Page 158 of Handsome Devil
Didn’t want Andrin to win, even if it was from his grave.
Daniel stared into his whiskey, rolling his knuckles over his white whiskers. He was growing older. Old enough that I was a little panicky. I always had the inkling Daniel, in fact, was the very string keeping me together.
“Well, I did.” My father put his drink down. “I conducted thorough research. I wanted to know why he—” He stopped, glancing sideways to catch my expression.
I kept it blank and glacial. It was bad enough to admit to myself how much power Andrin, dead or not, had over me. No need to act hysterically.
“Carry on,” I said, realizing that I wanted to know. Was desperate to unveil why this man had tortured me the way he did.
“Why he did what he did to you,” Daniel finished. “So I hired a security company that ran an investigation on him. It was crucial I knew everything about him before…” He stopped again.
I reached across the table, squeezing his hand in mine. “Yes, I know.”
Our gazes locked, and something passed between us. An unspoken promise. A vow. Daniel killed for me, and I would kill for him. No questions asked. It was the least I could do for the man who saved my life.
“So.” I withdrew my hand from his, still unaccustomed to affectionate touches. “What did you find out?”
“I looked into what made him take such a risk. Torture you and jeopardize his life. His career. He was born in a small village in Switzerland. Lived there his whole life…until university. That was when he moved to Zurich. And during his time at ETH Zurich, he took a semester in New York.”
“Okay.”
“In New York, he met someone. A lovely woman named Fiona. They had an affair. It is my understanding they tried to do the long-distance thing for a while. A year or two. Then she moved to Switzerland, because this was where his career took off. But eventually—after about seven years—they got a divorce. Fiona returned to America, and he stayed in Switzerland. They were childless.”
“So far, so fucking boring.” I yawned into the back of my hand. “What does it have to do with me?”
“A few years after Fiona and Andrin got divorced, she met someone else—a man named Robert—and they entered a relationship. The relationship produced one son.” Daniel paused, staring down at the wooden table. “The child’s name was Gabriel.”
My entire fucking universe tumbled down like a house of cards. To hear about my parents—that they were, in fact, in existence at some point—seemed so trivial. Everybody had biological parents. Yet I never fully registered it before today.
I swallowed hard. “Tell me more.”
“Andrin found out about you when you were less than a year old. He was angry, upset. He had hoped Fiona would reconcilewith him eventually, I guess. And there was something more. This, I didn’t find out through the investigators, but it was just an inkling. It is my belief that Andrin couldn’t have any children. Otherwise, why would Fiona conceive almost immediately upon meeting Robert? She wanted children.”
I nodded, transfixed. “She did.” It was stupid. I didn’t know her. Wasn’t aware of her existence until a second ago. And still, I knew. “She wanted children.”
She wanted me.
“Andrin arrived in the States and confronted Fiona and Robert. The police report said that Robert and Fiona died in a burglary gone wrong. The killer was never caught.”
I closed my eyes. Took a deep breath.
“When I met Andrin shortly before his death, I made him tell me the entire story. He killed them, Tate,” Daniel slurred, tears making his eyes glitter.
Normally, I would be uncomfortable with this extravagant show of emotions. Yet I felt just as raw as Daniel. Actually, ten times more.
“He told me Fiona and Robert protected you with their bodies. It was you Andrin wanted to hurt. They fought for you. Begged for your life. Threw themselves at Andrin so you wouldn’t get hurt. He killed them first with the intention of killing you, but by the time he got to you, the police were coming. He heard the sirens. He took you and ran away.”
Everything clicked together. How I showed up at a Swiss boarding school of all places. How I knew so little about my parents. How no one claimed me—my family thought I was dead, along with my parents. How someone seemed to foot the bill for that expensive school—that was Andrin himself.
He hid me so he could fuck with me.
I was his dirty little secret.
Instead of killing me fast, like he did my parents, he killed me slowly, until there was nothing left of my soul and hope.
Daniel spent the night telling me everything. About the so-called skiing accident Andrin had. The confessions he managed to rip from his mouth. The shreds of information he had about my parents. We didn’t sleep. We didn’t drink any more. We just talked and talked until our mouths were parched and our eyes stung.
And even though I recognized that my life was tragic and horrifying to most people, I couldn’t help but think I was the luckiest boy alive.
