Firethorne

Chapter 43

Chapter Forty-Three

Maya

T he fallout from the fire and the days that followed were some of the hardest we’d ever lived through.

I knew that for the time being, I’d have to live my life filled with unbearable anger, regret and inconsolable grief. My father had betrayed me, but I still loved him. I hated him, too, but I had to find a way to learn to live with that. After all, I hadn’t fought so hard to survive, only to live a bitter half-life.

I wanted a full life.

The life I...

No...

We deserved.

I never found out why I kept seeing the shadowed figure behind me when I was at the apartment, being cared for by Damien. But I liked to think it was my father watching over me, making sure I knew that he was still there.

But I never saw it again.

Maybe my mind had been playing tricks on me, but it gave me comfort to think it was him.

That he wanted to make amends.

Wanted to put right what he’d done.

It helped me to think that was the case, anyway.

On the fateful night, when the fire engines eventually showed up, they battled throughout the night to put out the fire. By morning, all that remained was a shell of the mansion it’d been. Blackened ruins that Damien wanted to tear down with his bare hands.

As the firefighters had fought the blaze and the police began to scour the grounds, we managed to get to the woodland where my father was, before anyone else found him. Damien, Trent, and another man I’d never met before, who was introduced to me as Isaiah, worked together to cut my father down and then dispose of the noose. Damien begged me to stay in the van so I wouldn’t have to witness it, and I agreed to do as he’d asked. I didn’t want to see my father’s body again.

Trent and Isaiah took my father, and a few weeks later, we were able to give him a proper burial in the cemetery in our old town.

The town I’d left behind.

We buried him next to my mother, and I felt some comfort, knowing that he was finally at peace.

The Butcher never did show up to the manor that night, but Damien assured me he’d been dealt with. I didn’t need to know any more than that. Damien told me his men had their ways of dealing with things, and I was relieved to know that another sicko had been taken off the face of this earth.

As for Damien’s father, the investigators found his charred remains in the wreckage, along with those of Beresford and the two other men, the ones who’d tortured Damien in the cellar. There was talk of a criminal investigation, that maybe it’d been arson or some other foul play. But the townspeople weren’t forthcoming when questioned about the family and what went on at the estate. It was a blight on their town that they didn’t want to acknowledge, a stain they were relieved to know had been snuffed out.

The police tried to track Lysander, Miriam, and Damien down to question them, but we all went to ground, hiding from the authorities. From the intelligence Damien received, Lysander and Miriam weren’t in the country anymore. Apparently, they were living in France, as a couple, and partaking in the lifestyle they’d thrived on when they lived here with their exclusive ‘parties’.

Their days were numbered, though.

We’d sent an elite group to France to join them at their next event. I don’t think they were going to enjoy the toys I’d sent over that were specially engraved with my name and a ‘fuck you’ on them. But those bullets were nothing that they didn’t deserve.

As time passed, and Damien’s associates worked their magic, hacking into police files and altering the trajectory of the case, things began to die down. The deaths in the manor were reported as accidental, and to everyone’s relief, the case was eventually closed.

Damien decided to adopt a whole new identity, discarding the name Firethorne and taking on a surname that didn’t carry the shame that his real name had. Of course, this was all carried out by his people, hidden from the powers that be, so he could remain hidden. But there was one person he didn’t hide from.

Cora.

The day after the fire, we secretly visited her in her cottage in the town. She looked exhausted when she opened the door, but when she saw Damien, her face lit up.

She invited us in and put her kettle on to make drinks. And then, as she sat down at her little wooden table with us in her kitchen, she said, “I only ever stayed there because of you, son. I felt like it was my duty to watch over you, in a way.” She paused, and then in a solemn voice, she added, “I saw what they did to your mother.”

Damien tensed, and said, “I’m not sure I want to know what happened to her. Not yet.”

“A story for another day, then.” Cora nodded to herself. “I’ll always be here, ready to talk, whenever you need closure.”

I wasn’t sure if Damien would want that closure. I think he’d blocked out whatever had happened. He knew it wasn’t going to be a pleasant story. Nicholas Firethorne didn’t have some sordid love affair with his mother, that much was true. The truth of what actually happened lay in the grey areas where Damien always told me he lived, and the secrets and lies that were buried at Firethorne.

Maybe Damien’s mother was out there somewhere. Maybe she’d been one of the girls who’d survived.

Or maybe not.

But that was Damien’s decision on whether he wanted to find out.

As if reading my mind, he straightened in his seat, and without looking up from the coffee cup he was staring at on the table, he asked, “Is she still alive?”

“No,” Cora replied, sorrow on her face as she reached across the table to try and touch Damien’s hand.

But he remained still, his hands in his lap as he replied, “I don’t need to know any more then. She’s at peace. That’s enough for me.”

“She is,” Cora said, moving her hand away and sitting back in her chair. “She’d have been so proud of you, though. So, so proud of what you’ve done.” Cora didn’t elaborate further, which made me question how much she really knew about that family, but then, what did it matter now? The Firethorne branch of the business had been destroyed.

That chapter was over.

But the war raged on.

Damien had made it clear that once the heat died down, he’d be going back to work. Evil was still out there, and he’d worked too hard to walk away now. He still had targets he needed to take down.

We left Cora’s cottage soon after and agreed to stay in touch. Cora whispered to Damien that she wouldn’t tell a soul that we’d been there, and we believed her. We trusted her.

We gave her one last hug and then headed down her path, towards a new life that awaited us.