11. Jensen

The flames danced before him, and Jensen lost himself in them.

It was rare that he used the fireplace in the living room of his Mayfair flat, but discovering that he had a child he didn't know about had given him the unshakeable need to burn something—to rage at something.

Himself most of all.

He had a child he didn't know existed. A child whose life he'd missed. A child whose name he didn't know.

"How could she keep this from me?" he whispered, his knuckles white from clutching the armchair.

In the corner, Aldous poured a drink for himself, the crystal decanter clinking against the glass. "She didn't give you a reason?"

Jensen leant forward, his elbows on his knees and his forehead in his palms. "No. We were talking and then Euan came in guns blazing. You should have seen the look she gave me, Aldous…"

Shifting a cashmere throw, Aldous sat in the armchair opposite. "How old did you say she was?"

The sounds of late night London were a low hum through the windows of Jensen's flat. Car headlights could be seen through the French doors out to the balcony, the curtains still open despite the late hour. Jensen's flat wasn't far from the luxury hotels, but so too was it near Hyde Park, shielding him from much of London's noise.

"Early twenties." He scrubbed his face, the abject hurt in Talia's expression coiling around his chest like barbed wire. "I don't know. However old you need to be to go to university." It wasn't like he'd gone; Jensen had spent his formative years serving a decade long sentence for murder.

"Most freshers are eighteen." Aldous's voice was quiet.

"Eighteen?" Jensen choked. He'd known she was a virgin, but Christ, he thought she'd been older. In her twenties at least.

The realisation pressed him against the back of the armchair, cutting off his airway. "I took an eighteen-year-old's virginity, got her pregnant, and left her to raise our son alone."

He needed to speak the words aloud, to put voice to his sins. He needed to be judged for them.

He'd become the type of father he despised, and the knowledge rested heavy on his shoulders.

Aldous drew back, his face contorting in disgust, and Jensen committed it to memory. "You took her virginity?"

He nodded, his throat jumping, the piercing blue lights of an ambulance on the street below momentarily giving the living room an icy blue glow. "I didn't know until… until I was already inside her."

"How did you even meet? You're not exactly the type to go clubbing with uni students," he frowned, his jaw locked tight.

Jensen's lips pressed together. "It wasn't that sort of club."

Aldous's brow quirked. "Meaning?"

"Meaning the old CEO of Garcia-Richardson took me to what I thought was a normal private members club, and when we got there… " Jensen stopped, not daring to look at his cousin. "A host announced that the auction was beginning, and then Talia walked onto the stage, dressed in this transparent robe that revealed her body to the crowd. And the crowd started to bid on her."

"They what?" Aldous's eyes were wide with horror.

"Men who were old enough to be her fucking grandad were bidding on her, Aldous. She looked terrified, so I outbid them. I won't lie," he promised, wrapped in guilt. "I desired her, yes, but I had no intention of fucking her. I outbid them because I thought she had been forced onto that stage, to be sold against her will."

Aldous downed the rest of his drink. "Sounds like there's a but coming."

"But," he conceded, "when I went into the room she'd been put in, we spoke. She wasn't there against her will at all, quite the opposite; she'd applied to be auctioned off to pay her tuition fees. I went to leave… but then she asked me to stay."

There was a pause before Aldous answered, his gaze softening, until he resembled the innocent boy he'd once been. "So you did."

"So I did. And now we have a son." His eyes locked onto Aldous's. "I've missed my son growing up, just like I missed you growing up."

The judgement vanished, replaced by something resembling shame. "Mum and I visited you whilst you and Rhys were in prison. We saw you all the time."

Jensen remembered those visits. They were cold and clinical, eternally watched by the prison officers and surrounded by inmates. Alison had always visited, but Aldous's weren't as frequent.

And Jensen didn't blame him. Aldous had been a traumatised child who'd lost half his family overnight.

Jensen had been thirteen when Aldous was born, and given that Aldous's father—Jensen's uncle—had abandoned the family by the time Aldous was six, Jensen was the closest thing he had to a father.

Jensen had been there for all of it.

Until he hadn't been there at all.

"I don't want to waste my life being separated from the people I love," Jensen stared into the gold and scarlet hues of the flames, flickering without end.

He'd missed out on seeing Aldous grow up. He'd vowed never to do it again. And yet here he was, with a son he didn't even know the name of.

There was that shame again. Aldous looked away, as though what had happened had been his fault. As though it had been his actions that had destroyed their family. "I'm sorry."

That pulled him out from the whirlpool of thoughts he'd been drowning in.

"You have nothing—nothing—to apologise for, do you hear me?" Jensen uttered, his voice fierce. "If I could go back to that day—the day Rhys and I killed him—I would make the same choice every single time. Even if it meant giving up my freedom. I may regret the time we missed, but I will never regret wiping that evil prick off the face of the earth."

Brows drawn down in a scowl, Aldous changed the subject. As he always did when they were in danger of treading too close to his childhood. "What choice would you make with Talia?"

Jensen already knew his answer. "I wouldn't leave the next morning. No wonder Talia fucking hates me. She went through everything alone. Pregnancy. Birth. Caring for a newborn. Think about how exhausted Warren was after Lucie was born; Talia was doing the same thing on her own." Even if it was by choice.He shook his head. "If I had been in Euan's position today, I would have beat my fucking skull in."

Because how could anyone willingly abandon their child?

With that thought came the realisation that the trajectory of his life had forever changed in a single night.

He was a father now. He could either run from it... or embrace it.

"This is insane, you do realise that?" Aldous muttered darkly, glancing over from the driver's seat.

Jensen checked his phone, ignoring the emails he'd received about Euan pulling out of their business deal.

Thatwas a catastrophe for another day.

Tonight, he only had one aim in mind.

He'd never realised how easy it was to track a private jet before. All it took was a quick search with the tail number of the aircraft—and as part owner of said aircraft, he had that information readily available. "We need to look into how to get the company jet blocked on these sorts of websites."

"After you've finished making use of them," Aldous muttered dryly.

"I'm not using them nefariously."

Aldous scoffed. "You're checking Talia's father has left the country to go on his honeymoon before breaking into her flat in the middle of the night. In what world is that not nefarious?"

"Every time I try to have a conversation with her, she runs from it. New York. The wedding. There is no way that woman is letting me into her flat to talk. The moment she sees me she'll probably call the fucking police."

"But breaking into her home is going to change her mind on that, yeah?"

Jensen didn't give him an answer. Talia, it seemed, lived in a mansion block in Covent Gardens. The red brick fa?ade of the building was effortlessly grand, situated on a pretty side street not far from the old market.

Life was cruel sometimes.

"I've lived a mile-and-a-half from my son this entire time," he managed through gritted teeth. "Every day, I've thought of Talia in New York, and I could have walked to her flat in twenty minutes."

Aldous's head turned towards him. "You thought of her every day?"

He hadn't meant to admit to that. "I was wondering how she was getting on at uni." Jensen nodded at the mansion block up the street, tapping his finger on his thigh. "But she was here the whole time, raising our son."

"How did you find out where she lived?"

"Warren sent me her address. Apparently, her and Kate are friends."

"Good to know Warren just hands out people's addresses to whoever fucking asks."

Jensen pinned him with a stare, trying not to let his emotions show, trying not to let the fact that Warren had got to know his son before he had affect him. "I said I needed to drop something off at her place after the wedding."

The deep growl of an incoming motorbike made his ears prick up, getting louder and louder. In his rear-view mirror, he saw a single headlamp turning onto the street, the sound cutting through the blackness of the night.

"Are you sure you trust this guy?" Aldous asked quietly, uncertainty layered beneath the question.

Jensen didn't blame him. Not after everything Aldous had been through.

"He was my cellmate. I know him better than I know myself."

"But do you trust him with your son?"

His hand stilled halfway through opening the door.

"He's a convicted criminal," Aldous muttered.

Jensen glanced back at his cousin before getting out of the car. "So am I."

Behind them, the biker was pulling off his helmet to reveal a face Jensen knew like the back of his hand. Sitting on his bike, Roman gave him a mischievous grin, his brown hair shorter than when they'd last seen each other. "Hey Jenny, who gave you that shiner?"

Jensen shook his gloved hand. "The father of the woman who lives here. Thank you for coming out at such short notice."

Roman nodded, his lithe form encased in his black biking leathers. "I'm beginning to see why he punched you."

"Aldous," Jensen began, "this is Roman. Roman, this is my cousin Aldous."

Before Jensen could warn him, Roman held out his hand. The movement threw his face into the light, illuminating the vertical scar bisecting his eyebrow, narrowly missing his eye, and ending halfway down his cheek.

Aldous didn't move to take it, merely glancing at it with contempt.

After a moment's silence, Roman retracted it, tilting his head to the side and shooting Aldous a grin. "Fair enough. You do you, boo."

Aldous ignored him. "This is a terrible fucking idea," he hissed, glaring at Jensen.

Roman cut Jensen off before he could respond, straddling his bike, his elbows on the handlebars. "I can still hear you if you whisper," he hissed back. "It's okay, I'd be mad all the time if my mum called me Aldous too."

The look Aldous gave him was so sharp it could have pierced steel.

"Judging from your message, Jenny, you want me to get into that fancy old building there." Roman pointed at the mansion block up the road. "Am I right?"

"I'm sorry, Jenny?" Aldous asked.

Jensen rubbed his forehead. Roman was an… acquired taste. The first year they'd been cell mates, he'd wanted to kill the man. Nothing he seemed to do could phase Roman, not anger, not silence, not threats, not even—on one particularly short-tempered night—shoving him up against the wall by his throat.

He'd gone to prison expecting to be housed with a violent sadist.

And instead every night his cell mate's voice called up to his bunk, "Night Jenny, love you."

Jensen had ignored him.

Until the prison decided to move them around, and Jensen's new cell mate, Blake, really was a violent sadist. One that liked to hurt him in ways that no one would notice.

Or at least he thought no one would notice.

Roman had visited Jensen's cell one day, leaning casually against the wall as he picked up Blake's nasal decongestant spray, replacing it with an identical one from his pocket. "I wouldn't use that if I were you, Jenny," he said with a smile, turning to leave.

Jensen had said nothing when Blake used it that night, or when Blake spent hours retching into the toilet, groaning in agony. So too had he remained silent when Blake requested painkillers from the pharmacy for head-splitting migraines and stomach aches that had him bed-bound for days.

It went on for a week before Jensen awoke to silence in the room, and a cell mate that was stone cold.

Roman had moved back in the next day, giving Jensen a casual grin.

That night, his voice came from the bottom bunk like clockwork, but this time he had a question to ask. "Did I make him suffer enough?"

Jensen swallowed, realising that his jovial, laid back cell mate was far more dangerous than he appeared. "Yes."

"Good. Night Jenny, love you."

Jensen had waited for a minute before answering. "Good night Roman."

Back outside Talia's flat, Jensen merely shrugged at Aldous. "To my dad I was Jay, to you I'm Jensen, and to Roman… I'm Jenny." Returning to the issue at hand, he nodded at Roman. "It's a flat in that building. Number sixty-two."

"Gotcha," Roman got off his motorbike, kicking the stand into place against the asphalt. "I rode past the back of the building on my way in. There's a service entrance down this alleyway here. Bog standard nightlatch on it. No cameras either." He set off towards the alley. "You say your son lives here?"

Jensen ignored the look Aldous was giving him. "I did."

"Well you might want to invest in some good security. Cameras. Alarms. The whole shebang. Want me to see when Tarik can install a security system? Can't have mini-Jen toddling around unprotected."

"I'll talk to Talia about it." If she doesn't throw me out of her flat the moment she sees me.

When they came to the back of the building, Jensen saw what Roman meant. The service entrance was far removed from the building's front door. Where the former was bedecked in columns and required a key card to enter, the latter was in a dingy side street comprising nothing but overflowing bins and puddles of dubious origin.

Roman shouldered his rucksack off, leaning against the back door's flaking black paint. He began rifling through it, pulling out several long, thin instruments with little upticks on the end and looking more closely at the lock on the door. He quickly decided on two, inserting them both into the lock and putting his ear close to it.

Jensen had no idea what he was looking for, but evidently he found it fairly quickly because he straightened a few moments later, turned the latch and opened the door. The hinges squeaked, making him and Aldous wince. The sound was loud enough to alert everyone in London, and Jensen was half expecting a foul-tempered security guard to come storming down the hallway.

Instead, it was empty, the automatic lighting flickering on.

"You're really going up there?" Aldous asked, his focus switching between Jensen and Roman.

Jensen nodded. "I'm really going up there. He's my son, and I refuse to lose another day."

Aldous's throat moved, casting a look in Roman's direction. "I'm going to wait in the car. Message me when you're inside. And then I'll leave."

"I will," he promised, handing over his car keys. He wouldn't need them.

With a final nod, Aldous retreated, disappearing back down the alleyway, his footsteps getting further and further away.

Jensen didn't need to be a genius to figure out why his cousin didn't want to come in the mansion block with them.

It was because, once Jensen was inside Talia's flat, Aldous would be left alone with Roman. A man he didn't know, in a place he couldn't escape from without Roman's help.

"Come on," Jensen said, clapping a hand on Roman's shoulder.

The two of them trod carefully as they made their way into the building. The service entrance was fairly lacklustre; it was clean, sure, but there was little in the way of security. There was a single door in between them and the residential corridor—and it didn't even have a lock on it.

Roman absorbed everything, pointing out the lack of cameras. There was a single security camera in the main reception area, but nothing other than that.

Gritting his teeth, Jensen took note of his every suggestion. "Can you ask Tarik how soon he's available to install a security system?"

They eventually found number sixty-two on the sixth floor, and Roman once again brought out his kit—and Jensen felt sick at how quickly the front door opened.

"Thank you," he said quietly, seeing the first glimpses of Talia's home through the door.

"Anything else you need?"

Jensen shook his head, holding out his hand. "I'll send over something for Jasmine, yeah?" Roman wouldn't accept a gift for himself, but he spoilt his dog rotten.

"Sounds good. Let me know when I can meet mini-Jen."

"Will do."

Bidding farewell to his friend, Jensen turned back to the empty flat. He stepped inside, closing the door behind him and silently observing the darkness within. There was a large living area before him, framed with cushy sofas and cushions. Baby paraphernalia could be found here and there—a pushchair by the door, a changing mat slotted in between a sofa and the coffee table next to it, a selection of large, colourful children's books piled on a table.

He took a deep breath. This was where his son lived.

It was then he realised that he hadn't planned for an eventuality in which Talia had already gone to bed for the night.

Before he could think of what to do, a noise came from behind one of the doors off the living room, and his heart stopped.

It was a baby's cry.

Jensen did what any father would do—he went to his son.

Silently, he opened the door, wondering whether he would find both Talia and their baby behind it. His question was quickly answered; it was their child's bedroom.

And over in the corner was his son, wide awake and fussing in his cot.

Jensen leant over the side, smiling down at the little boy. Instead of the smart outfit he'd been wearing for the wedding, he was dressed in a cozy-looking sleepsuit.

The baby reached up at him.

There wasn't a force on earth that would have stopped Jensen from taking his son in his arms.

Somehow, he didn't expect the boy to be so light. How could the biggest responsibility he'd ever have weigh so little?

A nightlight allowed him to see his son clearly, his eyes red from crying—but it made his brilliant sapphire irises all the brighter.

Jensen couldn't take his eyes off him, wanting to memorise everything about this moment. The feel of his son in his arms. The innocent, trusting way the boy clutched at him, slowly calming now he was being held. The way the rest of the world fell away around them, and Jensen knew he would do anything—anything—for him.

It was the least he could do.

His eyes burned with the same emotions that constricted his throat, until tears of his own fell down his cheeks. "I'm sorry," he choked out. "I'm sorry I wasn't there for you when I should have been."

His son reached a clumsy hand up to his face, almost poking him in the eye.

Jensen laughed softly, taking the boy's hand in his. He was surprisingly strong, his tiny fingers wrapping around one of Jensen's own.

It was only then that he looked away from his son. He'd been so focused on getting to the cot that he hadn't realised what was on the wall above it.

‘Felix' was spelt out in strong, bold blue capitals, followed by the name ‘Jay' in a lighter, more fanciful black script.

For a moment, he couldn't breathe.

"Felix," Jensen whispered, taking in his son all over again. "Felix Jay. That's your name."

Jay.

Talia had named their son after him.

Tears threatening to spill all over again, he realised why Talia had glared at him so hatefully at the wedding. Because she thought the name she'd given to her son had been a lie.

"That's what your grandad called me," he murmured to Felix, sniffing. "He would have been so pleased to meet you, Felix."

Jensen smiled, finally at peace now his son was safe in his arms. "And so am I."