As far as Fawn was concerned, Bridget was a fool anyway for not having realized how lucky she was to have such a gorgeous and loyal man as Declan as her husband.
“Can I ask a personal question…?” Fawn prompted cautiously.
His smile lacked humor. “I think what I’ve already told you is as personal as it gets.”
“And I am well aware of the trust you’ve placed in me by telling me all those things.”
“You placed that same trust in me when you told me the truth about you and River.”
She grimaced. “But you might find my next question too intrusive.”
Declan eyed her searchingly for several seconds before abruptly nodding his consent for her to continue.
“You said that you didn’t think giving your marriage a chance was ever Bridget’s intention?”
He smiled without humor. “No.”
“On that note…” Fawn looked around them at the obvious luxury of their surroundings. “This apartment doesn’t look as if it belongs to a man who spent over twenty years enlisted in the army.”
He chuckled. “Because it doesn’t. I actually own the whole building, not just this apartment. I rent out the other fifty-eight apartments on the floors beneath this one.”
“Wow.” This was a London penthouse apartment, and Fawn couldn’t even imagine how much it was worth. But the monthly rent coming in from those other luxury London apartments beneath this one must be astronomical.
Declan nodded. “I come from old Irish money, and I inherited a large sum from my grandfather on my twenty-first birthday, which I then invested in tech companies and real estate in Ireland, England, and the US. It was a lot of money then, but it had increased in value a thousand times over by the time I eventually left the army.”
“And Bridget knew you had recently inherited family wealth before the two of you were married?”
“Yes,” he acknowledged self-derisively. “Her greed in the divorce was when I finally realized how stupid I had been to ever think she was in love with me.”
“Maybe she was but the greed just overcame her.”
He smiled. “That’s very generous of you, but somehow, I doubt that.”
“You were very young.”
“But also a fool for ever falling for Bridget’s false claims of affection.” He looked down at his feet. “I’ve never— This next bit I’ve never admitted out loud to anyone before, but…” His chin rose. “After the divorce, I learned that Bridget had been involved with the man who became her second husband long before the two of us had ever met and married. That the whole marriageand divorce from me, even having Connall, was something they had planned together purely so that they could get their hands on a great deal of my money. Connall’s existence, his child maintenance, meant I would be the gift that just kept on giving.”
She winced. “That is so cruel and mercenary.”
Declan drew in a ragged breath. “It’s because of her long-term relationship with this other man that I’ve never been completely sure that Connall was really my son by blood. Not that it would have mattered whether he was or not,” he added quickly. “I loved him and cherished every moment we were able to spend together. No matter what a blood test might have shown, in every way that matters, Connall was—is, still my son,” he corrected forcefully.
“You said ‘was’ first?” Fawn prompted curiously. As far as she was aware, Declan’s son hadn’t visited him in hospital.
Declan’s jaw tightened. “Bridget and her second husband were killed in a car crash when Connall was almost four. They had picked him up from preschool half an hour before the accident happened. His child seat was still in the car. But Connall was nowhere to be found when the police arrived on the scene.”
“How is that even possible?”
Declan sighed heavily. “They searched, and so did I, for months after I was given extended compassionate leave from the army. At first, we thought maybe they had dropped him off with a relative, but none of Bridget’s or her new husband’s family had seen them or him that day. The police looked into the possibility of a kidnapping, but no ransom was ever demanded. Connall had somehow just…disappeared. As if he had just fallen off the face of the earth.” Declan’s eyes were shadowed with the painhe still suffered from that loss. “But that doesn’t mean I’ve ever stopped searching for him. I never will.”
Fawn felt utterly stunned at learning of the heartache Declan had endured: the marriage he had eventually learned was nothing but a sham and had only existed at all for mercenary reasons. Followed by the divorce and the separation from his son, then Connall’s disappearance. It was a testament to the strength of this man that he hadn’t crumbled under the weight of all that heartache.
“You stayed in the army?” she prompted curiously.
Declan grimacedat the deep compassion and concern that he could clearly see in Fawn’s expression.
In truth, he felt totally drained from having relived all the past and present heartache he felt in regard to his brief marriage and the loss of his son.
“With no other family ties, I had no reason not to reenlist after the first four years,” he confirmed. “But during all these years, I’ve employed private investigators all over the world to continue looking for Connall. Then, two years ago, I read that article in the newspapers about Rufus Wynter being reunited with his daughter, along with the circumstances of her disappearance.” His eyes brightened. “They were so eerily similar to the way my son had disappeared that I wondered if the two things might not be connected.”
