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“I’m on your side here.”
She huffs. “Could’ve fooled me.”
“I really am, Nicole. Tell me…” I purse my lips and add, “Please.”
More silence. More huffing. I swear the interior of my car is a thousand degrees and it’s a miracle I don’t drive straight into a wall at this point.
Nicole opens her mouth a few times, then stares out the window as she speaks in a soft, choked tone. “After Mum was arrested, I couldn’t bring myself to go see her. I felt so sorry toward Uncle Henry and even Astrid. I was planning to study in Cambridge and then, maybe a few years later, I would ask for his forgiveness. He was like a father to me after I lost mine, and I loved him, in my own way, even if he was blinded to anyone but Astrid and her mother. I just wanted to start anew, build my life from scratch.
“I was doing well, pretending my classmates didn’t murmur behind my back that I was a murderer’s daughter, that the aristocrats were rotten to the bone. It was fine.Iwas fine. I didn’t care about friends or parties or being a normal university student. I was just building my life. In the process, I ignored Mum’s mail. Until two years later when I got a visit from a police officer who informed me she’d died due to cancer. She’d been writing to me about that. Her cancer and her battle with it.
“I cried at her funeral, which I attended on my own. I cried for how she’d shaped my life and I cried because she was no longer in it. Then, in the middle of all that, I saw Christopher holding a baby. Apparently, he’d married my mum soon after Uncle Henry divorced her and was seducing her long before she was arrested. He said, ‘I only fucked you because you look like her. Now that she’s gone, you’ll do.’ I bolted out of there and fell down the stairs and broke my arm. I had an epic panic attack and nearly got myself hit by a car. I didn’t think seeing him again would spur such a reaction, but it did, and I hate that version of myself, the scared, faulty version. So I wanted to disappear, but he found me, he hit me.”
My fist clenches. “Did he…”
“He wanted to, but I blinded him with pepper spray and kicked him. It felt so good…so liberating. He left me alone for a while. A month later, social services asked me if I could take custody of Jayden. He was abused, had blue marks on his back, and he developed asthma from the conditions Christopher was keeping him in. I couldn’t say no, I just…couldn’t. He found me soon after, beat me to a pulp, and if it hadn’t been for a neighbor, he would’ve killed me and Jay. Uncle Henry found me around that time, but I couldn’t face him.”
That must’ve been what Astrid told me about.
“I had to leave the country and escape him. I dropped out of university and used the rest of my trust fund to raise Jay. It was tough at the beginning, and we moved a lot trying to find a good paying job. That’s how we ended up here.”
In New York.
Where I am.
My heart is thumping so loudly that I think she can hear every beat.
“Jayden said Chris visited you while you’ve been here.”
She slides her attention to me. “Did you ask him that?”
“Answer the question, Nicole. What happened?”
“He wanted us back. I kicked him out and moved the next day. That was two years ago.” She sniffles. “I never thought he’d sue for Jay’s custody. He never wanted him.”
But he wants you.
I don’t say that, because I doubt it will have a positive effect. I’m sure his whole mother-and-daughter fucked-up fetish is only that, a fetish. The one he actually wanted was Nicole, not her mother. She’s the one he used force to have, and she’s the one he’s been trying to keep a link to whether through her mother or her brother.
If he was actually after Victoria, he would’ve kept the last memory she left behind, Jayden, and raised him well. But he let Nicole have him just so he’d have an excuse to bulldoze into her life again.
That motherfucker is using his own son as a tool.
We arrive at the building’s parking garage, followed by a gloomy cloud, but thankfully no accident happened during the ride.
Nicole’s movements are mechanical and stiff. She looks so broken, so distressed, that I wish I could make it better.
Somehow.
Someway.
Once we reach the lift, she wipes at her face. “I don’t want Jay to see me like this.”
I lift her up in my arms and she gasps. “W-what…”
“I’ll tell him you’re asleep. Close your eyes.”
She blinks once, twice, and then her body goes slack against mine and she closes her eyes.
