Page 107 of Bound By Secrets

“Hi, Mum.”

“Callie! Oh, baby, it’s so good to hear your voice!”

I squeeze my eyes shut, praying that my tears don’t fall as I hear her soothing voice.

“It’s good to hear yours too,” I tell her, my voice shaky.

It’s the truth as well.

After years of not seeing her or hearing from her, my heart warms at the sound of her voice.

“I need to know, Mum,” I whisper, wanting to get straight to the point of the phone call.

I’ve cried way too much in these recent weeks and it’s exhausting. The sooner I get this call over and done with, the sooner I can release all of my tears and hopefully work on building myself back up now that all of the secrets and the darkness are gone.

“What do you want to know, love?”

“W-we found the certificate you had hidden. I know that Derek isn’t my Dad. So the first question I have for you is that. Who is my Dad?”

She releases a shaky breath, “Well, Callie, you have to understand that at the time, your-”

“No, Mum!” I snap, shaking my head. “I don’t care about what led up to it or what was going on between you and Derek, I just want to know who my real father is.”

“His name was Harley.”

My brows furrow at her choice of words and I rub at my chest, trying to ease the ache that’s starting to appear.

“Was?”

“Derek killed him.”

“Why?” I ask, hearing her sniffle down the phone.

“Your father worked for Derek. He was part of the security team. Cameron somehow convinced your father that Harley was stealing money from them and also selling information to their enemies. I tried to defend him, but Derek always believed Cameron over anyone else. So, he took Harley down to the basement to interrogate him.”

She pauses, clearing her throat. “I-I thought he’d be fine. I thought that Derek would realise that Harley was innocent. Instead, Derek came out of the basement a few hours later, covered in blood and called Paul in to clean up. I found out thatI was pregnant a few weeks later and I knew that I couldn’t ever allow Derek to know the truth, so I never said anything.”

My lower lip trembles as I listen to her heartbroken voice.

“Thankfully, Derek was busy once you were born, so he allowed me to register you by myself. I was planning to put his name on the certificate as your father, but it felt like a betrayal to Harley, so I left it blank and then made sure to hide it when I got home. Fortunately, he never asked to see it.”

“I’m sorry that you lost him, Mum.”

“I’m sorry too, baby.”

The line grows quiet as I let the information settle in my mind.

“Callie,” she says, breaking the short silence. “Connor and Callum have filled me in a little bit about the last few years. They said that it’d likely be easier for them to tell me instead of you… I just, well, I want to apologise to you for everything that you’ve had to suffer through. I know that it couldn’t have been easy and I feel terrible knowing that I could’ve possibly done something to stop everything happening to you.”

“I don’t blame you,” I blurt.

“Callie, love-”

“Not entirely anyway,” I add before she can accuse me of lying to her. “I know that you’re also a victim in all of this, Mum, and I know that everything happened to me because Derek and Cameron chose to do it.But, there must’ve been something more that you could’ve done. You were gone for years, and nothing helped until I mistakenly met Colin.”

“At the time, I thought I was doing enough,” she sighs, heavily. “I’d given Colin information about Derek and I’d helped them locate one of his old storage units. I should’ve done more, I know that now.” She pauses for a moment to blow her nose. “Truth is, darling, I was scared. Not only for myself but for Crystal as well. We were safe, and I never thought that Derek would do suchhorrendous things to you all, so I left Colin to do everything with his team and I took a step back from it.”

Her words send sharp, stabbing pains through my chest and a tear trickles down the side of my face.

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