“You did this,” Sylvain said softly. “You said something to her to set her off. She wouldn’t have done it without provocation.”
“No?” Sylvain’s father sniffed. “All signs point otherwise, my son. Bianca was just fine before you came. But then your arrived, and your presence disrupted the beautiful little oasis I’d built for her. You gave her the instability, Sylvain. You were the cause of her going over the edge.”
“Lies,” Sylvain snarled. “You make yourself believe that if you want, but I know the truth. You broke her, father. You made her the way she is.”
“Oh no.” His father stood. He reached for his cane and walked around the front of the desk. He stared at Sylvain, half a foot away, his eyes full of hate and loathing.
“She was born weak, son. Much like her mother. I did not break her. I gave her the upbringing worthy of the Alastair name. She was the one who failed me.”
“And you resorted to beating her,” Sylvain said. “Your own daughter. A little girl. You beat her when she was defenseless. You beat her when she was a child!”
“Aye, as my father beat me, and his father beat him, and I beat you. And now look at yourself, Sylvain. So high and mighty, standing up to a crippled old man.” The sarcasm oozed from his words. “I’m finally proud of you, son. Leila told me what you did.”
Sylvain started at him, giving no expression to his tumultuous thoughts.
“I haven’t the slightest idea—”
“The child!” his father exclaimed. “You got her pregnant, boy!” He laughed. It was the sound of madness. “I have no need to cradle your sister any longer. Not when I have you to carry on the Alastair family name.”
Sylvain’s head started spinning. First Doctor Patterson… now his child? Damn Leila, why would she tell the man?
Sylvain’s father reached up and put his hand against Sylvain’s cheek.
It took all the self-control Sylvain possessed to remain stoic. He put a hand on his father’s wrist and forced it down.
“Don’t,” he whispered, “touch me.”
His father gave a small, sad smile.
“This is a cause for celebration, don’t you think? I acknowledge you as my own. Isn’t that what you always wanted? My approval? Isn’t that what I raised you to seek?”
“How long have you known?” Sylvain asked. “About… the pregnancy?”
His father gave a wry smile. “There’s a difference between knowledge… and a hunch.” His father touched his nose. “The hunch came weeks ago, when I noticed the way the fool girl was doting on you. And knowledge? Why, it was not until your acknowledgement, a moment ago. You confirmed it to me, Sylvain. So really…” he sat back down, “if you insist on keeping things secret, you must learn the art of deception better. I’d advise you, however…” another smile, “not to try.”
His father reached into his desk and took out a dark bottle of liquor. “Brandy?”
Sylvain turned away in disgust.
He was fuming. The whole time he was back, he’d underestimated his father. The old man truly was as keen as ever.
Sylvain had been blind to it before.
He felt an idiot, a complete fool. He felt like he’d been played.
Sylvain strode harshly to the window and gripped the panel hard. The distant rage was starting to consume him. He wanted to lash out. He wanted to embrace it and let it cause his destruction.
But that would only feed into his father’s games further.
Sylvain took a steadying breath. What control did he have? In the span of a single conversation, his father had made him look like a boy.
Well. Sylvain would not make the same mistake again. It was beyond time for him to properly exert his dominance.
“Bianca stays here, at the castle,” he said. “She is not going to a home.”
He turned around. “Do you understand?”
His father shook his head. “You think you still have a say in it, don’t you?”
“I have the only say,” Sylvain growled.
“No.” His father looked him up and down. “No, Sylvain, in this you are mistaken. Do you know why they’re taking Bianca away? It’s because you let her off the estate in the first place. Because you called the paramedics. Because you exposed her to the world. And, sadly? There is only one place for her, out there.”
He took a small sip of his drink.
“Do you see now why I kept her to the grounds? Why I shielded her from it all? I knew what would happen, and you came and changed that. If you care for your sister as much as you profess to, you will not stay in our way.”
“Our?” Sylvain asked. “Who is our?”
“Why, me and the lady doctor, of course. She said you were quite uncompromising in her conversation with you last night. She found me a lot more… accommodating.”
“Bianca stays,” Sylvain said. He was repeating himself, he was digging his heels in, but he hated how his father always made him feel so unbalanced. Stubbornness was the only approach that could work now.
And it was the only one Sylvain had the capacity for at the moment.
“Too bad, son.” His father shook his head. “They are coming for her this evening. There is nothing you can do. If I were you…?” He smiled harshly. “I’d take these last remaining hours to spend with her. Because, to me…” his eyes honed in on Sylvain’s. “My daughter is dead.”
Chapter Ten
Sylvain raged into the underground command center and slammed the door. Then he opened it, and slammed it again. Again and again and again, just to hear the noise.
The anger inside was uncontrollable. He could not contain it. He needed to be alone—he needed isolation.
He roared and grabbed the monitor nearest to him. He hurled it to the floor.
It shattered with an astounding crash.
More. More. More. Sylvain needed more. He grabbed the bottom of the desk and heaved it up. He threw it down, satiating in the destruction, loving the sound it made.
He ripped around. The television screen on the wall. Yes, there. He stalked to it, clenched his hands around one corner, was just about to tear it off—
What am I doing?
The thought came out of the blue. It floated across the surface of the black voice that consumed him. It hovered on the edge, governed by the less animalistic part of his psyche.
Governed by his intellect.
Stop this.
Sylvain froze. With enormous effort he forced his fingers apart and eased them off the television screen.
He backed away.
He stood in the middle of the dark room, chest heaving, fighting to get himself under control. The world around him ceased to exist as he retreated deep inside his troubled mind.
There, he caught the fiery inferno that had flared. He battled it down, an enormous undertaking of will, and eventually… wrangled it to submission.
He was himself once more.
He staggered on his feet. He had to hold on to one distant wall for support. He brought a hand to his head. He rubbed his eyes.
Then, he slowly opened them and looked around.
The monitor he’d thrown down was in pieces. The glass was there, on the floor, in hundreds of jagged fragments.
The wires that fed into the computer built into the desk were ripped and frayed.
He looked past that. This was his sanctuary. This was the one place he could retreat in the castle and be sure to be alone.
He had tried to destroy that.
He shuddered. Then he pushed himself off the wall and set about repairing everything he’d broken.
**
Half an hour later, Sylvain emerged. If anyone looked at him, they would not be able to tell anything was wrong.
His control was back. In truth, the anger that had constantly raged inside him had built up to the point where it had to be released. The damage Sylvain had done was minimal, all things considered.
He’d put away the broken monitor and swept aside the glass, then ri
ghted the desk and quickly rerouted his systems so they would not display anything on the computer screen he’d destroyed.
This way, at least, he kept the anger to himself. Unlike his father, who many times unleashed his on his children and wife, Sylvain would never let it happen where anybody could see. It was his private shame. Nobody else could know.
And with the catharsis done, he could now focus on what was truly important: his sister.
He climbed the staircase to the castle’s main floor. Leila was waiting for him. She ran across as soon as she saw him.
“Oh, Sylvain!” she exclaimed. “Your father told me what he did. Tell me it’s not true!”
“About Bianca?” Sylvain nodded solemnly. “It is.”
“But you can’t let him! She won’t survive out there! She belongs here, with us—with you!”
He squeezed Leila’s arm. He meant it as a reassuring gesture, but misjudged his own strength.
Leila winced.
“I don’t intend to,” he told her.
“He said they’re coming for her—tonight!”
Sylvain nodded. “Yes. I can’t stop that.”
“But—”
“Don’t you think I would if it were possible?” he snapped. There was his anger again. A tiny thread of it, breaking through the barricade.
He pressed it back down. In a softer voice, he added, “They might take her away, but I will get her back.” His eyes flashed to Leila’s. “Have you spoken to her? Has my father?”
Leila quickly shook her head. “No. She’s still asleep.”
“I’ll tell her, then,” Sylvain said. “It’ll be best, coming from me.”
Chapter Eleven
Sylvain rapped his knuckles gently on the door.
“Bianca?” he called. “It’s me. May I come in?”
He heard sniffling inside. A moment later, the door opened.
A very meek Bianca peeked out.
“Big brother?” she said.
Sylvain smiled. “Yes,” he told her.
She cast her eyes down. “I’m… I’m sorry,” she mumbled sadly.
Sylvain lowered his head to hers. He looked her in the eyes. “There is nothing to be sorry for.”
She closed her eyes and roughly shook her head. Tears leaked out of the corners of her eyes. “No, there is! Daddy—he tricked me! I didn’t want to poison your drink. I didn’t. I didn’t. I did not!”
Sylvain frowned. Poisoned?
“Do you mean the coffee?” he asked.
Bianca bobbed her head up and down. “He told me to do it. He made me! That’s why you left, isn’t it? Because you were mad at me?”
“Bianca, no,” Sylvain said softly. “No, not at all. I don’t blame you for anything.”
“When you were gone,” she continued, blubbering now. “They came to me.”
Sylvain’s heart froze.
“And they told me to do it. They made me cut my wrists.” She held them up for a brief moment, then let them drop. “They said I had to, for… for you to come back.” Suddenly her face lit up. “And you did!”
Such sadness took Sylvain then. He couldn’t help himself. He wrapped his arms around Bianca’s back and pulled her tight to him.
“I’ll never let them hurt you again. Do you understand me? Never.”
Bianca nodded against his shoulder. “I believe you.”
“Bianca…” he held her at arm’s length. “You must promise me something. It’s very, very important that you do.”
She sniffled, then nodded in a few jerky motions.
“If they—the demons? If they ever come to you again, if they ever tell you to do anything again—I want you to come to me first. Okay? I want you to tell me what they say. I never want you to listen to them without consulting me first.”
Her eyes fluttered down. She did not answer.
“Bianca?” Sylvain pressed. “Promise me. Tell me you will come to me, no matter what. This is important.”
“I know,” she said softly. Her voice broke. “But…”
Sylvain held her arms tighter. “But what? But what? Tell me, Bianca.”
“But you don’t understand,” she whispered. She pulled away. “They are always there. And the one who makes me do these things?” She looked at him with utter, unmistakeable lucidity in her eyes.
“He looks just like you.”
Chapter Twelve
Sylvain left her alone after that.
He had to think.
He’d gone to the only person near he could speak to without feeling like he was losing his mind.
“So… she says they’re you?” Leila asked.
She grunted sourly in reply. “I don’t think she can tell the difference between her visions and reality anymore.”
“You’re not giving up on her!” Leila exclaimed.
“What?” Sylvain sounded shocked. “No. Of course not. It’s just…”
“You don’t think you can protect her.”
Sylvain exhaled. “How can I, when the very thing threatening her looks just like me?”
“She needs proper treatment,” Leila said. “Maybe your father’s plot isn’t the worst thing for her.”
“I know,” Sylvain said darkly. “That’s what makes it all so fucked up.”
“Do you know where she’ll be going? Is it far away?”
“It’s a rehabilitation center about two hours from here. The best facility in England, or so I’m told.”
“That… that doesn’t sound so bad,” Leila tried. She sat beside Sylvain. “Does it?”
“No,” he answered. “That’s the paradox surrounding my father. No matter what his deeper intentions might be, he always wanted the outside world to believe that he was doing the best for his children—for his family. He had to maintain the prestige—“ Sylvain hated the word, “—of the Alastair family name. So if he were to send Bianca away, of course it would be to the most esteemed facility.”
Sylvain grunted sourly. “Just like he sent me to Oxford.”
“You told me he called an old friend?”
“Somebody he knew from his days as a professor, no doubt. Probably somebody up high in the administration of the facility.”
“So…” Leila hesitated. “So, realistically…? Maybe it doesn’t sound that bad.”
“I know,” Sylvain said. Then he fell silent.
He hated how he had all the money in the world and almost nothing to show for it. Where were his allies, his connections, his friends? His father had those in spades. Sylvain’s were lost in the time he’d spent in prison. And all his wealth came from a solitary venture. He was not some grand businessman, running a multi-billion dollar enterprise from the palm of his hand.
He was, if anything, a crook. Plain and simple. An intelligent crook, a sophisticated crook, but a crook nonetheless.
“So now what?” Leila asked.
Sylvain shook his head. “I don’t know.”
Chapter Thirteen
They came for Bianca right after dinner.
The sky was dark. Sylvain was the first to hear the sound of the approaching vehicle.
He exchanged a look with Leila. She nodded.
She cleared her throat. “Bianca?” she said softly. “There are some people here for you.”
Bianca screwed her face up when she heard. “People?” she asked in confusion.
Sylvain’s father smiled.
“Yes, Bianca,” Sylvain said. “They are…” he could not believe what he was about to say. “Friends.”
His sister eyed him warily.
“You’re going on a vacation, my sweet,” Sylvain’s father announced. “Don’t you remember? Doctor Patterson told you that if you were a good girl for long enough, you would be rewarded. This is your reward.”
Bianca gasped and jumped straight. She absolutely beamed. “Really?” she asked.
Sinister, Sylvain thought.
“Oh yes.” His father patted her hand. “Doctor Patterson is a man of his world. U
nlike some at the table—” his eyes went to Sylvain, “—he can be trusted. He has your best interests at heart.”
Bianca started to bounce up and down. “Really? Really, really, really, I get to go? Wait—” her expression fell. Her voice filled with suspicion. “I haven’t been a good girl. Not at all. I…” she looked down at her wrists. “I…”
“That wasn’t you, dearest,” Sylvain’s father said. “Nobody could hold you accountable for the things they do.”
“Oh.” Bianca sighed in relief. “That’s good.”
A pounding came from the main door. Sylvain’s father started to rise.
Sylvain pushed himself up first.
“I’ll get it,” he said.
His father eyed him. “Do not do anything stupid, son.”
Sylvain left the dining room stiffly. Apprehension filled his gut. He was giving his sister away. The one thing he swore he would never do, he was now doing.
He opened the doors. There stood Doctor Patterson, accompanied by two male nurses.
“You,” Sylvain said.
The doctor smiled. “Hello again, Mr. Alastair.”
“My father said he dismissed you after you gave yourself away.”
“Oh, nonsense,” the doctor muttered. He stepped in close. “I am, and always will be, your trust man.”
Sylvain grunted. He very much doubted that.
“The elder Mr. Alastair did relieve me of my position, yes,” the doctor continued. “But it was a brief dismissal. You see, I’ve grown fairly… how can I put this? Fond? Of your sister.”
Sylvain’s jaw tightened. “What did you say?”
“On, no no no, you misunderstand. Not romantically, of course not.” He waggled his wedding ring in front of Sylvain’s face. “I am a married man, after all. But I have come to see Bianca very much like, ahem, like… my own chid? Like a niece, perhaps. She is a fascinating case, surely, and I am quite confident I can make her better.”
Sylvain eyed him. What was the man playing at?
“You were absent when she cut herself.”
“And that I regret greatly, Mr. Alastair. Which is why, as soon as I heard the news, I convinced your father to welcome me back.”
The Alastair Affair 4: Sylvain Page 4
