by Marian Tee
“Don’t call me that. You’re part of the family anyway. Call me ‘Mother’. Or if you want, you can call me darling. That’s what I made Jason call me the last time we fucked. I made him call me darling over and over and over as he gave me the best oral sex I’ve had in years.”
Her tone became bitter and vicious. “You should be proud of yourself. He was almost throwing up at the start, but he got over it when I reminded him he had just that one night to make me happy in exchange for the information he needed.”
Beatrice laughed, a cackling sound that made goosebumps form all over her skin. “He may say that he was doing it for his brother, but we both know that he was doing it for you. He let himself be raped again just for you. So how does it feel, Lilac York? While you’re fucking another brother, the other brother was being fucked against his will---”
The doors behind her were thrown open, and when Keanne turned around, she was not surprised at all to find an ashen-looking Jason gazing at her.
****
“So now you know,” Jason said hollowly, breaking the painful silence between them after long minutes had passed and they had both been sitting stiffly in their seats.
They were in Reid Chalkias’ library, which was decorated in heavy dark woods and antique furniture. It was the perfect setting for another Godfather movie, and Keanne wondered numbly if it was so because that had been Reid’s idea of a joke.
At his words, she forced herself to look at him, her heart breaking at the look of shame on his face.
“I disgust you now, don’t I?”
She cried out, “No.” She shook her head wildly, tears running down her face. “I’ll never…why would you ever think that? I love you.”
It was as if he didn’t hear her. “I had no choice. It was the only way. She had always wanted me more than she wanted Nick.”
She couldn’t bear the look on his face and she rushed to him, kneeling in front of Jason as she cupped his face, forcing him to look at her. “I don’t think you’re weak or disgusting. I think you’re the most beautiful man…” She choked. “You’re the kindest man to have done that for Nick and Lilac.”
“They mustn’t know,” Jason said flatly. “Can you promise me that? They will never forgive themselves if they knew.”
She nodded, tears falling faster at how selfless Jason Christakos was. “Of course,” she whispered.
He touched her face. “You’re crying.”
“Because I love you so much,” she told him, crying harder as she said the words.
There was something in her voice that made Jason turn white. Something was wrong. She said he didn’t disgust her. She said she didn’t see him as weak. He believed her, but even so…something was so fucking wrong he couldn’t breathe.
“Why are you crying?” he asked hoarsely.
Slowly, she got to her feet. “Because I realize…you don’t really love me.”
His face whitened. “Keanne---”
She couldn’t bear to look at him anymore.
When she twisted her head away, Jason sucked his breath in, the pain of her rejection taking him by surprise.
“When I was listening to what Beatrice said…I kept thinking…why? Why?” Her throat became clogged with more tears and her fists clenched at her sides. “Why are you so soft – why are you so soft with her when you’re so demanding with me? I thought…I thought…” She stopped, the sobs so heavy now that her entire chest shook. “Oh God, when I called you years ago and asked that you be by my side, to help me face down the people who once hurt and judged me, I thought you refusing me was proof that you loved me. That you wanted me to be strong…”
Her words slammed into him like poisoned arrows, and slowly the past was remade in his mind, making the present so much clearer – so fucking clear that his actions became unforgivable.
“When I heard what you did for Lilac, I knew…I just knew you didn’t really love me. You loved her enough to be there for her even when she didn’t ask you to be. If you loved me - if you had loved me, then you would have been by my side when I asked you.”
“No.” His voice grew in strength when all she did was cry, the sound of her tears ravaging him from the inside. He couldn’t let her think like that when it was not true – oh God, it was not true, but he was so fucking afraid he was too late.
“It wasn’t like that. I swear to God, it wasn’t---” Jason reached out to her but she recoiled, nearly falling to the ground in her haste to escape his touch.
Her rejection was like a knife wound that started to bleed and showed no signs of stopping. “Listen to me,” he said desperately. “It wasn’t like that. I realize now…” He raked his hand through his hair, feeling restless and so goddamn terrified that he would not find the right words to convince her that she had it all wrong.
“I’m so fucking sorry,” he whispered. “What you told me now…I realize how I’ve been unfair to you. Now, I know…I love you, Keanne.”
“NO!”
“Yes,” he said just as fiercely. “I love you – probably as long as you have loved me, but a part of me couldn’t face it. You were too young and I wanted to give you a chance to grow up and know your mind before you became mine. All these years, I was especially hard on you because I wanted – I needed…Keanne, I goddamn needed and need you now to be strong because only a strong woman could love someone like me.”
She shook her head. “You’re lying!”
“I love you! I’m not lying when I---”
“How can you say you love me when I saw that your phone was full of photos of Lilac? And that you were late yesterday – oh God, while I was waiting for you to come, you were on the phone with her for hours!” The pain was so great she felt like she was suffocating in it.
Inside Keanne, her heart was breaking and she wondered if the tearing sensation would ever stop. “You told me that you hadn’t talked to her, but you did,” she wept in accusation. “You did! You talked to her almost every day so tell me – TELL ME,” she screamed. “Tell me how you can say that you don’t love her when you talked to her more than you talked to me?”
“It’s not like that.” He could no longer bear the separation between them. Jason stalked to her side and pulled her into his arms, ignoring her struggles. She sobbed against his chest even as her fists weakly beat his shoulders.
He stroked her back, every tear that fell from her eyes no less painful than a whip striking his chest. The wounds of betrayal he himself caused were still bleeding and he knew they would continue to bleed until he found a way to make it up to the girl who had loved him selflessly since the very beginning.
“I know you won’t believe me,” he said hoarsely, “but now everything’s much clearer. I saw you in Lilac and because she was available and you were…not…I fell for her. I fell for her because she reminded me of what you could be when you were old enough – someone so strong you were able to overcome your past and not be cynical or hard like Nick or me.”
“With Lilac, I’m in control. With you, I’m not, and that was another reason I made myself believe I loved her.”
But she didn’t speak, only crying in his arms, her sobs sounding like they came from the deepest part of her. He had hurt her that much.
“Keanne, please,” he whispered hoarsely. “Please…”
When she struggled to be released, this time he let her go. Her eyes were red and swollen when they met his. “You’re right,” she told him dully. “I don’t believe you.”
Chapter Fifteen
“You tell me you’re not melodramatic like me, cherié, and yet here you are. Just to forget the man you are in love with, you dropped out of school and flew halfway across the world to lick your wounds.”
Amie Summers’ teasing words caused Keanne to look up with a grimace. They were on one of the stone benches facing the vineyards, the afternoon sun creating a seemingly magical effect on the half-finished sketch in front of her.
“Sometimes, I wonder if you really are on my sid
e and not on his.”
“I am on the side of true love, mon bebe. I always was.”
Something in her mother’s voice made her eyes narrow, but Amie only looked back at her innocently.
“If I find out that you’re talking to Jason behind my back…”
“Just his mother---”
“Mama!”
“You did not say that I should not speak with his mother either!”
She gritted her teeth in frustration. Oh, how good Amie was at twisting her words. “I didn’t say – I never told you not to talk to his mother or even to him.”
Amie let out a sigh. “So dramatic. You cannot even say his name. If you truly don’t love him anymore---”
“Mama.” She waited for Amie to look at her. “I never said I didn’t love him either. I never even said I’m over him. I only know that he does not---” Keanne swallowed painfully. “---I only know that he does not love me.”
“That is where you’re wrong, ma petite.”
She froze at the sound of that hatefully familiar voice, the one sound that made her have dreams and nightmares. They were just so beautiful and painful at the same time that Keanne had stopped trying to figure out what they could be.
When she looked up again, Amie was already driving away in the golf cart she used to tour the vineyards. Jason stood in front of her.
“Hello, Keanne.”
“H-hello.” She couldn’t make herself say his name. If she did, it would be over. She would be over.
“You’re not going to look at me?”
She shook her head.
“Surely I taught you better than that.”
The taunting words shocked her so much that she did look up, unable to believe he dared say something like that.
And that was when she realized she had been tricked.
He looked sober, his face a little too pale. He was thinner, too, and there was a look of strain in his eyes that reminded her too much of her own.
No!
He was not going to fool her again.
With a choked sob, she tried to escape, knocking down her easel in her need to get away from him. But he caught her wrist easily, whirling her around and she lashed out at him, slapping his face. “Je te hais!”
He did not let her go even as she repeated the words over and over, slapping him each time. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you.
But why, she thought brokenly, did it feel like she still loved him?
He said roughly, “I know you do. I know I deserve it. But I want to make it up to you. I want to woo you like you deserve and make you realize that I will love you like no other man ever could.”
“I will never believe you anymore!”
He shot back, “Even if you don’t believe me, I’ll keep loving you because it’s the only thing I know how to do.”
“No!” She pushed against his chest ineffectually. “You say the nicest words,” she sobbed, “but we both know that it doesn’t mean anything---”
“Then maybe you’ll believe this.” He thrust a piece of folded paper into her hands just before he released her.
Keanne looked down dumbly at the half-crumpled sheet of paper in her hands. She whispered, “What is it?”
“I bought your book when it came out,” he said hoarsely. “I know how you see me…and you drew me like I was the only one who had the power in our relationship.”
“Because it’s true!”
“No, it fucking isn’t and I made that---” His head jerked towards the paper in her hands. “I want you to know that you have me so fucking whipped there’s no way I can even breathe without thinking of you.”
“You’re lying.”
“No. I’m not and you’ll know---”
Slowly, she tore the paper in her hands into two and let it fall to the grassy ground.
When she looked at Jason, the hopeless devastation on his face was almost more than she could bear, but she hardened herself.
“I can’t ever believe you would be so cruel to do that just to hurt me,” he whispered.
She didn’t say anything even though she knew he was wrong. She had been cruel and she had done it to hurt him.
She bit her lip hard when she watched Jason fall to his knees like a man defeated by life.
“You don’t love me. And I will learn to stop loving you.”
Keanne forced herself to move away.
The tears fell, fast and furious, and she quickened her steps. Her mind was suddenly tormented with images of Jason in the years they had been together.
Jason, always laughingly teasing her when she was a withdrawn child of fourteen…
Jason, always so gentle and sweet even though the whole world thought he was a carefree playboy…
Jason, always knowing the right thing to say…
Jason, always expecting himself to suffer for others because he could never forgive himself for once being the reason his brother was hurt---
Before she knew it, she was running back to him.
He was still there, on his knees, and the look on his face made Keanne hate herself for hurting him so cruelly. He had hurt her, too, but never deliberately like she had just done.
Sinking to her knees, she shakily reached for the torn halves of his message and pieced them together.
A choked cry escaped her.
Jason Christakos was a man of many talents, but one thing he had never been able to do was draw. And yet this – oh God, she could only imagine the countless hours he had spent to draw something so heartbreakingly beautiful.
On the paper was the sun, no longer shining, its rays having turned crimson and black.
“Why did the sun die?”
The person who asked was no longer a little girl.
She had Grown Up.
The one who answered was the moon, whose tears turned into rain.
“Because you closed your eyes to it.”
“I’m sorry,” Keanne choked out.
She threw herself at Jason and they fell to the ground. His beautiful face was still ashen, and his cheeks were marked by the tears that she had forced him to weep with her cruelty.
“I’m sorry. I’m so, so, so sorry. I just wanted to hurt you because I thought you didn’t really love me.”
Slowly, the import of her words sank into him.
He focused on her, taking note of every detail of her lovely face, something he had missed so badly the whole time he had been away from her. He had done everything he could to reach her, but Amie Summers had kept him away effectively like he was no more than a rat trying to scurry into sacred grounds.
Never had he felt more helpless or terrified when he began to understand that if Amie Summers truly wanted to keep his daughter away from Jason, she would be able to do so.
Only when he had begged her in person, only when he had shown her his last resort had she let him near her daughter again.
“Hush.” The word came out raspy. It still hurt to speak. He had raged and begged Amie for so many days.
“I love you,” Keanne said brokenly.
His chest eased and he said unevenly, “I love you.” He pulled her down for a kiss. “I love you so much.” He tucked the loose strands of her hair behind her ears, wanting to see her eyes and wanting her to see him.
“Do you understand now?”
She nodded against his chest. “Yes.”
“I may be the sun…but you are the reason I’m shining.”
The words had her crying again, and all she could do was touch her heart just so he knew without words what she wanted to say.
Epilogue
“Ms. Crichton has reached the safe house, sir.”
Reid nodded. The moment he had heard about the attack on Keanne, he knew it was time to move Beatrice Crichton out of his home. She might be beyond saving like him, but it was not in Reid to simply abandon someone who was virtually helpless. Beatrice would be safe from Davos’ reach in Sicily. There were too many of his family there, and Davos was unlikely to be
stupid enough to try attacking her in a country that everyone knew as Mafia territory.
“Please inform Jason Christakos about this and call our contacts in Sicily. I want her heavily guarded. We require her testimony once Davos is tried for his crimes.”
“Understood, sir.”
And yet Igor remained standing in front of his desk.
Reid slowly looked up. Igor had been in the Chalkias family’s employ for as long as he could remember. Igor had been the guard assigned to Reid, the same way Igor’s father had been assigned to look after Reid’s father. It was tradition, and everyone knew that the Mafia was heavy on tradition.
Igor’s normally stoic face was grim.
He asked with a frown, “What is it?”
“What about the girl?”
Reid stiffened. He knew, even without Igor mentioning a name, who his bodyguard was referring to. “What of her?”
“Are you truly sending her away?”
“Shouldn’t I?” His fists clenched. “She is not of our world, Igor. You know that.”
“What I do know, sir, is that she is for you.”
A harsh laugh spilled out of Reid’s lips. “For me? I’m the Prince of Darkness. Haven’t you heard? And yet you say that someone like her – a goddamn living angel – is for me?”
“You will break her heart if you force her to leave.” It was not in Igor’s nature to meddle, but it was his duty to look after Reid and in this case, that meant telling it to his employer’s face if he was about to fuck up the best thing that happened in his life.
Igor was tempted to say many other things, but he knew he should not. He must not. There were just some things that a man had to discover for himself. And if Reid Chalkias failed to discover how much the poor girl loved him, then there was nothing Igor could do.
Reid had shot to his feet and stalked to the small wine bar in the corner of his office. Pouring himself a shot of whisky, he drank it down in one gulp. “You’re imagining things.”
Igor became grimmer. He had raised this man himself, and thus he knew Reid well enough to understand that he was stubbornly refusing to acknowledge the connection between him and the girl.
