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Forty-Five
Jamie
“Do you want anymore, Jamie?” Jay asks, and when I shake my head no, he picks up my plate, putting it in the sink. I thank him and tell him I’m going to get dressed.
I slept like shit, but I did at least get a couple of hours before I dragged myself out of bed this morning. And when I eventually made it to the kitchen, after getting a little lost on the way, I found Jay there, cooking breakfast. For a minute, I thought last night was all a bad dream, but then Seb strolled in carrying my bag from his and Jay’s apartment, and as soon as I spotted the bandage peeking out from beneath the sleeve of his t-shirt, I knew it wasn’t.
Up in Seb’s room, I get washed and dressed, knowing that my dad and the rest of the guys will be arriving soon. I even manage to put a little makeup on, partly to hide the bruise on my cheek and the bags under my eyes, but mostly because I feel like it’s putting on war paint, and I need to feel brave today. I need to have something to hide behind, to protect me, while I ask all the questions that have been churning over in my mind.
Having already discovered Seb’s stunning lounge this morning when I got lost, I have no trouble finding it again, I mean it’s right next to the front door for god’s sake. What I do have though, is trouble walking in there.
“Jamie, are you okay, dear?” Margaret’s voice echoes from behind me, and I spin round.
“Oh, err…yes. I guess so,” I reply, but even I can hear how pitiful it was.
“Can I offer you some advice from an old lady?” I nod. “Listen to me, sometimes the thing we most fear hearing can turn out to be the exact thing we need to hear. If you don’t go in there and ask all the questions and get all the answers you seek, the not knowing will be the thing that destroys you more than the grief.” She gives me a knowing smile. “I don’t doubt it will be difficult to hear, but God never gives you more than you can handle, although it never seems that way at the time,” she says with a raised brow. “Your mother, she did what any mother would do for their child, and I know it hurts now, but in time, and no doubt when you have a family of your own, you’ll come to see and understand why.” She steps toward me, wiping a tear that I had let slip from my eye away with her thumb. She pats my cheek affectionately before nodding and walking away.
I take a moment to let her words sink in and gather myself, and then taking a deep breath, I push open the door and walk in. The first pair of eyes I meet are deep caramel ones, that light up as I walk forward. When he reaches me, he grasps my face bringing me in for a kiss that sends a tingle all the way to my toes.
“Hey,” I say quietly when he releases me.
“Hey, Firefly. You okay?”
“I’m good.” I turn my gaze to the rest of the room to see everyone here, even a couple of faces I don’t know. I step out of Seb’s arms to hug my dad and Cam, who is here with Jamison. Before we can get started Jamison, starts wailing and Cam steps out to feed him.
I have no idea where to start, so I’m grateful that Rick steps up. He introduces me to a man I’ve not seen before as Ray, the DI that’s been helping them, and then he introduces me to a woman I’ve definitely seen before. She’s the PI my dad hired, Vanessa Markham.
Rick starts by telling us how he discovered that Marcus owned Tempest. It seems that Jay’s last chat with Natalia finally made her change her mind, and after giving a statement to Ray, and even though she couldn’t give them a name, they were able to get what they needed after they arrested Mark. He caved almost instantly when he was offered a plea bargain by the prosecution and named Marcus as the owner.
My dad’s fall out with Marcus two years ago was over his ownership of the haulage company MWB and their link to the trafficking of girls. Up until then my dad had no idea Marcus even owned the company, and when he found out, they had a huge row. But things had been strained before that after Dad passed over Marcus in favour of someone else for promotion.
When Dad received the first letter it came with the DNA test results, including ones that claimed I wasn’t Dominic’s daughter.
“I found those letters in your office, but there was only your test results?”
“That’s because your mother took them. After you visited the house that day and saw Travis there, she knew you’d come looking. She didn’t want you to find those results, Jamie, not until she’d had another test done to confirm it either way.”
“And did she?” I ask, holding my breath as I wait for him to answer. I know my mum said that Marcus lied, but I won’t believe it until I see it with my own eyes. As if my dad knows this, he gets to his feet, and taking an envelope from his pocket, he hands it over to me.
My fingers tremble as I pull the paper free and sob when I read the words that confirm Dominic is my father. I screw the paper up in my hand and launch myself into my dad’s arm. He groans as I hit his shoulder, and I remember he got shot too.
“Shit, sorry, Dad,” I say, stepping back to Seb. Dad laughs as he tells me it was worth it.
“Did you know?” I ask Dad, knowing I don’t need to say more.
“No, not until just recently. She always told me that she was attacked on her way home from work, and I never had a reason to believe otherwise.” I hear the pain in his voice, and my heart breaks for my mum and my dad because now they will never be able to make up for the lost time. “It’s okay, Jamie,” he tells me, and I know that’s his way of telling me that everything was right between them again before last night.
I sit back down beside Seb, locking out hands together. “How did Marcus even get involved in trafficking in the first place?” I ask.
“That we don’t know yet. It’s clear that even before he left the country and with him owning MWB, he was already involved in some way. We know that after he left here, he did travel for a while before arriving in Mexico, but after that, we can’t find anything.”
I nod, accepting that there will be some questions I might never get answers to, and it reminds me of what Margaret said about the not knowing. In this instance, I can live with the not knowing because I won’t be losing any sleep over him.
“And how did Jasper fit into all this?” I feel Seb bristle at my question.
Rick looks to Seb before answering. “Based on what Marcus said about Jasper’s wife, we believe Marcus murdered Jasper’s wife, Katie, after Jasper refused to help him anymore. What Marcus didn’t consider when he told Jasper to befriend you was how much you looked like Katie. We think Jasper got cold feet about what Marcus wanted to do to you, and after the incident at Rosco’s he refused to play any further part in it.”
“We found the guy that attacked you after an anonymous tip off, but when we got there, he was dead. I think Jasper killed him, but not before getting him to confess everything on tape first, and then he tipped us off so you could get closure and justice for Alex’s death,” Ray explains.
