Angel and the Assassin 3: Sins of the Father

wanting
    everything in perfect order. He had kept his bedroom spotless, unlike all the boys he
    had played with as a kid. She watched him now carrying the tea in, placing the lovely
    white porcelain cups and saucers with great care on leather coasters on the glass-and-
    oak coffee table. “Come and sit down. Where’s your overnight bag?” he asked as if he
    had just noticed she had brought nothing with her.
    “I didn’t bring one. I won’t stay.” She sat on the couch and took her tea. “I know
    you have a busy life.”
    Kael sat and turned to face her, one arm slung across the back of the couch. “You
    can’t go back tonight. You’ll be too tired.” He paused. “Mum, what is it?”
    “Your father,” she whispered, wrapping her hands around her cup more for
    comfort than anything. She might as well get right down to it. This had dragged on long
    enough. “He wasn’t a father to you. He was the man who got me pregnant.”
    Kael went very still. His face had always been unreadable except when he was
    angry. Even as a kid, he had never smiled much. He was always serious, always
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    reading or studying something. Always telling her about things she didn’t understand
    and would never have thought to question. “Go on. What?”
    “Remember I said I met him at the Adelphi when I worked there?” He nodded.
    “He didn’t work there. He was staying there.”
    Interest suddenly brightening his face, Kael asked, “Do you know his name?”
    “No, I don’t. I don’t really know anything about him. I was a chambermaid, and
    he was a guest. The Adelphi was the best hotel in Liverpool for years. It probably still
    is.”
    “Please, Mum. Tell me what happened.”
    In a voice so quiet Kael had to ask her to speak up, she said, “I was changing the
    bed in his suite, and he came up behind me. He threw me down on the floor, and he
    was on top of me so fast there was nothing I could do. He was so quick and so strong.”
    The memory of the rape, with all the fear and helplessness of the moment,
    returned, making her mouth dry and her heart pound. She looked down, wishing she
    had not told him, but she couldn’t stop now. He had a right to know where he came
    from. “Before he left the room, he said not to bother telling anyone and not to call the
    police because they wouldn’t believe me. And why would they? He was some rich
    bloke, and I was a cleaner from a council estate. Two months later, I found out I was
    pregnant with you.”
    Easing the cup from her hands, Kael put it on the coffee table and pulled her close
    until her head rested on his chest. “Why didn’t you tell me before?”
    “You don’t tell something like that to a kid. I wouldn’t have told you now, but you
    wanted the details when you were home last time. I thought it was time I told you.”
    “I didn’t want to upset you, but I needed to know. I’ve always wondered who he
    was.”
    “That’s only natural,” she said.
    “Can you tell me what he looked like?”
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    She tried to think back to that awful day in 1977. It was June, and it had been
    unusually warm for Liverpool. “I never saw him very well. He threw me on the floor,
    and then he was on top of me. I was too busy trying to get him off me to look at his face.
    Then afterward he walked away. I wouldn’t know him if he was standing in front of me
    right now, and that makes it easier. If I remembered his face, it would make it worse. I’d
    be looking for him in you, and that’s the last thing I ever wanted to do. You’ve got
    nothing to do with him. He was scum, and you’re the best thing that ever happened to
    me. You’re nothing like him. Look how good you are. You’re such a good son.”
    “I’m surprised you wanted to keep me,” he said quietly.
    Those words made her sit up straight and look up into her son’s handsome face. “I
    never even thought about giving you up,” she said fiercely. “The moment I saw you, I
    loved you. That’s why I never told you what happened. I didn’t want you to think there
    was anything wrong with you because of how you came into the world.”
    “What do you remember about him?” he persisted. “Anything, Mum. Please try to
    think back.”
    “Oh Kael,” she sighed. “There’s nothing we can do. We’ll never find him, and I
    don’t want to.”
    From the moment he was born, she’d been entranced by those gorgeous blue eyes.
    She could