3. Hades
Hades
CHAPTER THREE
"Are you telling me that out of nowhere, one of the most respected law firms in the world decided to represent her?" I ask the team of lawyers I hired to assist the Prosecution against Kennedy Juliet O’Neal.
"Yes, that's correct,” answers one of them. “And there's more. They dismissed the psychiatrist, Dr. Roberts, whom you asked us to hire to assess whether her amnesia was real, which was expected. Why would they keep someone who’s interested in their client's conviction?"
"The doctor wasn't being very helpful anyway."
"You asked us to find the best criminal psychiatrist money could buy. Peter Roberts is the best in that regard. He won't bring you the answers you want, but rather the truth."
"The truth is what I want."
"Is it? Because, if you'll allow me to speak frankly, you seem obsessed with revenge."
"One thing doesn't exclude the other."
"If Miss O'Neal is guilty, then yes, I tend to agree with you, but I'm not convinced. I'm more inclined to believe that Ryan Corey III committed the crime."
"They both did. He was Kennedy's boyfriend," I say, feeling the bitterness of self-loathing in my mouth as I speak those words.
Even now, knowing everything she's done, how she wickedly squandered the chance given to her by Vina and Pam, the idea of another man touching her makes me sick.
Based on what? A few kisses we shared?
I must have been crazy, damn it!
But then I know there's no better way to define the state I've been in for almost three years than utter madness.
"I don't know,” says one of the lawyers. “The truth will come out sooner or later. The fact is I wanted to warn you that there's a good chance she might be able to answer the charges while out on bail soon, due to the fact that she's a first-time offender, has amnesia, woke up from a coma, is very young, and her fingerprints weren't on the knife."
"She was on the run!"
"That's not what the defense claims. They say your client lost her memory and, because of that, wandered around the world, but when she saw a headline in the newspapers with a picture of her saying she was wanted, she tried to turn herself in, got hit by a car, and the rest you already know."
"Where was she all that time? On Mars? Because only that could justify her not being seen anywhere. Kennedy was obviously hiding."
I stand up, feeling all the resentment I've been harboring for three years erupt.
I dismiss them and pick up the phone to answer Zeus, my older brother, because he's been texting me all morning and I know why. I hardly ever leave the house or see them anymore. Only on rare occasions. My three brothers, just like me, are overly protective.
Besides my being the youngest, my journey for revenge worries them.
"Why didn't you come for lunch at Eleanor's house on Sunday?" he asks, without greeting me, as soon as I answer.
Eleanor is his mother-in-law, the stepmother of his wife, Madison, and has become an important figure in the family, since we lost our mother a long time ago. In fact, we lost both parents on the same day—Mom in a fatal accident and my father by suicide.
"I had business to attend to."
"What kind?"
I remain silent, and of course, he soon guesses.
"The usual? Will you never give your mind a break? Just because you're only in your early thirties doesn't mean you're exempt from a heart attack."
"Give my mind a break? That will only happen when everyone is punished. I won't stop."
"I heard Juliet woke up from the coma and is in the prison hospital. Isn't that enough for you?"
I don't tell him what the lawyers just told me, that she might gain the right to plead her case while out on bail. "One is missing. The damn fugitive."
"In your quest for revenge, you're ruining your life, Hades."
"You're the last person who can advise me to forget about revenge, Zeus."
Our grandfather made him swear, on the day our father died, that he would clear the Kostanidis name after our mother dragged it through the mud, and for over a decade, Zeus lived to fulfill the promise and only rested when our name was cleared and the enemy of our family was dead.
We're very alike. He needed to fulfill his vow to our grandfather before he could finally start living again. I have to do the same regarding Pam's death, or I'll never have peace.
We talk for about ten minutes, but I’ve barely hung up when the phone rings again.
"Hades?" The voice of Vina, Pam's grandmother, sounds tearful when I answer.
I close my eyes and lean back in my leather chair in the office. "Vina, how are you today?"
"I feel stronger every day. Could you come see me? You don't need to stay long."
That's not what I want. The property where she lives brings me an inexplicable feeling of loss.
Since Pam was killed, I moved Vina to the main house. Before, she lived in the caretaker's house, but when she told me the smaller residence brought her too many memories of her two "granddaughters," Pam and Kennedy, whom she calls by her middle name, Juliet, I told her she didn't need to stay there anymore. She could choose any room she wanted in the main house.
I hired more staff and nurses to take care of her once she returned from the hospital because her health has never been the same since the stroke she suffered.
However, the only time I returned to that house, shortly after she moved, I felt like I was suffocating as I passed through the library.
After accepting the invitation, I say goodbye to her, and an hour later, I arrive at the property I've been keeping for no other reason than to allow Vina to continue living where she worked almost her entire life.
Like a masochist, I walk straight to the library, the room that brought me an unpleasant feeling the last time I stepped into it.
I enter, trying to understand what the hell that was about, and as soon as I step into the room, the memory of a female moan crosses my brain, making me sure I'm going mad.
Unable to understand why, somehow I know it's hers: Kennedy's—or Juliet, as Vina, Pam, and everyone else called her.
I lean against the wall, searching every corner of my mind for the context of that moan, but all I can think is that the only time I was with Kennedy here was on the night Pam invited me to dinner with them, asking to use the main house kitchen to prepare our meal. But then, because of the rain, she couldn't get home, and the meal never happened.
That day, for the first time, I found out she had told a small lie. Vina wasn't there. It would be just us three. In the end, only Kennedy came to talk to me and then went back to the caretaker's house, where she lived, because I vaguely remember her leaving me alone.
I ended up sleeping in the library itself, and when I woke up the next day, I found Pam watching me.
I told her to leave. I was shirtless, pants undone, which I believe I did to be more comfortable.
She didn't move at first, and when I asked about Kennedy, she told me she had gone to meet her boyfriend in the middle of the night.
She told me her "cousin" had sent her a message saying she was going to Ryan Corey III's house.
I remember the hatred and also the possessive feeling that hit me. I wanted to go to the damn man's house and get her out of there.
Memories of my conversation with Pam that day flood my mind.