Prince and the Pauper

Chapter Forty-One

"Remember," Zaiden instructed into a microphone, "subconsciously you'll be touching and fiddling with the camera out of nerves. Keep it in your head not to. A, it could sever the connection between you and us, and b) Sam could pick up on it." I glanced at Zaiden who flashed me a reassuring smile. We were currently in a high tech security room at Zaiden's security company, a large computer screen on the wall showed us Harry's view from the hidden camera discreetly hidden in the button on his shirt. A hidden microphone was also stitched into the lining on his clothes, so it would be like we really were in the room with him. With my father. I took a shaky breath as Harry confirmed his instructions, and then we were watching as police officers escorted Harry into the interviewing room. An advantage of being the town's elite, all Harry had to do was walk into the station and demand to see the father of his deceased lover, and it was all a piece of cake from there. For Harry. The next part was not going to  be easy for me at all. I had no idea how I was going to handle hearing my fathers voice again, but my racing pulse and sweaty hands told me I wouldn't take it in my stride. His words were going to haunt me, or set me free from my past demons, but regardless this would be a pivotal day in my life. Harry stepped into the room, and the camera zoned in on him. The man that made my blood boil. That man that shared my blood and DNA.
"Sam." Harry's tone was clinical. Cold and unattached, but ringing with power.
"Mr Styles." My father-Sam, greeted with false politeness. He was already dressed in an orange jumpsuit, and I found myself growing weak at the knees. I felt Zaiden place a comforting hand on my shoulder, and I grasped onto it gratefully as we watched the scene unfold.
"I'm going to be honest with you, Harry, if you're expecting an apology for me shooting your mothers lover, you're going to walk away from here rather disappointed." I sucked in a sharp breath. There was the man I remembered from my childhood. Selfish and never apologetic for his mistakes.
"I didn't come here for an apology, Sam." Harry's voice dismissed as he took a seat across from the table where my father sat. Now I really had a clear shot of him, and it was nauseating. He hadn't changed at all, and yet he was almost unrecognizable at the same time. His hair was still long brushing his shoulders, but it looked cleaner. He clearly had time to shower these days rather than spend all his spare time at casinos. His eyes were the same dark brown, but less hooded. He obviously hadn't been losing sleep over his children. And his face. That cold yet confident face was clean and his skin was unblemished. Back when I was a child he always seemed to have a black eye, or a split lip, gashes in his forehead. He had always wrecked havoc at the casinos, played dirty, and drunken fits were thrown when he lost which led to being thrown out roughly. Yet here he was, clean cut, cool, and... a criminal. With my boyfriend. In some normal family this would be a joyous day. The daughter bringing her boyfriend home, seeking the approval of her father, the man who raised her. But this was different. Sam hadn't been my dad. He hadn't taught me how a man should treat me, and how much I was worth and to turn away all the toads until I found my prince. He didn't hug me or comfort me when I had my heart broken for the first time, he didn't ever offer to help with my homework. He didn't come and check on me when I came home from a bad day at school and console me. He couldn't look at his daughters face and know she needed her father to put a smile back on his little princess's face. He didn't give me cheesy pet names, or come home from work and hug me and kiss my head telling me he missed me. He didn't love me. He never had. And that killed me. Years on, now an adult, and still cautious of men and pained that she never had a fatherly figure. I still saw teenage girls at cafes or grocery stores with their dad and wondered what they talked about, or frowned when they still called him "daddy" at sixteen years because they would always rely upon him no matter how old they were. I was now grown up and a new person, but still that scared and lonely little girl.
"Then what are you hear for?" Sam asked, leaning back in his seat.
"I want answers." Harry demanded, and Sam studied Harry, but through the hidden camera it was like he was looking right at me.
"Why did you do it?"
"Why do you care?" Sam retaliated. "He slept with your mother behind your fathers back. I didn't think you'd miss him that much." He shrugged.
"I don't care for Trace Ritzon more than I care for dirt on the bottom of my shoes, but I didn't shoot him. You did." Harry replied without hesitation, and I almost cheered for him. He was fighting my battle for me, and for that I would always be his cheerleader.
"We had a business deal. We were going to go into opening a new business together and I had invested, but he backed out, and then your daddy, Drake, snatched the land up from under my feet." He invested? With what?
"That doesn't add up." I heard Harry frown. "There are contracts, if you made an investment Trace couldn't back out and cheat you of your spending." He argued.
"He could if he handed over his half over to Drake." Sam refuted.
"Then why not shoot Drake? Why Trace?" Harry questioned, shocking me on how carelessly he had spoken of his fathers death.
"Because Trace planned it all from the beginning. This wasn't about business, but me personally. Hell, this wasn't just about me. This was about my daughter." I froze, and the screen went so still I considered the camera had frozen until I saw Sam blink.
"Dev?" Harry spoke up eventually, and Sam smiled coldly.
"Dev? Not Devonne? So you are familiar with her." He mused lightly. Then he laughed. "My daughter and the towns elite, Harry Styles." He made a swooning face as he spoke Harry's name, and my hand balled into fists.
"Tell me what Devonne has to do with this." Harry spoke slowly, malice creeping into his tone.
"Is it true?" Sam asked as his demeanour changed. "Is she dead?" Pain? No. Regret? Not at all. Morbid curiosity? Dead on. The realisation was sickening.
"What do you care?" Harry growled, growing more and more frustrated. Although I couldn't see Harry with the camera on him, I could see his hands grip the table edges tightly.
"I may not have loved her or cared for her a great deal, but that doesn't mean I wanted to see her murdered. Especially by your brother."
"Ask him how he knows this." Zaiden ordered into the microphone that Harry would hear through the listening device hidden by his ear.
"How do you know Date did it?" Harry asked.
"Trace happily delivered the news the same time he told me he had given his share on the land to Drake. He wanted maximum impact I guess." Sam said with an icy tone.
"Did you hear that?!" Zaiden turned to me with a huge grin on his face. I blinked slowly.
"He just said Trace confessed to knowing about Dante's plans to kill me." I repeated , and Zaiden enveloped me in a tight hug.
"We have prove Trace is accessory to pre-meditated murder! Dev, he's going down! He's going to prison!" Zaiden cheered.
"Sam could deny it, to spite us." I said hesitantly, but Zaiden shook his head.
"And protect the man he tried to kill? No way darlin'! Besides this way Trace will be locked  up in prison here with Sam. He'll see it as a mouse trapped in a labyrinth with a cat. He'll testify it." My hand covered my mouth and I muffled an excited scream.
"I wont have to play dead anymore?" I gasped.
"No, no you won't." Zaiden hugged me again and we  continued to hug as we turned our attention back to the camera.
"-so you're saying you won big at the pokies, and you wanted to spend it on an investment of a rehabilitation centre? You get that sounds like the biggest load of BS I have ever heard?" Harry scoffed.
"I was a gambler and depressed and one night I got lucky, Harry. Really lucky. I'm talking five digits. I didn't need the casinos anymore, what I needed was to put food on the table for my Mrs." My breath hitched.
"Mia?" Harry laughed. He didn't need to say more, his voice spoke volumes on how ludicrous is sounded. 
"M-Mia?" Sam blinked. I was confused even further when he burst out into laughter, banging his large hands on the table in front of him.
"That drunken, good-for-nothing skank?" He chuckled. "Heavens no. Eleanor. My new wife." Sam corrected. I felt my throat tighten. I hated my mother more than anything, and I certainly felt no pity for her husband moving on so easily, but the thought that my dad was capable of loving somebody, but never giving any to me or Geordie? It was a slap to the face. Even more painful than my mothers cruel hands.
"You married again?" Harry asked. "Let me guess, you met at group-therapy?" Harry spoke in a deprecating voice, I smiled lightly at how Harry so easily jumped to join my side in battles I wasn't even present for.
"Actually," Sam licked his lips, "she was my counsellor." Harry was silent, and Sam watched him carefully, almost expecting Harry to laugh.
"It's not illegal if we started up after I left therapy." Sam added in defence, and my brows furrowed.
"I don't give a damn about your new bed-buddy." Harry dismissed with a wave of his hand. "You said Trace planned to trick you. How?"
"He let me believe I was buying a share of some land in Louisa Boulevard."
"To build a rehabilitation centre?" Harry clarified, earning a nod.
"Yes. I missed a 'meeting' where it was discussed what the land  would be used for. What the business we were going into would be. I thought we were partners, so when I got a call from Trace saying he would fill in for me because I had a 'personal crisis' I believed him."
"Personal crisis?" Harry repeated.
"Yes. My daughter was missing. It was when Devonne had been abducted." I felt the air leave my lungs.
"Despite my past actions that would lead you to believe the news wouldn't matter to me, it did. I was a lousy father, Harry. I admit that, and that's why I left. I saw Devonne grow up so damn quickly, maturity way beyond her years. She was-"
"Shut up!" Harry roared, making Sam flinch. "You don't get to take pride in somebody as amazing as Devonne rising above the ashes, when you are the very dirt she rose from!" I bit my lip as I listened to Harry's passionate words, and Sam inhaled deeply.
"Let me finish." He asked with raised hands. I heard Harry's loud breathing slowly try to steady itself, and then he lowered himself back down into his seat.
"Devonne kept her head high after her mother beat her. She cleaned up the mess Mia left after her drunken fits. She ignored her bleeding wounds as she tended to her brother. She never let anything waver her. Until she looked at me."
My eyes closed at his comment. It was true. My mother I could handle, cuts to the face didn't leave as much of a wound as the neglect of love.
"She looked at me with such sadness, Harry. If Mia was around, she'd keep her eyes downcast, she took the lashings, shrugged it off, and looked after Geordie. But if I was around? She'd look me in the eyes, with this...longing for her dad. For the dad every daughter needs. The dad I never was."
"She was giving you a chance after chance." Harry growled, his voice pained.
"I know. And I knew I would always let her down. I didn't know who she was." He laughed ironically. "I knew her since her birth, but I couldn't tell you what her favourite colour is, her favourite animal. Her biggest fear, the name of the first boy she crushed on. I didn't know her!" Sam shook his head frantically.
"Do you know who named her? Devonne?" Sam asked, and my chest ached.
"She did. Mia never gave a damn, and I never knew her well enough to name her. When she was five, she was outside the house. She saw a mother and child running around in their front-yard. The kid was called Devonne, and the mother called her name, picked her up, swinging her around as this kid squealed with delight." Sam was staring off at a wall as he recalled the moment in my life I didn't even remember all that well.
"Devonne, your  Devonne," Sam gestured to Harry, "watched so transfixed. She watched on in awe. I was sitting on the porch drinking, watching her watch the family she wished she could be part of. Then the mailman came along, saw her standing at the mailbox.
"I guess he was one of those people that just loved kids because he smiled at her and started talking to her. He asked her name, and she looked up at the mailman," Sam was shaking his head slightly at the memory,
"she kind of pointed across the road at the mother and daughter. Then pointed at herself. 'Me' she said. 'Dev. Me be a Dev' She didn't call herself Dev because she liked the name. She thought that was what you called it when a mother  loved her child, when you had a family. She was trying to say she would be a family some day. Be a 'Dev.' So she become Devonne. She become her own family on her own." Tears were streaming down my face. I sobbed and fell to my knees. I felt Zaiden and Nox come to my side, comforting me as I cried.
"Shh, it's okay kiddo." Zaiden whispered, pain laced with his raspy voice.
"You failed her." I heard Harry say with such anger. His voice cracked. He was crying. The pain in my heart doubled.
"Having a daughter is the best gift a man is given. She loves you and depends on you instantly, before you even earn it! You didn't need to have all the money in the world, you didn't have to have a Stanford qualification, you just had to be the man in her life that would always be there for her. You just had to know her! You just had to love her!" The table went flying across the room, and I watched in disbelief as Sam blinked away tears in his eyes. 
"You had the girl with the biggest heart in the world, with so much love to give, so much love, and you couldn't return any of it. You failed her. You failed yourself." 
I was done. I didn't need answers anymore. I had a list of so many things I wanted an explanation to, but now they seemed irrelevant. I didn't care anymore. I wasn't the daughter he named, the daughter he raised. I wasn't anything to him. I never had been, so why should he give the answers to questions on a subject he knew nothing about?
"This meeting is over." I heard Harry growl.
"Wait." Sam pleaded, his eyes glistening with emotion I didn't even know he was capable of.
"Just tell me. Is it true? Is she dead?" Sam was on his feet, looking at Harry with such determination.

I was still crying, tears spilling down my cheeks and my chest heaving up and down with hiccups stealing my already short breath. I watched through blurry eyes as I saw my father for what I knew would truly be the last time. Through the microphone I heard the door open and the camera focus in on his face one last time as Harry delivered the sentences that would be the closing chapter of the book between me and my dad.

"She's dead to you. You don't get to mourn her, but my God I hope you mourn every day from the hauntings of her ghost in your miserable life."