28. Scarlett #2
“Right.” He lays his palm flat on my thigh, measuring the large limb against my body.
“She told him her devastating secrets, Richard survived the night, and word had spread amongst the men that someone hurt Arabella the night before. A soldier. In Richard’s warped mind, he was determined to protect her from whoever had violated her, so her security detail was increased and, by pure luck, he only shot my father twice for not doing his job. ”
“What?” I startle and jolt back. “Richard shot your dad?”
“Twice.” His lips curl into a smile, as if the idea of being shot, twice, is just a friggin’ joke.
“Word had spread, remember, that someone hurt Arabella. For that to have happened, Paul obviously didn’t do his job.
No one knew who was making her scream that night, and Arabella wouldn’t confess, so security was increased, Paul was lucky his injuries weren’t worse, and for every moment Richard’s back was turned, they formulated their escape plan.
My Uncle Bas set himself up to become the ultimate scapegoat.
He was the face of Operation: Get Arabella The Fuck Out.
Arabella’s betrothed was brought to the house, he and Richard discussed business, and when deals had been struck, he attempted to woo his future bride. ”
“She wasn’t having it?”
Sebastion barks out a playful laugh, shaking his head softly from side to side.
“Not even a little bit. But, as had been proven in the past, men have the power to take, even when she didn’t want to give.
They have the power to control, even when she was determined not to let them.
She was just a girl. Not very old. She knew going through with a wedding would spell the end of…
” He shrugs. “Everything. Because she would not lie down for him. She would die defiant, or he would die by the end of her blade. Together, Paul, Arabella, and Bastion planned her escape, but shortly before they were set to leave, she turned ill. Nausea was her constant companion. Pain in her hips made it difficult to walk. A growth in her stomach made it all horrifyingly real.”
“She was pregnant.” My breath catches on emotion. “With you.”
He nods. “With me. She swears to me, swears on her life, she knew from the start I was Paul’s son and not her father’s.
Claims she never once doubted it. She insists that a mother knows.
Though I’m not sure I believe her,” he chuckles.
“Wasn’t she tempted even a little to cut me out of her stomach in those early days? Make it go away, just in case?”
“She knew.” I trail my fingertip along the bridge of his nose, Paul Jameson’s nose, and thank the stars the right sperm won thirty years ago. “She was sure.”
His shoulder twitches. “Either way, it was time to go. Her plan was not simply to run away. It was to die. Disappearing would only give Richard a new obsession, a new target to hunt, so it was imperative that he believe she was dead. She never breathed a word of her pregnancy to anyone, not even my dad, until they were gone, and on the way out, she wanted Richard’s empire flattened, his resources minimized.
This was the only way she could feel safe. ”
“So they faked her death,” I rasp. “That thing with Bastion and Paul and…” Lincoln told me some of the story already. “How she was raped and stuff.”
Sebastion turns his face and presses a gentle kiss onto my wrist. “A final kick while he was already suffering. To let Richard believe the very act that had killed her was a mere simulation of the act he’d committed against her a dozen times already.
She hoped it would haunt him. She hoped it would destroy him.
And then she and Paul, and Uncle Bas, too, and a few other men, set out to find a new life.
A new beginning. On my mother’s orders, Uncle Bas told Richard he knew the coordinates to Arabella’s grave, amongst other information the old man would send himself mad trying to find, and then he stood back and watched the prick twist himself into knots over it all. ”
“There never was a grave. Or information.”
“No. Since clearly, she’s alive and feral, even now.
” He exhales a quiet laugh. “Their plans were not flawless, they were young, working under great pressure, and inviting more men into the fold meant more lips that could flap. Richard’s business was devastated financially, and his mental health was completely obliterated.
For a short while, anyway. But where there are lips to speak, secrets eventually spill.
Word got out that more than just Paul and Bastion were involved in my mom’s death, and worse, those same loose lips let on that there were five separate men, each in possession of a subset of information Richard wanted.
Which brings us around to Nova’s involvement in this whole mess. ”
“Lincoln said you were hunting each of those five men down and relieving them of the information they possessed. The original assumption was that you were killing them, but later, he said these people were being placed into a protective detail and given new names and stuff.”