Chapter 26
“Your father liked his coffee sweet as well.” Werner smiled at Cece, his hand gripping his coffee cup tight enough to make his knuckles white, the only indication he might be as nervous as she felt.
To her relief, her plea for Briggs to trust her had worked, and he’d stopped the shift. He growled every time Werner got too close to her or stared at her for too long, but Cece could live with a little growling.
She’d quickly bought her supplies, taken the potions list from Charissa, and hustled Briggs and her grandfather out of Charissa’s store and into a nearby coffee shop.
Now, she took a sip of her coffee and when Briggs growled again, murmured, “No growling, honey.”
It should have felt weird to use a pet name with a man she wasn’t dating, but it didn’t. Not in the least. And she didn’t know how to feel about that.
Hey, Cece? Maybe now isn’t the time to explore your feelings for Briggs.
“I’m so glad to meet you, Cecelia,” Werner said. “I’m sorry for scaring you in the potions shop. It wasn’t my intention.”
Briggs scoffed loudly, his coffee sitting untouched in front of him. “You’ve been trying to kill her for weeks, and you’re apologizing for this?”
“Briggs,” Cece said.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Werner said.
“Bullshit. Cece’s aunt told us what you did to your own son,” Briggs said.
“I didn’t do anything to my son,” Werner said.
“Other than killing him.”
Werner’s hands glowed bright red, and in a low voice, dripping with anger, he said, “Watch your tongue, shifter. My patience grows thin.”
Briggs growled again, a low, continuous sound that made the couple sitting at the table beside theirs give him an uneasy look before standing and leaving the coffee shop.
“Enough,” Cece said. “Both of you stop it right now. I’m not being sued for damages by a coffee shop when you destroy it because neither of you can control your emotions.”
“You shouldn’t even be talking to him, Cece,” Briggs said. “He’s trying to kill you.”
“I am not,” Werner snapped. “I don’t know why you have that ridiculous idea in your head, but I certainly would never hurt my granddaughter.”
“Like I said…bullshit,” Briggs spat.
“Briggs, stop,” Cece said.
“You didn’t strike me as the type of person who lets their mate speak for them,” Werner said to Cece. “That’s disappointing.”
“One, you know nothing about me,” Cece said, “and two, I trust Briggs with my life and know he only wants what’s best for me.
You, on the other hand, are a stranger who may or may not be trying to kill me.
So, keep your mouth shut when you get the urge to share your opinion of me or my life because I can assure you, I do not give one flying fuck what you think of me. ”
A slow grin crossed Werner’s face. “You are definitely your father’s daughter, Nietita.”
“What does nietita mean?” Cece asked.
“In Spain, it is a pet name for a granddaughter,” Werner said.
“You’re from Spain?”
“Yes. Your grandmother and I emigrated from Spain about three years before your father was born.”
“Why are you contacting me now?” Cece asked.
“To make it easier to kill you,” Briggs said.
Werner glared at him. “I don’t know why you have this preposterous idea that I would ever harm my granddaughter, but I’m growing weary of your constant insinuation that I would.”
“Oh, it’s not an insinuation,” Briggs said. “This is me straight up saying you’re trying to fucking murder her.”
“I don’t care that you’re my granddaughter’s mate,” Werner said. “No one speaks to me that way. Most definitely not an ill-tempered shifter with zero self-control and -”
“Enough!” Cece hissed when Briggs growled so loudly that even the baristas stopped to stare at them. “Both of you knock it off with the macho bullshit. I am fucking over it.”
Werner and Briggs stared sullenly at each other as Cece said, “Someone has been trying to kill me for the last few weeks, and my aunt was so certain it was your family that she came back from the dead to warn me.”
“Why would she think our family is trying to kill you?” Werner asked.
“Because you tried to kill my mother when she was pregnant with me, and you killed your son instead,” Cece said.
Werner’s mouth dropped open. “My son died in a car accident.”
Cece glanced at Briggs. He was studying Werner with a slight scowl, and no doubt he could see the genuine confusion on Werner’s face just like Cece could.
“Maybe the amnesia spell is still working?” she said to Briggs.
“If it were, he wouldn’t remember you at all,” Briggs said.
She chewed on her bottom lip. “Maybe it’s only half working.”
“Is that how an amnesia spell works?” Briggs asked.
“No, not usually, but…”
“What amnesia spell?” Werner leaned forward. “Nietita, what are you talking about? I had no idea of your existence until a week ago.”
“A week ago?” Cece echoed.
He nodded, and Cece glanced at Briggs again before she said, “This will sound strange, but I need you to tell me exactly how and when you remembered I existed.”
Werner sat back. “Well, I didn’t remember anything. Until I found the letter, I didn’t know about you.”
“What letter?” Cece asked.
Werner took a deep breath. “My wife, Adora, your grandmother, bought a new desk for her home office. I thought I would do her a favour by arranging for her old desk to be given to a charity shop. As I was emptying the desk, I found an envelope hidden in one of the drawers.”
He stared at his coffee, his smile a little melancholy. “She had taped it to the bottom of the drawer, but it had been many years, and the tape had dried out. It fell onto the floor.”
His skin was on the pale side now, and his hands trembled slightly when he took a sip of coffee. “Our names were written on the front of the envelope in Andrew’s handwriting. I read the letter and…”
“And what?” Cecelia asked.
Werner gave her a ghost of a smile. “Learned about you, Nietita. You and your mother. That my son was in love, and she was having his baby, and he’d never been happier.”
“You just found out about me last week,” Cece said.
“Yes,” Werner said. “When I read his letter. He had written it before he died in the car accident, and left it at the house for Adora and me, but Adora, she…”
“She hid the letter from you,” Cece said. “Why?”
Red infused his cheeks, and there was a note of bitterness in his voice. “Because your mother was an apprentice witch and Adora didn’t want…”
“To sully the bloodline,” Briggs said.
Looking a little ashamed, Werner nodded. “Yes. I knew she didn’t have much respect for apprentice witches, but I didn’t realize how important it was to her to maintain the blood witch line in our family until…”
“Until she tried to kill Cece’s mother,” Briggs said.
Werner scowled at him. “Adora may have her faults, as we all do, but she is not a murderer.”
He turned to Cece. “I’m sorry, Nietita, but what your aunt told you is simply not true. Adora would never try to kill you or your mother, and she would certainly never hurt our boy. She loved Andrew deeply. His death nearly destroyed her.”
“Did you tell her you found the letter?” Cece asked.
Werner nodded. “Yes, that night. I’ll admit I didn’t go about it the right way. I was angry and hurt that she had kept this information from me, and we argued. Quite badly. Especially when I found out that Alistair, our youngest son, knew about you as well.”
He lapsed into silence, staring at the coffee cup in front of him before sighing.
“I went to a hotel for a few days, but I just needed time to… to wrap my head around the fact that you existed and that my wife and son had kept this secret for so many years. Once I calmed down, I returned home, and Adora explained to me why she’d kept you a secret. ”
“Oh, I can’t wait to hear her reason,” Briggs said.
Werner frowned at him before turning to Cece.
“She found the letter the day after Andrew died. He’d left it in her home office the day before his car accident, but she hadn’t seen it.
She didn’t tell me because I was… well… I didn’t handle Andrew’s death very well.
I was not myself for months, I fell into a deep depression, and she didn’t want to make it worse. ”
“She thought knowing you had a grandchild, that a piece of your child existed, would make your depression worse?”
Cece could hear the skepticism in Briggs’s voice, and Werner could too because his body stiffened and he gave Briggs a defensive look. “She thought she was doing what was best for me. After Andrew died, Adora found out where your mother lived and went to talk to her and…”
“And what?” Cece asked.
“It went badly,” Werner said. “Your mother was angry and blamed us for Andrew’s death.
She said he was so worried about what we would think that he wasn’t sleeping, and that’s why he fell asleep at the wheel that night and drove off the bridge.
Your mother didn’t want us to have anything to do with you, Cecelia, and she swore that if Adora tried to force the issue, she would spread lies and gossip about our family.
Adora was terrified that it would cost me my job at the WWC and damage her charities.
She agreed to leave you and your mother alone. ”
He sighed deeply and took another sip of coffee.
“Adora made the decision not to tell me. She believed she was making the right decision, Cecelia. I was devastated over the loss of Andrew, and Adora believed that also losing his child would be too much for me to handle. Alistair was there when she found the letter, and she swore him to secrecy as well.”
“So, not telling you about Cece had zero to do with Adora hating apprentice witches,” Briggs said.
Werner flushed. “That was a part of it, yes, but as I said, Adora is not perfect. None of us is.”
“So, is that why she isn’t here with you now?” Cece asked.