“But, well… he did. And quicker than I could blink, they were getting married and our time together was over.
“I did the right thing. I walked away and allowed them to get on with their lives. Maria was happy. Well, she looked it. I know exactly where Toby’s ability to put on a smile and pretend comes from.
“I never questioned it until we were all at an event one night and she literally walked into me as she came out of the bathroom.
“Her eyes were dark. She looked exhausted. She tried to brush it under the rug, tried to convince me that she was ill. But she forgot that I knew her almost better than I knew myself.
“After a little convincing, I managed to get her to agree to meet me the next day while Jonas was working. And, well… one thing led to another.”
He drops his head into his hands.
“I’m not proud of my actions, Stella. But I’m not going to sit here and defend them, because it’s in the past. And to this day, I’d do anything for the woman who stole my heart all those years ago.”
My eyes burn with tears as I stare at him, my hand clamped in Seb’s.
I’ve always wondered about Dad’s relationships or lack thereof. But I just assumed he’d never found the one. Never that he’d had her and lost her. That he lived with this kind of heartache every single day.
“We started seeing each other as often as we could. She confided in me just what life was like with Jonas, but by the time she confessed some of his worse treatment, she was already pregnant with Toby.”
“Why didn’t you do anything? If he was hurting her then you should have—”
“Don’t you think I wanted to? Jesus, Seb.” Dad scrubs his hand down his face. “This…” he gestures to his injured arm, “I get this more than you can understand. You need to protect Stella to right the wrongs. I get it. I wanted nothing more than to go and put a bullet through his head for ever laying a hand on Maria. But I couldn’t—”
“Just like Toby can’t now,” I interrupt.
“Yeah. He might be an abusive cunt, but he’s smart. Too fucking smart. He had things in place to ensure that Maria would be left with nothing, her entire family left with nothing should anything happen to him. I’m sure a similar situation is in place for Toby now. Plus he’s got the added concern of Maria’s health.”
“Jesus Christ, Dad.”
“I know.”
“Don’t you think you should have taken a step back when she was having his baby?”
“I tried.”
“Oh yeah, real hard. There are eleven months between us,” I point out.
“Yeah.” Regret oozes from him as he fidgets with the mug in his hands.
There’s a part of me that desperately wants to go and comfort him, but there’s another bitter part of me that’s still too angry to let any of these secrets go yet.
“Jonas knew. We weren’t clever enough. The next nine months were some of the worst of my life.
“We knew she was pregnant again. She assumed you were Jonas’s. We were always careful, but Jonas wasn’t having any of it and forced her to have a DNA test the moment she could.
“The second you were born, he demanded to know. He was already pissed off because you were a girl, and he wanted to build his own little army of soldiers.”
“What a relief I didn’t end up stuck there then,” I whisper sadly.
“The second we got the results, Maria told me we had to leave. That I had to take you and get the hell away from Jonas.”
“But—”
“Trust me, Stella. I went through every possible option. The last thing I wanted to do was take you away from her. I wanted Maria and Toby to flee with us. But she couldn’t leave. It was too dangerous.”