Chapter 17
Mila
I paced the corridor until my phone lit with a message from Tyler, asking me to come up to the seventh floor, only a minute after their shock appearance.
First. That should have made me happy. She’d picked me above anyone. But instead, pain pierced my chest. Maybe because of what she had to say.
Lovelyn rubbed my arm. “This is what we wanted. I’m just so surprised. Why didn’t Tyler tell us?”
My brother’s scowl remained fixed in place. “That’s what I want to know.”
Cassie lifted her chin at him. “He sent ye to Edinburgh in pursuit of her, correct? Redirecting your search from the Isle of Skye?”
Kane grunted agreement, and they swapped a glance I didn’t like.
Hot emotion rushed through me, heightened from the run downstairs. The first glimpse of the slight figure buried under Tyler’s coat. She’d looked so scared. “I’m sure whatever it is, she’ll tell us. You heard what he said. She’s obviously fragile. No one is going to push her.”
“Of course not,” Lovelyn said.
If Kane and Cassie agreed, I didn’t see it. In the lift, Convict pressed the button, and he and I travelled up.
“Are you okay?” my boyfriend asked.
I couldn’t catch my breath. “Not even a little bit.”
“If they don’t let me in, I’ll be right outside.”
The doors slid open to an empty hall. My spine prickled with awareness, as if I were facing a firing squad.
Tyler’s door stood at the far end, closed. Just across the hall from where we’d supped cocktails in Cassie’s place, wishing for this very thing.
I walked towards it, each step heavy. Like I was trespassing on something sacred, or dangerous, or both. By the time I reached the door, my palms were damp and my heart was hammering hard enough that I wondered if she’d hear it from inside.
I raised my hand.
Then stopped.
What if she hated me?
What if she blamed me for the articles, the hunt, the mess my—our—name had caused? What if the only reason she was here was because of Tyler and not because she wanted to see me at all?
The door opened.
Tyler made way for me then connected his gaze to Convict’s over my head. I slipped into the room.
On a leather sofa, Dixie waited. She rose, barefoot, a pair of heels discarded to one side.
My brain refused to reconcile the image with the few photographs Cassie had shared. She was smaller than I’d expected. Softer. Not fragile, but coiled, as if ready to bolt if the air moved wrong.
Her blonde hair fell loose around her shoulders. There was a faint shimmer of makeup on her skin, carefully understated, and her eyes—my eyes but a different shade, I realised with a jolt—were watching me with wary intelligence.
“Hey.”
I swallowed a burst of emotion. “I’m so glad to meet you.”
“Long time coming.”
We stood there, a few feet apart, strangers bound by blood and history neither of us had chosen. The silence stretched, as breakable as glass.
Tyler’s enquiry interrupted it. “Want me in here or outside the door?”
Dixie smiled faintly at him. “Go talk to Convict for a bit. Just…”
“I won’t leave the hall.”
The snick of the door told me he’d gone.
“I’m so glad you’re back,” I managed. “I didn’t know if you would ever return.”
Her mouth twitched. “Same.” Dixie picked up a lock of her hair. Rubbed it between her fingers. “Your hair is my original colour.”
“Yours is so pretty. I love the platinum.”
“Vital for a showgirl.” She directed me to sit. “I… I need to apologise to you.”
“You don’t.” My words came out fast, and I tried to control them. “I mean, I feel the same. Like I owe you an apology for coming to the warehouse in the first place. Plus for not even knowing you existed until a few weeks ago.”
Dixie released a soft laugh. “That’s crazy talk. You couldn’t control either of those things. On the other hand, I did know you existed. I found out when I was thirteen. But I was under strict instructions never to contact you.”
My mind worked overtime. I didn’t blame her for that. I’d been told the same thing regarding Kane. “One of the older relatives mentioned that our grandparents were training up a granddaughter before me. I thought he was losing his marbles, but was that true?”
“Yes, hun. When I was a brand-new teenager, they showed up at our door, and within weeks, I was living with them. They wanted an heir, and my mother liked their money. I just felt special.”
A chasm opened in my heart. It already ached, but there was something so specific in her simple telling that hurt.
Dixie peered at me. “What is it? What did I say?”
I shook my head. “That’s my story almost exactly, except I was a year older, and they didn’t let me live with them. I went to boarding school, then in the holidays slept in an apartment they bought for me.”
Something passed over her vision. A bad memory, or an unpleasant thought.
I wanted to reach for her. I kept still.
“It was a good thing they did that. They learned from their mistakes,” Dixie said.
I had to be so careful. There was such a gap in my mind. Between the girl who’d been in my shoes and the woman sitting in front of me. She’d been hurt, I couldn’t guess to what extent or how many times. Our grandparents might have been part of that.
Dixie took a breath, breaking the spell of the terrible moment. “I know you have a lot of questions for me, and it didn’t sit right to be hiding away when I could be helping you. I know it’s too little, too late, but I can try, even if I’m not the big sister you deserve.”
“Of course you are. I’m scared of asking too much. I have a million questions.”
“Gimme your top three.”
My top three. Probably the hardest. My cheeks heated.
“You’ve seen the articles? Do you know what happened on the Eden?” At her nod, I continued. “I just need… Did he know?”
My beloved grandfather. The gentle, kind, and warm-hearted man who’d hugged me and taught me all I knew. I’d admired him so much, but every twist and reveal since his death had painted him in worse and worse light.
Dixie’s eyes lined with tears, and my heart twisted.
“I can’t say for sure,” she said, “but my guess is that he did. He had friends who used women, and Tyler mentioned that you were hunting a man named Rhys Jacobs. That piece of shit was a teenager selling schoolgirls for sex. I wasn’t allowed in the meetings, but I once asked him what he did.
He boasted about it and said something gross about my body.
It wasn’t until years later I understood the implication of him being regularly in our grandfather’s office. ”
My mouth popped open, dry as dust. “Jacobs was selling girls, even then? Wait, to Grandpa?”
It made sense to what Esther had said, with Jacobs soliciting her for a virginity auction only a few years on. It felt like so long ago that I’d heard that.
Dixie spread her hands. “Or to his friends. I can’t be sure. Bear in mind I left there when I was fourteen. I had barely eighteen months of exposure, and many of my memories are clouded. Let’s just say I left a far less happy girl than I’d arrived.”
The picture in my head adapted. Not into clarity, but to something I couldn’t look away from. Dixie had pieces of the puzzle that when mapped onto mine, formed a picture I couldn’t deny. But also, that she’d suffered something in the space of that year which had changed the trajectory of her life.
She’d known the same warmth of our grandfather’s love, and she’d run from it. Something had gone badly wrong for her, and under his care.
Heartsick, I tore my gaze away, searching the boxes around us. Anything to occupy my mind. One contained a lamp, fluffy fringing to the top. Surely it couldn’t be Tyler’s.
I gestured with my head. “Are these yours?”
Dixie followed my gaze and gave a startled laugh.
“That, I haven’t even processed.” She stood and rounded the sofa to the nearest box, pulling out a vase then a book.
She stared at them like she’d never seen them before then hefted the book.
A Marilyn Monroe biography. “I don’t know whether to hug him or throw this at him. ” Her voice wobbled.
A startled giggle fell from my lips. “I find with the skeleton crew men, both are effective.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of, sis.”
My heart clung to that half-word. Sis.
Dixie wrinkled her nose. “Are Lovelyn and Cassie mad at me? I want to talk to them, too, but I treated them so badly. Just like I did you.”
“You didn’t. And no one’s angry. Only concerned. We were actually just talking about you when you came back. All of us wishing we’d done more or been different.”
I stood, my breathing uneven to the point where I was almost dizzy, my questions scrambled.
“Do you want to say hi to them? I can bring them up, one at a time. We can get that out of the way then talk more. I can order food. Stop me if I’m racing ahead.”
Dixie’s smile, when it formed, was so pretty. “I’d like that. It’ll give me a second to gather my thoughts.”
I knew exactly how she felt. I excused myself and went to the door, slipping out to the hall. In a corner of brick and iron, Convict spoke quietly and in earnest with Tyler, the intercept lead breaking off to check with me that Dixie was okay before they fell back into conversation.
A quick text brought Lovelyn and Cassie up in the lift.
They had to have been waiting. Just as I had, so desperately.
There had been a ticking clock in my head for the vote on the future of Marchant Haulage.
It had infected my every thought, worsening when I discovered I had a sister.
Now I was only sad for how the mess had affected her.
I’d protect her from it. In any way I could.
At the sight of my friends, I burst into tears, stifling a sob with the back of my hand. “She’s so lovely. She’s sitting there, surrounded by boxes of her possessions, and she’s just so kind and sweet.”
Lovelyn hugged me, but Cassie went still.
“What do you mean boxes?”
She angled her head as if working something out, then her furious gaze shot to Tyler.
I realised I’d messed up. I just had no idea how.