“How about you enlighten me?” Ethan asked, and she could see he no longer was going to let her get away with protecting him. Yes, his controlled anger was directed at her because she hadn’t trusted him, but he was also furious at their father because he believed her. She understood the anger; she felt it every day. It just was hard to have the one person who had always been in her corner aim even a small portion of his anger at her.
“That night I was restless, like every other night since my abduction. But it was different; it was a more profound restlessness. I attributed it to what I had overheard earlier in the week, but now I’m not so sure. Now I know it was my intuition telling me there was more to the story. I knew there had to be a good reason Father would want all the evidence destroyed. I wanted to believe that he was covering up for past shady dealings, but I was terribly wrong.”
“Kara, I think it’s time you stop telling such foolish, made up stories,” Constance Vanderbilt said, her voice dripping venom.
Kara hadn’t realized that their parents had walked in, but she wasn’t surprised they were hovering outside, careful to protect themselves. Kara turned and looked at her mother and mock clapped at her performance.
“Bravo, Mother. Good timing. Unfortunately, this time I won’t be silenced. So, you can leave the command performance at the door.” Kara looked at her mother scornfully and noticed that her brother and Caleb had both looked at each other with alarm on their faces. For the first time in her life, Kara had made her mother pause, and she was going to take advantage of the situation. “I heard arguing, which was not unusual in this household, but for some reason, I was intrigued by it more than scared of it.”
Her mind traveled to that night nearly ten years ago. Kara couldn’t wait to get it all off her shoulders, and once she started, the words tumbled out. It was surprising how easy it was to recount.
It was a cold, damp night, and once again, Kara couldn’t sleep. Big surprise. She hadn’t slept more than two hours a night since the abduction unless she was medicated, and Kara had stopped allowing them to dispense any medicine to her. Therefore, the two hours she slept were usually filled with horrifying nightmares. They weren’t really nightmares, just memories of what had happened. A nightmare was something that you worry could happen, but it never actually did.
It was no wonder she was more restless tonight than usual. After hearing her father with those two cops, it was any wonder she could stomach being in the same house with him. Soon that wouldn’t be a problem since she was still going away to college like she planned. Agitated, she got out of bed and decided to go grab a book from her parents’ extensive library.
Surely a good book could get her through the night. Lord knew it had done the trick almost every other night since she’d gotten home. At least she was brushing up on her literature; it would be useful knowledge when she left for school in the coming weeks. Even if she’d been struggling to leave her parents’ house for more than a photo op with them, it didn’t matter, she wasn’t staying in her parents’ house forever.
Kara had always felt uncomfortable getting her picture taken with her parents, pretending that they were the happy family when the reality was far from that. But before the incident, as her parents referred to it, she could at least stand there and not feel like a freak show. That wasn’t the case anymore. They expected her to act normal; no, they expected her to be normal.
Uneasy, she walked down the hallway, and when the sounds of arguing piqued her interest, she crept as silent as a whisper to her parents’ bedroom door. She found herself tiptoeing, a habit that had formed as a youth so as not to be heard when arguments were occurring. Her parents had forced her to break the habit, but these days she seemed to always be tiptoeing, even though no one would be able to hear her footsteps on the plush carpet.
Kara wasn’t sure what had compelled her to eavesdrop; normally, she would walk as quickly and quietly in the opposite direction as possible. But on this night, she felt the compulsion to stand by her parents’ door and noiselessly listen.
Perhaps it would help her figure out her father's betrayal, the betrayal she had overheard earlier in the week because for the life of her, she could not figure out why he had asked those two cops for the evidence and then burned it in their fireplace. But for whatever reason, he had paid them to hand it over so he could make it disappear.
Whatever the reason was, she knew it was imperative to listen to the argument tonight. Leaning into the door so she could better hear, her stomach dropped to her knees, and her heart felt like it would jump out of her chest and bounce down the hallway. Kara wasn’t sure what she had expected to find out, but she knew it wasn’t what she was hearing.
“Would you just calm down? We are not going to go to jail. As long as your two hired guns are as good as you say they are, we should be fine. They are as good as you say, right?” her mother asked.
“They damn well better be. I paid them a lot of money to get me that evidence, and I am not about to go down for this whole mess.”
“Don’t you mean we paid them a lot of money?”
“Fine, whatever; let’s argue over semantics when we should be discussing how to handle this blackmail letter we got.”
“So, we pay it, what is there to discuss? We pay what he wants, and if he comes back, we pay again. I will not go to jail if I have anything to say about it.”
“But you would send me to jail for you, wouldn’t you? Just remember, darling, this was your idea. From the day we got the ransom call, you were calling the shots, delaying the drop so we could get some more publicity. I knew you could be a bitch, but I had no idea you were so coldhearted.”
Crack! Kara jumped when the sound of a hand slapping someone across the face echoed through the door. Apparently, her mother hadn’t liked being called a bitch. It was no secret she was coldhearted. Kara guessed she just didn’t like it being said out loud. She didn’t particularly care at this point. If she understood what she was hearing, she didn’t care about anything her parents said or did. They were unredeemable.
“Are you saying you don’t want to be governor? Hell, she was already in their hands, and the publicity was priceless. You climbed up in the polls so fast that there’s no way you can lose.” Constance’s voice was different now, seductive. Hell, she was nearly purring.
“Is that all you care about, being a governor’s wife?” Stanley asked and then grunted, and Kara heard a zipper sliding down.
“No, but it ranks in the top five. Right behind what I am about to do right now. Don’t get all sanctimonious on me; you certainly were not fighting me on this back when it mattered. You were thrilled at the prospect of using this to get you in the governor’s mansion.”
Kara heard the sounds of her parents having rough sex and swallowed, disgusted. Not because her parents were having sex, but because they were having sex while discussing what had happened to their daughter. As if it turned them on.
“That was before I found out what they did to her. You don’t care in the least what they did to her, do you?” he moaned and grunted.
“It was unfortunate. But what would paying sooner have done? She had already been with him for two days before we were contacted; what was done, was done. Yeah, like that.” Kara didn’t know what that was and didn’t want to know.
“She spent two extra days being raped and tortured before she escaped. That doesn’t upset you?”
“Harder…which part? That she escaped or that she was there for two extra days?”
They stopped talking for a while, and all she could hear was more sounds of rough sex. She finally heard clothing being put back on.
“It should upset you. But the part about us dragging our feet, all for what, for some publicity to get me in the governor’s office? How can that not upset you? How does that not keep you up at night?”
“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. It doesn’t appear that you care all that much, either. Kinky bastard that you are.”
; “Lucky for us, she didn’t die.”
“Things might have been easier if she had.”
“Constance! Don’t you care for her at all?”
“Oh, like you care. You’re too busy bedding anything with a pulse to care about your children.”
“And you should talk.”
Crack! Kara flinched again when she heard another slap connect with her father’s face. Stunned, she quietly walked back to her room and packed.
“As you can see, our wonderful sainted parents delayed paying the ransom for some added publicity. They left me with him for two extra days. All because Dad was climbing in the polls. God, I felt so loved when I heard you strategizing.”
The truth came tumbling out in one breath, everything except the disgusting details of her parents having sex while discussing her kidnap and ransom. No one needed to know that part; she didn’t even want to know that part. Being raped had been no contest to having such a deep betrayal from her parents. The betrayal had been felt so deep, she would never be the same. Parents were supposed to protect their children. They should have rushed the money to her captors, but they didn’t.
“My God, Kara. Why didn’t you tell me?” Ethan whispered.
“I couldn’t tell you. My life was ruined. Why ruin yours, too? What I heard that night…it was like being raped all over again. Over the last ten years, I found myself wondering if it would have been better never finding out what they had done. But I now know it made me who I am today. I’m stronger because of it. I still had been planning to go away to school, but I may never have left their godforsaken house had I not heard them that night. I certainly wouldn’t have gone to the school I wanted to and not their choice. I had been scared of my own shadow. I would have done whatever they wanted if they only showed me the simplest thing—that they loved me. But they didn’t show me that, and what I heard empowered me. Not only did it empower me to leave, it helped push me to the school I wanted and to choose medicine like I wanted, so I could make a difference.”
“But I could have shouldered it with you. For God’s sake. Kara, the only reason I kept in touch with our parents was for Mother. And she’s no better than Father. In fact, from what you just told me, she’s worse. So much worse.”
“Ethan, please don’t be angry. I had to do it this way. I had no idea how to deal with things that were going on in my head, much less what I had witnessed. There was no way I could let you go through what I’d gone through. Your life was still livable. At the time, I kind of felt like mine was done. I know I told you I felt liberated. Which I did, but I was like a person with no country and didn’t know if I would be able to pull out of the tailspin my life had gone into.”
“Kara, I’m not mad at you; I’m furious at them,” he said, throwing a glare to their parents. Who had been systematically ignored since the truth had broken out of its shell.
“You’re not?”
“How could I be mad at you? You were only eighteen. I’m not sure anyone could have stomached what they heard. Actually, I give you a lot of credit for walking out on them. I would have done the same thing.” He glanced at them again. “I would ask you if you’re happy that you have lost your daughter since now you are going to lose your son, but I don’t think you care. Even if you do care, I quite frankly don’t. Some sins just cannot be forgiven.”
“Someday, you are going to be sitting all alone and wonder what happened. You might even forget whose fault it was and try to contact me, but you can be sure I will not answer any kind of correspondence from you. Time cannot heal what you did, and I should know,” Kara said.
Kara turned her back to them. Caleb placed his hand on the small of her back, and she finally felt protected. Even when her mother chose to show her true colors, she felt capable of handling it.
“Don’t worry, dear, there won’t be a time when I will be sitting around wishing I could talk to you. So, don’t wait by the phone for me to do so,” her mother said coldly. “But I will make you pay for turning my son against me. Mark my words.”
Kara squared her shoulders, sucked in a deep breath, and turned once more to look at her mother. Locking her eyes with the eyes of the woman who raised her, who was supposed to protect her, all that she saw was hatred, and she shook her head sadly.
She turned to look at her father, pity washed over her face.
“It’s a real shame that all this time, I gave you some credit. After that night, I thought you were just a product of an evil wife. I disagree with Ethan; you turned out to be worse. When you could have been salvaged, you did something unredeemable. You allowed it to happen, and then you nearly laughed about it after. For that, I am sorry. As for you, Mother, in the last ten years, I thought you might have a change of character and plead for my forgiveness. You didn’t, and after you leave this room, I’m done with you. I will not think of you another second.”
As if their father was truly tired, weary of the fight to continue to pretend he was the patriarch who led their family when in reality their mother did, he looked at her, and she swore his eyes were glistening when he said, “I truly am sorry, too.” And then he turned and walked away.
“You always were so weak, it disgusted me,” her mother spat. “At least your children got their strength from me.”
“Oh, but remember, dear mother, you would have preferred I died, so maybe you would have preferred I inherited his weaknesses?” Kara asked coldly. “If I had, I wouldn’t have made it out of that cabin and those woods. I would surely be buried somewhere, either never to be found or destined to be found by some poor hunter or kid walking his dog.”
Kara was about to leave the hospital room, but then she realized that she didn’t need to leave. They did.
“No, you know what? I am not leaving. You need to leave. You are not welcome in this room.”
“You can’t force us to leave; you don’t have the power to do so.”
“This is my hospital room, and I would like you to leave…” Kara held up her hand, effectively silencing her brother.
“That is where you’re wrong, Mother. As one of the attending doctors of this hospital, it is fully in my right to not allow you to step foot in a patient’s room. It doesn’t matter if you’ve donated money to the hospital. You need to leave before I call security or, better yet, I could have Detective Montgomery escort you out. Wouldn’t that be great for the evening news?”
Her mother not being one to be talked down to had one last biting remark as they walked out the door.
“You got one thing right: I would have preferred you died. If he would have done his job right, you would have…”
Once they left, she took a deep breath, and another piece of her heart seemed to heal. Even her mother's cruel remarks couldn’t diminish what had happened. She had laid a major demon to rest by finally telling what she knew. It made her think of possibilities. There was life out there for her. The man standing stoically behind her with his hand on the small of her back was her present and her future. Once everything was said and done, and the dust was settled, she would put the past behind her, and he would be there. After all she’d been through, she deserved a happily ever after.
27
Caleb thought he’d heard everything in his years on the force; likewise, he’d thought his years of training had prepared him for anything, that he could handle just about anything without losing his cool. But standing there beside Kara as she retold the story of what had caused her to close the door on her parents, Caleb felt a temper rise in him that he’d never felt before.
Parents were supposed to keep the evil at bay. They weren’t supposed to hang their children out to dry for power and greed. Caleb wasn’t stupid; he knew things like this happened every day. And he had witnessed a few monstrosities in his line of work, but this affected him bone deep, and he knew it was because of the love he felt for Kara. He now knew more than ever why meeting his parents had put such a look of longing on Kara’s face. It was because she’d never known what love from a
mother and father—a real mother and father—felt like. Kara had Ethan’s love, and Ethan had hers, period, until now.
Caleb was no longer surprised when he thought about how much he loved her. He knew damn well that, while it hurt to hear the details of what had happened to Kara all those years ago and now the details of what her parents had done, he would try every day to make her know nothing but happiness. It might not be time to tell her he was in love with her and that he would spend the rest of his life making her know how loved she could be, but that didn’t mean he had to hide it from his own heart. She deserved to be loved. He wanted to be the one to love her; that is if she would let him.
As much as he knew he was in love with her, he also knew that it was going to be a challenge to get her to accept it. She was a complicated and headstrong woman who thought she was tarnished and of no use to any man. And that was another thing that Caleb was going to work hard to fix. Because if last night was any indication of how good it could be between them, he was willing to do anything and everything for her.
“My God, Kara, I-I had no idea the level of depravity that they both would sink to. I knew Father was guilty of bribes. But this? And Mother…”
“You were always a little blinded to how Mother really is,” she said sadly. Caleb came to stand behind her and wrapped an arm around her shoulders, pulling her tightly against him.
In the Night (Darkness Falls Book 1) Page 22