‘You don’t trust me?’
‘When I’ve asked about your relationship with Bruno you tell me that you don’t want to talk about it. So why should I tell you about my relationship with Dax?’
Carina finished her wine then took a deep breath, the sound of the ocean filled the echoing silence between the women. ‘It’s been a long time since I thought about him and longer since I spoke of him.’
‘Bruno?’
‘Yes.’
‘Does that mean you haven’t thought about Dax?’ Ivy asked. Dax could have used a mother when he was growing up. If he hadn’t been abandoned by his parents so young then maybe he wouldn’t have been such an easy target for Mauri Stark.
‘I thought about him, but I thought he was with Ray.’ The man who Dax had thought was his father until Mauri revealed the truth of his parentage. ‘Bruno was… we were together for almost five years and for a long time we were happy, he took care of me and made sacrifices for me.’
‘The dream guy,’ Ivy said, hoping her disdain wasn’t too obvious.
‘Oh no, he had his vices and after the bloom came off the rose… we fought a lot, and he didn’t like it when I argued back… then the affairs started.’
‘He slept around?’
‘Bruno did what he wanted when he wanted. At first he made excuses but after a few months of enduring his flirtations he began to act like it was normal, and he expected me to put up with his behaviour without complaining. The sad part is that for a long time I did.’
‘Is that why you left him?’
‘I found out that I was pregnant, and it was when I came home to tell him that… I found him in bed with another woman.’ Which sounded like it was normal behaviour but from how Carina gazed out across the black ocean, which was lit by only the moon, something was different about this woman.
‘Who was it?’ Ivy asked.
‘Mauri’s wife, Winnie,’ she said, forcing herself to smile and turn to Ivy, but the glaze in her eyes betrayed how real the pain still was for her. Ivy’s jaw fell, and she wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that revelation. Dax had never spoken about Mauri’s wife, the mother of Brad and Trystan, from what Ivy did know the woman had been dead for a long time. ‘Mauri didn’t know, and of course I couldn’t tell him.’
‘Why not?’
‘Bruno warned me not to. He threatened me, and I had to agree to keep the secret, Bruno was so angry at me for catching them like I did. The funny thing was, he fought for her more than he fought for me or anyone else. He didn’t want his relationship with Mauri to change, but he also worried for her safety, for her wellbeing.’
‘Is that when you left?’
‘I struggled because I thought the baby would change things, it didn’t. I didn’t tell him about it right away, but when I did… he told me to get rid of it, to get rid of Dax… I couldn’t do that.’
‘Why did he want—‘
‘He wanted to keep seeing Mauri’s wife, but that was never going to work, she would never have left Mauri because he could offer her a life that Bruno couldn’t. If Mauri had discovered them… he’d have cast them both out, and neither of them wanted that.’
‘How did Bruno react when you refused to have the abortion?’
‘I didn’t,’ Carina said, lifting her eyes to the moon. ‘I knew how he would react, and I knew he would force me to do it. I took everything that I could, and I left, I never went back.’
‘That was… very brave of you,’ Ivy said. ‘You must have been scared.’
‘Before I was with Bruno I survived on my own for years. With a child it was… it was difficult and then I met Ray, and he was so good with Dax, they loved to spend time together. Dax was no more than a toddler when I met Ray, but they went everywhere together, they were like peas in a pod and… Ray made it look so easy.’
‘So you abandoned Dax? Why?’ Ivy’s sympathy for Carina waned when she considered whether she could walk away from her child, the child she had already sacrificed for before.
‘I… I don’t have an excuse. I was exhausted and… things weren’t working out with Ray, he loved Dax more than he loved me. I thought it was important for a boy to have a father, that he have that male influence. I had struggled for so long, and I was still terrified that Bruno would find out I’d had the baby, if he found us… I didn’t know what he would do. Ray and I were living in a trailer, struggling to make ends meet and… I got an offer from my cousin, she offered me a job in Boston… I couldn’t have looked after a child and worked as well. So I just left…’ Rolls of moisture slid out of her eyes, and she made no attempt to brush them away.
‘A child needs a mother too,’ Ivy said. ‘Ray sold him off to the fighting circuit when he was eight… I guess looking after a child that wasn’t his took its toll on Ray too. Mauri didn’t find him until he was thirteen.’
‘Mauri told me,’ Carina said, twisting in her seat to reach over and put a hand on the arm of Ivy’s chair. ‘He told me everything that he knew… Mauri found out that his wife was cheating, I don’t think that he ever knew who her lover was, if he did then I suspect he’d have turned his back on Bruno too. Trystan was only five or six when she died.’
‘How did she die?’
‘Mauri didn’t tell me,’ Carina said. ‘But it wasn’t long after he discovered her affairs… read into that what you will.’
‘You think that Mauri…?’
‘I know that he was a ruthless man in his hey-day, even Bruno feared him, and he had a reprehensible reputation of his own.’
Would Mauri have killed his wife for having an affair? It was a possibility and one that Ivy would have to ask Dax about. There was only a year between him and Trystan, given that, he wouldn’t have been in the Stark mansion when Mauri’s wife died, so he might not know anything about what went on.
‘Wait,’ Ivy said aloud. ‘There’s only a year between Dax and Trystan…’
Carina said nothing to the unspoken question and it would be impossible to know if Bruno had knocked up two women a few months apart. Now she had a secret of her own, Ivy would have to tell Dax, she couldn’t know all of this and not tell him. If it turned out that Trystan was his half-brother then Dax would go into self-destruct mode, he hated the guy.
But now that she thought about it, Trystan was nothing like Mauri and Brad, they were both dark haired and had a similar build and work ethic. Trystan was an anomaly, but maybe that came from being the youngest, he was spoiled. She had no idea what Mauri’s wife looked like, what her colouring was, or her upbringing, but Dax might.
‘I have to call Dax,’ Ivy said, Carina caught hold of her.
‘He’s been through so much…’
‘Yes, he has,’ Ivy said. ‘But he has to know the truth.’ Except with this bounty hanging over their heads now perhaps wasn’t the time to split his focus.
‘I’m glad that he found you, that you two… that he has a woman in his life who loves him for who he is.’
‘I do,’ Ivy said. ‘None of this explains why you came back now.’
‘Dax was in his teens by the time I heard that he was staying with the Starks. I thought about approaching him, but I was too afraid of Bruno and what he would do if I tried to get into Dax’s life. I didn’t know what they had told him about me… The Starks are quite a force to reckon with, and if they decided that I wasn’t allowed to have contact with Dax, then they had the means to keep us apart.’
‘You were worried for your safety but didn’t consider Dax’s?’
‘Mauri has so much money and… he could give Dax a life that I couldn’t. I didn’t know anything about how he was raised or where he was living. I knew that the Stark mansion was impenetrable, what should I have done?’
‘I don’t know,’ Ivy said.
She didn’t know what she would do in that scenario. Ivy had struggled to encourage Dax to stand up to Mauri when he was a fully grown man with nothing to fear. As a teenager, Dax would have been ensconced in the Stark ethos, and if Mauri had told him to cast out his mother, then he probably would have.