43. 43 - Maverick
I ’m pacing back and forth in the hall like a caged animal when I finally hear the noise from Enzo’s bike.
Ryder’s footsteps pound down the stairs. “Are they back?”
My nod is short. It takes everything I have not to rush into the garage, but I hold myself back until the door swings open and Enzo saunters out, his hand on Zella’s back as she walks in, her fingers tugging at the sleeve of her dress.
I’m not sure what to expect, but when she sees me, she darts forward, burying her face in my chest. “Maverick.”
Exhaling, I wrap my arms around her, my hand cupping the back of her head. “Are you alright?”
She nods into my shirt. “Enzo took me for… some fresh air.”
I bet he did. I narrow my eyes at him, and he shrugs.
“It helped.” Zella swallows as she shifts back, pushing her hair away from her face. Her braid is coming undone, long tendrils of gold falling past her shoulders as she looks between us all. Her face creases in hesitation, but she straightens her shoulders. “I think… I think we need to talk.”
“Okay,” I say softly. “Whatever you need.”
Her feet move, and she glances back as we start to follow. “I just need to get something. Will you wait for me? In the sitting room?”
“Of course.” Ryder, Enzo and I filter into the room as she darts up the stairs, returning a few minutes later and glancing at where we’re all sat. She comes to sit next to me on the couch, curling herself into a corner and taking a deep breath.
Silence stretches into minutes as we wait, all three of us still as Zella’s expression barely flickers. Finally, she looks up at us, and the forlorn expression on her face makes my chest ache. “Zella.”
I reach for her, but she shakes her head, holding her hand up. “No, I’m alright. I just… needed to work through some of the thoughts in my head.”
My fingers curl in on themselves as she straightens. Her skin is pale, her green eyes shadowed as she begins to speak.
“I don’t remember my parents,” she says quietly. “I don’t remember anything, really. Not when I was a child.”
I nod, knowing this from the discussions we’ve had previously.
She flips open the sketchbook in her hands, staring down at the marks on the page. “I asked Ethan a few days before I left how he managed when I was little, since he doesn’t like to be touched. He told me I had a nursemaid called Maria. He’d never mentioned her to me before.”
My whole body jerks, and her eyes flick to me. “Sorry,” I say hoarsely.
But I recognise that name.
Holding my tongue, I wait for Zella to bring her thoughts together. The little threads to a mystery two decades old.
She looks back down to the page. “Around the same time, I sketched something different to anything I’d drawn before. I always struggled to draw anything I’d never seen, but this…,”
She holds the book out to me. “It just came so naturally,” she whispers. “Like it was always there, inside my head.”
My fingers shake as I reach for the page. I have my suspicions, but shock still steals my breath as I look down at Maria Cooper’s face. I’d know it anywhere.
I’ve looked at that face every day for more than ten years.
It’s a dangerous thing, hope. Almost as dangerous as the absence of it. When you feel hope, opportunities are endless. But as hope begins to fade, those opportunities become like delicate threads. Each one slowly snipped away, until you’re left with nothing.
This case consumed my father, pushed him to open up the company we run today, to spend every spare moment searching for answers on behalf of his best friend.
He died without an answer.
My hand clenches on the sketch as I reach into my pocket, tugging out the crumpled photo and holding it out to Zella silently. She stares down at it, at the unmistakable resemblance between the woman in the photograph and the woman in her sketchbook.
“Nineteen years ago,” I say hoarsely, “my father’s best friend lost his wife and daughter in a fire.
It ripped through their home, so much so that they were unidentifiable.
But they only ever found one body. The police dismissed it.
They couldn’t identify the body due to its condition, and they said that because of the heat of the fire, it was likely that the daughter had perished too.
They thought it was a simple house fire, and they closed the investigation. ”
Zella closes her eyes. “I think they got it wrong.”
“My father did, too,” I say quietly. Her eyes fly open, and I give her a strained smile. “His best friend needed help, and it drove him to open up an investigative company. But he never found any explanation of what might have happened to Maria and Aria Cooper.”
Zella flinches, and I reach for her hand. It feels cold in mine, so fucking cold, and I pull her into me. Her entire body is trembling.
“What does this mean?” Her voice is hoarse and shaky as I hold her. “What did Ethan do?”
I rub my hands over her arms, trying to warm her. “I wish I had an answer for you,” I say softly. “But we’re closer to an answer now than we’ve ever been.”
She swallows. “What do we do now?”
I blow out a breath. “I think,” I say carefully, “that a DNA test is needed.”
“A DNA test?”
I cup her cheek. “It will tell us if you’re really Aria Cooper, Zella,” I say, trying to soften my words. “It will tell us if Emerson is your real father.”
Her eyes glisten, spilling over with tears. “And if he is?”
“Then,” I say softly, “we will think about what happens next. One step at a time, okay?”
It takes her a second to nod. “But… Ethan might have killed my mother. Why would he do that? Did he know them?”
“I don’t have all the answers,” I swallow, stroking her cheek. “But we’re going to get them, Zella. I swear to you.”
She straightens. “Can you… call him now? Emerson, I mean?”
“Are you sure, little thief?” Ryder interjects softly. “This is a lot to process in a short amount of time.”
Zella shakes her head. “It’s been twenty years,” she chokes out. “I don’t think… I think he deserves to know.”
We all exchange glances. “Alright,” I say roughly, trying to keep the ache in my throat down. “I’ll call him.”
Zella slips from my lap, and I glance up. She shifts on her feet.
“I want him to know,” she explains wanly. “I just… I don’t think I can be in the room for that. Not straight away. Does that make sense?”
“Of course,” I acknowledge. “I completely understand.”
She holds up her hand to stop Ryder and Enzo as they both rise from their seats. “I just… I’m going to have a bath. And maybe a nap.”
She wraps her arms around herself as she leaves, looking so small and fragile that it just about breaks my fucking heart. The others look just as struck, and Enzo’s hands are so tight on the arms of his chair I think I hear a crack.
Twenty years. Twenty years of looking for a ghost, of praying for a damn fucking miracle, and here she is.
“We could be wrong,” Ryder says quietly, and I shake my head.
“We’re not wrong,” I say, picking up the phone and bracing myself.
“Wait,” he bursts out. “Just… wait.”
He looks between the three of us. “This changes nothing,” he says hoarsely. “With us. With her.”
Enzo taps his hand on his knee, the only outward sign of his anxiety. “Obviously.”
He looks to me for confirmation. When I hesitate, he swears. “Fuck, Mav, this is not the time for you to be noble .”
“It’s her choice,” I say hoarsely. “It has to be her choice.”
He shakes his head. “She makes me want a future,” he says, his voice gruff. “I never bothered looking forward until we found her, Maverick. And now I can see it. It’s right fucking there. I’m not letting her go anywhere.”
“I agree,” Enzo chips in, and my eyes close. I can’t do this now.
Picking up the phone, I hit Emerson’s number and press the phone to my ear.
This is the job. This has always been the job.
We bring them home.
Even if it rips us apart.
“Emerson,” I say hoarsely, when he picks up the phone. “I think we’ve found her.”