Chapter 47
“Where the fuck is he?” Jacques shouts down the video call.
There have been search parties out all day and night over the last two days.
There’s a permanent sick feeling in my stomach.
Xander is missing, and no one knows where he is or what he’s doing. I don’t know where Sid is, either.
Ezra tells me that Xander took him, but he didn’t tell Ezra where exactly that is.
Talk about digging yourself a hole.
Jacques has been trying to get ahold of Xander on his phone multiple times a day. The first day, the calls went through. Now, they go straight to voicemail.
The skin around my nails is raw, red, and painful as I pace Jacques’ office.
“We haven’t been able to track him down, sir. It seems that his phone is turned off,” the voice on the other end of the call says.
“Fuck,” I whimper, running my hands through my dishevelled hair and sitting down on the chair behind me.
Jacques glances over at me, fury etched into his face. I haven’t seen him smile once since Xander left.
“We will find him,” he mouths towards me.
Their voices trail off as my brain conjures up the worst that could’ve happened. Is he still even alive?
I rock back and forth on the chair, desperately trying to keep my tears from falling.
Jacques keeps telling me we’ll find him, that he’s alive…
But there’s never any certainty in his voice.
There’s always the undertone of ‘I’m going to try to make you feel better, but really I’m just as nervous as you are. ’
The one thing I wanted was to get away from Xander. The whole time I was just trying to convince myself that he’s not good for me. He’s toxic.
What he did was inexcusable, and I don’t know how I could ever forgive him for it, but at the same time, the thought of him not being here anymore…
Vomit makes its way up my throat and out of my mouth. All over Jacques’ floor.
“Shit,” he curses, standing from his chair and rushing over to me.
“I’m so sorry,” I choke out, throat burning.
“Don’t worry about it. You need to get some sleep, Camila.”
I shake my head as he rubs my back, and more vomit threatens to escape. “We need to find him, Jacques.”
“We’re doing everything we can, okay?” He pulls away, pressing a button on the wall next to us. “Fuck, if I knew he was going to disappear, I would’ve found a different way to keep him away from you.” He pinches the bridge of his nose.
“It’s not… your fault,” I manage, swallowing down bile. “I should’ve heard him out.”
He sighs. “You know, I can tell you what you need to know. You just need to be ready for it.”
I nod at him. He’s been relentlessly offering to tell me about Xander for days. He’s defending his brother. But I don’t want to hear it. I’m trying to wrap my head around what Xander did. And I don’t want to make excuses for him.
What he did was toxic, but our relationship was none of the sort.
“Come on.” Jacques helps me up off the seat as a couple of cleaners come in with buckets and mops.
I give them an awkward smile on the way out.
When we reach the mansion, Jacques takes me into the kitchen and offers me a bottle of water.
I take it from him and drink little sips.
He sits on the opposite side of me, hands folded in front of him, eyes fixed on nothing in particular.
You can see the regret written all over his face.
I think we both regret it. But neither of us knew what it would mean for Xander to leave.
The cold water soothes my throat as I finish the rest of the bottle. We're both silent as I flatten it and place it in the recycling bin.
“I’m going to go and shower this off.” My announcement cuts through the silence.
Jacques nods as I move past him, squeezing his tense shoulder.
The only positive to come out of the last few days is that myself and Jacques have formed a friendship. Albeit over his missing brother, but still a friendship. And though guilt is eating me alive at what I said to Xander, I feel even worse for taking him from Jacques.
Sleep evades me, as it has been.
I’ve been tossing and turning. Every little noise I hear, I hope it might be Xander returning from wherever he is. Ezra insists that he doesn't know. I had to stop Jacques from almost shooting him over it multiple times. I believe Ezra.
Huffing in frustration, I drag myself out of bed and pad over to the kitchen, where I pour myself a glass of wine.
I don’t even like wine.
I carry the glass into the sitting room of the house and pause when I see Jacques sitting in front of a lit fireplace, a bottle of water in his hand.
Quietly, I move to the chair opposite him. “Can I?” I ask.
He gestures to the chair, and I sit, staring into the fire as we sit in silence and sip on our drinks.
“Wine?” I offer.
He shakes his head. “I don’t drink.”
“I wish I never said the things I did,” I state, my unfocused eyes staring at the flames in front of us.
Jacques snaps his gaze to me and sighs. “You had a right to be angry, Cam.”
I turn to him. “But I didn’t need to hurt him like that.”
His lips tighten. “He hurt you, too.”
“But you can’t fight fire with fire.”
That silences him.
“You can try to validate me, but I’ll never forgive myself for what I said.” My throat is tight.
I can’t pick and choose when Xander’s obsessive tendencies are okay, but I just wish he told me the truth.
Letting out a long breath, I focus on the flames in front of us again. “I think I’m ready.”
I’m not facing him, but I can see in the corner of my vision that Jacques whips his head towards me. He’s been waiting for me to say those words since Xander went missing.
He clears his throat, leaning back in his chair. “How much do you know?”
“I know about his mum and dad. His mum didn’t care about him, and his dad committed suicide after she left. Nothing past that.”
“Yeah…” he pauses. “After his dad died, Xander was fostered. And not into a good family. He was… abused. Badly. Worse than his mum ever did.”
“What about you?” I question.
“What about me?”
“Aren’t you brothers?” I arch my brow.
He chuckles, a stray strand of hair falling in front of his face as he dips his head down. “We’re not actually brothers.”
Well.
“People only believe that we are. And being in the business we’re in, it’s better to pretend and go along with it. It makes people fear you that little bit more.”
“Oh. Xander never mentioned.”
“Because you didn’t ask. We’ve been friends since we were toddlers. We feel like brothers,” he says, his face becoming sombre before he continues.
He doesn’t hesitate to tell me about Xander. And I listen with a tight throat. He’s been waiting for this with silent hope that it might change my mind.
But truthfully, maybe I just needed time away from him.
“Why hasn’t he told me any of this?” I ask.
“Xander… His brain blocks out that part of his life. He doesn’t like to talk about it. He was doing fine until you showed up.”
“So all of this is my fault,” I muse.
“No. That’s not what I’m saying. In that box… was there a picture of a green teddy bear?”
I nod slowly, recalling the teddy bear in multiple pictures.
“That was a teddy bear his dad bought him after his mum left. His dad loved him, but he wasn’t present.
He worked a lot. Xander did everything he could to make his mother love him, but it was never enough for her.
She… abused him. The teddy was green. He was obsessed with it.
Just like the colour. It was his one source of comfort throughout those days of hell in his foster house.
” He swallows. “One day, his foster parent destroyed it completely. He shut down after that. He wasn’t himself.
For years I tried to help him find a way to cope.
Slowly, he started blocking out that part of his life.
That colour. It helped. And then you showed up. ”
“But I don’t understand what I have to do with it.”
“You were wearing green, Cam. Your eyes are green. He found his comfort in human form.”
A tear rolls down my cheek at all the information I needed confirmation on.
“But why green?”
He shrugs. “He had a misdiagnosis as a child. They said it was ADHD. It wasn’t.
Xander… He obsesses; he doesn’t fixate. I guess that’s what his brain chose when he was young.
Until he had to start blocking it out and started obsessing over”—he opens his arms, showcasing the house—“this. Drugs. Dealing. He started getting tattoos to cope with the pain of losing the only parent figure that loved him. It was an extra distraction.”
Everything in my body fills with sadness and realisation.
Xander thinks he doesn’t know how to love, so he loves in the only way he knows how. He did everything he could to keep me to himself. He was scared I was going to leave him.
“But what might’ve started as a trigger clearly evolved into… love.” He smiles at me.
It feels like there’s a tonne of bricks weighing down on my throat. If only he had told me about this sooner. If only he had opened up sooner.
None of this would’ve happened.
“I just didn’t know he would get this bad when we sent him away. I’ll regret that for the rest of my life,” he sighs, his blue eyes fixed on the fire.
“Sir, we found him.”
We both stand, and I knock my glass of wine over on the plush, white carpet in the process.
But none of that matters right now.
“Stay here,” Jacques says as he throws on a leather jacket.
“What? No way. I’m coming.”
“It’s not safe. We don’t know who could be tracking him. We don’t even know what’s happened to him.”
“I don’t care, Jacques! I’m coming with you.” My voice is all determination.
He sighs. “Fine, let’s go.”