Chapter 45
He still hasn’t let me go, and that’s exactly how I want it to stay.
Bound. Connected.
Rodrick is inside me not only in this moment, when his sex possesses me, but etched into my heart and soul.
“I’m yours, duke. I don’t care what you think you did. I’m yours.”
Before he can respond, our phones start ringing at the same time. Right after that, the doorbell goes.
“We have to answer,” I say.
“I don’t want to let you go or pull out of your body, my Jazmina.”
“I’m not going anywhere without you, but we need to find out what’s going on.”
As if echoing my words, the doorbell rings again, insistently.
He sets me down and straightens my dress. Zips his pants.
“I’m going to the bathroom. I’ll meet you in the living room in a minute,” I say.
When I come back to him a few minutes later, I realize he’s speaking to Lamar in a serious tone.
“What happened?” I ask.
“Athol. It looks like he’s had a heart attack.”
I’m standing in the hospital corridor, waiting.
We’ve just learned that what Athol had wasn’t a heart attack but a bout of indigestion that caused severe pain. Even so, the doctors admitted him as a precaution, given his advanced age.
He’s awake now, and Rodrick went in to speak with him.
I’ve barely had time to process everything that happened to us today.
Our fight. My confession that I love him.
Sex as an attempt to reach each other.
The pain he finally allowed to surface, and then the possibility of losing the man who has been his anchor.
I’m confused and frightened. I don’t believe what he told me about being responsible for his father’s death, but I know that he believes it.
What could have happened for the former duke to go to such an extreme?
I hear footsteps on the cold floor, and when I lift my head, I see the last person who—if it were up to Rodrick—should be here: Gilroy.
As if he can read my thoughts, he raises both hands before he even reaches me. Maybe because Lamar has moved closer.
“I didn’t come to fight,” he says. “I just want to know about Athol.”
“Why?”
“For a time, he was the only one who cared about my survival.”
I remember what my husband’s former guardian said—that Rodrick expelled his stepmother’s son from his lands.
My heart hardens, because my loyalty lies with the man I married.
“I don’t feel sorry for you,” I say. “I don’t know you, but I know my Rodrick. He’s good. He would never hate you for no reason.”
“Your Grace,” Lamar calls to me. “You shouldn’t even be speaking to him.”
“I’m not in any danger, so please give us a moment.”
I’m tired of respecting my husband’s boundaries. Maybe it’s time to look for answers.
“Why do you hate each other?”
“It’s always been that way. I hate him for so many reasons that sometimes I can’t even remember them all, but the main one is that he caused my mother to be killed.”
“How is that possible? He was a child!”
His face hardens into a mask of hatred. “No. He was her lover.”
I had stood up because I don’t like talking to that man from a position of disadvantage, but the shock makes me sit back down.
The corridor spins and my stomach churns.
“He couldn’t have been his stepmother’s lover. When his father died, he was barely twelve years old. He was a child. If she became involved with her stepson in any way, it was sexual abuse.”
The moment I say that, Rodrick comes out of Athol’s room, and I think he hears the end of our argument. I feel his fury rolling off him in waves.
Then he lunges at Gilroy.
My scream echoes down the hospital corridor as I watch, horrified, Lamar pull the two of them apart. I believe that if he hadn’t intervened, Rodrick would have killed Gilroy. The level of violence in him is terrifying.
When the head of the bodyguards finally drags my husband off his half-brother, Rodrick doesn’t even turn in my direction. He walks away down the corridor without looking at me.
I think about going after him, but Athol appears in the doorway of his room, wearing a hospital gown. From the pallor of his face, I know he heard everything.
“What happened?” he asks.
I’m shaking so badly that my legs can no longer support me. Before I can fall, another security guard steadies me.
“Take her to my room and call a doctor.”
The man helps me lean back into an armchair.
“I’m fine, Athol. Go back to bed.”
He obeys, but his eyes never leave me. “What happened?” he asks again.
“Gilroy . . . He told me that my husband and his stepmother were lovers, but I know that isn’t true. Rodrick was just a child.”
“We can’t talk about this without him present.”
“I’m tired of secrets, Athol. Today we had a fight, and in the end, we didn’t reach any conclusion, except for the fact that I’m not leaving him because I’m in love with him.
But how can I love someone who thinks he isn’t worthy of my love?
Who pulls me close with one hand and pushes me away with the other? ”
“He loves you too, Jazmina. I have no doubt about that.”
“Maybe he does, but not enough to share what poisons his soul. There will never be a relationship of true partnership like that.”
“Rodrick hates himself, my child, even though he has no reason to. I’ve taken care of that boy since before the former duke died. The man you see today is a survivor. I never thought he would manage to overcome what happened.”
“He didn’t. If he had, we would talk about it and leave the past behind.”
“Some memories cannot be erased, my child.”
“Please, tell me everything. I need to know.”
“I can only recount the period from when I began living with him, when he was eleven years old, just a few months before his father killed himself.”
A doctor tries to enter the room, but Athol dismisses him.
“We need privacy. I’m fine,” he says.
The man hesitates. “And the duchess?”
“It was just a dizzy spell,” I say, and at last he leaves.
“Go on, Athol.”
He runs a hand over his face, looking utterly exhausted.
“When people talk about pedophilia, they usually think of older men with boys and girls. It’s hard to imagine a child being abused by a woman, especially when it’s a boy.
Society tends to believe that even when a boy is prematurely stimulated to have sex with an adult woman, as in cases of teachers who become involved with students just entering puberty, it’s a choice. ”
“Of course it isn’t! In my mind, it’s sexual violence all the same.”
“Yes, it is. I studied the subject extensively when I became Rodrick’s tutor because I wanted to help him, since the psychologists couldn’t. There’s no way of knowing at what age she began abusing him. Iona had been caring for Rodrick since he was three years old.”
Tears stream down my face as I imagine my husband—a beautiful, strong, honorable man—still a child, vulnerable in the hands of a monster who should have protected him.
“I can, however, tell you when he began to react. Rodrick told me that from the moment he realized the things his foster mother asked him to do were wrong, he no longer allowed her to touch him. He was around eight years old. According to what Donell told me, he became rebellious around that time. His father traveled a great deal and left him at the mercy of that woman, who, no longer able to abuse him sexually, beat him.”
“And the duke? Why didn’t he do anything?”
“Rodrick tried to tell him, both about the past sexual abuse and what came afterward, the physical abuse, the beatings. The duke conveniently chose not to believe his son. That’s when I entered their lives.”
I hold my breath, my intuition telling me the worst has yet to be said.
“Rodrick and I formed an instant connection. Perhaps because I always respected him and never treated him like a problem child, even when he misbehaved. One day, he found the courage to tell me everything. I’m a lawyer.
I work with facts and, above all, evidence.
I advised him to film her, and that’s what he did. ”
“To blackmail her?”
“To try to put an end to Iona’s cruelty once and for all, since Donell wouldn’t take him seriously.
Rodrick pretended to accept her advances.
He arranged to meet his stepmother in his bedroom and placed a video feed in the duke’s study, showing everything that would take place in the bedroom.
He knew that on that day his father would be working from home.
In fact, he was only a few steps away from Rodrick’s room.
In any case, by that point Rodrick was already big and strong, and if anything went wrong, Iona wouldn’t be able to force him into anything.
The plan went exactly as expected. The woman undressed .
. .” He looks uncomfortable. “I’m sorry to recount something so sordid, Jazmina, but if you want to understand your husband’s mind, you need to hear it through to the end. ”
“I won’t lie and say this is easy. I myself would kill her if I had the chance. I hate her with every fiber of my being.”
“So do I, my child, and I hope she’s burning in hell.”
“Please, go on.”
“The duke entered the room with a gun in his hand. He shot his wife and then himself.”
The room spins as I try to imagine the horror of that moment.
Agitated, I stand up, but my legs give out and everything goes black.