“Yeah?”
“You know how you promised me anything?” I whisper.
“Yes?”
I swallow thickly. “Please, would you help them? Don’t let Eric ruin this for them. I would have taken years to get this far and honestly, I wouldn’t have provided anything as nice as this, but Carlo can, and he seems like a good man. Would you…could you make sure this sticks for them?”
Dax reaches out his arm as if to touch mine, it hovers in no man’s land for a moment before he drops it again. “Of course. You don’t even have to ask.”
“I do, because this is more than I deserve. You never really owed me anything for what I did for Tom, no matter what you say. It could have gone either way. I wanted to leave him there. Did you know that? I was so afraid that I considered pretending I hadn’t even seen him.” The shame I feel saying it aloud is like a knife in my own gut. Dax sucks in a breath. I wait for him to yell at me, butwhen he speaks his voice is soft.
“But you didn’t. You wouldn’t be the first person who wanted to run away from something like that—and in the Vale, where it easily could have been a hoax or a trap—but you stopped, and you helped as best you could. For that, just that alone, I owe you. Even if he had died there on the stairs, I would have been happy knowing that you were there with him at the end. That he wasn’t alone. Thank you, Jules.”
At the time, I’d been consumed with the fear of Tom dying and it being my fault, but Dax is right. If Tom died on the stairs, I’d have been in the right place at the right time to bring him some comfort, to carry his messages for Dax and not allow him to die alone. Dax was happy I’d been there at all. Things would have turned out so differently if I hadn’t.
I focus again on the house. It’s pretty, clean, and made for a family and not a tattooed biker living alone. Had he held onto it, hoping Mum would come home to him?
Dax clears his throat. “Are you ready to go inside yet?”
“I think I have to, whether I’m ready or not. We don’t have much time.”
“I’ll be right beside you. If it gets too much, just say and I’ll get you out of there, okay?”
“Thank you, but I need to get them safe from Franz and Hanson and Eric.”
Dax exits the car, closing the door quietly. He walks around the front and then opens my door for me. If he hadn’t, I wouldn’t have moved an inch. I think we both know I’m stalling. No matter what my words are saying, my body isn’t playing ball.
He reaches out a hand and I take it. He lifts me to my feet and closes the car door behind me as quietly as he did his own. I guess he’s trying not to spook me. It’s a kind gesture.
We walk together on the path, Dax’s fingers tangling with mine. He doesn’t seem to want to let go, or is itmeclutchinghimas though my life depends on it? I don’t know, I can’t tell. But I don’tput any emotional weight on it either after his withdrawal in the car. I’m learning to differentiate kindness from romantic interest.
The red door opens, Aiden stands waiting as Dax pulls me through into a narrow hallway with a sweet wooden staircase. Photos dot the walls all the way to the first floor. Some show a pair of teenagers laughing in the sun; the girl lounging carefree over the young man’s back. He carries her piggy-back as they wade through shallow water. Their smiles are contagious. I want to smile too because I know without asking that this is Carlo and my mum. I lift my eyes to the next image, one of a tiny newborn, wrapped in hospital towels and cradled in my mother’s arms. Casey, I guess. I look higher. More images from the past interspersed with pictures of Casey in her best dress, eating ice cream, dancing in the fountains at the marina. Stolen moments of a stolen life.
There are none of me.
I swallow a bitter lump in my throat and enter the large living room. An enormous stone fireplace dominates the far wall. The kids jump all over a seat built into the bay window. Mum sits alone at the far end of a stone-grey sofa and Carlo…Dad…paces in and out of the archway between the sitting room and the dining area.
He stops as soon as I step into the room behind Dax. He turns to look at me and I can’t understand what he’s thinking. Only his fear is familiar. I imagine I look much the same.
“Are you okay?” Mum asks, rising to her feet until I shake my head and she sinks back down again.
“No. I don’t think I am, but we need to sort some things out.”
“Jules…” Carlo begins and then stops. The pain seems to writhe on his face as he clamps his mouth shut and draws my mother a look that would sting if she noticed it. He resumes his pacing.
Whatever. That is their discussion to have. Not mine. No excuses will make any difference now. The damage is already done. There are other problems to resolve, with Eric and Barry Franz taking the top slot on that list.
“Look, I know there is a lot to be said, but we have otherissues.”
Dax squeezes my fingers and steps forward. “Eric,” he begins solemnly, “has engaged the help of Barry Franz. From what Jules and I overheard them saying in the apartment tonight, Eric has done a deal ensuring that Franz gets Jules in exchange for his boys.”
“And Mara and Casey?” Carlo asks, urgency spitting his words out fast and hard. I grit my teeth. Here’s another father who doesn’t give a shit about me. Dax stiffens beside me but answers Carlo’s question.
“He is letting Franz’s men do what they want with Mara, though he’ll probably deliver her to Eric once they’re done. He’ll likely keep Casey for himself. Eric only wants his sons, not your woman or yourdaughters.” The emphasis he lies on the plural is a reprimand and one that drains the colour right out of Carlo’s face.
I don’t dwell on it or on the things Dax isn’t saying about the creepy way Franz focussed in on my baby sister.
There’s something that’s been bugging me since we left the Tower. Eric doesn’t have connections, wealth or anything of real value…so what chips could he have bargained with? It’s a question that thrums like electricity under my skin, dangerous and urgent, so I ask it out loud and hope that my suspicions are wrong. “Eric is a bastard, and we always knew it, but here’s the thing that worries me; Eric made a deal. What the hell has he given Franz? What information did he give him in exchange for the twins? Whatever it is, it’s big, because not only is Franz to take me but Dad…Eric…earns money from me for the rest of my life, if I heard right.”
