Chapter 27
Being escorted to my own house in Nashville hadn’t been where I’d expected Lafayette to take me when he’d suddenly whipped out a gun on me. Surprisingly, I wasn’t even that scared. I was more pissed off than anything. Where was Priyanka? Where was Van?
My heart lurched gratefully when he made me open the front door, like he wasn’t poking me in the back with the gun, and both Fawcett and Thiessen came bounding up to me, unharmed.
I’d managed to come back home and get them settled before I’d had to go to the taping at The Gab.
I managed to slick my hand down the back of Thiessen’s fur right before her sister started hissing at Lafayette, already sensing his malice.
When she saw that Fawcett was going off in his general direction, Thiessen started doing the same thing, eyes wide and hissing loudly.
“Either get them to shut up or put them in a different room.” Lafayette demanded, his slicked back blond hair unmoving as he gestured the gun between my girls. “We have business to discuss.”
Attempting to calm the storm brewing inside myself, I scooped up my little darlings and placed them in the office right off the entrance, closing the door with them protected inside. Whatever the hell Lafayette planned to do to me, I wouldn’t allow him to hurt them.
While I’d been securing the girls, I saw that Lafayette had managed to walk into the dining room and had picked up a chair from the table, one of my silver coated dining chairs that had come with the house, and placed it in the middle of the entrance, right beneath my massive chandelier that hung from the ceiling.
“Sit down.” He again used the gun to gesture toward the seat and I really wished he’d holster the fucking thing if he wasn’t going to actively shoot me.
Because I valued my life and the continued heartbeats of my cats, I begrudgingly sat down in the chair and faced him as he began to pace.
He revealed my phone from his pocket, sliding his fingers over and over as he seemed to be typing a message.
I heard the sound that signaled that the message was sent and then without a second thought, Lafayette slammed my phone on the marble floor, my phone shattering in a skittering of jagged pieces across the floor.
I winced at the impact, but kept my eyes square on him.
He’d confiscated my phone once he’d gotten me in the white car he’d forced me to get in to.
I had no way of getting in contact with Priyanka, Van, or the authorities.
There was no home phone here. Inwardly, I remembered that I had my iPad upstairs in my bedroom.
If I could somehow get up there, I could use it to get help.
However, Lafayette was ending his pacing, and aiming the gun directly at my chest as his narrow eyes drank me in, his obvious obsession with me blooming behind his blue eyes.
A wicked smirk proceeded, looking ugly and twisted on him.
This was a grin full of malicious intent, and I wanted to look away but I found myself not wanting to allow him the upper hand by me not being vigilant to my surroundings.
“What do you want?” I bellowed, unable to take this silent dance any longer. He had been brave enough to pick me up backstage at The Gab and brandished a gun to make me get in a car with him. Clearly, he’d had a plan and I was done being in the dark. “What’s the point of all of this?”
“Straight to the point.” Lafayette nodded, his lips turning into an impressed frown. “I have to respect that. I’ll postpone my monologue then and get to business.”
“Thank fuck for that.” I rolled my eyes.
Again, I don’t know why I wasn’t more scared than I should have been. Maybe it was being in my own house, being in a familiar setting, but I was just irate that this was happening. And if he’d hurt Priyanka or Van, I’d kill him myself.
Lafayette let out a rolling laugh, full of self-indulgence and sounding out of place around me. I wanted this psychopath of a man out of my fucking house.
“Bold and brash. As I’d expect you to be. You really are one of us.”
My face crumpled in confusion. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“How much do you know about the Rhodes family, Alistair?” He said, standing before me and actually managing to conceal his gun in the back of his white slacks.
“Enough to know all of you are prejudice pieces of shit.” I snarled, crossing my arms. “Did I miss anything?”
He chuckled again, tossing his head back in a fit of laughter and amusement. When he regained his stature, he bent down, carrying his weight solely on his ankles as he made sure we were on the same eye level before he spoke again.
“A fair assessment.” He wiped the smug look off his face and suddenly looking pious. “I, however, have no ill-will toward Orbs like the rest of my family. I don’t really care about Orbs. But this,” He used his hand to pantomime between the two of us. “This isn’t about Orbs. This is about you.”
“Get to the fucking point.” I said bravely. Now that the gun wasn’t as accessible, I really didn’t give a shit about keeping my tongue from lashing out at Lafayette.
“Something you may or may not know,” He stood back up to his full height, beginning his pacing in front of me yet again. “Is that my father, Archibald Rhodes, is dying. In fact, he’s probably on his way out the door as we speak.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Because he said something a couple months ago that completely upended the family.” Lafayette nodded, tilting his head and sliding his slitted eyes my way. “He admitted to stepping out on our mother. Once and only once.”
Okay, and? Why the fuck did I care about this family? Lafayette knew I didn’t give two shits about him. He’d learned that from our stare down backstage at the show. So why was he still doing the monologuing he swore he was going to refrain from doing?
I remained quiet until he finally lifted his lips once more.
“He admitted that while it had only been the one time with this mystery woman, who’s name he couldn’t quite remember, their one night only had resulted in the birth of a child.
” I kept the veil of unknowing on my face because I still wasn’t understanding what this little tale of family woes had to do with me.
“I was put in charge of figuring out who the long-lost Rhodes half-sibling was. So I visited the town that my father did somehow remember, visiting her old home that she had vacated only months prior to my visit.”
Now it was my turn for my eyes to narrow. Because this was feeling really familiar. But…there was no way that…
“That’s right, Alistair.” Lafayette sighed, ending his pacing again to stand abruptly right in front of me, unmoving and stoic. “As fate would have it, you are the Rhodes half-sibling.”
My mind swam, drowning in the waters of his words.
That...was impossible. I searched for a reason that would explain why Lafayette would lie to me, specifically about something like this.
Too many contradictions afflicted me to make sense of his proposal that I was secretly related to the Rhodes family.
“You're wrong.” I spat, announcing his falsehood flat out. “My father was James Finneson.”
“No.” Lafayette placed his hands on his hips, as if that made his point more valid. “He might've been your dad, but he was never your father.”
My stare was stuck on every crease that made Lafayette Rhodes. I'd never wished more than in that moment that I could insight flames to skate across someone's skin, wishing I could make him spontaneously combust and saving me from having to face his loose accusations.
I decided to try and poke holes in his theory. If this was the conversation we were going to have, then I was going to milk it. “I’ll pretend for the sake of argument that you're right. How do you know I'm this long-lost Rhodes sibling?”
Lafayette's simper was entertaining as much as it was devilish.
If I didn't already hate him so much, I'd be impressed by his layered levels of facial expression.
“Well, my first inkling that it was you was when you just so happened to be standing outside of the very dwelling that my investigation of my father's confession had led me to.”
My eyes flared in response. As I glared at him, one piece of this confusing puzzle started to lay itself into place. That weirdly sensitive feeling I'd felt outside of Spider Way...
“It was you." I finally surmised. “You were watching me when Van and I were visiting Spider Way.”
“That's right.” Lafayette affirmed. “I’d only arrived minutes before you did. I'd barely had enough time to hide among the trees before you tried to spot me.”
So I hadn't been losing my mind. Lafayette had been in the building both at the first show when I'd felt that obtuse feeling of being observed as well as backstage at The Gab. All three instances that I’d felt this loathsome stare, dripping with bad intent, had come from one person and one person only.
All along it'd been Lafayette.
“Then when I met you backstage at your show,” Lafayette continued his explanation.
“And I shook your hand, I had this feeling. That it was you. But of course, I needed more than a feeling. I needed proof.” He began to rustle around in the pocket of his white slacks as my patience began to sheer thin.
“There's no way you managed to get proof of this crazy hunch.”
“Oh, but I did.” He snarled with a smile, producing a rolled up wad of papers. “But here, read it for yourself if you still don't believe me.”
As he tossed me the consolidated papers, the sickening sound of his stifled laughter filled the space, and it truly made me want to gag.
I started scanning over the papers, dumbfounded that it was actually DNA test results. My eyes flared as I read Lafayette's name next to someone labeled only as 'Subject B'.