Page 58 of The Question of Us (Fisher & Church #2)
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Five weeks later
Nick
Sunlight striped the covers over our tangled limbs, making me smile. I wasn’t sure I’d ever get used to waking up with Mads in my arms, knowing he was mine and that I wasn’t going anywhere. We weren’t going anywhere.
I tightened my grip around his waist and pressed my nose into his silvering hair, breathing him in. He smelled of his favourite body wash, late night sex, sour morning breath, and old books. It shouldn’t be as sexy as it was.
Through the window over his shoulder, I watched the magnolias sway gently in the breeze, their skeleton shapes dark against the bright morning sky. Autumn had hit hard and fast in the upper North Island, a recent cyclone stripping even the hardiest trees bare in a day.
I drew the covers over my shoulders and hunkered down, Mads’ warm body flush against mine. This was our house now, our bedroom, our bed. I couldn’t have been happier. But it hadn’t been easy. I’d finished moving in only a week before, two weeks after we returned to New Zealand.
Mads had been both shocked and thrilled when I’d first raised the idea.
I could still picture his face as he tried and failed to hide just how overjoyed he truly was.
It was all the reassurance I’d needed that I was doing the right thing.
I wanted this man. I wanted to build a life with him. Case closed.
But that was only the beginning. Every decision about what to bring with me, what to put in storage, what to throw out, and what to leave in the house for a potential future tenant was fraught with emotion.
Letting go of the life I’d shared with Davis was a process that I figured would always hurt in some way.
And that was okay. It didn’t mean I wasn’t ready to start building a new life.
My therapist agreed, although I hadn’t needed her approval.
I’d already known the truth of it in my heart.
And so, the skip arrived and the clean-out began.
Some days I managed on my own. Some days I needed Mads or Samuel to get me through—once Samuel started talking to me again, much the same predicament Mads faced with his own brother who was a week away from arriving on our doorstep to rip Mads a new one.
Regardless, I was finally done. The important threads of one life carefully preserved with another just beginning.
I’d cried and raged and laughed. But what I hadn’t done was question my decision, not even once.
It felt strange seeing Davis’s and my things in Mads’ house—in our house.
It would take time, I knew, but every day felt a little more comfortable.
At first, I stored most of the items in our bedroom or in the large hallway closet, not wanting to intrude on Mads’ carefully curated life.
There were pieces of art, mostly Davis’s, but ones I liked, small pieces of furniture, and favourite knick-knacks.
Yet somehow, over the last week, many of the items had miraculously migrated into the living area, including a photo of Davis’s and my wedding day, the sight of which brought me to tears.
There was only one person to thank and that was Mads.
He’d also changed two of his artworks for two of ours; the fruit basket on the kitchen island was swapped to one I’d bought on impulse from a market while holidaying with Davis in Fiji; and Mads’ bedside tables were switched out for mine as well.
It meant the world. Seeing pieces of my old life set amongst Mads’ made me feel welcome in a way I couldn’t express.
But the most touching thing Mads did was allocate one of his spare bedrooms as my study.
After everything that had happened, I felt no desire to return to my forensic work.
The decision had been easy. But I needed to keep my other clients until I figured out what my next step would be.
I felt adrift in my career for the first time in my life and I had some thinking to do.
The study provided a place for my desk and computer and my favourite armchair and bookcases.
A place to display the more personal items from my marriage and those memories of Davis.
It was also a safe place to retreat when things became too much or I needed some thinking time where I knew I wouldn’t be interrupted.
And I wouldn’t be interrupted because Mads made me a promise.
If the door was closed, he would always knock.
He would never ever violate my privacy. Ever.
Unless I was playing some godawful music and he couldn’t think.
Knowing how much Mads’ own space and privacy meant to him, I understood it was a promise he would never break, even though I didn’t need those same things quite as much as he did.
It was Mads’ way of saying Yes, I love you and I want you here.
This is your house too. But you are your own person and so am I.
I will respect you. We will respect each other.
And fuck if that wasn’t sexy as hell.
Unlike me, Mads had returned to his conservator work with a relish that made me envious.
It seemed to soothe something in his soul and helped his healing.
I was happy for him. I knew I needed to find the same thing in my own life; I just wasn’t sure what that looked like yet.
Mads said there was no hurry and not to rush a decision. I decided to take his advice.
Mads murmured and stirred in my arms but he didn’t wake.
His soft snores broke the quiet of the room, making me smile.
He always swore he didn’t snore and I loved to tease him about it.
Not that I had the moral high ground on that issue since I snored like a trooper most nights.
I pressed a kiss to the scar on his shoulder from the bullet wound, and another to the site of his skin cancer excision.
His hips moved against my groin and... good morning to you, too.
I hadn’t actually topped Mads yet, but it was coming.
I wasn’t sure why I hadn’t made the move but it didn’t appear to bother Mads and I tried to lead in other.
.. naked ventures. Besides, Mads seemed more than happy to indulge my craving to have him inside me as often as I could, which to be fair, might not have impressed Gazza and his generational ilk, but it was just as good and maybe even better.
And snuggling on a couch watching bad movie reruns was hella sexy too.
Which was just as well since it had been pretty much all we were capable of the two weeks we’d spent holed up in a Wangaratta bed and breakfast while being interviewed by the police about the whole Marty Klein shitshow.
To be fair, the detectives were a lot more forgiving about our involvement in what went down than they might’ve been.
This was partly due to Angela and Samuel putting their necks on the line and running interference—we’d never be able to thank them enough.
It was also down to what the police found when they began pulling Marty’s house apart.
A ton of incriminating evidence painted a nasty picture of what had truly been going on behind the public persona Marty cultivated of a man at the helm of a successful racing empire.
This included a pharmacy-level range of date rape pills and a ton of additional recreational drugs like meth and cocaine, in addition to an incriminating notebook full of names and.
.. preferences. The repercussions were ongoing and many more people had been arrested in the weeks following the party.
This included quite a few of the attendees themselves, Jacob, not the least of them.
We’d been right in thinking Marty’s party was anything but a standard celebration, hence the no cell phone moratorium at the front door, which had seen Gazza’s phone taken from him.
Marty was part of and possibly even the organiser behind a select and secretive Australian sex trafficking operation made up of mostly wealthy, powerful men.
Men with an interest in other men but not on equal terms.
Marty’s parties were a way for like-minded men such as Jacob to indulge their fantasies and sample fresh merchandise .
Even the waitstaff had been chosen for their discretion and their willingness to participate in any extracurricular activities if called upon in exchange for a generous remuneration.
Hence the blade secreted around Lee’s neck.
It wasn’t unknown for Marty to offer Lee as a bribe or a thank-you to his friends, and it hadn’t always gone well for the young man.
It made disgusting and horrifying sense.
A further two young men had been found drugged and unresponsive on the grounds of Marty’s property that night, but neither could provide any details about what had happened.
Lee proposed that Marty had told his men to simply get them out of the house and get their abusers to safer ground once the police were on his doorstep.
Sexual control and all kinds of abuse appeared to be the common theme bringing all these arseholes together, and not much seemed off limits.
Drugging, kidnapping, imprisonment, using family as leverage were all widely practised.
Some of the targets remained in public, like Lee.
Others were squirrelled away, moved between states when their captors grew tired of them, or simply fell out of sight.
The list of names grew daily. As far as the investigating officers could tell, there’d been no underage targeting, but that didn’t make what had gone on any less unspeakable.
But the true unveiling of what went on inside Marty’s house and at his parties came not from the initial police search of the property—Marty had been very careful to make sure nothing untoward was readily accessible—it came from evidence provided by Lee, who led police to all the hidey holes Marty used for storing his most prized information and collections.