Page 123 of Long Live the King

He has a folder in his hand and a grave expression on his face.

“Why are you here?” I ask him, my brow furrowing. “You should have called.”

“I thought you’d want to hear this in person.” He says, shouldering past me and into the kitchen.

“Hey, mate.” Rhys says, surprise on his face at seeing him walk in. “I didn’t know you were coming today.”

“That’s because he didn’t give me a warning.” I say, crossing my arms. “I assume you’ve found out something about my mother.”

He nods but doesn’t say anything else.

“Well, where is she?” I ask him, getting aggravated now.

My eyes snap to the folder as he throws it on the counter between us.

“There’s no easy way to say this…”

The physical response is immediate. Ice freezes the blood in my veins and my heart in my chest.

“Say it.”

“She’s dead.”

All the air in my lung exhales in one whistling breath. I knew it was coming and yet it somehow doesn’t cushion the blow in any way.

“When?”

Müller is all business. He’s transactional in the way he delivers the information. It’s just data to him, there are no feelings involved. But this time, he hesitates.

“When?” I repeat, my jaw clenched.

I’m trying my best to contain all physical reactions to this moment. I don’t trust him with the information of how I react to the news.

“Ten years ago.”

“Fuck… mate.” I hear Rhys exclaim softly off to the side.

Confusion hits me almost as hard as the anger that follows. She’s been dead this whole fucking time.

“How?”

How did he find out and how did she die?

“She died around the same time she reportedly walked out on you and moved to the US. Like I said, there were no traces of her in Europe let alone getting on a plane to the US. I looked everywhere in every conceivable place I thought she could be without leaving a trace and when I still couldn’t find her the next obvious place to look was the morgue. I went through unsolved files prioritizing those of Jane Does around the time of her disappearance and found a case that I thought could be her. Female body, around the same age, same physical descriptors, badly decomposed and unrecognizable after her body was found in a lake…strangled. She’d been in there between two and five years.”

The vein in my temple is pulsing repeatedly by the time he finishes speaking. I grind my jaw back and forth.

Dead.

“You identified her through my DNA?” I ask.

His request for my DNA makes sense now. So much for the genealogy connection.

He nods.

“Does anyone else know?”

“No.”

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