It was still pitch dark. Still cold and damp. She knew that she couldn’t be the first to speak – her dad had always told her: when in doubt, shut your trap. If you kept your own counsel, eventually the others would feel the need to explain themselves, and he had been right. She had learnt that the hard way. So she didn’t say a word.
She could hear the shallow breathing of whoever was now in the room with her and, more to the point, she knew that they could also hear her breathing. They would know that she wasn’t asleep any more. She was very much awake. It was a terrifying experience. She had never once, in her whole life, needed to worry about someone else’s reactions to her or her antics. No matter what had happened to her, no matter what she had said or done, she had always known that her father would be in the background, and the reason why she would ultimately be safe no matter what she did. No one was willing to confront her because that would mean they would have to deal with him. That was something no one in their right mind would even consider. It was her get-out-of-jail-free card, the reason she pushed everything as far as she could. It was why she had been able to fuck her father over again and again. He had always made sure that she was untouchable. She had thought she was invincible because of her father – it was something she relied on. No matter what she did, no matter how much trouble she had landed herself in, her father had always made sure that it had all gone away. It was something she had seen as another of his weaknesses, as another reason to do whatever she wanted. After all, no matter what she did, he bailed her out. He made sure that her actions did not infringe on his lifestyle in any way and that was what it was all about. She knew his reputation was everything to him. Well, she was his daughter, his only child, and she had made damn sure that his reputation as a parent was worth nothing. She had enjoyed that, enjoyed the knowledge that her actions had undermined him, and made him see that he was not worth anything really.
But now she didn’t know what to think. She would have to play this one by ear. She was in serious trouble. Whoever was behind this was not someone who cared about her or her family name.
She was so scared. She wasn’t alone in this darkness, and she knew that she wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
Josephine Flynn looked at her little grandson and smiled. He was beautiful – dark-haired and blue-eyed – his grandfather’s double. He even had Michael’s mannerisms. It was uncanny considering Jessie had no idea who had fathered him. Josephine believed that Michael’s genes were so strong they had cancelled out any that the culprit contributed. She hoped so, for the child’s sake; his father could be anybody – that was the honest truth. Jessie had only had the child because an abortion was out of the question as far as her father was concerned. It was also the only thing that would make her mother turn against her daughter. Still, Josephine liked to think, in her lighter moments, that her daughter wouldn’t have been capable of doing something so heinous.
Jessie knew how she had struggled to have her. She had lost all her other children – some even after Jessie’s birth. A child, Josephine believed, was God’s gift, and to refuse such a wonderful offering was beyond forgiveness. So Jessie had calmed down, stopped her drinking and drug-taking for a while, and she had brought this handsome gorgeous boy into the world. Jessie had then walked out of her own child’s world when he was two days old; she had given him over to her parents without a backward glance. That had hurt Josephine more than anything else her daughter had done, even if she was happy to take him on. Jessie had only been sixteen, and Josephine had hoped that giving birth might have made her daughter grow up, start to understand that all actions had their own set of consequences. But she had been wrong, very wrong – if anything, it had just made her daughter worse.
Jessie had not even bothered to name her own child, and that, for Josephine, summed up the whole situation. So she had named him herself – Jake – and Jessie had not voiced an opinion either way.