Chapter 26
Chapter Twenty-Six
Ilya
Something was going on, and had been going on for years, and it was something I had no part of. An aspect of my life that wasn’t right.
Well, lots of things in my life weren’t right.
I’d felt that way since they had wheeled Daisy away for her C-section all those years ago, and then she had died, and I never got to say goodbye.
I never got to tell her all the things I had never been able to say to another human being because it was too late.
Only it wasn’t too late. She was alive. Alive and well and carrying my baby—again.
But still—I fell into the chair behind my desk with so much force that it rocked back and almost deposited me onto the rug.
Something wasn’t adding up. It hadn’t been for months, but I’d been too busy hating and punishing her for leaving me to pay it any attention. Now it was all I could think about. In my mind, I went through every conversation we’d had since she had come back into my life.
And the same things kept sticking out to me.
Daisy kept saying that she wasn’t going to be forced away this time, and she said it with the look on her face that told me she meant every word she said, but that begged the question: had someone forced her away from me and Alec the first time?
I’d always thought it was strange that she had the means to fake her own death and start a new life, but, like everything, I had been too busy hating on her to actually think about it.
It was easier to believe she had left us. Easier to hate her and wrap that hate around me like a security blanket for the last six years.
Loving her and hating her were so mixed up in my head; sometimes I wondered which ones were my true feelings. Only deep down I knew.
I loved her. Always had and always would.
Now there was a new baby in the mix, and I needed to find out the truth.
I gave myself twenty whole seconds of hanging my head and trying to catch my breath before I inhaled deeply and straightened. Turning on the computer, my fingers paused over the keyboard.
I didn’t have a clue where to start.
Another sigh fell from my lips as I began to type. I hadn’t looked into the past in so long, especially not my grandfather's personal accounts, but deep down I knew that was where I had to start.
If someone had made Daisy disappear all those years ago, it was him. After all, it had been him that had told me she had died, and he was the only one who would have the contacts and means to do it.
What would I do if I found out he had taken her from me? The old man was already dead, so it wasn’t like I could kill him. But I would hate him.
Well, I hated him more, and I would hate him for eternity.
For hours I went through old files, one by one, and there was nothing, absolutely nothing, until I found one single entry in old bank records.
To a nurse for tens of thousands of dollars.
And once I found that, everything seemed to flow into my lap.
A nurse to take care of her after her surgery, several more payments to lowlife criminals. One to the medical examiner.
Fuck, there had been bodies in that smoking car crash. Bodies that had to be identified with dental records because they were so badly burnt. My grandfather had paid everyone off to make sure I believed she was dead.
People had died for his ruse. He had been so hell-bent on making sure I wasn’t happy that he had killed innocent people. Not that it was totally surprising. The old man had never much cared for who he hurt. As long as he got his own way, nothing else mattered.
Even when it had come to me. He knew I was in love with her. He knew I wanted to spend my life with her, and instead of being happy that his grandson and heir had found someone, he had ripped us apart, and by doing so, had ripped out my heart.
But he hadn’t just taken Daisy away from me and her father, who had died never seeing or hearing from his daughter again because he thought she was dead; he’d taken her away from her child as well.
I couldn’t even imagine the pain and fear she must have felt being torn away from the hospital, still fresh from surgery, and forced to part with her newborn son.
Had they even let her see him? Hold him?
Probably not, and the thought made me feel sick.
Slamming my hands down on the desk with enough force to make the wood creak and groan, I stared at the screen.
The university in England where Daisy had finished her studies.
He hadn’t paid them. She'd gotten a scholarship fair and square, and he hadn’t even bothered to tell her.
He’d made her believe that he had funded her new life. And she would have hated it all.
God, I couldn’t even start to think about what she had been through.
He’d probably told her I wanted her gone. That it was all my idea, and it cut deep to think she believed him and that she hadn’t tried to talk to me first.
But of course she had; I knew Daisy. She would have begged to see me. He wouldn’t have let her.
He ripped us apart and robbed us of the life we should have had together. Six fucking years of happiness, he had taken from me.
Asshole.
If I had the power, I would bring him back to life and kill him all over again. Slowly.
My hands closed into fists, the veins in my arms popping out as the rage engulfed me. The old man had played us. All of us. He had ripped apart the only good thing I had, and the only happiness I had ever imagined, and I didn’t know why.
Surely it wasn’t just because he hated the world so much?
Well, I hated him more than ever. If he wasn’t already cold and dead in the ground, then I would put him there myself.
Hell, I couldn’t even be sure that she had needed that surgery to begin with. Probably not; he had just needed her away from me for his plan to work.
It took well over five minutes for my breathing to go back to normal.
He was the devil, and people always assumed I was just like him. And maybe in a way they were right, but Daisy had seen past that wolfish persona and into the real me, and she had loved me.
She had LOVED me. She still did. I saw it in the way she looked at me even now.
Daisy loved me even when I was unlovable.
Even in these last few weeks, when I had been cruel to her, she had still touched me with her gentle hands. Even when she screamed and shouted at me, she did it with love still in her eyes.
All these years, and she still loved me.
It was so much more than I deserved, I knew that. And I loved her too. I always had; that’s why I had been hell-bent on punishing her any way I could.
God, I had been such a fool.
All these years, I had hated her, thinking she had died leaving me and our son, and this entire time she had been alive.
Seeing her at the graveyard should have felt like a miracle. It was a miracle, and what had I done? Made her life hell.
And even as I had done it, I hadn’t been able to stay away from her.
I wasn’t going to stay away from her now, either. There was another child now. Even if there wasn’t, I wouldn’t be able to let Daisy go.
Leaning back, I pinched the skin between my eyebrows, praying that the headache that was throbbing through my temples would abate before I had to get Alec up for school.
Like he had heard me think his name, I heard the tiny pitter-patter of his feet and quickly closed down the screens where the pictures of a woman’s charred body filled my screen. The woman I had thought was Daisy for so long.
"Papa?" Alec called, but he didn’t open the door. There was so much uncertainty in his voice. Something that hadn’t been there before I had brought Marguerite into our lives to punish his mother.
"Yes, little man. You can come in."
The door opened a crack, and his little body slipped through.
"Did you have a nightmare?" I asked, pushing the chair back so he could jump onto my lap. He instantly snuggled into my chest.
"It’s morning, Papa."
I glanced towards the window, and sure enough, the sun had already risen. I had been so engrossed in finding out the truth that I had spent the entire night here and hadn’t even noticed.
Tightening my arms around him, I brushed my nose through his silky curls. Like always, the smell of him made the beast inside of me quieten.
"So it is. Do you want breakfast?"
For a second he paused. "Is your—"
I knew what he was asking before he had even finished. "No, not today," I said softly. "Marguerite won’t be around at breakfast time for a while."
"Is ma—" he paused, and I heard him swallow hard. "Can we see Daisy today?"
I closed my eyes. He missed her, and he had been about to call her mama. It wasn’t the first time he had called her his mother.
"Yes." I smoothed my hand down his back before placing him on his feet. "Yes, we will be going to see your mama today."
There was hope in his eyes when he lifted them to mine. Like he recognized the gravity of what I had just said.
"But you need to go to school first. Afterwards, we will go and see Daisy together, okay?" I stared at his face, so open and happy that he was allowed to now call her mom, that my heart gave a pang.
"We will bring her home," I said quietly. "After school, though, okay?"
The plan made me smile. Yes, later this afternoon we would bring Daisy home, and we would be a family. Finally.
He opened his mouth to argue back and then shut it again with a nod of his head. "Okay."
Without a backward glance, he skipped away, and I knew it was to change into mismatched clothes that I would have to help him change before school.
Still, it gave me a few minutes to shower and gather my thoughts around me.
Daisy was the love of my life. There had never been any doubt about that. She was the mother of my son and soon-to-be mother of my next child.
And I was never, ever going to let her go.
I couldn’t.
Marguerite…
I hadn’t even thought about her until Alec had brought her up. She hadn’t even been a blip on my thoughts, but I had to deal with her sooner rather than later.
Another sigh, and I was reaching for my cellphone. Scrolling until I found her number. It was still early, so she might not be up, but it shocked me that her phone went straight to voicemail.
Taking a deep breath, I left a message. "Hi Marguerite, it’s Ilya. We need to talk."
She would know something was wrong the moment she heard the message, and that was for the best. I didn't want to blindside her, but I didn’t want to marry her either.
I couldn’t marry her.
I’d only marry one woman, the woman I loved.
And her name was Daisy.