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It slaps me in the face…
He mentioned files, he mentioned Adrian. All things he shouldn’t know.
“Dad…” my mouth moves and I speak his name but I don’t know what more I intended to say.
“Mimi, please sweetheart tell me where the files are. Give them to me and I promise you I’ll keep you safe. Please I went through so much to keep you both safe, please listen to me. She wouldn’t listen.”
She?
“Dad, what are you saying to me? How do you know about the files and Adrian? Are you talking about Mom?” I start shaking.
Shaking from my core. The truth is waving itself in front of me but I don’t want to accept what it’s telling me. Because what my instincts are saying … they can’t be right.
The only way he could know about any of what he’s saying to me is if he was involved in mom’s death or knew about it. And, if he knew that... then everything else is him too.
No…
He’s my father.
He’s a consultant, the middle man who’s worked for the Giordanos for years, so many years.
He wouldn’t be working with the Fontaines too.
Would … he?
I look to the door Salvatore showed me and see it’s slightly ajar. It wasn’t like that when I left here to go and see Charlotte. It was closed.
Jesus is that where he came through?I shake my head at him.
“It’s you who needs to tell me what happened, what is happening? Dad…what did you do to my mother?”
“It was an accident,” he replies and the world stops. The world freezes like the chill that came over me.
“What was an accident?”
“Everything. She found the files in my bag. That bastard, William, saw me with Marc Fontaine and had my own wife spy on me, and boy did she ever hit the jackpot and find everything he needed to destroy me and work his ass up the ladder of success.” He doesn’t look away from me, not once. “She took the files and was ready to take you, leave with him and do an exposé that would shake up the government and take out the Fontaines too. She had to be stopped.”
“Stopped? Papa… what do you mean?” It’s like I’ve become that little girl again, that was what I used to call him. A tear runs down his cheek.
“I didn’t mean to hit her. I just… saw the danger of what she was about to do and I knew they’d kill us. The Fontaine’s would kill us. I lost control when she wouldn’t give me the files. I grabbed her. I didn’t mean to squeeze her neck so tight. Then when she told me Adrian had them I … hit her and… she fell over the balcony. When I looked in my hand I saw the paperweight. I didn’t even remember reaching for it. I don’t remember. I just remember her ….falling…”
“You… it was you? You killed Mom?” The words don’t feel right and I wish for moments ago when I was thinking about the questions that were still hanging over me. I wish I didn’t have answers. I wish I didn’t know.
Never could I guess that the answer was this. Dad. He’s the answer.
Jesus…
No…
“It was an accident Mimi…”
“But the note,” I cry. Tears are pouring from my eyes like I’m set to cry and never stop. Like something switched them on and I can’t switch them off even to see him clearer.
“It was a note she was writing for me. She was leaving me. I found her while she was writing the note,” he explains.
Jesus Christ… God… all the things I thought were true are true.
I thought the note looked like she hadn’t finished because she was so particular about punctuation. Such a little thing, but a tell of what happened, a piece of the picture.
