Finally Heaven (Room 103 Book 4) (28 page)

Julie shook her head and stared at us all. “I have no fucking idea what you’re on about.” She directed her gaze to me. “All I want is for him to pay for what he did to my family, to Ann and my sister.”

Zoe caught my eye. I knew she believed Julie, just like I did.

“What does Alan Francis have to do with all this?”

I stilled and tipped my head, the tone in which Sal said Alan’s name grabbing my attention. “I’m not sure but Nick told me Penny had something on him. Neither of us knew what but it got her killed and it thrust me into the spotlight to cover Penny’s death.”

Sal’s usual chocolate skin darkened until he appeared to radiate fury.

“You’ve had dealings?” I asked quietly, getting a feel for his rage.

He clicked his tongue. “Oh yeah, Alan and I aren’t what you’d call… friends.”

This helped. This helped a lot. I buried my pride and ignored everyone else in the room. “I know I owe you, Sal.” I flinched when I felt every single eye in the room shoot my way. “But I need your help. I can’t… I can’t get to him, he’s too high and too covered.”

Sal chuckled, a dark smile erupting and showing off the glare of his startling white teeth. “He’s not that covered.”

“But the Met are under him.”

Sal laughed, the ice in it chilling my blood. “Oh Romeo.” He shook his head and tapped me on the cheek. “You see, that can’t be quite true.”

“Oh?”

“Mmm,” he nodded and winked. “The
entire
Met are under me, along with every commissioner and board member in the country.”

My heart started to beat faster. “You can take him down?”

He tutted then narrowed his eyes on me. “I could. But I need that info first.”

“And if I can find it?”

“Then you give me one more roll and I’ll take him down.”

Shit!

“Romeo?” Zoe queried quietly. “What does he mean you give him one more roll?”

Sal gave me a cruel smile and winked. “Oh didn’t you know.”

“Sal…”

“It wasn’t just Penny that used to work for me,” he divulged with a glee that saw my teeth grinding together and my fists shaking.

“What the fuck!” E burst out. I looked at her. Her eyes widened. She knew everything about Sal and what businesses he ran, after all she was part of his family now. “You used to work for Sal?” Her mouth fell open. “You used to fight!”

Sal winked at her, clicking his tongue before he walked from the room. “He didn’t just fight, Tiger.” He waggled his eyebrows and chuckled. “He fucking ripped people apart.”

He slipped open the door and walked through, his back to the room when he said, “He was the best, never lost a fight. Made me a lot of money. Well he did until he killed someone.”

I PULLED OPEN another drawer, trying to find something to divert my wayward thoughts but eventually it was no good.

I coughed slightly. “You know…”

He stilled as he hunted through a different drawer in Nick’s study but he didn’t look at me. I could sense his tension, the guilt once more eating at him.

“I… uhh.” I coughed again, clearing my throat. “I think it’s kinda hot.”

He definitely froze then. “What?”

I shrugged, giving him a quick glance and a cheery smile. “When men… when they get all hot… and sweaty… and… and bloody.”

His brows popped into his hair, his mouth falling open. He straightened and stared at me. “What?”

“Well… all that… grunting and testosterone, and the sweat flying and the heat, and the pure – raw – power.”

I shrugged and laughed, trying to disguise my eager reaction. “Shane… he… he used to cage fight when I met him.”

“What?” his tone had gone up an octave.

“Mmm.” I nodded. “That’s how I met him.” I blew out a breath and shivered. “Fuck. I’d never been so turned on in my life when I watched him power fist after fist into another guy. And apparently it was because I’d screamed something and the other guy had made a lewd remark about me. So Shane fucked him up.” I giggled uneasily. “But don’t tell Jen that. Fuck, she’ll go ape.”

He nodded stiffly, his eyes wide and staring at me.

“Well, I just wanted you to know that… well… I wondered if…”

“No!”

“Aww baby,” I whined, my lips pouting and my eyes widening as I tried to convince him.

“No Zoe, there is no way you are watching that. It’s a cruel, different world.”

“But…”

“NO!”

I huffed and went to back to my searching, my lips puffed outwards in a sulk. “But…”

“NO!”

“Okay. But just so you know, I get hot when you play too.”

He quirked an eyebrow at me. “Won’t work, baby.”

I curled a lip at him and grumbled when he winked and blew me a kiss. “Mean.”

I froze when I shifted another paper out of the way and a print off of an email stared at me. Picking it up, I scanned over it.

I flicked over the page that was stapled to the email. A photocopy of an old newspaper report stared at me and then behind that a duplicate of a police statement.

My lungs slammed hold of my breath and I palmed the desk for support. The room swam, my vision blurring and I closed my eyes to steady myself.

“I think we need to see if we can look into some financial records of Francis’, maybe which could… Ink?”

My mouth had dried so much I couldn’t swallow back the bile and I started to choke on it. Daniel rushed over, patting my back. His gaze landed on the email and he reached for it. Snatching it back, I shook my head at him.

“Baby?”

My mouth opened but nothing came out. He took my arm and directed me into Nick’s leather chair. “Zoe, let me look.”

I shook my head firmer, holding it to my chest, keeping it from him. “No. I… No.” I grabbed his hand unable to stop the heartache for him. “Oh god, Daniel. Baby…”

He licked his lips, narrowing his eyes on me. “Tell me.”

“Well…” I choked out. “I now understand what your parent’s have against you.”

He stared at me, his brows furrowing harder. “What? What do they have to do with this?”

“Did you know that your mum used to work for the government?”

“What?” He stared at me like I had gone crazy.

“Mmm.” I nodded, unable to function any other part of me. “Around thirty one years ago…”

He dropped onto the table, his body hitting the wood with a thump. “What?” I watched as the skin on his arms and neck prickled with goosebumps.

“She was the secretary for the local labour delegate.”

“What?” Daniel whispered.

I nodded and looked up at him slowly. “She was sacked when she accused her boss of rape.”

“Her boss?”

I closed my eyes. “Alan Francis. Her boss.”

“IT’S GOT TO be wrong. She never worked for any political party. She was a cleaner.”

Zoe stared at me in a way I didn’t want to see. I could read what she was thinking. Fuck. I was thinking it too. I closed my eyes. But the thoughts still slammed hold of me, all of them furiously fighting with the previous to be heard. Raped. Thirty one years ago. A year before I was born.

“Daniel.” The soft tone she spoke my name in made me hurt even more.

“No.” I shook my head at her, my eyes fixing her with a daring glare. “Don’t say it Zoe, it’s not true. It’s not true. NO!”

Her teeth clenched when her phone rang. She looked down at the screen then back up at me. “Bulk.”

I shifted uncomfortably. Bulk and Jax were at Penny’s, searching through her things. I just knew what he’d found… because he’d rang Zoe and not me.

“No,” I whispered, pleading with her not to answer. I couldn’t manage to talk and it came out a choked gasp.

She kept her eyes trained on me as she answered and listened, her eyes closing halfway through the conversation.

“We know,” she said after a while. “We’ve just found the same.” She nodded. “Yeah. I know. I will.”

She placed her phone back in her jacket pocket, her gaze secured on mine the whole time. “Daniel.”

“Will you stop saying my name like it’s a damn curse!”

She flinched but didn’t move away from my fury. I shook my head, angry at myself and grabbed her hand. “I’m sorry.”

“I know,” she whispered as she came to stand in front of me and held my face. “Life is shit, baby. Both of us know that. But I want you to listen to me.”

I stared at her, waiting, unable to do much else.

“We can’t choose our family. They are what we are given when we’re born. But sometimes,” she smiled and stroked her thumb across my cheek, wiping away the tears. “We are thrust into a group of people who, even if they’re not our blood, they’re very much our hearts and soul. The guy’s, they love you as their own brother, baby. Me, I love you so much that I would die for you. And Jakob, he will one day call you Daddy and he will be as proud of you as Harry and me are.
We’re
your family. All of us, because we love and accept who you are,
what
you are. Because to us, you’re you and you’re damn perfect.”

She pulled me to her chest when a stuttered sob erupted from deep inside me. She was right. My parent’s had never been my family. I found my family the day I walked into the music room at university and sat next to a long haired idiot that threw a scrunched up paper at a girl in front of him and pointed his thumb at me when she turned around. My family found me when I picked up the guitar that frosty morning in a rundown old shed by the river behind Boss’s grandparents’ house and played beside three other guy’s that took me into their hearts for who I was.

And they were the people that held me up when I wanted to drop, made me laugh when I couldn’t see for the tears. They were the strength that beat back my weakness and they were the love that fed my soul.

And the woman stood in front of me. She was what the future held for me. She was what my family would be. And she was what my heart would hold on to and cherish for the rest of my life.

I didn’t need someone who called themselves my mother and father and never once held me or told me they loved me. The guy’s did that. Zoe did that. But the difference was, they didn’t need to say it because they showed it with every breath they took beside me, with every smile they gave me and with every joke we shared.

I looked up at Zoe, my heart swelling with how she looked back at me, her love and adoration for me so openly displayed on her beautiful face. “I want to go home, baby. I want to stop. I want to stop and enjoy you, and Jakob and hopefully Harry. I want to clean the gutter and mow the lawn. I want to chase our children. I want to cook supper with you, and breakfast. I want to fall into bed with you every night, and wake up in your arms. But I want a life. I don’t want to exist for the sole fact that people want to hear me play. I want to have a family, and a life with that family. No more tours, no more interviews. No more hiding from flashing photographers or hiding at the back of the pub in case I’m noticed. And I do not want that for you or Jakob. I’m tired. I’m tired of living for everyone else. I want to live for us. For our family.”