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‘No . . .’ I inhale my shock, disgusted.
‘I took a few too many poundings. I had no choice but to toughen up or be used as a punching bag every weekend. He carried on hitting me, and I carried on cowering.’
I bury my face in his lap, wanting to hide from the horrors. Wuss? Poor excuse for a male? Now his father’s words are laughable. Theo is the most prime example of masculinity. A perfect specimen. A warrior. Because it was survival. It makes me sick to think his bastard father would be proud of him.
‘Your mom?’
He looks at me, and I get it. He beat Judy, too. Theo nods, seeing where my mind is. ‘He had handy fists. I trained myself to always be prepared for his backhands or unexpected jabs. I was constantly on my guard. Then one day I won my first fight. Dad lost a shitload of money and went mad. No one thought I’d win. He called another fight immediately with a notorious fighter. I won that one, too. I started earning Dad a lot more money. I was a cash cow. Isn’t it ridiculous that I was happy because for once he seemed proud of me?’ He shakes his head, dismayed. ‘Then one day I refused to fight. I was tired. Exhausted. He got mad and ordered his men to drag me into the cage. I battered them all and left, and Dad followed me. I didn’t realize, and when I got into his office to go back to the house, he punched me in the back.’ Theo winces, and I squeeze his hand in support. ‘It was fucking hard. I wasn’t expecting it. I—’
My gut tells me to stop him, so I do. I lift my hand and place it over his mouth, preventing him from finishing. I get it. I don’t need to hear the rest. ‘Enough.’
Theo has other ideas. ‘I lashed out,’ he mumbles against my hand before pulling it away. ‘Every punch he’d ever given me and Mum, I returned tenfold in that mad few minutes until he was unconscious. But I kept going. I couldn’t stop. Didn’t want to. I wasn’t going back to those days again. Not ever. So I made sure I finished the job.’ He drops his gaze, ashamed. ‘Mum found us.’ Theo’s jaw rolls. ‘From that day on, every time someone touched me, I jumped. I reacted. I had flashbacks and saw my father cuffing me, trying to groom me into a fighter. People were wary of me. It became instinctual to react, like a defence mechanism that I couldn’t hold back.’ His face twists in agony, his eyes closing. ‘But honestly, I liked it. If people feared me, they didn’t come close. They didn’t dare touch me.’ Blue pools full of awe gaze at me. ‘But you did. You dared.’
I can feel his pain. It’s potent, penetrating me to my bones. ‘I knew you weren’t a bad guy.’ He was forced to be this way. He can’t help it. But under the iron body and hard face is a soft, loving heart. I have that heart. It’s mine. ‘Were there no questions asked about your father? From the police?’
Theo shakes his head. ‘Andy covered for me. Or probably more for my mother. I knew she’d been involved with him for some time. As I got older, Dad’s punches seemed to get harder. Andy hated him. One call to him from my mother had everything dealt with. Dad had a lot of enemies. It wasn’t hard.’
My mind goes to another crime Andy has taken care of. Trystan. It’s been months since he disappeared, and not one person has come forward to report him missing. I had Andy check the records back in Manchester, too. Nothing. And he assured me, not for the first time, that Trystan’s body will never be found. Once again, he’s covered for Theo. And I’ll never be able to thank him enough.
Lifting my finger, I trace over the beads of the rosary cascading down his shoulder. ‘You got these as a reminder.’
Theo hums, relaxing under my touch. ‘I believed in God as a boy. Once I stopped going to Sunday school, bad things happened. My life wasn’t good any more. I still said the Lord’s Prayer every day, but I don’t think it was enough for him.’
‘You went back to the village you grew up in,’ I say, bringing the conversation round a full three-sixty. ‘That’s where you were.’
He nods mildly. ‘I went to church every morning. And I confessed my sins every evening. And still the guilt was there. It was too late for me. I’d abandoned him for too long.’ He blinks and laughs a little under his breath. ‘So I went to the club. I wanted to feel pain so intense I could feel nothing else. It didn’t work.’
