A Love that Endures 3 Page 19

  “And I don’t know what to believe, Katy, but he seemed really genuine. I think he was telling the truth. At least, he believed that he was.”

  “Who did he believe was framing him, Cerise?” Katy asked, calmly and confidently, trying not to let her voice show how quickly her heart was beating. Because she was afraid, deep down, that she already knew. That maybe a part of her had always known, but she’d been too naïve, too drowned in the loud opinions of others, to listen.

  “I’m sorry, Katy. Like I said, I’m not saying this. But David believed . . . well . . .”

  Katy braced herself.

  “He believed it was the king and queen who were doing it. Your parents.”

  25

  David

  “Maybe it was a bit naïve of me, but, uh . . . I was kind of hoping you’d be excited by that news.”

  David stared across the firepit—the trash fire had burned down to only embers by now—at the tall Brazilian man in front of him. His heart was pounding, and his thoughts were a tangled mess. He knew that this man (his father?) was trying to make a joke to ease some of the tension in the air. He just couldn’t force himself to laugh.

  Marcos shrugged uncomfortably and then grabbed one of the busted lawn chairs surrounding the firepit by its back and pulled it out. “Mind if I take a seat?”

  David didn’t answer. He simply watched as the man took the initiative and seated himself. He had dark hair that was lightly gelled back. His eyebrows were full and dark and commanding. He moved with a casual elegance that reminded David of money and luxury. But he also seemed strangely cowed by David’s presence. After seeming to assess the situation for a moment, the man spoke in a rich, deep voice.

  “I’m sure this is very strange for you, David. It is for me, as well. But I’m just here to talk to you. To get to know you. To make amends.”

  “How do I know you’re really Marcos?” David finally said. Hadn’t he met “Marcos” once before—in a way that would drastically alter the course of his life? So how could he be sure that this tall stranger who resembled him, sitting across from him now, was the man he said he was? Could he be a cousin? Another uncle? Some conniving friend of the family that David didn’t know and, frankly, no longer wanted to?

  “I could show you my passport,” the man replied politely. His dark eyes bored into David, though the intensity didn’t appear threatening. “We could take a DNA test in the morning. I wouldn’t blame your suspicions, given what you’ve been through.”

  So he knows.

  In the flickering glow of the embers, the man’s face became harder, almost bitter. “My family . . . I’m sorry about that, David. I didn’t know what Adriano and my father did. Not until—until it was almost too late. If it helps, I want you to know that I’ve cut those people out of my life now. Out of our lives.”

  Hearing the man who claimed to be his biological father use the term “our” was surreal. To think that David and Marcos could share things . . .

  David shook himself. He’d been burned once, and he wasn’t buying into the “our” talk just yet.

  “Perhaps you’d like to hear the story?” Marcos offered, a bit nervously, obviously testing the waters.

  David didn’t reply, but he didn’t have to. Perhaps it hadn’t actually been a question.

  “I’ve known about you for two years now, David. I had to overcome quite an urge not to write to you during your . . . incarceration.” He said the word gently, as though trying not to offend. “But I couldn’t do it safely at the time. I’m sure you understand that.”

  David thought that he probably did understand that, if only because he knew how dangerous his own experience with the Morenos had been. And despite his misgivings, the story sounded . . . well, plausible. And, even if he hated to admit it, it still piqued his interest.

  “How did you find me, then?” he asked the man claiming to be his father. It was late and dark, but all dreams of sleep had gone out the window.

  “With a roll of British currency.” Marcos chuckled, a warm, rich sound. “Bribed a palace security guard who told me it looked like some friendly bums picked you up. Took a newspaper with your picture and started canvassing the bad parts of London. That’s why I’m here so late. Long night.”

  “No,” David clarified. “I mean how did you find out about me?”

  Marcos’s casual smile slipped away. He paused briefly before answering.

  “The same way that your uncle Adriano found you. A friend in public records. He just found out first.” Marcos’s tone was dark, a strange mixture of anger, regret, and sadness.

  The man paused for a moment, but David could tell he had more to say. He nodded a bit to encourage him to continue, then listened intently, holding his reservations close, as Marcos shared his tale.

  “In this type of business,” Marcos began, spitting out the word as though it had a bad flavor, “it’s just part of the job to know if people are looking for you. So when your private investigator requested my old marriage license, the family lawyer was immediately alerted. But he didn’t come to me.”

  Marcos paused, his pensive face lit by the embers, the glow highlighting the creases of thought and pain on his forehead. “I only found out about it when I accidentally came across an email meant for my brother.”

  David tried to remember the details from his conversation with Adriano years ago. His grandfather and uncle had chased Jeanine away from Brazil and told Marcos that he had to stay involved in the family’s questionably legal business, despite his wish to leave with his new bride. So it made sense that the records request would have bypassed Marcos entirely, assuming that there were people working for his grandfather with eyes on it; the family couldn’t have Marcos finding out that someone, possibly related to Jeanine, was looking for him.

  Marcos continued, his face in shadow. “I made the mistake of asking my brother about it, when I should’ve known he’d lie. Of course he just told me it was a con artist trying to dig up dirt on the family for extortion purposes by looking into all of our pasts. Said he’d had his marriage license and his children’s birth records requested as well, so they could try to prove that one of his kids was conceived during a time that he was out of the country.” Marcos shook his head and sighed, expressing his disappointment in his own past self for believing the lie.

  “But why would you ever trust Adriano?” David asked, his voice louder than he’d meant, just shy of shouting. He had no goodwill toward his trigger-happy uncle, who, on top of impersonating his father to trap him, had tried to bribe him with dirty money, then threatened his life in order to keep this very scenario from occurring.

  Marcos looked down at his hands. He wore an expression that David couldn’t read, possibly because it wasn’t any one emotion. “Because he is my brother.”

  David felt his hard expression soften. That was . . . understandable. Relatable, even.

  “That wasn’t when I got the answer. That time, I let it go. But, a few months later, I was following the news about a big European scandal. Some princess and pauper story, but this time the pauper was also an amateur drug dealer who had just returned from Brazil and was about to be sentenced to prison. I was curious. I read more. Saw the man had just been to Bahia. And then I saw his photo . . . your photo . . .”

  Marcos’s voice trailed off, and it sounded like emotion briefly overtook him, like it was too much to remember all at once. His face was still lined and pained as he recounted the memory. He looked up at David.

  “David, do you know how much you look like my father did when he was your age? How much you look like my brothers? But—you wouldn’t know that. You couldn’t. My own family made sure that wouldn’t happen.” His voice became tighter as he spoke, as though he were grinding his teeth over the words.

  David couldn’t help but feel slightly moved. He listened in rapt attention. At first, it had seemed like such a far-fetched story; in fact, it still did. But, then again, didn’t David feel that same strange familiar
ity with the man in front of him that he was claiming to have felt when he saw David’s photo? A vague memory came back to him of the pictures he’d seen in his grandfather’s study in Bahia. A boy who’d looked just like David had as a child . . . a boy who certainly didn’t grow up to look like Adriano.

  Besides, at this point, wasn’t all of David’s life kind of a far-fetched story? Was this part that much harder to believe?

  Marcos was continuing. Maybe he’d noticed how David had leaned forward in his seat at last, his attention pinned to the tale. “I wanted to confront my brother right then. And our father. Our cousins. Anyone who had a part in covering up this whole other life I could’ve had. The life I wanted!”

  The man claiming to be his father looked intensely up at David, and his eyes seemed to flash. “David, I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t believe me—but I never chose my father’s life for myself. I was never happy in that role. But there aren’t many other roles out there when you grow up knowing the family business. There are consequences for family members who . . . aren’t cooperative. My cousin Ronaldo learned that the hard way. They’d have done the same to me in a heartbeat.”

  David swallowed. He was relieved when his father didn’t go into more detail. Instead Marcos took a moment to compose himself and then continued.

  “I’d wanted to leave my family before. But for a long time I felt stuck there. I tried to just accept my fate. But when I found out about you, David, when I found out I had other family out there . . . a son who didn’t even know what my face looked like . . . It was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

  “But I couldn’t do it rashly. I couldn’t let them know what I was planning until I had the upper hand. I had to be slow, methodical. I began to siphon small amounts of money out of my account, saying I was paying bills or buying gifts. Little by little, I was able to move a sizable portion to a new account that no one else knew about. It took years.”

  Completely caught up in the story by now, David struggled to imagine the type of fear Marcos must’ve felt to have had to work in complete secret. But remembering his paternal uncle and grandfather, he thought he could get an inkling.

  “By the time I had the means to actually leave, you had already been imprisoned for some time. I was too afraid to contact you during that time. Afraid that my father and brother would take out my discovery on you, whether as a tactic to get me to come back to them or just out of pure spite. It pains me that you were alone then.” The man heaved a sigh and quickly wiped beneath his eye. He looked back up at David. “I’m sorry that I wasn’t there. I never believed the charges against you—and, seeing you now, I still don’t.”

  “Thank you,” David said. He knew his voice sounded awkward. But it was always nice to hear those words. No matter the source.

  And this source . . .

  Somewhere inside of David, a flicker of excitement about the man in front of him was starting to grow. But it still felt so strange and out of place, like a bad joke that was about to explode in his face, that he was having a hard time allowing himself to feel it. A complete stranger, suddenly understanding that he had a son, and still, despite knowing nothing about him, believing the best of him?

  Marcos simply nodded with a gentle, paternal smile, as if believing in David’s innocence was the least he could do. But his thick brows furrowed again as he returned to his story.

  “Once I had enough money to live comfortably, and after you got released, I bought a one-way flight to Boston, thinking you’d still be there. I wrote my family a long letter. I don’t think I’ve ever been so scared.” Marcos fidgeted with his hands in his lap. He patted his pants pocket instinctively but then smirked to himself. “Old habit. I stopped smoking while I was saving money for my escape. Rotten timing, huh?” He chuckled anxiously.

  David quietly chuckled, hoping to relax the atmosphere. But he still wasn’t feeling quite so relaxed himself. “I’m sure that took a lot of bravery,” he encouraged the older man.

  Marcos looked at David as if he was trying to judge whether or not the sentiment was genuine or sarcastic. After a few seconds of thought, he apparently accepted it, half-smiling in appreciation.

  “Yeah, it did. My father is the scariest man in Bahia. One of the scariest in Brazil, perhaps. I went through half a dozen barf bags on that plane.”

  David stared at the man across from him, wide-eyed, unsure of how to respond, until Marcos finally laughed. Fully and unashamedly. It was a laugh that reminded David very much of himself.

  And David laughed as well, feeling doubt flow out of him. This man seemed to be telling the truth, and he came across as a good person to David . . . for whatever that was worth.

  “Of course,” Marcos went on, his voice stronger, “you were no longer in Boston by then. And I thought I’d lost you again . . . until the news about your little party crashing hit the television and internet this morning.”

  David stared at the man before him. So the fact that I blew it trying to talk to Katy . . . ended up leading my father right to me?

  Once again, Marcos seemed to be thinking similarly. “Ironic, no? So I jumped on another plane, went through a few more barf bags”—he chuckled, and then looked up at David expectantly—“and now here I am. Sitting in front of my son.”

  That flicker of hope inside David flamed briefly brighter. Marcos had gone through all that trouble and given up so much to find him? He’d found the strength to finally escape his family for the hope of seeing his son again?

  And isn’t that another problem?

  “But what about your family?” David asked suddenly, realizing at once that someone even scarier than Scotland Yard might now be looking for him. “Won’t they come after you? After us?”

  Marcos shook his head, though his face looked incredulous, as if he couldn’t quite believe it himself. “Before I flew out of Boston, a man came knocking at my hotel room door. When I answered and he told me that he’d been sent by my father . . .” Marcos shrugged. “I said my final prayers. They’d found me. So quickly. I knew then I’d never be able to fully escape him.”

  David’s heartrate increased at just the thought of flying to another country and being found immediately. The Morenos didn’t mess around when it came to family loyalty.

  “But?” David prompted his father.

  “But,” Marcos replied in disbelief. “The man didn’t pull out a gun. He just handed me a phone. And my father was on the other end.” He shook his head again, holding out his hands in front of him, and it was obvious that he still couldn’t understand it. “And for the first time, I heard my father crying. He told me he was older now, wiser. That he finally saw that family came first, even before business. And that he’d felt guilty for what he’d done to me for decades. And he was ready to let me live my own life.”

  David’s breath caught. It was hard to imagine the intimidating man he’d briefly met in Bahia saying those things. But then again, perhaps it had really all become too much for him at the end of his life.

  “Do you really believe him?” David asked fearfully. How much could they trust the word of a dangerous criminal?

  “It was the only time in my life that I felt like my father was actually speaking from the heart,” Marcos replied in a small voice. “So yes. I believe him.”

  Silence fell back over the dying fire between them. Trying to sort through it all, his head reeling, that flicker of hope still strong in his chest, David had one final burning question for the man who claimed to be his father.

  “Why didn’t you believe the charges against me?”

  “Two reasons,” Marcos began. To David’s surprise, he began to smirk. “For one, because I knew my family wouldn’t have dared to involve you in the business. By then I knew what you’d been doing in Brazil, and if you’d gotten drugs there, they wouldn’t have been from my family. Which made all of the other evidence against you seem very sketchy.”

  David regarded his father blankly, absorbing all of this. “And
the second reason?”

  Marcos was quiet for a long time before he responded. And when he spoke, his voice was strained in a way that brought a tear to David’s eye.

  “Because Jeanine was the most wonderful person I ever knew or hoped to meet. When I saw those eyes on your face . . . I knew you’d be good, too.”

  David stood, the tears streaming now, and moved around the fire toward Marcos. And, in the ember-light of a foul fire, in the middle of a cold London car park, David and his father embraced.

  After what seemed like a lifetime, they stepped back, and Marcos’s eyes seemed rimmed with tears. But he also had a sneaky, challenging smile, which came out as he stared at his son, still clasping him by one shoulder. “But you really are innocent of all the cheating and lying, right?”

  “What?” David sputtered, blindsided by the completely forthright question, and Marcos stared at him for another couple seconds before bursting out laughing.

  “I’m sorry, I couldn’t help myself. You know I believe you. Come with me. You can tell me the whole story on the way. I want to hear everything.”

  * * *

  For the second time in as many weeks, David had the unique joy of moving from a cardboard shelter to goose-down pillows on a king-size bed. Marcos had gotten them rooms at the Wayland, another luxury hotel in the palace district.

  He awoke refreshed, his eye and lip healing nicely, took a long, hot shower, and enjoyed the tea setup in the room.

  Even better than that snobby Wych Elm, some might say.

  As David was tightening the band of his wristwatch—which he was rather relieved he hadn’t pawned—a knock rapped at the door.

  David smiled as he went to answer it, knowing exactly who’d be there.

  “Brought breakfast,” Marcos said, holding up a paper bag in the hallway. David let him in and closed the door behind them. “Found pão na chapa at a bakery nearby. You’re going to love them. Need to put you in touch with your roots.”