Page 27 of The Light Within
“Well, fuck me,” muttered Elliot.
“My… my what?” Cinn said weakly, slumping back in the armchair.
His father. A man he had no living memory of.
It had bothered him a handful of times in recent years, how remarkably little his mother had mentioned his father, back when he lived with her.
He knew his father was dead without knowing preciselyhowhe knew. He’d certainly got none of the infamous lies of single-mother households. There was no ‘he was a famous rockstar killed in a tragic car crash’, and no ‘his submarine got lost in the Mariana Trench’.
The only thing his mother did share about his father was his taste in music. A song would come on the radio, and she’d say, ‘your dad loved this band’, and then get that sad look in her eyes that invited no questions.
Apart from that, Cinn’s father was only a blank space in the tapestry of his past, a ghost without a story. A blank space. Apart from… Therewasthat one photograph on the bookshelf, a framed portrait of a man under a weeping willow tree. Had he actually been explicitly told by his mother that the photo was of his father, or had he simply connected the dots himself?
In the photo, the man’s face was obscured, lost in the shadow of the cascading branches, leaving his features forever a mystery. The man’s arms were bare, revealing a skin tone strikingly similar to Cinn’s own, and it was this fact that squashed his persistent theory that he was just a random man his mum had cut out of a magazine. But he wouldn’t put it past her.
“Give me that.” Cinn reached out to grab the file, clutching it to his chest.
The first bunch of pages were similar to Béatrice’s—basic information. They’d somehow collated a list of every address he’d ever lived at, including all ten of his foster homes. Next was a detailed police report of his first arrest as a teenager, which he quickly flipped over—no need to relivethatright now.
Another police report, another bad memory—the quadruple homicide that triggered Auri’s involvement with Cinn. Even looking at the photographs from the CCTV made a sour taste rise in the back of his mouth, and his warding band heated slightly.
Then, a transcript of a telephone conversation between Viktor Sturmhart and Eleanor, ordering her to go and collect him from England.
A photocopy of a letter to the chief of the gendarmerie, Salvatore Gallo from Eleanor, stating that he might be a flight risk and she may need his officers to help contain him within the Auri boundaries.
His mood plummeted further. He’d never been the biggest fan of Eleanor and this wasn’t helping.
Turning the page, Cinn saw Noir’s name at the top, heart sinking at the notion of the old codger spilling the beans about their tutorial-come-therapy sessions. However, after an explanation of his visits to Noir, the rest of the page was filled with a single line—session records confidential. Cinn laughed, the image of the grumpy bastard refusing to contribute entertaining him greatly. Or, equally likely, Noir couldn’t be bothered to type up his notes from his leather notebook.
“The information about your parents is next,” said Julien, peering at him from across the room.
Cinn shot him a look that he hoped said,shut the fuck up,before studying the documents.
First up, his mother. Just the sight of her name, Esme Saunders, had his heart leaping into his throat. There was no photograph. It had been so many years since he’d seen her—would he even recognise her? Underneath her current residential address—a part of London he didn’t recognise, a fancier postcode than he’d grown up in for sure—there was indeed a work address at a hospital.
That was it, aside from a note stating that Cinn left her custody in July nineteen eighty-five. The phrase ‘voluntarily relinquished custody to state’ wasn’tquitehow Cinn remembered it.
“Alright?” asked Darcy quietly.
Cinn grunted in reply, moving onto the final piece of paper.
A black and white headshot of a man in his twenties filled a corner of the page. Cinn crumpled the corner of the sheet in his shock.
“He has your hair, right?” said Julien.
“I’ve got my mum’s hair,” Cinn shot straight back.
But he couldn’t deny the similarities between him and this man. His father. The stranger possessed a slightly sharper nose, slightly narrower eyes, but the comparison was indisputable.
A trickle of sweat made its way down the back of Cinn’s neck. It was difficult to breathe. He removed his hoodie, but the room was stillso goddamn warm.
With his file in hand, Cinn stood, swept his rucksack up from the floor and headed out into the corridor, avoiding the three pairs of silent eyes that followed his path.
For reasons unbeknown to him, his feet took him to Béatrice’s room, rarely ever entered. But one look at that black bundle of wool on her desk—the knitted scarf she’d never finish—had him pivoting on his heel, dashing through the kitchen to fling open the back door.
He inhaled a large gulp of crisp air, the chill of it hitting his throat like an icy shock.
It took several more breaths for the tightness in his throat to relax.
