Frowning, Silas waved his hand about. “It was a fight, Robbie. We had a fight. When will you let it go?”
“That fight lasted six years.”
“Most of which you spent in luxury—”
“But confined,” Robert reminded him. “You imprisoned me. How do you expect me to forgive you this time?”
“The same way I forgave you, that’s how.” Silas leaned forward and rested his arms on his knees. “Did I not forgive you when you deserted me? When you bedded my wife? When you planned and schemed with her to take my daughter and son away from me? When you cut half of my face?”
Robert shook his head. “No you didn’t. You never forgave me, that’s why you injected me with that poison and locked me in your prison.”
Sitting back in his seat, Silas groaned in exasperation. “You’re never going to get over this, are you?”
“It’d be ridiculous of you to ask me to, Silas. In my eyes, you doing such a thing to me is betrayal.”
“I’m sorry,” he yelled in frustration. “You of all people know that I don’t think when I’m upset. Look at me, Robbie.” He stood up from his seat. “Look at me. Don’t you see the difference? I’ve changed now, I brought you here to show you that!”
“That’s because you want something,” Robert shouted. He wasn’t fooled by this meeting; he knew exactly why Silas would reach out to him like this. “Whatever it is that you want, the answer is no. I’ll never do anything for you again. I shouldn’t have come here. I’ve betrayed Anastacia and my daughter by doing this. I should just kill you now and save everyone the trouble.”
Silas shook his head. “You are upset, that is why you say these things. Such things that you know would hurt me.”
“Stop stalling, Silas, and tell me what you want.” Robert wasn’t an idiot. This Silas speaking to him—this lucid, rational Silas—was all a show. He wanted something, and when he didn’t get it from Robert, the true man would burst through the façade.
Silas hesitated for a moment, and then returned to his seat in front of Robert. He sighed softly before speaking. “You are right, Robbie. I want your help.”
Robert listened closely.
“I’ve spent much time thinking about my life, and the last time I truly felt fulfilled. I have decided recently that my business, my followers, even my money have become meaningless to me. I’m not interested in it anymore, none of it brings me joy. As I have aged, I have thought over my life and come to find that the most meaningful times in my life were when I was in the presence of my family. Making love to my wife, playing make-believe with my little girl, and playing catch with my boy. All of these moments brought me happiness.”
“Yet they are the past, Silas. Anastacia has moved on, and Carter and Gabriel are adults now. You have all but destroyed your relationships with each of them—”
“Don’t,” Silas interrupted with a tight expression on his face, “don’t say such things to me, brother. Nothing is ever destroyed forever. Relationships can always be rebuilt.”
Robert shook his head. “Not these, Silas. They want nothing to do with you.” Remaining honest with Silas was Robert’s best option. He wouldn’t be giving his brother one shred of false hope since it would only fuel his obsession.
“With me, maybe,” he said with hope in his voice, “but they love you, Robbie. They love you …”
Robert frowned. “What does that have to do—” Right when he was about to ask the question, he already knew the answer. “No!” he shouted, outraged that Silas would even ask such a thing. “Are you out of your mind? The answer is no. I’m done with this, Silas. Never again.”
“But it’s the only way, Robbie. Please,” he pleaded. “I could have just forced you—”
“I dare you to fucking try!”
“But I didn’t.” Silas got off his chair and on his knees in front of Robert. “I didn’t do that, Robbie. I would never do such a thing again.” He took Robert’s hand in a silent desperation. “Just one more time, brother. As you, I can show them that I am a better man. I can be the father, and the husband, that they deserve. I won’t mess up again, I promise. Just give me time with them.”
“The last time you played this game you nearly killed both Carterina and Gabriel.”
“That was a mistake.”
“You ordered your men to shoot!”
“I told them not to shoot,” he yelled. “Why would I kill the children I love? Why would I hurt my blood?”
“Why would you sell your other children? What makes Carterina and Gabriel so different from the rest of your blood, Silas?”
“Because they are not abominations, Robbie.” He smiled. “They come from love, from marriage. The rest of my children were bastards, born of lust, my weakness and insatiable need for the female body. Anastacia is my wife, my love, my heart. Carterina and Gabriel, they are our love in the flesh, and therefore they are important to me …”
There was nothing but truth in Silas’s eyes when he spoke the words, which meant he truly meant it. He held Carter and Gabriel above his other children because they came from the woman he loved. Robert didn’t doubt that Silas loved his family, he just knew from experience that to be loved by Silas was to be hurt by him. Silas was living in a fantasy world, a world where it was actually possible to erase all that he’d done, and act as if it never happened.
Robert held tightly to his brother’s hand and brought him back to reality. “You know Anastacia used to have nightmares after you attacked her? After you told her that her son was dead. She couldn’t even look in the mirror after you did that to her; her face was that unrecognizable. She would scream every time I walked into a room because I have your face, your voice. Carterina had to stay in the hospital for months because she was so small, so underdeveloped. She ate from a tube, had cords coming out of every part of her body because she wasn’t ready to be in the world yet. After she was strong enough, we took her home and had to beg you—beg you—to allow her mother to feed her the way she needed to be fed. Then after six months you threatened me, told me you would sell that little baby if I didn’t get rid of her mother. You didn’t have to see that broken woman! You didn’t have to take her child from her arms, the way we were taken from our mother many years ago. No! You left that to me. Scars like that don’t disappear, Silas. They last forever. You can always see them. The scars on your son! The way you beat him for starting a war between your precious followers. Is that how you love him? To be so callous and throw him in a basement like he was nothing because you couldn’t bear the sight of what you’d done. Did you think that showering him with material bullshit would make him forget about the pain and betrayal he must have felt the moment you turned on him. You, his father. This is you! This is the man you are. I will never—never—allow you to use me to get anywhere near them. We’re done!”
“I don’t need your permission,” he said softly. “I can find a way. They’ll never even know, Robbie.”
Robert shook his head and released his brother’s hand. “You’ll never fool them or anyone else again, Silas. I’ll make sure of it.”
“And exactly how do you plan to do that? Kill me?”
“I’m leaving.” He’d spoken the words with pure determination. It wasn’t going to be easy, but it needed to be done. “I’m leaving, Silas. I informed Angelo Salerno before I made this trip, so there is nothing you can do to stop it. If you try to capture me again, throw me in a prison so that you can take my name and impersonate me, you will be killed. He knows that I plan to leave and he knows the exact date I’m leaving. No changing it.” Robert got in Silas’s face. “No more games,” he growled. “They are better off without you and me. I am letting them go, and so are you. Let go of this obsession, prove that you love them for once, and move on. You failed, it’s over. Let them be.”
Silas stared at him blankly. Robert didn’t speak either, nor did he regret his words. He didn’t particularly enjoy saying them, but they needed to be said.
Silas s
oon broke the silence. “Is that how you feel about me, Robbie, your own brother?” A pained expression flashed across his face as tears gathered in his eyes. “Seeing me is a betrayal. Loving me is a burden. You want me dead?”
Robert looked away from him. “Enough, Silas. Your tears will get you nowhere with me. Your crying is, and has always been, pointless. The answer is still no.”
“Pointless is my pain to my own brother? He does not care if he wounds me, rips my heart from my chest and tramples it under his feet. I am your family and you would treat me in such a manner?”
“I said enough, Silas!” Robert snapped. Slipping into insanity had always been Silas’s way, and Robert was sick of it. “I will no longer entertain your dramatics. If you continue this behavior, I’ll walk out that door and you’ll never see me again.”
“Then go,” he roared as his entire body began to shake with emotion. “Leave me like you did before, Robbie! Let me suffer, let me die alone. You go to my family now and be happy. Bed my wife, allow my daughter and son to call you their father, and forget about me. Forget about your blood, your brother. After all we’ve endured, you would hurt me like this again—”
Now pushed past his breaking point, Robert shot up from his seat. “What about how you’ve hurt me?” He had screamed the words in Silas’s face, rendering him speechless. A foreign emotion blanketed itself over Robert’s body, causing his voice to shake and heart to pound rapidly in his chest. “After everything we’ve been through! Being abducted when we were five years old, thrown into a house full of young boys where we were raped by grown men until we bled. Screaming and crying in agony even though no one could hear us. No one could save us. Who did we have but each other? When Dmitry saved us from that wretched man, that cruel master, it was you that deserted me! You chose money, power, and lunacy over your own flesh and blood! You betrayed me.” Gripping Silas’s shirt, he jerked him forward until their foreheads touched. “You have done nothing but fill me with disappointment, my brother, my blood.”
Silas let out an enraged shout and slammed his fists against the wall. “You disappoint me! My brother. My blood!”
“This is it, Silas, I’m done. No more of this back and forth. This is the last time I will ever extend my hand for you to come with me, even though you do not deserve it. I will call you the day I leave and tell you where to meet me. If you do not show up this time, you are on your own.” He pointed his finger at Silas. “But mark my words. If you ever go back to New York in pursuit of my daughter, her mother, or her brother again … I will kill you, Silas. I don’t want to do it, but I will. It is for my daughter that I would kill even my brother, whom I love.”
“Well,” Silas shrugged, “why don’t we just test that promise, shall we?” Silas’s expression once again went blank, and his eyes went cold as he spat every word at Robert. “Let’s see if you can actually do it. I have a feeling that it is as easy for you to kill me as it is for me to kill you.”
“Don’t test me, Silas,” Robert warned.
“No worries, brother,” Silas smiled, “I would kill myself before I’d kill you. That is just how much I love you, how much I can’t live without you in this world with me, Robbie. You, Anastacia, Carterina, and Gabriel. The only four people I love in this world. The only four people that have ever loved me.”
“Carterina doesn’t know you, Silas.”
Silas chuckled. “She does. She wishes she didn’t, but she does. My little girl will reach out to me, you mark my words. I threw in a curve ball, and I’m expecting a call from her any day now.”
Robert let out a deadly growl. “Stay the fuck away from my daughter. I’m not warning you again.”
“Be real, Robbie. You have nothing to do with her existence. You can’t produce children, remember? Carterina is my daughter, and she’s Anastacia’s daughter; she is not yours.”
~*~
Present time . . .
The words, although true, had hurt Robert. After they were said Robert had left his brother, boarded the first flight home, and went straight to his daughter’s home, if only to assure himself that if no one else in this world belonged to him, she was still his. His fears and insecurities were put to rest when she saw him and called him daddy. Just daddy. A name she didn’t call Silas. A name she didn’t call anyone else but him. He was daddy, he was the man that raised her, loved her, and she was his greatest accomplishment, his greatest joy. His daughter, his baby girl.
He’d do anything to protect her, even if that meant limiting their communication to brief, infrequent phone calls.
“I’m leaving, Anastacia.”
A frown of confusion instantly fell over her pretty face. “Well, where are you going? When will you be back?”
Robert hesitated, finding the words difficult to say. Leaning forward, he sat his coffee on the table in front of them, then turned to face her.
“Anne, I’m not coming back. I’m leaving for good.”
She immediately began shaking her head and put her coffee down. “No. No you’re not. You’re home now, you’re alive, we’re happy, aren’t you happy? We have our baby girl, my son is with us now, and we have grandchildren. This is what we wanted. We are a family.”
“Anne, I always planned to leave after I reunited you with your children, I never meant to stay with you.” The confession was hard, but a long time in coming. Robert didn’t want her to hate him, so he explained. “Silas enjoys using our resemblance to manipulate. We’ve both been doing it since childhood. I mean to prevent him from doing this to you and your children ever again. This is for your protection. I trust that the City is being watched closely, but Silas has less of a chance to use his trickery to infiltrate your lives if I am gone. I’m doing this for you, for our baby girl, and for your son. I am doing this for my grandchildren, whom I do love very, very much. Please understand this love. I need you. This won’t be easy to explain to our daughter, I need you by side. Please.”
The moment he stopped speaking, Anastacia’s expression tightened and tears gathered in her eyes. Robert clenched his jaw tight, fighting to remain strong, fighting not to give in. It had never been easy for him to see Anastacia cry. She was a woman of hard exterior; she detested emotion, hated weakness. So in the rare times when she fell into depression, into sadness, it was a real indicator that something had truly devastated her, had hurt her greatly.
Robert held her in his arms, whispering soft apologies in her ear.
“Stop,” she whispered. Her tears slowly made their trek down her cheeks, but she quickly wiped them from her eyes. “No apologizing, Robert. Just stay.”
“I can’t, Anastacia.”
“But you just got back!” She cupped his face. “Is it Silas? Did he say something?”
Robert sighed sadly. “This is not about Silas. This about doing what I must to keep him away. Come here.” She climbed into his lap and rested her head on his shoulder. “I need to do this for you, for the twins … and for me. While I travel, I’m going to try and locate where Silas and I came from. I want to know about our lives before we were taken, our family, maybe even our real names. This is something I’ve always wanted to do but never got a chance to, being a single father and all.”
Anastacia nodded and dried her eyes. “I understand. You deserve this journey. You deserve to know where you came from. I would never want to hold you back from that, and neither would our daughter.” She placed a gentle hand on his face. “I just want you to know how much I love you.”
“Shh,” he kissed her lips, “I love you. I love you, too.”
He only did it because he had to. He had to feel it, he had to remember how it felt before he left. He kissed her. His mouth tentatively sought hers and she met him halfway. He followed her movements with his mouth and soon became lost in the passion of their kiss. This was love for him, this was making love, and it was everything he needed.
Chapter 22: Father & Daughter. . .
It had taken forever, but Nathan had finally fallen to
sleep after they’d made love. Carter had been waiting patiently, fighting her own fatigue so that she could sneak out of bed after he was out. Carefully she tried to slip from under his arm, but paused when he began to stir, tightening his hold around her.
“Where are you going?” he mumbled, his deep voice vibrating against her ear.
“I need to pump. I’m getting a little full,” she whispered, hoping he’d let her go before he fell back asleep. If he’d already fallen back to sleep, she was pretty much stuck.
When his hold loosened, Carter released a relieved sigh. Slowly she slipped from the bed and tiptoed to the bathroom.
“Hurry back, baby. You know I don’t sleep well without you.”
“Ten minutes, honey, that’s all,” she assured as she closed the bathroom door behind her.
When she entered the bathroom, she went straight for the drawer where she kept them. Opening it, she pulled out all eight of the letter’s Silas had sent her since the night she gave birth to the babies. Every week since that night, a letter had arrived at S.O. from Silas to Carter. Luckily Aniyah was there to intercept the letters and give them directly to her. She didn’t want to worry Daddy Angelo or Nathan with letters, nor did she want them to know that sometimes … she anticipated reading them.
She hated that she did, but it was the truth. In the letters Silas talked about their times together. He talked about the good times he had with Gabriel, and with her mother. He even talked about his dreams and how he wished things could have been for them, for their family. Silas’s view of the world—of life—fascinated Carter. There were times when she’d stare at the phone, hoping that Aniyah would call and tell her another letter had been sent. It was all very … pathetic of her.
Yes, pathetic. Carter felt like a pathetic, naïve kid, especially now. She’d been trying to listen to her mother and Gabriel about Silas’s manipulations, but it had been hard. She’d been so confused because the Silas everyone told her about, the Silas that she’d encountered on more than one occasion, wasn’t the Silas that wrote those letters. The letters were gentle, kind, and loving. They were the words of a father to his daughter. But they were fake. Nothing about the letters were real. They just couldn’t be.
Dangerous Beauty: Part Three: This is War Page 42