Chapter 6 #2
He chuckled. “Because it doesn’t. I actually own the whole building, not just this apartment. I rent out the other fifty-eight apartments on the floors beneath this one.”
“Wow.” This was a London penthouse apartment, and Fawn couldn’t even imagine how much it was worth. But the monthly rent coming in from those other luxury London apartments beneath this one must be astronomical.
Declan nodded. “I come from old Irish money, and I inherited a large sum from my grandfather on my twenty-first birthday, which I then invested in tech companies and real estate in Ireland, England, and the US. It was a lot of money then, but it had increased in value a thousand times over by the time I eventually left the army.”
“And Bridget knew you had recently inherited family wealth before the two of you were married?”
“Yes,” he acknowledged self-derisively. “Her greed in the divorce was when I finally realized how stupid I had been to ever think she was in love with me.”
“Maybe she was but the greed just overcame her.”
He smiled. “That’s very generous of you, but somehow, I doubt that.”
“You were very young.”
“But also a fool for ever falling for Bridget’s false claims of affection.
” He looked down at his feet. “I’ve never— This next bit I’ve never admitted out loud to anyone before, but…
” His chin rose. “After the divorce, I learned that Bridget had been involved with the man who became her second husband long before the two of us had ever met and married. That the whole marriage and divorce from me, even having Connall, was something they had planned together purely so that they could get their hands on a great deal of my money. Connall’s existence, his child maintenance, meant I would be the gift that just kept on giving. ”
She winced. “That is so cruel and mercenary.”
Declan drew in a ragged breath. “It’s because of her long-term relationship with this other man that I’ve never been completely sure that Connall was really my son by blood.
Not that it would have mattered whether he was or not,” he added quickly.
“I loved him and cherished every moment we were able to spend together. No matter what a blood test might have shown, in every way that matters, Connall was— is , still my son,” he corrected forcefully.
“You said ‘was’ first?” Fawn prompted curiously. As far as she was aware, Declan’s son hadn’t visited him in hospital.
Declan’s jaw tightened. “Bridget and her second husband were killed in a car crash when Connall was almost four. They had picked him up from preschool half an hour before the accident happened. His child seat was still in the car. But Connall was nowhere to be found when the police arrived on the scene.”
“How is that even possible?”
Declan sighed heavily. “They searched, and so did I, for months after I was given extended compassionate leave from the army. At first, we thought maybe they had dropped him off with a relative, but none of Bridget’s or her new husband’s family had seen them or him that day.
The police looked into the possibility of a kidnapping, but no ransom was ever demanded.
Connall had somehow just…disappeared. As if he had just fallen off the face of the earth.
” Declan’s eyes were shadowed with the pain he still suffered from that loss.
“But that doesn’t mean I’ve ever stopped searching for him. I never will.”
Fawn felt utterly stunned at learning of the heartache Declan had endured: the marriage he had eventually learned was nothing but a sham and had only existed at all for mercenary reasons.
Followed by the divorce and the separation from his son, then Connall’s disappearance.
It was a testament to the strength of this man that he hadn’t crumbled under the weight of all that heartache.
“You stayed in the army?” she prompted curiously.
Declan grimaced at the deep compassion and concern that he could clearly see in Fawn’s expression.
In truth, he felt totally drained from having relived all the past and present heartache he felt in regard to his brief marriage and the loss of his son.
“With no other family ties, I had no reason not to reenlist after the first four years,” he confirmed.
“But during all these years, I’ve employed private investigators all over the world to continue looking for Connall.
Then, two years ago, I read that article in the newspapers about Rufus Wynter being reunited with his daughter, along with the circumstances of her disappearance.
” His eyes brightened. “They were so eerily similar to the way my son had disappeared that I wondered if the two things might not be connected.”
“Were they?”
That light faded from his eyes. “No.”
“How can you be sure?”
“Because Linus is very good at what he does,” Declan said flatly.
“Which is why, when I applied for a job with Wynter Security, he was able to quickly learn the full truth about what happened to me in the past. A truth he has very kindly chosen to keep to himself because he says it has no bearing on whether or not I would make a good employee.”
“That makes Linus a good man.”
“It does,” Declan acknowledged.
She tilted her head. “What was his real reason for being in the apartment earlier?”
Declan gave her a nod of appreciation for her intuition. “He came to put away the photographs of Connall.”
“Because if I had seen them, I might have started asking questions.”
“Yes.”
“He really is a good man.”
“Yes.”
“Will you show me the photographs of Connall sometime?”
He swallowed. “Sometime. When the pain of this conversation has eased a little.”
“And Linus didn’t find any connection between Connall’s disappearance and that of Rufus’s daughter?”
“None,” Declan stated heavily, that disappointment still a living, writhing thing inside him.
“But since then, he’s continued to search every avenue, legal and illegal, to see if he can find a single clue as to what might have happened to my son.
And I do mean every avenue,” he added bleakly.
“Including hacking the records of the groups of criminals around the world who abduct children for the sole purpose of selling them for profit, without a care for what happens to them after they’re sold. ”
“Dear God, no!” Fawn gasped at the horror she obviously felt at what he was implying.
“He hasn’t found any evidence that’s what happened to Connall,” Declan quickly assured. “But neither have we found any evidence that he’s still alive and living somewhere safe and happy, but in complete ignorance of the father who has been searching for him for the past sixteen years.”
“But he could be doing exactly that,” she insisted.
“He could be, yes,” Declan conceded before admitting, “It’s only by clinging to that hope, whenever I dwell too much on those other heartbreaking options, that has kept me from going completely insane all these years.”
Fawn stood up, her amber gaze holding his as she walked purposefully toward him.
Declan watched her approach warily, his emotions already so raw, he had no defenses left.
He moistened his lips with the tip of his tongue as she came to a halt in front of him and placed her hands on his chest. “What are you doing?”
The fullness of her lips curved into a smile. “I’m going to kiss you.”
Indignant resentment, white-hot and strong, surged through him. “I’m not interested in a pity fuck, even from someone I’m as attracted to as I am you.”
“That’s good, because you aren’t going to get one. It’s equally as good that you’re attracted to me, because I’m attracted to you too.” Fawn used her grip on his shoulders to pull herself up onto her toes before claiming his unresponsive lips with her own.