“The drugs?” I prompt, not wanting to get carried away with storytime.
He lets out a sigh, clearly seeing that the fun is over. “They were already there. My sources tell me the cops were actually going in to check on one of the guys she was living with who skipped out on a meeting with his parole officer and found her with it. She did that all to herself. A case of wrong place, wrong time.”
“So, me asking you to make her pay had absolutely nothing to do with her winding up in prison?”
“None at all.”
I nod my head and let out a breath, not realizing until this very moment just how badly I was needing that clarified. I don’t think I could live with that on my conscience. Sending someone to prison for a crime they didn’t commit is taking it a little too far, but considering she did commit the crime while on her probationary period and I had nothing to do with it – well that I can live with.
Alright. Onto the next thing. I take account of everything I need to sort through and hit him with the next question. “You lied about being my father, or well, knowing that you were my father. When you didn’t know at all, did you?”
Anton’s lips pull into a tight line and the slight shake of his head is the only indication that I get confirming what I already know. “When your mother left me, she took your DNA results with her. I knew there was a baby and I knew there was a possibility that you could have been mine, but at that stage, I was focusing more on getting the three of you back. By the time I’d found Gina, you were gone, and I’d had no way of discovering the truth.”
“What do you mean? You could have had the DNA test redone or gotten them to send you a copy.”
“That was my first thought,” he says with a darkness in his eye, clearly still pissed off about everything that went down all those years ago. “When I contacted the lab, I found that the files had been deleted and the DNA contaminated. I don’t know how, but I know Gina was the one who did it. Since that day I’ve always done my own in-house DNA testing.”
“Ok, so…what happened then? Something tells me you’re not exactly the kind to just give up.”
Anton smirks proudly. “I’m not. I didn’t have the resources back then as I do now, but I searched for you for a very long time. I knew the second those DNA tests had gone missing that you were mine. I’ve always known that. I just didn’t know where to find you. Gina had told me that your name was Meadow Mathers and all these years, that’s the name I’ve been searching.”
I shake my head. “Meadow is my middle name.”
“Yes,” he says. “I know that now. You wouldn’t have believed my shock when I found you all these years later living right under my nose, in my town, roaming my streets, and befriending your own brother.”
I square my jaw and try to put my emotions to the back of my mind. “When did you work it out? Was it when you tried to shoot Noah or when you had Rocko kidnap me?”
“Neither,” he says, sitting up in his chair. “It was just after last summer in that burger joint down by Haven Falls beach. I’ll never forget it. I walked in right behind you and watched you place your order. The second I laid eyes on you I just knew.”
“Because I look just like Gina.”
“Exactly.”
“You destroyed her life,” I say, a little unsure why I’m even bringing up the topic. “And Samuel’s. The three of us could have had a happy life living together as a family. I never would have gone my whole life not knowing them, but you destroyed that.”
“No. You don’t know what you’re talking about. Your mother took you away from me and I’m not about to apologize for that. She got what she had coming for her.”
“So, you admit it then? Gina was telling the truth. You made her do it all and then put her behind bars just for the fun of it.”
Anton looks away with the slightest hint of regret in his dark eyes. “I did what I had to do.”
I suck in a breath, unable to believe what I’m hearing. I thought maybe Gina had been exaggerating about her involvement with the prostitution ring, but she wasn’t. She’s an innocent victim in Anton’s web just as me and Noah were.
“You’re a monster.”
Anton shrugs. “So be it. You’ll understand it one day.”
“I’ll never understand putting the mother of your children in prison.”
“I’ve told you what you need to know and now it’s your turn to do something for me,” he says.