Chapter 43
R aphael
A tired-looking Gabe opened the front door to let us in, a tiny wail chasing him. He and Effie had brought their son home yesterday, but neither had slept for more than a few hours together in days, so we’d given them time before visiting.
Ariel and Jackson had already arrived, so when Alex and I entered the living room, we tucked up next to them on the sofa, all gazes on the wee scrap of a bairn in my sister’s arms.
Ariel’s eyes were lined with tears, which said a lot as she never cried. “He’s perfect, Effie. So beautiful. Look at what you made!”
Effie curled in an armchair with a blanket over her and her dark hair tied up. My sister-in-law had been the image of a hardened athlete, and motherhood had softened her. “We agree. I can’t stop staring at his face.”
“Luckily, he looks just like his ma,” I told her, saying the only thing that should be told to a woman who’d just undergone days of labour.
Ariel passed me the baby, and I tucked him on my arm, tracing and memorising every little feature from his button nose to his wisp of dark hair. Alex took a photo and stroked his cheek, and at long last, I realised my fear for his safety had gone.
All I felt was a rush of love so strong it could have floored me.
“Okay there, uncle?” Gabe said softly.
“Hush it,” I said back but with a smile. “Do we have a name yet?”
The couple glanced at each other, and Effie spoke.
“Nope. He’s still just Baby Gordonson. Originally, we wanted to go with something that represented his role in our lives. More specifically, in your lives here in Scotland, and in the freedom ye found. His birth represents so much. Ye both,” she indicated to me and Ariel, “were young teenagers when ye first came here. I didn’t know then what you’d become to me, but I knew ye needed family. People who’d love ye. My husband was the same, even if he gave me the runaround.”
She grinned at Alex. “Did ye know I had to basically torment him into loving me? Gordonson men are tough nuts to crack.”
Alex curved an eyebrow at me. “Sounds familiar.” She returned Effie’s smile. “We need to compare notes. I want all the stories.”
Effie smiled, and her gaze dropped to her son. “That need for freedom and a new lease of life is in the past, though. We are living it now, so naming a child to represent anything to do with your shared history just didn’t hit. We couldn’t do it. He’s his own person. He’ll grow up without the tyranny of his grandfather. We’re not tying him to that.”
Gabe heaved a sigh. “Which takes us back to the drawing board. Any and all suggestions, throw them at us. We’ll see if anything sticks.”
Jackson and Ariel began name generating, the new parents hearing and shrugging at most. I stared down at the bairn then ran an arm around Alex.
“Got any ideas?”
She sucked in a breath. “I wouldn’t want to make a suggestion. I’m brand-new to this family.”
“Yet the promise ye extracted from your cousin was done to protect us all, including this wee one.”
The room fell silent.
“Uh, maybe explain that?” Ariel asked.
Quickly, I outlined what had gone on. I hadn’t told any of them. Not that I shared my troubles with them in general, but with my sister-in-law in labour, a family meeting had not been on the cards. They didn’t even know my picture had appeared online or connected with Alex’s.
When I was done, all stared wide-eyed.
My brother was quickest to recover. “The king offered us his support?” He uttered a laugh. “Makes sense now why that haunted expression has gone from your eyes, Raph. Thank ye, Alex. I refused to live a life in fear, but I’ve got to say that helps a lot.”
Effie watched her baby and tilted her head. “What if we stop looking for big meaning in the name? We just pick something that suits him.”
Gabe’s eyebrows rose. “Where’s the list of names we liked?”
She found her phone and opened her notes. “Xavier?—”
“That’s perfect,” Gabe said.
Effie blinked at him. “I put that on the list because it’s the name of the snowboarder I admire, but more because I think it sounds really cool. Xavier Gordonson is a badass name for when I take him out on the slopes.”
“Xavier Gordonson.” My brother tried it on for size. Then he smiled. “Welcome to the world.”
B raced by Jackson at my side, I moved in on Dori. The count, invited by Alex to ours for dinner, lifted his head at our approach, his posture stiffening. Throughout the evening, Alex had tried to get him to talk, but he was muted. Nothing like the man I’d met in a nightclub when he’d sprayed champagne, jumped on a table, and caused a ruckus. She had the feeling she might be the blocker, so this was our alternative plan.
“This is the firing squad? Put me out of my misery,” Dori said sardonically.
I ducked my head at the door. “Up and out. We’re taking ye for a walk.”
He sighed but stood. “Maybe a quick dip in the loch. Don’t let me surface.”
Outside in the fresh night air, I led the way, strolling out into the lane that led around the hill and in the direction of Braithar, Jackson keeping pace. “You’re unhappy. Alex hasn’t told us your story, but we know the basics and want to help.”
“My heart’s broken. Nothing any of you can do about that.”
Jackson palmed his shoulder in a friendly gesture of solidarity. “Tell us the story. Maybe we’ll have some ideas.”
Dori relented, probably because of the alcohol Alex had plied him with, but the words came thick and fast. His falling in love with his musician. Their romance. The way he knew to the bottom of his soul that she was the one for him, but then her agreement to marry another.
At last, we got the details of why he’d lost his passport and had been avoiding Alex.
Jackson gave me a look behind Dori’s back. Neither of us liked the sound of what he’d told us.
“So you see, she made her choice. I should never have gone to find her.”
“Have ye moved on?” I asked.
“What the fuck does it look like?” He hauled in a breath. “I don’t mean to snap at you. But no, I haven’t. I can’t.”
“Because ye haven’t heard the words from her lips,” Jackson said.
Dori swung his gaze up. “Exactly. That’s why I went. It felt off. It still does. But what am I supposed to do? I don’t know where she is. There’s no way her management company would tell me—I know, I tried. I can’t call or text her any more as my number was blocked. The one place I can still see her is an account that she doesn’t use anymore.”
“Have ye tried messaging her there?” I asked.
“Yes. No reply.”
The conversation had taken us all the way through the woods so we were above Braithar.
Jackson planted his hands on his hips. “What if someone else tried to get in touch with her?”
Dori shrugged. “She knows about Alex, but I can’t imagine she’s going to reply to her. Not when she ignored me. Why would she?”
“What if she can’t reply? What if ye were right all along and she’s somehow restricted and her comms are being controlled?”
Dori didn’t answer, but emotion brewed just under his surface. He hadn’t given any part of this up.
“One of the things Ben trained us to do is think outside the box,” Jackson continued. “To get ye to answer the phone, Valentine used a local number trick. We could do similar with Elsie.”
“What are ye thinking?” I asked.
“Leo. He can approach her. With his star power, there is no way she’d ignore the contact. Especially if she has a new album coming out. Her record company would bend over backwards at the hint of him helping to promote her. We can try it. Even ask her to come here for a recording session if we think she’s being manipulated and needs a way out.”
It was a good plan. I turned to the count. “Ye knew her, Dori, even if ye think those two weeks were a fever dream, there was a connection. Believe me, I fell in love in a shorter time than that and would move mountains for Alex. Tell us to do this or tell us to mind our own business. Either way, we’re friends and we don’t want to see ye down.”
The count looked between us. Surprise shifted to certainty in his eyes. “You really think this will work?”
“Only one way to find out.”
“Do it.”
We half ran the rest of the way to Braithar and hunted down Leo. As an old romantic, he needed no convincing to join in our conspiring, directing us into a music room to plot.
In thirty minutes, his friend request to Elsie’s private account had been accepted. That had been our first plan of attack, the record company approach a second. Good to know we didn’t need it. The greater the privacy the better.
“Okay, to the DMs. I’ll ask if we can discuss cowriting a song,” Leo said.
Dori swallowed and nodded.
Leo sent the message, and we all stared at the screen, waiting on her reply.
Elsie: This should really be approved by my manager. My contract is pretty tight, and I get no say, which I know sounds ridiculous. I only accepted this request because I respect you as a musician. How did you even get this account name?
Leo: A mutual friend. If you’re by yourself, can I call? I’ll explain it better.
A long several minutes passed. We’d scared her off. She wasn’t going to reply.
Leo’s phone rang with a video call.
He answered it, careful to keep the background behind him a wall of guitars and not the rest of us. “Elsie?”
A small, tentative voice filled the air. “It’s me. It’s nice to meet you, Mr Banks. Who did you mean by a friend?”
“Are you alone?” Leo checked.
“I am.”
“I know him as Dori.”
The room held its collective breath. With the phone at an angle, I could just make her out. She had her blonde hair down in soft waves around her heart-shaped face. The picture of her and Dori together on her account had been of a happier-looking woman.
“Dori?” she breathed. “I’m shocked that he still thinks about me, let alone to recommend me to you.”
“Why’s that?” Leo asked.
“That’s highly personal, plus ancient history. How do you even know him?”
Leo’s gaze held Dori’s, who practically vibrated with how rigid he held himself.
“We’re friends. I don’t think you’re ancient history as far as he’s concerned.”
She made a sound of frustration. “I don’t know you to have this kind of discussion, and if I’m overheard… Listen, whatever he said is a lie. For the sake of setting the record straight, he broke up with me by a single message while I was in the middle of the toughest and most gruelling album recording sessions you can imagine. He shattered me, then blocked me, and left me no method of contacting him. Since then—” Her voice strained, and she stopped.
Dori burst off the wall and snatched the phone, carrying it off down the room. Wild-eyed, he held it up so Elsie could at last see him. “That was a lie. I thought you’d blocked me. I couldn’t get in contact with you at all. I tried every way possible. When I couldn’t get through on your phone, I called your management team, your publicist, all of them. You’d gone ahead and got engaged, and the way I found out was that video appearing online.”
Dead silence filled the line, then a sob. “No, that isn’t what happened.”
“It is! Believe me, I bled to see you. I came to your goddamned engagement party to reach you just to be sure?—”
“You did what?”
Dori slid to his knees on the music room floor. “You didn’t know?”
The three of us made to leave. The contact had been made, our job was done.
Something sounded her end of the line.
Elsie spoke in a rush. “The engagement was fake. I only agreed to it as a publicity stunt because I was upset over losing you. Your breakup message had come in that morning, and I was broken. I mean destroyed. But it went too far, and now…”
Voices sounded on her end of the line, abruptly cutting off her speech.
Her voice was the only clear one, with the emotion completely gone from her tone. “…Leo Banks. We’re talking about a collaboration. Why would you need…Victor!”
Dori scrambled up and tossed the phone to Leo who caught it and centred his face on the screen, right as a man appeared behind Elsie in the frame. The influencer she was engaged to. He took in Leo then walked away.
“Don’t be long,” he told her. “We have shit to do.”
Dori took the phone back but stayed with us. He touched his gaze on each of us, and I gave him a nod, sharing the sense of something being badly wrong here.
Elsie watched her fiancé leave, and her throat bobbed. “He’s gone.”
“You’re in trouble,” Dori said.
She took a breath. “It’s complicated.”
“Or, it’s simple. You’ve been lied to and kept away from me. Did anyone tell you I’d asked to speak to you?”
“No one. You even spoke to Misty, my manager?”
“Even her. She told me you were too busy to talk and that she’d pass on my name but I shouldn’t expect shit back.”
“She lied. Oh God. Why did she lie to me? She knew how hurt I was. Dori, please, the breakup message wasn’t from you?”
Dori crumpled. “No. I never would’ve. I got one, too.”
The two of them watched one another, and the emotion fucking choked me. It felt intrusive to witness, but I also knew Dori needed us. Like Alex, even in the middle of a wealthy family and castles for days, he had next to no true support. He needed a team around him.
Like he’d read my mind, Dori centred himself. He panned the camera to show me and Jax. “I have bodyguard friends here who can get you out. I don’t know what’s going on there, but I’m certain you have to leave now.”
“I can’t. I’m under contract. It’s tied up so tight.”
Leo chimed in. “Let me help with that. My mother-in-law employs the best entertainment lawyers and would love to tear up whatever they had you sign.”
The woman on the phone screen paled. “Is this even happening? Dori, please.”
“All you need to do is tell us yes.” He gripped the phone tight.
The desperation in her features bled into her voice. “Yes.”