaged, offering solutions to problems. Meanwhile, I’d sit there struggling to catch on to the direction of travel, and by the time I did, the subject had moved on already. ”
“Christian.” I shake my head. “I can’t believe you’re saying this, that you believe it. We all have differing skillsets, things we’re good at and things that we’re not. Have you considered that your brothers’ rapid-fire way of approaching a problem isn’t your way of learning or contributing?”
“No, I hadn’t.”
“Well, maybe you should.”
He smiles, brushing the back of his hand over my cheek. “I do like it when you scold me.”
“Stop deflecting. What did your family say when you told them what you’ve told me?”
A faint blush steals over his cheekbones. “They were a little taken aback but supportive.”
“So, nothing like you expected.”
“No.”
“Funny that.”
Grinning, he encircles my waist, and I soak up his strength, resting my head on his chest. “What do you want to do about your uncle?”
I lean back so I can look into his eyes. “He’s still alive, then?”
“You think I’d have had him killed before talking to you?”
“It would’ve been an understandable reaction, considering he abducted you and beat you up, and for all I know would’ve done much worse if you hadn’t escaped.” A question occurs to me—one I hadn’t had the opportunity to ask until now. “How did you escape?”
“By having the right technology and the right contacts.” Letting me go for a minute, he lifts the sleeve on his shirt.
“This watch has a built-in tracker with an emergency beacon. Before the gas your uncle released into the car took effect, I managed to activate it. That sent a message to a man called Patrick Mahoney, who heads up the Irish mafia and is… I guess you could say on retainer to my family. He happened to be in London with his brothers and came to get me.”
This sounds like the plot of a thriller movie. I should be more shocked, except I’m not. “What if he hadn’t been in London?”
“He has a large organization. He’d have sent someone else.”
“So, he’s like…. The Godfather?”
He chuckles. “If the time comes when you meet him, I beg of you don’t say that to him. The man already suffers from a huge ego. Let’s not encourage him.”
“I’m happy to give him a swerve. He sounds scary.”
“He is, which is why I’m pretty sure the last couple of weeks haven’t been a barrel of laughs for your uncle.”
“Do you know where he is?”
“No, but wherever Mahoney’s holding him, it won’t be The Ritz.”
Funnily enough, I don’t care. I hope Daniel is crapping himself. Actions have consequences. His set in motion a chain of events that could have led to disaster.
And now it’s time for me to face the consequences of my actions. All this time I believed that Christian was culpable for my parents’ deaths, yet his only ‘crime’ was a fear of disappointing his family, and a determination to ensure Arron and I didn’t think badly of ours.
“Can I think about it? I want to talk to my brother before anything’s decided.”
“Of course.”
“And if I decide I want you to let him go?”
“Then, that’s what I’ll do.”
“Truly?”
“Yes. I may have Mahoney giving him a bit of a pasting for breaking my bloody nose, but he’ll live.”
I don’t condone violence, but Daniel started it. Maybe a black eye and a split lip is the least he deserves.
Reaching up, I cup Christian’s face and stare deeply into his eyes.
I want him to see my sorrow and know it’s coming from a place of deep regret.
“I am sorry, Christian. For everything. I can see now what I did was the wrong way to go about things. I had my brother fake an identity, I lied to you from the moment we met, and I put your life in danger. All this could have been avoided if I’d approached you and asked for the truth. ”
His arms tighten around me. “I’m not sure I’d have told you then, Grace. I wasn’t ready to put my own flaws out into the open. I didn’t act selflessly. I did what I did as much for me as I did it for you and your brother.”
“You were going to tell me all this the night he took you, weren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Did you know who I was then?”
“No. Your uncle showed me a photo of you with your parents and your brother. I couldn’t work out at first why it looked like you but different.” He flicks the end of my nose. “I’m ashamed that my actions led you to put yourself through surgery, to change your natural appearance.”
“I never liked the old nose anyway.” I shrug. “Looking back now, it’s incredible to me the power that grief has. Before my parents passed away, I could never have envisaged the lengths I would go to for revenge.”
“It’s a potent emotion. Your parents only died recently.
My mum and Annabel were taken from us more than twenty years ago, and we’re still grieving.
When I look at Xan, especially with the recent discoveries we’ve made, it’s as though he hasn’t moved on at all from losing his twin, and these latest revelations have made matters so much worse. ”
“You’re being far nicer to me than I deserve.” I sigh. “I still can’t believe they were in so much debt, and we never saw anything wrong.”
“We’re all capable of subterfuge.” He arches an eyebrow, his eyes twinkling. “Right?”
“I guess so. None of us know what we’re capable of until our boundaries or beliefs are challenged.
Until we face hardship and loss. I’ll try not to think badly of them, but it’s going to take some processing.
If it hadn’t been for some benevolent stranger coming to our rescue, I don’t know what we’d have done. ”
“What do you mean?”
“After the funeral, we found out someone paid off the mortgage on the house. If they hadn’t, we’d never have afforded the repayments on our own.”
“Ah.” Christian drops his gaze, his teeth scoring his lip. “That was, uh, me. It’s so long ago, I’d forgotten. I also paid off all their debts, so the criminal gang your father owed money to wouldn’t come looking for you and your brother.”
My eyes fly open. “You… what?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh, Christian.” I rest my hand on his thigh. “I can’t believe you did that. And look how I repaid you. God, I’m so ashamed.”
“Don’t be. Enough with the recriminations. I love you, Grace, so very much. I’m not sure at what point it happened, but all I know is that you make my life complete. There’s only one remaining question, or rather, two, that I need an answer to if I’m to work out where we go from here.”
I blink up at him, reeling from his admission of love. He loves me. He loves me. “What’s that?”
“Do you love me, and do you still want to be my wife?”
My eyes swim with tears, and I can’t swallow all of a sudden. I gaze into the bottomless brown eyes of a man I thought capable of terrible atrocities and think about how lucky I am. How things could have gone so terribly awry, and I would only have had myself to blame.
“Yes,” I whisper, letting the tears fall. “Yes, yes, yes.”
His beaming smile sends my heart racing. “Right answer.”