THE HEIR'S REVENGE

chapter 33

Henry folded his hands. “We both know that Marcus is just like Daniel. He's never careful with words. So saying the word needs is deliberate and means it's something he has to do.

I looked down at the paper again.

Henry might have a point but I was not going to let that make me see that man.

“You need to think about this before making a decision. He said he wasn't going to contact you again if you didn't respond.”

I thought about it.

“What do you think, Henry? I don't want to see that man. Not now, not ever. I want him to be away from my family.”

“I think you should meet him. Judging from the way he approached you. I believe that whatever he wants to say must concern you or your mother.”

I was quiet.

"He's been thinking about contacting you for weeks," Henry said. "I believe this message was written and deleted several times before it was sent.”

I stared at the paper for another long moment.

I thought about my mother. Her face vividly appeared in front of me, the way it always did when I was tired. I always had that memory of her, not the tired one of when she was still living with Pierce but the version of her that was always happy.

I had so little of her.

I had nineteen years of questions about why she ended up where she ended up and who had put her there and what she might have become if someone had been paying attention at the right moment.

Marcus Pierce had been in that house the whole time.

"One meeting," I said to Henry. "We go to a neutral location. I don't trust that man. And Henry, I need a full recording. If he tries to make this about himself, I walk out."

"Understood," Henry said. He picked up the paper. "I'll arrange it for tomorrow evening. Late enough that it doesn't interfere with your schedule and early enough that it doesn't run into anything else we're managing."

"Keep it out of any system that connects to the corporation," I said. "Personal arrangement only."

"Of course." He moved toward the door.

"Henry."

He stopped.

"If this turns out to be exactly what I think it is.. I know what I mean. I lived with these people for years.”

"Then we will take the information," Henry said, "and we make no promises about the help." He paused. "That is already understood, young master."

He left.

I sat for a while longer in the study, the internal communications review open in front of me and the city visible through the window, doing its evening things.

Eleven days.

I went to the Fenwick Hotel that Thursday evening. It was quiet and Henry had chosen the perfect corner table at the back of the restaurant away from the entrance where eyes would wander. I wanted this conversation to be as private as it should.”

I arrived first. Henry had arranged it that way deliberately, he wanted me seated and settled before Marcus walked in. He wanted the room to be mine before Marcus entered it.

I ordered water and waited.

Marcus came in at seven minutes past the agreed time.

He looked good. Not better than before but still good.

I had prepared myself for whatever it is that he wanted to say or do. I had told myself that I wouldn't be in shock of the first moment.

Marcus Pierce had been a physically impressive man in the way that men who have always had money and comfort are physically impressive, not through effort, but through the effortless maintenance of good clothes and regular meals and the unstressed posture of someone who had never had to carry anything too heavy for too long.

That version of him was still there but I didn't care about that.

He looked thinner since I had seen him in the Pierce house. He was still healthy and his face had settled into new lines that hadn't been there before. His suit was expensive, he was still dressing from habit, but it sat on him wrongly, the jacket slightly large across the shoulders in the way clothes become large when the person inside them has diminished.

He saw me from across the restaurant and stopped walking for just a second. One full second where he stood between the tables and looked at me and whatever he felt in that second moved visibly across his face before he controlled it.

Then he walked over and sat down across from me.

Neither of us spoke immediately.

I was tired of this. Meeting former people in my life. People that I didn't want anymore in my life. People from my past.

The restaurant moved around us. A waiter passed. Someone at a table nearby laughed at something. Ordinary Thursday evening sounds.

"Thank you for coming," Marcus said. “I'll go straight to the point.”

His voice was different too. The authority had gone out of it. That confidence and authority with a mixture of rudeness he always had wasn't there today. He was now quieter and less certain, his voice low.

"You said you had information," I said. "Say it."

He looked at the table. Then back at me. He had prepared something, I just knew that he must have revised some part of the conversation. It seemed difficult for him to look me straight into the eyes.

"I need you to understand something first," he said.

"No," I said. "You don't get a preamble, Marcus. You get the conversation. Start it."

He was quiet for a moment.

Then he started.

He talked for a while.

I know the time because I checked it before he started talking, the way you check a time when you want a fact to hold onto.

He told me everything I had suspected and things I had not suspected and things I had never thought to wonder about because they were so far outside the version of the story I had been given.

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I couldn't explain how I felt after the meeting with Marcus.

In his message, he said that he had something to say to me so throughout that meeting, I waited and I listened.

Something about Mum.

I liked that he went straight to the point and didn't have to make small talk. He started by telling me that Victoria had known my mother before he told her. He told me that Victoria had long seen my mother as a threat.

Marcus loved my mother and was willing to be with her and that was why Victoria hated her so much.

We could say that Victoria hated my mother because she didn't have to do anything to be loved by Marcus, while Victoria had been performing all her life, doing everything to be loved by him.

“When your mother disappeared, I never knew that Victoria was behind it. She made it look like your mother ran away from home but I just knew that your mother would never leave just like that. I suspected her but I did nothing. I blame myself.”

I didn't care if he regretted it or not. All I knew was that I was here for a specific reason which was to heat him out.

I was only grateful that he wasn't giving excuses about it or asking for another chance like the way other people would.

He didn't want to go searching for mother because he was afraid of what he would find. He was afraid that what he would find would destroy his family. Without knowing that it already did.

I sat across from him and listened to all of it.

I only asked him questions when I wanted to be clear on some things like dates, names of people he mentioned and the specific events that happened. That was all I needed to know.

When he stopped talking. It was evening and everywhere remained quiet. All the tables nearby were all empty now and the waiter had stopped coming over to ask us what we would like to eat.

He must have realized that we were having a serious conversation that didn't need any distraction. He read the room.

In the silence that followed, I looked at Marcuz. He had the expression of a man who finally got relieved after carrying such a burden for far too long.

I didn't know how to feel about everything but I knew that I wasn't satisfied. I had given him the chance to give me any information that could be helpful to my investigation but what he did the whole time was explain himself.

It felt like he was trying to apologise and then say that it isn't his fault that things are like this.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I know that.."

"Will you say all of this on record?" I asked.

He stopped talking.

“I mean would you say everything you told me on record? With your exact name attached to it.”

He glared at me for a while, probably wondering why I was asking him such a question.

Marcus looked at the tape, then at his hands. He probably regretted why he had made it to this dinner. I didn't care, I just wanted to hear his answers.

The silence was getting too long and I was wondering if he'd say no to my request.

Then he said: "Yes."

It was just one word but I carried more weight than I knew.

"I'll have my legal team contact you," I said.

I stood up. I buttoned my jacket.

Marcus looked up at me from his chair. He looked very old at that moment. He looked older than he was and I guess it was his business giving him problems.

I looked at him.

I had quite a lot of things to say to him. Things I have been carrying for nineteen years. Things that I couldn't say to him since I was a child. That cost me my childhood.

I wanted to tell him how he had hurt me in the past. How he wasn't present to be my father. I wanted to say all of that and I could have said it and he would have listened.

But I said nothing.

Not because I forgave him or because I didn't want to bring up the past, nor because it didn't matter to me anymore. It mattered a lot.

I didn't bring it up because it meant killing my mother for the second time. She didn't need all this pain. J wanted her to rest in peace because she deserved it.

That was what I was there to get.

I had gotten it.

"Goodbye, Marcus," I said.

I walked through the restaurant and out into the cold night air. I could notice his eyes still following him.

I didn't expect him to stop me but I did know that we had some unspoken feelings between us. Silence that couldn't be broken out from.

My driver was waiting patiently. He opened the door when he saw me and I got in and he closed it and went around to his side and started the engine.

We sat for a moment before he pulled out. I looked at the hotel entrance through the window. It reminded me of the days when my mother cleaned the floors of the Pierce house.

She always woke up before the whole family and went to bed after they all slept. My mother literally slaved her whole life for the Pierce family. That was not supposed to be her life. She was supposed to be the wife not the maid.

Victoria did all of that and I could never bring myself to forgive her.

She'll pay.

My mother had been from a well known family. She was supposed to live like the Queen she was. Grandfather spent years searching for her and she died not knowing that she was wanted and loved by her own family.

And Marcus Pierce had known something was wrong from the beginning.

And he had chosen not to look or say anything.