Chapter 217: Was There An Autopsy?
Chapter 217: Was There An Autopsy?
Camilla
As I took the single step down from the mat I didn't bother to wait for a response, already knowing that if it was my father who sent her, I wouldn't really have a choice to stay away either. I may as well just humor whatever ideas he has going this time so I could return to waiting off the last week of my punishment in peace.
People acted oddly as I was led down a series of hallways even though I made sure to have this place memorized like the back of my hand since the first week I was kept here. Intelligence is the only way I have learned to survive but I will admit, I was coming up blank as to what this meeting could possibly be about. Unless my father found out about the secret cash I have stashed beneath the loose floorboard under my bed and was mad about it but even then, that wouldn't explain the whisper of people on my way over here.
I have mostly gotten used to it at this point, being the boss's daughter and all but today's usual conversation felt different in a way I didn't know how to describe.
"Here," Stella offered right before I moved to open the door to my father's office, going to my back before gently untwisting the elastic that was keeping my hair tied up.
It had gotten a lot longer from this last year that I have neglected to cut it but it was the one thing that has remained constant for me as of lately. The fact that Stella was undoing it for me, her long nails massaging my scalp in the process was her way of giving me support despite the fact that our intimacy didn't really branch outside of sex.
"Let me know if you want to meet up later." She said, slipping my hair elastic back onto my wrist and confusing me even more.
She knows better than anyone I couldn't care less about breaking my father's rules just as I don't complain when the time comes to take whatever reprimand he deems fit. I don't understand why she looks worried for me but won't say anything because that is just out of character for both of us.
"Okay," I sighed softly with a nod of my head, wanting to simply get whatever talk I had earned myself over with.
Something I appreciated about Stella was that she didn't linger but I knew she would make time for me if I needed a distraction. She used me just as much as I used her but we have also become something a lot like friends over the last year we have known each other. While she was on the team that brought me here from Kumon City, it was only my father I blamed for that. Stella was already gone by the time I raised my fist to knock on the door.
"Come in," my father's voice echoed from where his desk is probably and sure enough when I walked inside, I found him sitting with his knee bent and his ankle resting against his opposite leg.
He wouldn't look at me. I moved inside but it wasn't long before I realized we weren't alone. He was accompanied by Louise Chandan, Adriano, Domenico and Gregorio's mother stood at my father's back with a look that unnerved even me.
I have always tried to avoid her as much as I could and I have done a pretty job at it but it didn't seem like this was something I was getting out of. I didn't like the familiarness of her eyes or the fact that she was here in general. My father refused to tell me how she was alive even now, saying it wasn't his story to tell but the very fact that they mourned yet another year, unknowing of this secret their mother chose to keep. It is fair to say I don't have a lot of respect for her.
With the amount of security I have on me to just monitor each breath I take makes it impossible to tell him even if I wanted to. But just because I didn't like Louise Chandan doesn't mean I have any desire to talk to the man who took something from me he had no right to take.
"What is this all about?" I went straight to the point as I let the door close behind me, not taking a seat to show just how much time I planned to spend here.
I am not mad at my father anymore, at least not in the way I was a year ago. However that doesn't mean I agree with the way he runs thighs around here. It has been three weeks since I have even gone outside, things apparently too unsafe with all of the disruption stirring in Kumon city. I would never admit it but sometimes when things get quiet and the only presence I have is myself, I think about those who still live there.
"I take it you haven't looked at the news recently?" My father said softly and I already know something has happened by his tone alone. He doesn't do it gently unless it is a strategy for his own game.
"No, but I am assuming I am about to." I responded, not showing any kind of weakness that would display the way my heart started beating just a little faster against my will.
He only frowned, Louise remaining quite as she stood at his side like a composed statue. I hated it almost as much as I hated seeing Marble with him, looking like a family I has never be a part of. I made it my goal to alienate myself from all of them, Festus included because at one point, before the drinking and the pain, my mother was the most beautiful person I have ever met. I hadn't been ready to let her go and based on the tears I have seen my father shed when he thinks no one is watching, he wasn't ready either.
"Camilla?" The sound of my name pulls me away from my thoughts, my father still seeming slightly somber even though he has barely even said anything yet. Whatever I did couldn't possibly be bad enough for this, right?
"I know you don't like to talk about them but we need to now." He gazes downwards, not looking at me as he slides a sheet of paper across the desk.
From where I was, I could see it was a printed article of sorts but it wasn't until I saw a face I haven't seen in over a year that made the hardness of my expression falter. Not waiting for an explanation, I picked up the paper as my eyes were pulled straight to the title in a thick bold font, a sick feeling pooling in my stomach from the first few words alone.
'Billionaire CEO, Domenico Jaxson was found dead this morning at the young age of thirty-six from a fatal bullet wound to his heart.'
That was the heading alone, the attached photograph a shot of Domenico walking down the street, curly hair slightly shorter than what I remembered. It was him but I didn't see any pictures of him dead.
"What is this?" I asked, all emotions void from my voice and apart from my increased rate of my heart, I experienced nothing.
Blinking at my father, he was quiet for a moment as though pondering in surprise at my reaction. I didn't repeat myself, simply waiting for a response to explain the nonsense in front of me.
"This was taken three minutes before a shooting broke off in the city this morning. Witnesses say he jumped in to cover a little girl who looked like she could be related to him and was shot in the process."
Harper? The Domenico I remember was selfless and would have something like that but why would he be so unprotected in public in the first place when his mafia was stirring up so much shit? This simply wasn't true.
"Was there an autopsy?" I asked, putting the paper back down on the desk.
"Pictures of a body? Proof of what these witnesses claimed?"
I could go on and on about how this was staged in some way because Domenico being dead simply wasn't an option. The look I saw Louise gave me made my blood boil as it was very clear she thought I was in denial. But I wasn't, I didn't truly believe my mother was dead until I demanded to see the pictures of her behind that hotel building in that City. I threw up after seeing it and it is an image I will never be able to erase but at least I knew for certain she was gone. Until there was better proof that someone's word, Domenico is not dead.
"His funeral is expected to happen in five days, we don't know where yet." My father said carefully as if expecting me to break at any given moment.
The hurt on Louise's face for losing one of her sons but she managed to approach me in a motherly way and the way my father didn't simply let me learn about this elsewhere. But like I said, it was unnecessary.
"Domenico Jaxson is very much alive." I said, finality in my voice as I turned my back on both of them.
Those were the only words I had been saying on this matter because whatever whispers I had received on the way here were simply not true. I heard someone call out my name as my hand gripped the handle of the door but I was already leaving before I could care to figure out who it was. I was going to go back to five o'clock wake ups with white clothes and hidden floorboards just as Domenico was going to go back to whatever he does now with his life.
Things have changed incredibly since I last saw him and again since I walked from my stepfather's house smelling like ash and gasoline but this was the way things were now. Day in and day out.
The only part l have left now is to go find myself a new distraction, praying it will be enough to lose myself for just a little while longer.
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