Page 40 of Fierce-Jax (Fierce Matchmaking #18)

DIRECT THE NARRATIVE

“ I appreciate you meeting me after work,” Dillion said on Thursday.

“Not a problem,” Trent said. “I know it’s difficult for you to get time off at the last minute. You’ve not heard anything else from the Cannons?”

Jax looked at Dillion. He’d said he’d like to be with her as support for this meeting but had told himself he wouldn’t say too much.

He did trust that she’d keep him up to date on what was going on though.

“No,” she said. “Tomorrow is the thirty-day mark from when I received the letter. We all agreed to do nothing and see their next move.”

He wasn’t so sure he agreed with that, but Trent had advised Dillion to sit back and wait too.

As patient and laid back as he was, waiting for answers on something like this wasn’t his nature.

He was more likely to take charge and direct the narrative to his side.

The fact Dylan Patrick agreed with him made him feel better, but he also knew that Dillion and her father were butting heads on it, so it was best for him to not voice the fact her father sided with his approach.

“I’m positive you’ll receive something next week,” Trent said.

“What did you find out about them?” she asked. Dillion turned her head to Jax and he reached his hand over and threaded their fingers together.

“I’ve got a report here detailing what Zander discovered,” Trent said. “He didn’t dig too deeply just yet, but he can. This is more of a baseline. Where they live, any arrest records, employment history. That kind of thing.”

He saw the manila envelope in front of Dillion, but she was making no move to open it.

“Can you summarize it for me?” she asked. “Or I can read this.”

“I’d planned on talking to you about it. Zander would have been here, but he got stuck on another case.”

Zander Conway, another one of the Fierce matchups. Jax knew Zander and Regan were getting married in less than a month.

Hard not to know these things when the Fierces were always bragging about their successes.

“That’s fine,” she said. “You set this up. If I need more, I can meet with him.”

“Hopefully you won’t,” he said.

“I hope not,” she said, “but something tells me this isn’t over yet.”

Jax didn’t think so either.

He’d been thinking of it for weeks and trying to see both sides of everything.

A lot was going to depend on what was said today, but the soft spot of his heart felt for a mother who didn’t know their son had died or left a grandchild behind.

That was for a stranger. But since this concerned the woman and child he loved, he wanted to huddle them in a safe house.

What Dillion had said was Alec’s father was abusive, not his mother. She was most likely a victim as well and he’d seen enough of those situations in his career and that was where he was waffling on his feelings in regards to this.

“I don’t think so,” Trent said.

“Why?” she asked. “It has to do with what you found out?”

“Zander didn’t find much,” Trent said. “Luke, Alec’s father, had some charges dropped against him for domestic violence. They were always dropped by his wife, Martha. Most times a neighbor called in a fight going on.”

“That plays in line with what Alec had said about when he was younger,” she said.

“There’s been nothing in over twenty years,” Trent said. “He’s held the same job in construction. Martha has had a few jobs in the past thirty years. Nothing major and no issues that Zander could find. They still live in the same house, have good credit, and seem to keep to themselves.”

“Not exactly upstanding citizens if the neighbors called for domestic violence,” Jax said. “That could mean it’s happening more and they just got fed up with it at those times.”

“I agree with that,” Trent said. “But twenty years is a long time to go with nothing. Neighbors could and have most likely changed or behaviors did. Again, Zander didn’t go into too much. Alec’s sister lives in the area too.”

“He has a sister?” she asked, almost jumping in the chair.

“You didn’t know that?” Trent asked.

“No,” she said. “He never said a word. We weren’t together even for two years. He didn’t talk much about his family and when he did it wasn’t with happiness. I just knew he hated his parents for different reasons and shut them out of his life.”

“His sister is forty-five.”

“So she was about eight years older than Alec.”

“Sounds like she might not have been around much when Alec was a teen,” he said.

“I don’t know what to believe,” she said.

“They appear to be an average middle class family,” Trent said.

“I’m not sure much about their characters or their drive to know their granddaughter.

It seems odd to me that for four years they had no knowledge their son died.

What made them look for him or want contact?

Those things you don’t know and you won’t unless you talk to them. ”

She took a deep breath. “I don’t know what to do.

What I’d love is if life just went on without them knowing, but that is selfish on my part.

I’ve heard it from my mother enough that she’d move heaven and earth to find her grandchild and be in their life.

It’s hard to not see that side of it, but I’m doing what is in the best interest of Gianna. I don’t want to disrupt her life.”

“We don’t always have control over that,” Trent said.

“I’m just speaking as your attorney on this.

You need to be prepared that Gianna is going to find out.

Alec’s wish not to have his child meet her grandparents doesn’t mean a lot without proof of why since he’s not here to shed light on anything. ”

“Everything is hearsay,” she said. “But that should count for something.”

“It will count for enough that they will be looked into and monitored. Supervised visitations could still happen,” Trent said.

“Where do they live?” Jax asked. “No one has said that yet.”

“Charleston, South Carolina,” Trent said.

“That’s over four hours easily by car,” Dillion said. “There is no way I’m driving that distance for them to see Gianna for an hour or two and I’ll empty my accounts before they are allowed to take her overnight.”

Jax was getting as worked up as her, but he knew his job was to keep her calm.

He reached for her hand and squeezed it. “If any of this goes to court, I’d think they’d have to come to you. They want this, not you, right, Trent?”

“That would be part of it. We are talking about two different states here. You live here, it’d be filed here. It’d be on them to do the legwork to start. They might grow tired of it.”

Jax didn’t think that was going to happen though. “Maybe they just want updates on Gianna,” he said. “Pictures and texts or calls or emails. A lot is done via video calls now.”

He was positive that Dillion didn’t want to share her daughter and he couldn’t blame her.

After what she’d gone through with Alec, she’d thought she’d wiped it from her life and moved on.

He knew she was second-guessing everything and that didn’t make it any better.

“Jax is right,” Trent said. “At some point, you need to find out what they are hoping to get out of this. I know you want to keep Gianna to yourself. As a stepfather and a soon-to-be dad, I get it.”

“But as my mother said, there is more than one side to this. I’m being selfish, aren’t I?”

“You’re being a wonderful mother,” Jax said. “Don’t look at it any other way. Right now, it’s smart to reserve judgment. Your set of facts and theirs might be different.”

“Not so different if there were signs of domestic violence in the house,” she argued. “That means Alec was telling the truth.”

“Some of the truth,” Trent said. “Sure. I agree and I’d argue that. But their attorney will argue it was against his father, not his mother. The letter came from Martha stating she wants to meet her granddaughter.”

“But she’s still living with Luke, you said.”

“It appears that way on paper,” Trent said. “That means nothing though. Things could have changed.”

“I won’t know it unless I have Zander do more checking or wait for their next move,” she said. “Got it.”

“I think that is where we are at,” Trent said. “Unless you want to make that move.”

“No,” she said. “Their letter was a courtesy in their eyes. I’m not playing nice. I’m not trying to be a bitch, but it’s my daughter’s life they are playing with.”

“Can I ask what she might know of Alec?” Trent asked. “If anything.”

Jax wanted to hear this too. They hadn’t talked much of it.

He could have asked more but chose not to at this point knowing that they’d gotten over the hump of their last fight.

“She knows her father died in an accident when she was a baby. I didn’t say he was shot. She’s still young. I don’t know how to explain that. To her, Daddy is in heaven.”

Trent nodded his head. “It’s something you’re going to have to think about most likely. I’m sorry for that, but it’s there.”

“I know,” she said. “I’ll figure it out. I don’t know if I should consider counseling for her either. It seems drastic if she’s a happy child.”

“As someone who has counselors in my agency,” Jax said, “I will say it’s never a bad idea.

Counseling doesn’t need to be when you’re already experiencing issues.

It can be there to help transition a change so that Gianna understands it’s okay to be confused and just talk about it with someone other than her mother. ”

“Jax is right,” Trent said. “And if you’re thinking along those lines, Zander’s soon-to-be wife is a therapist and has a practice right across the hall next to Zander’s office.”

Dillion snorted. “They made it easy on the Fierces for that one.”

Trent laughed. “They did. You’ve got options and some time.”

“But not a lot of time,” she said. “Thanks.”

The two of them got up and left a few minutes later.

When they were in his SUV, he asked, “What’s going through your mind?”

“Too much stuff,” she said.

“Care to share some of it or do you want to process it alone?”

“I don’t want to be alone,” she said. “It’s hard for me to say that, but I’m being honest. I don’t even know where to start with anything.”

“All you have to do is talk and I’ll listen,” he said. “I promise not to judge or get upset. I’m here to support you.”

“Thanks, Jax,” she said. “I needed to hear that. My parents have me all over the place. My father is ready to build a wall around my house to not let anyone in. My mother agrees one day and then the next says she’d continue to fight if it was her to see a grandchild she just found out about.”

“You feel guilty,” he said. “Right?”

“I think guilt is part of being a parent,” she said. “I don’t know the right thing to do. I want to honor Alec’s wishes.”

“It’s not like he thought of you or your child when he did what he had,” he said.

She looked at him and frowned and he should have kept that to himself, but he couldn’t.

“You don’t think I haven’t thought of that too?” she asked. “That’s part of the guilt in this. I think I just need to wait for their next step, then go from there.”

“Then that is what you do,” he said. “And put it from your mind. As best as you can.”

“Easier said than done,” she said. “But it’s all I’ve got.”