Kade (NSC Industries) (23 page)

“Marcus was your son, Will. He was yours.”

His brow creased then his eyes widened as he shook his
head sharply and his bottom lip trembled, “No.”

“Yes.” I whispered back as I watched the realisation hit
him full force.

His throat constricted as a tight whimper left his lips.
He stumbled backwards and grabbed hold of the chair arm for support as his legs
gave way and he fell against the chair. He scrambled around it, staring at me
like I had cursed him, his head still rapidly shaking from side to side as a
faint wail started to carry from him. “No, you’re lying.”

“No, Will. You know I’m not.”

“YOU FUCKING BITCH!” He screamed as he raised his gun
once more and I closed my eyes, ready and prepared for the finality as I welcomed
death, relished it even.

But then all hell broke loose and I watched in shocked
silence as each of the men in the room dropped to the ground after a series of
gunfire.

Will lifted his eyes to mine and locked me down. “Grace…”
he whispered with so much pain it splintered every single inch of my soul as
the devastation at what he had done hit him.

I tried to get to him. I knew what he was going to do but
my legs wouldn’t move. “I’m so sorry, Grace.”

I felt arms come around me from behind as Will lifted the
gun to his head and pulled the trigger.

“They’re all gone,” Grace repeated as Ava held her tight
on the sofa opposite me. “All of them.”

Her cries ripped me bare but she wouldn’t let me near
her. When Mason had brought her back she hadn’t even acknowledged me but I
don’t think she was aware of anything as she sank lower into herself.

We all looked up as the door opened and Liam walked in.
He stopped and closed his eyes, gaining the strength he would need to comfort
his surrogate daughter but she gazed at him and shook her head angrily, “Don’t
you dare.”

He sighed and carried on approaching when she flew off
the sofa and started to hit him. Liam held a hand up at Mason when he came to
tackle her, telling him to let her get it out. The sight of her breakdown was
crippling to watch and I turned so I didn’t have to witness it.

The heart wrenching cry she made as I closed the door
behind me took a piece of my heart and crushed it under her desolation and
grief.

I didn’t know what to do to help her and I veered
straight for the whisky as I nodded in acknowledgment at Baxter who was sat
nursing his own drink at the table.

“May I?” I asked as I held up the bottle.

“Be my guest.” He held his own glass to me and I brought
it to the table and refilled his before I poured my own then settled the bottle
between us on the table as Mason slumped into the chair beside me then gestured
for me to fill him one.

I sensed the pair of them eyeing each other until Grant
sighed and peered at Mason. “Out with it.”

Mason sighed and rolled his lips then bit down lightly on
his tongue. “Something Grace said”

“Marcus?” Grant asked quietly and Mason nodded. “You want
the whole story, I gather?”

“Well, yeah.”

Grant looked down at his glass and swilled it round,
giving him something to concentrate on as he relayed the story we both needed
to hear.

“I’ll give you the shortened version cos’ the long one
will take too much of my loving time away from Nicola.” He winked softly at a
plump redhead who was filling the dishwasher and then tipped his chin to the
door signalling for her to leave. She winked back and blew him a kiss before
she left and I smiled faintly, it was quite funny to watch a big, gruff muscled
bloke go weak at the knees for such a plain and ‘normal’ girl but if I was
honest, it was very refreshing to see.

“Right,” he sat up straighter and huffed loudly. “Will.
Where the fuck do I start with that cunt?”

He blinked, then widened his eyes, then scowled and each
of his facial expressions differed so completely from the last I had to hold
back a snort of laughter. He reminded me of that puppet out of The Muppets with
the big bushy eyebrows and I watched Mason fist his hands under the table. Not
just me then!

“Will was thirteen when Grace came along. He absolutely
fucking doted on her. Loved the bones of that kid and it was incredible to
watch them together. He grew up happy like any other kid.” I nodded and
refilled all our glasses as I watched his face darken and his posture stiffen,
“But when he hit eighteen he received a letter.”

“His real Mother?” Mason asked intuitively and Grant
nodded as he took the glass from me and downed a huge mouthful.

“Yep, skanky fucking bitch that she is. Of course Will
didn’t have a clue about her. Robert had married her when they were both
seventeen. I’ll admit, they were both in love and they had Will through that
love, but then she changed, God did she change. She hit the heavy drugs and her
veins practically flowed with the stuff, they must have been pure heroin the
amount she stuck in there.”

He shook his head and frowned as he reminisced but then
he sighed dejectedly and shrugged, “Will blamed Robert of course for not
telling him. He was so angry with Robert but funnily enough he didn’t seem to
blame Iona at all. To him, she was the saving grace in all this. She had taken
another man’s child and brought it up as her own and to Will that was pretty
special.”

He scoffed and shook his head in bewilderment. “He
thought she was so special he had an affair with her.”

“What the hell?” I barked and then quietened quickly when
I remembered Grace was nearby.

He nodded and shrugged his shoulders. “Robert was on his
usual womanising streak and to be honest, I don’t blame Iona one fucking bit. She
and Will got close when she would talk to him for hours about how he was coping
with the revelation and I suppose they grew too close. Anyway, their affair
began and… Iona became pregnant.”

“Oh shit!”

Grant nodded at me, “You guessed it, along came Marcus.”

We sat silent for a while and all I could think of was
how Grace had gone through this alone. I wished she had felt able to talk to me
but Grace never felt the need to lean on anybody.

I glanced towards the door and prayed Ava was helping her
through it. I could help her but I knew she wouldn’t let me.

“I take it from his reaction today that Will didn’t know
he was Marcus’s Father?” Mason mused and Grant sighed.

“No, they thought that he couldn’t cope with it. God
knows, don’t ask me.” He scoffed with confusion but Mason shook his head.

“We all make the wrong decisions when we’re parents.
Fuck, I should know.”

I cocked my head and gazed at him, “Everything okay,
Mase?”

He nodded but I noticed there was no ease in his smile,
“Mase?”

His brow furrowed and he turned to me with a pained
grimace, “Just… George. He seems… I dunno but he seems… distant from me.”

“Don’t be daft; he’s always been Ava, that’s all.”

“Mmmm” he mused then smiled and stood up. “Talking of
Ava, I need to fuck my girl.” He winked and I chuckled with him, “Night.”

He strolled from the room but I noticed the slump of his
shoulders and I reminded myself to have a word with Ava about what shit was
going on between Mason and George.

I jolted in my chair as Grant leaned forward and thumped
his elbows on the table so he could stare at me. “What’s the deal with you and
Grace?”

I lifted my brows and stared at him, “Excuse me?”

“Don’t fuck with me, arsehole. I’m all the family she’s
got left now.”

I couldn’t hold onto the astonished laugh that made both
our eyes widen, “You’re family, yet you took her in exchange for me?”

The corner of his lips twisted and a glint twinkled in
his eye, “Business, Mr Hamilton. Don’t you fret; she knew exactly what she was
doing. She knew I wouldn’t hurt her.”

I snorted and my jaw dropped, “You wouldn’t hurt her? Did
you see the state she was in when you’d finished with her?”

God, this man made me bloody angry and he smirked at me
when he saw my anger come through. “Quite feisty there aren’t we? It’s a shame
you weren’t this brave at the club.”

I leaned forward and copied his pose, resting my elbows
on the table as I tipped my head at him. “You know, I’ve known Mase a long
time, I know how things work. If you’d have even bothered to ask me, I would
have told you that my lips were sealed anyway.”

He shrugged casually as he stood up, “Just business as
I’ve already said Mr Hamilton. Good night.”

I stared after him as he followed through the door Mason
had left through and I leant back in my chair and rolled my stiff neck around
my shoulders.

I wasn’t sure how I was going to win Grace over. Why the
hell she couldn’t have walked in the room a minute later when I would have had
chance to finish the sentence was bloody frustrating and I sighed heavily.

She needed release and there was only one way to give it
her and as I walked back into the room I prayed that she would allow me to give
her the freedom her soul craved.

My brain was weeping and my body was throbbing at the
pressure of it. Why? It was all so pointless. I had lost both my brothers in
one day by the hand of one of them.

I closed my eyes and prayed that Marcus had been too
strung out to even realise what was happening.

All I could picture was when he was seven and our foster
parents had smacked his legs for something silly. He was devastated, he’d never
been struck before and his loud wails as he called for me still haunted my
dreams even now but I knew without a shadow of a doubt that they would now be
replaced by something far more dark and agonising.

I closed my eyes as Will’s face swam in my head, the gun
held to his head and then the blood, Christ the blood had been everywhere and I
gasped as my chest stuttered painfully.

“Grace?” Ava asked quietly as she took my hand. I frowned
at her, unaware of what she had just said. “Why don’t you try and get some
sleep, hun?”

I shook my head and stared at her as my heart ached with
the sight of her, “Do you still want him?”

She gave me a confused look but then sighed when she
realised what I meant. “No Grace. You got the wrong end of the conversation
earlier.”

“How could I get the wrong end of it? He told you he
loved you!”

She opened her mouth to speak but snapped it closed when
Mason walked in and smiled at me, “Where’s Liam?”

“He got called in to work.” Ava told him as he held out a
hand to her and pulled her upright.

“I need you. Come on, home!”

She giggled when he slapped her arse and I smiled at them
both. I had always been jealous of their relationship but I hadn’t seen it
until now. Before I had told myself that I didn’t need anyone and I had
believed that but since Kade… since Kade had come into my life I physically
felt as though something was missing.

I blinked when Ava knelt before me and took my hand, “You
gonna be okay?”

I nodded and squeezed her hand, “Yeah, some lone time
will do me good.”

She scowled at me and sighed, “Kade’s around somewhere.”

I nodded, not letting on that I actually didn’t want to
see him. He had uttered the same words to me not an hour before he had said
them to Ava. That was some going, not many men were that shallow.

“Okay, but you know where I am.”

I repeated the nod. I was sick of smiling and nodding at
people. Why couldn’t they leave me alone?

I watched them walk out and then slumped back on the sofa
and curled my legs underneath me. My mind wouldn’t shut down and I groaned,
rubbing at my eyes as the various images flittered about like moths around a
lamp; Marcus, Will, Kade, Ava, Mona, my parents and then finally the little
blue chip that I now knew was worth my life to Will’s mother.

She was the lowest of the low from what I had managed to
find out about her. I hadn’t told Will the full story. He didn’t need to know
that his Mother had actually sold him to my Father. What kind of mother does
that? She made my Dad give her a hundred thousand to hand him over without a
fight, and my Father being my Father hadn’t even blinked according to Grant. To
him we had each been priceless, I just wished that Will could have seen that.
Maybe now they could make their peace together in heaven.

“Arghhhh” I groaned loudly as Will’s tortured face filled
my head again. “Please be at peace” I whispered as I looked to the ceiling.
“Find your son and love him.”

I was exhausted, my body was running on reserves but my
brain wouldn’t slow down and I closed my eyes to try and find a little harmony
in the chaos that refused to release me.

I could feel the build-up of tears as Marcus’s last words
slaughtered my strain to keep control. His happy drug induced high as I shouted
at him when he grinned up at me from the chair.

“I can’t do this anymore?” I screamed at him.

He laughed and grabbed my hands, “Sis… I love you.
You’ll never know how much I love you and I know what you did for me Grace… I
know…”

I flung my hand over his mouth before he voiced the
words but he moved my hand and looked up at me, his pupils not really with me
but he still saw me. “I love you so much Grace… Thank you… thank you for saving
me.”

But in the end, I hadn’t managed to save him.

I blew out a breath and stood up; running my hands up and
down my thighs agitatedly as I frantically scanned the room for something to
occupy my mind with. I frowned as I noticed the laptop resting on the coffee
table and rushed over to my bag for the USB that I had downloaded all of Liam’s
data onto. I had forgotten all about it in my rush to get Kade back and sort
out all the other shit.