‘You’re asking if she’s the only obstacle to my agreement,’ Dax said. ‘She’s not. I told you that I wanted nothing more to do with you before you ever made this offer.’
‘So why did you come back?’
‘Brad said you were sick, and it seemed like the right thing to do. I was curious too about… I always thought that meeting you at that fight, where I pickpocketed you when I was thirteen, I thought that was an accident and to find out that you were looking for me, that you meant it… You lied to me through my whole life.’
‘Bruno didn’t want to accept you,’ Mauri said. ‘He saw you as a threat though I didn’t know why. I wanted him to embrace fatherhood, I thought it would change him, make him realise that there was a softer way to be; he’s often too heavy handed and impulsive. Having a child makes a man reconsider his life, at least it did for me.’
‘Didn’t work for Bruno,’ Dax said. ‘I’ll never accept him as my father, but I would like to know how you found out about me.’
‘When Carina was pregnant, she kept it to herself at first. She told Bruno, and when he reacted in a negative way, she fled. At the time, I didn’t know that she was pregnant, I found out later.’
‘How did your wife die?’ Ivy asked. The worst he could do was refuse to answer the question and his answer was an evasion.
‘Trystan was only five,’ Mauri said. ‘It was a long time ago.’
‘You found out about her affair with Bruno,’ Ivy said. Though she could feel Dax’s stare, she kept her attention on Mauri.
‘I see that locking you in a house with Carina was not a wise decision,’ Mauri said. ‘Why did she tell you?’
‘I wanted answers to Dax’s questions,’ Ivy said without admitting that she and Dax had not discussed what his questions were. ‘Carina kept evading my questions, and I put it to her that she couldn’t expect trust if she didn’t show honesty.’
‘So she told you?’
‘Yes,’ Ivy said. ‘She didn’t know if you knew.’
‘I didn’t at the time.’
Locking her fingers between Dax’s, she filled him in. ‘Carina caught Bruno sleeping with Mauri’s wife at around the same time she found out she was pregnant. Bruno didn’t want the truth to come out and by that time he was beating her regularly. He didn’t want to have a baby with her, which is why Carina left, to protect you.’
‘How long did the affair last?’ Dax asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Ivy said, shaking her head and turning to Mauri.
‘I don’t know when it started,’ Mauri said. ‘I wasn’t aware that they were together at first. I discovered them together not long before Winnie, my wife, died.’
‘Did you kill her?’ Dax asked without any of the tact or hesitation that Ivy had felt. ‘Did you kill her for sleeping with your best friend?’
‘No,’ Mauri said. ‘Bruno killed her.’
That was unprecedented, if questionable, honesty. ‘Why?’ Ivy asked. ‘Why would he do that? Carina believed that he was in love with her.’
‘Maybe he was, but it was Winnie who confessed to me that Carina had been pregnant. When Bruno found out that she had broken his confidence he was angry, and it was after that, when they were resolving their differences, that I found them together. Winnie asked me to cast him out, he was violent and unpredictable. When Bruno heard that she had turned on him, he turned on her. He was angry and holding a gun…’
‘He shot her?’ Ivy asked.
‘Only one of them could have survived in my inner circle,’ Mauri said. ‘Bruno knew that.’
To speak of the death of his wife without emotion was chilling to Ivy, but Dax seemed to understand. ‘It was one or the other,’ Dax said. ‘You forgave him?’
‘It was that or lose him too,’ Mauri said. ‘I told him that we had to find his child, and we spent years tracing you. Bruno was never interested, but he listened to me and by the time we found you, most of our issues had been resolved.’
Bruno might have loved Winnie, but it didn’t seem that Mauri loved her very much. Maybe he had in the early years, or maybe he only stood by her because she was the mother of his children. But now facing his mortality, he made no apology for covering up the murder of his wife. Men in his line of work had to be detached, but Ivy was pleased Dax wasn’t cut from the same cloth.
‘This is why we should remain together as a family,’ Mauri said. ‘There is a rich history between us all, and it’s one that Ivy will be a part of now too.’
‘Ivy and I want to build our own family, not be a part of anyone else’s,’ Dax said, rising from the couch, taking her and her backpack with him.
Mauri sprang up portraying panic through his expression. ‘You cannot just leave here.’
‘I can, Mauri,’ Dax said. ‘Thanks for… I have a lot of respect for you, and I’m sorry that you are sick. This is a time when you need to embrace your family and I’m not a part of that anymore. Ivy is all the family I need.’
‘We can give you money and security and—‘
Dax skirted the couch and took Ivy to the door, which he opened before he looked back at Mauri. ‘The Stark trade will carry on without you and without me. Fate will decide how it works out. Take care, Mauri.’
Ivy stayed quiet when he led her out of the room and through the house to the exit. The Starks were no longer a part of their life, they would never have to come here again.
The car was still in the drive when they got there, Dax took their things out of it and left the car keys on the front seat. Looping her purse up over her head and putting on her backpack, Ivy smiled when her husband put an arm around her.
‘What are you grinning at?’ he mumbled at her as they made their way down the drive towards the gate.
‘I love you,’ she said. ‘And I’m so proud of you.’
‘Yeah? You just remember that while I’m trying to keep you alive.’
‘I will. I don’t doubt that you’re capable of fixing this, not for a second. I have faith in you.’
‘I’m glad one of us does,’ he said.
Pulling her closer to kiss her head, Dax guided them out onto the street where they could call for a cab. Now that they’d dispensed with one dilemma, they only had one left to deal with – the bounty.
Chapter Twenty-Four
The cab took them to Dax’s storage unit where he retrieved his bike, which was the only mode of transportation that they owned here. There was no point in going to a car rental place or even buying a new vehicle, because she hoped that they wouldn’t be in California for that long.
‘We could just go back east,’ Ivy said as soon as they got back to Dax’s apartment. ‘Or we could leave the country entirely and take up residence on a deserted island in the South Pacific.’
‘For half a mill, I know a couple of guys who would still manage to find you,’ he said as they made their way into the bedroom.
‘Do you have a plan?’ she asked, leaning on the inside of the bedroom door after it was shut.
‘I’ve been thinking about that since we left Mauri’s,’ Dax said, sitting on the end of the bed, with his feet far apart, he rested his hands on the bed behind him.
‘And what have you come up with?’
‘If you want me to go back there, to tell Mauri that I’ll stay and do what he wants—‘
‘No, why would I want you to do that?’ she asked, crossing to crouch on the floor between his knees. Pushing her hands up his thighs, Ivy moved onto her knees and rested her head against his leg. ‘I don’t want you going back there, not for anything.’
‘What he said was right,’ Dax said. ‘Mauri can keep you safer than I can, he has the resources and manpower—‘
‘I only need one man and that’s you. For all we know, Mauri wants us to go crawling back, if he’s the one behind this—‘
‘I thought about that,’ he said, stroking her hair down her cheek. ‘If he had put up the bounty then he would’ve shown his hand in that last meeting. He’d have told us that he knew something or someone that would make it go away.’