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I guess we couldn’t confirm that. We really didn’t know, and the moment my parents did realize I was there in the room with them, they attempted to wave me out of it.
I didn’t budge, couldn’t. Even if I wanted to, I didn’t think I could physically move. I was stuck.
I wouldn’t leave.
Chapter Four
Dorian
My god dad came over to me, his hand up when my parents wouldn’t do anything but look at me. Jax put his hands on my shoulders, waving my parents on. I wasn’t leaving, and it seemed he thought it best just to be with me in that moment.
Maybe my parents felt the same way because my mom’s attention traveled to my dad next. He raised that phone to his mouth, the call apparently on speaker, and the seconds in which he didn’t say anything amplified in this quiet room.
“Dad,” he said, the word foreign coming from him. I mean, he was my dad. So yeah, hearing him call someone else that was weird. Dad’s jaw shifted, tight when the muscle feathered along his jawline. “Any idea why you’re holding an eighteen-year-old girl who’s been missing for the past eighteen years?”
Straight to the point, my father, and when Jax refused to breathe behind me, I realized we were both doing the same thing. We were holding our breath.
And we were doing it for my dad.
We all knew his history with my grandfather. Maybe not everyone in his room, but the people closest in his life. This wasn’t easy for my father, this conversation.
Some static occurred on the line, movement. Wherever Grandpa was, things were going on, moving. “Royal.” The word amplified in the room as much as the silence. “Thank you for speaking with me.”
If my dad had a tell for what it was like to speak to the abuser during his youth, he didn’t give one. He merely glanced down when the man beside him, the one behind the computer, lifted a paper.
He’s at the hospital was written across the paper, big and bold, and my father took his attention back to the call.
“And I’m sure you want answers,” Grandpa continued, deep and smooth as my dad’s voice. Hearing them together was crazy, trippy. They probably hadn’t spoken to each other since before my birth. Grandpa had been in prison before. “I’m here to give them, but to start, the hold you speak of was merely a security precaution.”
A lazy smile touched my dad’s lips, but I was sure he’d found nothing funny. He angled the phone toward his mouth. “Holding her against her will and keeping her from her family was a security precaution?”
“All due respect, son, you’re not her family, and as far as the Mallicks, she didn’t know they were. Until she did, it didn’t seem appropriate for, to put it bluntly, an army of strangers to come and get her.”
Dad sneered.
“As far as holding her against her will, this was not true.” He sighed, a bit of agitation in the old man’s voice. Was my father getting to him? “I’ve actually been trying to get her back to her family, her real family, since she’s come into my care.”
“Well, please. Enlighten me and everyone else in this room because no one else knows what’s going on but you.” Dad raised a hand toward the room. “Because how it looks is, you have a missing person in your custody. A missing person my kid tells me you’ve been lying to. At least about your identity.”
I stiffened, my god dad bracing my shoulders.
Dad angled in my direction. “He’s also been telling me how you pursued a relationship with him behind my back and without my authority. One he more than clearly cut off after his mistake, so from how it’s looking, at least on your end, it’s not good. Especially when it seems one of your final meetings together didn’t end so well. For him, or for you.”
He’d changed the words up, danced around what had actually happened but probably only for my benefit. This room was full of strangers, friends, and Dad hadn’t wanted to put what I’d actually done out there.
He didn’t want to tell anyone his son had attempted a murder.
My parents kept eye contact with me, both of them, and though it was hard, I didn’t look away. I had done what he’d said, and I owned up to it.
Even if it was late.
Another sigh from the old fucker on the phone. “I’m sure you think you know what’s going on, and yes, things do look a certain way. It was unfortunate what happened with Dorian and me and completely my fault in that regard.”
My mouth parted, my dad’s too. I didn’t think either of us had actually thought he’d admit that.
“Pursuing a relationship behind your back was wrong, and I make no excuses for that. I was the adult in the situation, and I should have put a stop to it when he came to me. I’m sure he explained to you why.”
“He did.” Dad’s tone was stiff, rigid. “And he knows what he did was wrong, but that doesn’t excuse some of the things I’ve heard you’ve done to him. Nor does it make anything right about what you’re doing now to Pilar Mallick. You’re holding her and the fallout of what happened between you and my son—”
