was he who handed me a thick cream envelope with a sad, supportive smile.
‘Your father wrote this after his first heart attack a year ago and wanted you to have it a little while after he’d been laid to rest.’ He nodded towards the envelope. ‘I think he wanted to give you a bit of time to grieve first.’
I have to admit, I was intrigued. He’d already willed everything he owned to me, including the entirety of his prosperous software business, so I was at a loss to think what could be in this letter. It had to be something seriously important for him to have had it delivered to me in this way.
After ripping it open and sliding out a single sheet of paper, I took a breath before starting to read my fathers achingly familiar handwriting, my heart in my mouth.
Son,
If you’re reading this it means my damaged heart has finally given up on me and I’m in the ground. In a lot of ways this will be a relief. There have been many times in my life when I’ve prayed for an easy way out of the despair I’ve often found myself sucked into, particularly since losing the woman I loved more than life itself.
Please don’t think for a second that this means I ever wanted to leave you, though. You are the one and only thing I did absolutely right in my life and I’m so proud to call you my son. You turned out to be a better man than I could ever have hoped for.
I’m sending you this letter now because I need you to do something—something I was never able to ask of you while I was alive. Go and ask April Darlington-Hume to tell you what really happened to her mother.
What they reported in the papers wasn’t the whole story. Not even half of it. I’ve wanted to tell you about it so many times, but it’s proved impossible for me.
You’ll understand what I mean by that when you finally hear the long-buried truth. Even though it may be distressing to hear, I’ve come to realise that you knowing everything is the most important thing in the world.
It will finally give me peace and hopefully you too, eventually.
Take care of yourself, Jamie.
Be happy. That’s all I’ve ever wanted for you.
Your loving father,
Cliff
I stared at the piece of paper in my trembling hand, holding back an onslaught of emotion that brought back the memory of the excruciating mental agony I’d experienced as I’d watched his coffin being lowered into his grave.
Despite the distracting weight of my grief, I was still intrigued by this posthumous missive. Why on earth did I need to know what had really happened to April’s mother? And why couldn’t he have told me when he’d been alive? Had April’s father, Maxim, been blackmailing him all these years so he hadn’t been able to tell me what he’d obviously felt I now needed to know? As far as I knew, Maxim had taken great pleasure in bankrupting my father’s first business not long after Isabella Darlington-Hume had died, but was there more to the story than that? And, if so, why hadn’t April told me about it at the time? Why, instead, had she cut all ties with me? Had her father forced her to do it?
It seems incredible that something like that could have happened. But then, you never did know with Maxim Darlington-Hume. He’d probably happily use his daughter as a shield if he thought it would let him get away with something.
Is that why my father wrote me this letter—to ask me finally to get justice for him? Or for me—so I can finally get closure?
But of course that means connecting with April again.
Something I’m reluctant to do after our last clash.
Being inside her again, so physically close when my feelings about losing my father were still so raw, had been electric. I’d needed it so badly, that intimacy, that primal, life-affirming connection. But I hated that it was her I’d needed it with. In those moments I’d let my emotions control me, something I’m very careful not to do any more, and it had scared the crap out of me, how good it felt to fuck her. To be close to her. To connect with her again. I was on a razor edge of ecstasy and despair. And it was dangerous. Really bloody dangerous.
Which is why I’d forced myself to turn the situation back into a game. Perhaps it had been a way of punishing her for making me feel like that. I don’t know. It was a fucked-up situation through and through.
And not one I should consider revisiting.
But I know my father would hate to think she’d beaten me into submission and that I was just moping about, feeling sorry for myself, now that he’s gone. I’m the last living De Montfort without a steady partner or children and perhaps he was afraid I’d never be able to commit to someone if I was still hung up about my disastrous relationship with April. That I would spend the rest of my life alone.
So I’m going to take his challenge and run with it. To be the man he was so proud of and get him the justice he deserves. I’m finally going to make April tell me the truth then nail that bastard Maxim to the wall for what he put my father through—even up the score between our two families. Then maybe I’ll finally be able to move on from my hang-ups about April Darlington-Hume.
But all this means I need to find a way to see her again.
I need some sort of bait. But in order to make that work I’ll have to offer her something she can’t refuse. Something she has no choice but to deal with herself.
Maybe then I’ll finally be able to put this thing between us to bed once and for all.
* * *
I choose to roll out my plan on my private island off the coast of Greece, deciding it’ll be the best way to secure her complete attention for as long as I need it.
Now I’ve retired from professional tennis and I’m in a position where I can run my sports-clothing company remotely I like to spend a lot of time here on Palioph. It’s small compared to the rest of the Greek islands, with only three miles between its coasts, but to me it’s six and a half square miles of paradise.
It only has one residence on it, a two-storey, six-bedroomed Greek mansion with a balcony that wraps all the way round the house, giving me three-hundred-and-sixty-degree sea views. It’s right on the northern coast, and has a white sand beach directly in front of the house and a small harbour just a five minute walk away where I keep a small yacht moored for trips to the mainland. In a complex next door to the house I also have a gym, an Olympic-sized open-air swimming pool and both lawn and clay tennis courts.
You can see why I like to spend so much time here.
And, if all goes to plan, April’s going to be more than happy to spend some time here with me. For a handful of days, at least. I’m hoping that’s all the time it’ll take to get the information I want from her.
Thankfully, the lure of the business proposition I’ve set in motion has caught her attention and I’m expecting her to arrive here on a private-hire yacht any minute now.
I pace the room as I wait to hear the sound of the boat’s engine as it approaches the harbour, aware of my blood thrumming through my veins.
To my great annoyance I’m actually nervous about seeing her again. I guess it’s because I know I probably only have one chance to get this right. If she senses how important this information is to me, she’ll use it against me by deliberately withholding it, and I can kiss goodbye to fulfilling my father’s dying request.
Which I’m not going to let happen.
I owe him that much.
I turn and look out of the floor-to-ceiling window as the sound of a boat’s motor breaks the still air of the living room where I’m waiting. It’s her. I can see her standing on the deck of the small yacht, looking towards the house. The sun is making her blonde hair shine like