Page 147 of Restitution
Dad shakes his head. “You are everything your mother is, and she’s exceptional. It’s a shame who the father is though.”
Stacey takes my hand, and I sit down beside her and inspect her legs while Dad and Luciella keep talking. She’s telling him how wonderful my best friend is, and how long he waited around until she gave in. Dad scoffs a few times – he doesn’t really understand love outside of his own. Though I think he understands me and Stacey to an extent because of how much I struggled – just like he did.
“I’m still shocked as to why you let Sebastian of all people impregnate you,” Dad says, and Luciella goes red with embarrassment. “But if you’re happy, then so am I.”
“I think I am,” she says. “I only found out right before the explosion.” She places her hand protectively over her stomach, and I look at Stacey, whose eyes are shining. We used to have that. “Even if I lose Base to the Russians, I still have a part of him.”
She won’t lose Base. He’s an asshole, but he won’t walk away from his own kid. He’ll hide them and most likely himself. He’ll step up.
He and Barry are obviously still arguing outside. He’s borderline flirting. It’s like it’s built in to his personality that he can’t have a conversation without picturing the person naked, and I should know – he’s been flirting with me since we were fucking teenagers.
Once Dad picks out any debris from everyone’s wounds, I kneel between Stacey’s legs to help clean up the gashes on herskin. The bruises from where the beam trapped her are just above both knees. They’re swollen and already turning a dark shade of purple.
“Are you okay?” she asks me, and I raise a brow in confusion. “The manor. Your dad being alive. And… everything that’s been going on. It’s a lot to deal with.”
“I just need to stay focused,” I reply, wiping dry blood from her ankles. “I want to deal with Bernadette and—” I stop, breathing slowly. “I’d like to move on from all of this.”
It’s been constant since I was nineteen. I’m still on edge, and I feel like something bad’s going to happen. It always does.
“So do I, but I think we should sleep first.”
“Where is Bernadette?” I ask Dad. “I need to see her with my own eyes.”
“In the room you built for her. She’s been drugged up for twenty-two days and locked in a cage.”
I lean my elbows on my thighs, crouching in front of Stacey as I look at my dad. “A cage?”
He smirks. “You’ll see when you go downstairs.” Dad hands me a cloth for my own face. “Why did you buy this place anyway?” he asks me. “Of all the places, you buy this building.”
It holds a lot of meaning. This was where all the chaos ended nearly twenty-five years ago. There’s a little flowerbed and plaque outside for Aunt Gabriella.
“I already said it was so I had somewhere to take Archie and Bernadette when I eventually caught them. It’s in Barry’s name, so they can’t track us here.” Then I narrow my eyes at my dad. “But you already knew that, didn’t you? You’ve been hiding here while we all thought you were dead.”
Stacey places a hand on my wrist to calm me down, and I’m thankful for it. I shouldn’t be mad at my dad – I just can’t handle my emotions properly right now.
“I couldn’t risk exposing myself. Barry couldn’t either. He told you; the entire manor was bugged, and you had several rats in your team.” He shrugs. “I killed them by the way. You’re welcome.”
“What about the people who attacked the manor?”
“I caught their boss in the tunnels and cut his head off. He had long, greasy hair, so I wrapped my hand around it…” He mimics the move with a cloth then swishes his arm. “I cracked about four bodyguards’ faces in with it. Then I threw on their uniform and used the radio to track where everyone was.”
“Jesus,” Luciella blurts, screwing her face up. “I didn’t need to picture that when I feel so sick already.”
“Sorry, sweetheart.”
I blow out a breath as I sit beside Stacey and start sorting through my own wounds. Nothing extreme, but I’ve burned my arm and I have a few cuts. Plus, I’m covered in other people’s blood.
The door opens, and Base finally walks in with a bleeding lip. “Sorry, princess. I was in a football debate with the kid, and he decided to punch me. Kade, deal with your dog.”
Despite everything going on, I huff out a laugh.
Barry rolls his eyes behind him. “I’m going to call Lisa and get some sleep. Everyone else should sleep too. We’ll put together a strategy tomorrow on how to deal with Bernadette, then if all the threats are gone, we can all go home.”
Unless we count my apartment in Stirling – though it’s probably blown up as well – I have no home. I glance over at Stacey, and the thought vanishes.
Five minutes later, Base is gritting his teeth as Luciella and Dad try to fix the wound in his shoulder. There’s a bullet lodged in it, and she’s using forceps to try to pull it out carefully while Stacey wipes at the spilling blood with gauze.
I spot Dad pulling a box from under one of the units and tossing multiple tablets into his mouth, swallowing them dry. “You have your meds?”
