ARAWN
She beams at me, nodding. “Of course.”
“Danny is my half-brother,” I say lowly, and she gasps.
“I beg your pardon?” She looks around as her voice got a little bit high-pitched. “Wasn’t he your father’s right hand’s son?”
Pushing my plate from me, I take another sip of my drink. “Yeah. I took a DNA test a few years ago. As my father and his right hand died, Annie made a strange statement. At first, I didn’t give it much thought, but after sticking with me for a few days, it started eating my brain up. So, I took him for another ice cream. I nearly felt guilty as he was so happy, but I just needed to get a sample from him.”
“Oh, my God. He will lose his mind if you tell him,” she says, making me smile sadly.
Scratching my chin, I click my tongue. “I thought about it. But then decided against it. His father is his idol. Losing that idea of being his son surely will have him falling apart. And he is already unstable as it is. I know that I will have to tell him, but I have to wait for a moment when it doesn’t make him spiral out of his course uncontrollably. So… Also, seeing how his mother used to talk about my father… I don’t think it was an affair.”
“What do you mean? You mean a one-time sort of thing, right?” she whispers, her expression morphing into worry. “Arawn… Please tell me it was an ‘oops-I-slept-with-my-coworkers-wife kind of moment!”
Shaking my head, I make her gasp. “His right hand’s wife?”
“My father was an asshole. And a cheating prick. But I think that was something more. I think he did get her somewhere alone and attacked her. Maybe it had to do with some stupid concept of power. He always used to tell me how being fond of someone would make you weak. Especially when it came to women. It made me think that maybe they died because of this… Because Carwyn wanted to take revenge, and someone fucked up.”
She puts a hand before her mouth, as shock takes over her expression. “This would explain why he hates him so much. But takes care of his brother so lovingly.”
“Yeah. First I thought that it was because I had threatened to take her children from her if she wouldn’t take care of the little one, so she focused on him. But a few years later she said she wouldn’t care about what was happening to Danny as long as she and her son were to be left alone, and it just clicked.”
I take a deep breath and can literally hear the gears turning in her head as she suddenly slaps my arm. “Why didn’t you take him in? You have enough place in this huge penthouse of yours.”
“How should I have done that, Nerthus? I can’t take a child away from his mother. She would have had the chance to raise bad voices against me, and he wouldn’t have been safe. Like this, I can keep an eye on him by having him ‘working’ for me and keep him safe.” I answer, with a grin.
She rolls her eyes at me, and I grab her chin. “Unfortunately, politics are sometimes more important than the life of a 15-year-old boy. You should know that already.”
“Argh,” she groans, freeing herself from my hold. “I know, I know.”
Halting mid-movement, she scrunches her nose at me. “But he isn’t 15, Arawn. Men are so inattentive.”
“Of course he is.” I see her face fall and laugh out loud. “What did he tell you?”
Her eyes widen as she shakes her head repeatedly. “19. He told me he was 19! God, I went to a club with him.”
I crack up even more as she panics, slapping my arm again. “This isn’t funny, Arawn. I took a shot with the boy. Oh, my God.”
“Don’t worry. He won’t die from it,” I say, wiping a tear from my eye. “No wonder he loves you so much.”
Crossing her arms, she scoffs, and I put my arm around her. I kiss her shoulder, seeing her lips twitching lightly.
“What if we spend Christmas with him? Like invite him officially to spend Christmas with us, and we decorate a tree and bake cookies,” she speaks lowly as if she was unsure if she wanted me to hear it.
I hum, acting pensively. “I don’t know. I usually get someone to decorate my tree.”
“Like an interior designer?” she asks, making me nod.
With a groan, she turns her head away from me. “You rich people are impossible.”
“I know,” I simply state, biting into her shoulder gently.
As I straighten my spine to sit back up, she rubs her shoulder, glaring at me. “You are going to ruin my pullover. Meanie!”
“At least as an impossible rich guy, I can buy you a new one,” I say jokingly, which doesn’t help to get rid of her angry look.
“How do you usually spend Christmas?” I ask after a moment of silence, not sure if I want to hear the answer.
She smiles sadly, poking the leftovers in her plate with her fork. “I decorate my little tree. I bake a few cookies and then I open a bottle of wine to drink it while I watch old movies.”
“That sounds awesome, honestly,” I sigh.
I can see that she is forcing herself to keep her smile up as she agrees with me. “Yeah. It was a little tradition. My mom and I used to do it every year, well, minus the wine for me. But she always bought grape juice for me, so it looked like we were drinking the same.”
Wrapping my arms around her, I pull her close. “Do you want to spend Christmas with me and Danny?”
“I’d love to,” she says, still avoiding looking at me as she continues to play with her fork.
“Awesome,” I whisper, getting her to turn her head to look at me and capturing her lips with mine.
***
Putting a cigarette between my lips, I step out on the terrace and close the sliding door behind me. I can see Nerthus snuggled in the blankets happily through my reflection in the glass as I take Harvey’s call.
“Tell me everything.”
“I didn’t find anything, Arawn. The goods weren’t confiscated.” He says calmly, worry dripping from his voice.
“What do you mean they weren’t confiscated?” I drive my hand through my hair, cursing the fact that I just wore shorts to step out into the freezing weather.
“There is no protocol of a search. There are no confiscated goods. And no weapons registered to have been found during a search. Arawn, someone played us,” he observes, making me groan.
“Fuck! I knew it was the rat!” I course, and he sighs.
“What do you want to do next?”
Looking back into the hotel room, as if I knew it would calm me down, I shake my head. “Let me think of something. We have to find them as soon as possible.”
“Roger that. I will try to find out if some corrupt cop or dock worker was involved. Maybe we can start from there,” he says before we end the call.
Pushing out a big breath, I chuckle to myself exhaustedly.
As I thought. It was not us who got lucky.