Roman's Redemption: Roman: Book II (Roman's Trilogy) (20 page)

She was everything I ever wanted in life, and I was gifted a second chance to capture her. She was fierce. Alive. Free. She was the most real thing I’d ever seen. I wanted to harness it, own it, and absorb it. All of it.” My father’s tired eyes rise and settle on mine. “And so I did. She and I had the best eleven years of our life, every moment was stolen and precious, it was ours and it was sacred. I loved more in those years than any other.”

My calm façade hides my hatred extremely well. “Which son’s arrival did you hear of first, father? Your bride’s son, or your whore’s?”

His scoffing is almost laughable.

“You can dress her up with every beautiful and righteous word in Webster’s Dictionary, but a fucking whore is still just that. A fucking whore, period! Now which son?!” Both fists crack the surface of my desk at the same time I stand from my chair and tower over my father’s frame, “Which son, old man?”

Almost whimpering, he barely gets the words out, “I’ve only ever had one son, Roman, and you are him.”

Settling back behind my desk, I swipe my iPhone from the desks’ mahogany surface and dial Andrew who picks up in less than one ring, “Sir?”

“Bring Delores from the basement, I’m sure she hasn’t missed any of my father’s performance via the intercom in her cell.” My calm exterior returns as I maintain eye contact with the man in question.

When the hidden cracked door that consists of a stairway from the basement to my office swings open beside the bookcase, I watch as my father’s face drains of blood becoming as pale as the white overstuffed chair he sits on.

Dolores walks in first with her wrists bound behind her back and as Andrew crosses the threshold he quickly moves around her to move a chair next to my father but I raise my hand to stop him.

“No, she may kneel on the floor. There’s no need to keep this neither polite nor accommodating. She no longer cares for this family, and I for damn sure don’t care about her.”

After a pathetic attempt at refusing to kneel, she cries out as her knees smack the hardwood floor at the same time she loses her balance from Andrew nudging her down. Unable to use her hands to prevent her face from bouncing off the edge of my desk she lands on the floor with a sickening thud.

I nod towards Andrew, “Pull the whore up.”

Her act of defiance by not looking me in the eye pisses me off, but I remain calm.

“You don’t appreciate how highly my father still speaks of you? You must have been some good Cajun coon ass pussy back in the day.” My eyes slide to my fathers, “Where is your other son, dad? Do you know?”

He shakes his head before looking down.

“Her family? Her mother, where is she from? Start from the beginning if you must, but you will dig every piece of information out of that head of yours.”

He remains silent for several minutes then clears his throat and speaks, “I met Delores in grade school. That’s when her mother came to work for my parents. We couldn’t have been more than ten at the time. Both she and her mother’s accent were so thick I could hardly understand them. When I asked why, your grandmother told me they were from south Louisiana. That’s all I know, son.”

I nod in thought then look over to Dolores.

“How long did you know Mother was pregnant before you found out your whore was as well?”

“Less than twenty-four hours.” Dolores’s cold voice of steel cuts through the room and my eyebrow lifts in amusement.

Chuckling, I look over at my father, “And she speaks!” I glance between them, “Is that so? Well…” More chuckles commence, “That is quite upsetting and slightly convenient. What happened then, dear old Dad? Or step whore, whomever prefers to speak.”

“I paid her.” Tears well in my father’s eyes and any respect I ever had for the man in front of me dissipates, and if I still possessed a heart after this hellish three years I’ve lived in, it would have had a string slightly pulled by the travesty of a life my father has lived. “I paid her, I told her to get rid of it,”

His face turns to Dolores and crumbles when he begs, “Why didn’t you just get rid of it and come back to me like we planned?”

The frail woman surprises me with her vigilant strength when she somehow stands from the wilted heap on the floor and leans in speaking with ice laced around her every word, “I did come back to you, I just decided to keep what was mine, love.”

Her dead eyes, almost swollen shut stop on mine, “When a man witnesses a woman give his child life, take the deepest breath needed before pushing the child from her body, a love unlike any other is also born in that moment. Viv stole that moment from me, but she wouldn’t steal the love we once shared. So I retreated, I pulled my guards up around my heart and continued to live out my life the only way I knew how, in total silence.”

I look at both traitors in front of me before nodding at Andrew.

His knee slams into the back of Dolores’s disrupting her balance and sending her face first back to the floor costing her, her consciousness.

“Andrew take her back downstairs, get started on tracking down any and all family history you get a lead on.” I look at my father before standing and walking from the office. I pause at the doorway and tilt my head to the side, “I’ll call Mother, I’m sure she’d like to be brought up on today’s events and top stories.”

After I talk to Mother, I find out she’s in LA with some of her friends from her bridge club. I explain as delicately as possible that I need her to head home when planned and not to draw out her vacations as she usually prefers to do.

I am a tired, defeated, and exhausted man as I slowly make my way into the master bedroom and sink on to the chaise lounge, kicking my shoes off.

“Rome?” My wife’s husky voice calls from the bathroom doorway drawing my eyes to her silhouette.

Her voice cracks, “I need you. I need you to take the pain away the way only you can, please,” a broken sob escapes her lips and I’m stalking towards her, “Please.” She whimpers as I scoop her up in my arms and carry her trembling body to our bed.

“Shh…I’m here. Mouse. I’ll make it go away, baby.” My chest feels like its splintering in two and I’m forced to call on a strength I don’t possess. I lay her down, stripping her body of the sheer robe before splaying her open for my eyes and pinning her wrists above her head. I lean over her, growling against the flesh of her tender neck as my hands secure hers with the sash I ripped from her robe, “Take the pain the way only I can? Mouse,” I rake my blunt nails from her wrists down her arms until my fingers circle her neck, “I can only do that with more pain, baby.” My hand tightens around her neck as I trail my fingertips from her throat down through the valley of her pert rose tipped breasts, across her abdomen and between her splayed thighs. When I feel her wetness covering her bare pussy all ready, I smile and pin her eyes with mine, “Tell me you want it. Tell me you need my brand of pain, sweet Heather.”

Her eyes roll back as they flutter closed and she arches her neck, then begs. God have mercy on us both, she begs.

“Roman, please, I need it, I need your pain to make it go away.” And I don’t need another word said.

Before sense can be made of what happens in the following second, I’m slam inside my wife to the hilt.

One hand yanks her neck and tightens even more as the other thumbs her clit and I ram my cock into her sweet wet cunt over and over shouting my devotion and my love around unintelligent sounds.

The sounds of my hips slapping against the wetness running down the insides of her thighs, our breath, and moans of release with whispered tender words are the only sounds heard in our room until we cum together, her cries muted by my growls of ecstasy.

I wrap my shaking arms around her trembling sweat soaked body and rock her back and forth.

Long after she’s drifted asleep and sleep is encroaching on my conscious do I feel the pain I took from her, sear straight through my soul.

I’m lost in a balance somewhere between sleep and wake when the reality of what we’re facing as parents strikes me.

As does the reality that we may never see our daughter again. No matter what type of hell I raise, or how many lives I end, or how much money I spend, I am not the one controlling any of this.

And for the first time since I lost my little Ivy Angel, I’m fucking scared.

Chapter 28

While Roman berated his father, opening wounds closed lifetimes ago only to add insult to the injury by parading Dolores to star as a guest to a man’s crucifixion, I listened in the next room and contacted my brother Bobby. Yes, he didn’t follow in dad’s footsteps like I did, but his contacts would have to do. I don’t have a damn Andrew at my disposal. I mean, I do… Just not at my silent disposal.

I had a name. A name I’d blocked out with Mace’s assistance. I had a name I hadn’t heard mentioned since my time in Sebastian’s hell.

Lizbeth.

Hell. Yes. I had a fucking name.

After listening to as much as I could stomach and gathering what information I could, I contacted my brother and told him what he needed to know in order to get his niece back.

After dragging myself away from the detritus left of a father and son’s relationship, I stripped and took a blistering hot shower, scraping at my skin with a pumice stone, bathing away things no one else could see.

I felt my control slipping as the dreaded pain I’d kept at bay began lapping, before almost pulling me under. The sound of Rome’s shoes thudding to the floor as he approached our bedroom was the only thing keeping me afloat as I dried off and slipped on a robe before begging my husband to take it away.

And he did.

Just like he always has done, his pain released me from the ties my own pain tethers me to.

When I see the sun filtering though the curtains from behind closed eyelids, I sigh and roll onto my stomach, reaching my hand across the mattress searching for someone I already sense is gone.

He’s never here in the morning.

Then again, he never really has been has he?

I slowly scoot to the edge of the bed, and again I’m forced to brace myself for the nausea that’s become a morning ritual over the past week.

After it quickly passes I inhale deeply through my nose and stand, exhaling though pursed lips. In the bathroom I wash my tearstained face, brush and floss my teeth and slip into a loose t-shirt and lounge pants. When I look at the woman fingering her hair into a loose braid and tying it off with a ponytail holder I freeze at the woman staring back at me.

“Mouse?” Roman’s stern voice pulls my attention towards him where he’s gone completely unnoticed even though he’s standing directly behind me. “Dr. Sharp is downstairs in the library. What-“

Without giving him time to finish, I smile as brightly as I can before quickly kissing him and making my way out of the bathroom, calling out over my shoulder, “Thank you, Rome. Sorry, I was lost in thought. I still get rattled from time to time. I’m going to hurry downstairs. I don’t want to keep Dr. Sharp waiting.”

My bare feet hit the main floor and I’m almost sprinting when I finally make it to the library. My hands nervously brush at my clothes as I walk in.

“Heather. How are you today?” Dr. Sharp smiles up at me from her notes.

“I’m ahh… I’m good. Great.” I nod before taking my seat and clasping my fidgeting hands in my lap.

“Great?” She looks at me with suspicion. “Come on, haven’t we made it past this polite banter?”

“Well, what the hell do you expect me to say? I’m doing about as shitty as a mother could be doing with a missing daughter, who just so happens to also be a masochist trying to overcome split personalities. How’s that? You like that answer better?”

She smirks, “If it’s the truth, I do.”

Oh honey, if I could choke you.

An exaggerated sigh escapes as I shake my head. “It’s about as much truth as I can afford right now, Dr. Sharp.”

“And Mace? Has she fought you for control since we talked last?” She scribbles on her legal pad.

“There was a moment last night, I don’t know if I’d call it her fighting or me trying to just freely hand her control, whatever it was I handled it.” I keep my eyes fixated on my sweaty palms rubbing together.

“Are you still lying about taking your medication as prescribed?” My eyes shoot to hers and before my scoffed false disbelief is cut off she hedges forward. “Do you think I’m collecting your blood once a month because it’s all I need for my new vampire diet, Heather? Don’t try to bullshit a bullshitter, sweetie.”

“I beg your pardon?” After jotting down something on her legal pad her thumbs swipe across her cell phone before setting it on the table at her side.

“I draw your blood to ensure the levels of medicine in your system are consistent with the therapeutic level, not to quench my thirst. I’m sorry to disappoint your romantic notions.”

More scribbling in her notes ensues, “Tracy is headed in to gather my dinner, I mean your blood,” She chuckles, “If your levels are still nontherapeutic, I’ll give you one of two choices. You can tell me what side effects are preventing you from taking your medication as prescribed, or I can draw twice the amount of blood, write you a prescription for another medication, and we start all over. Now which will it be, Heather?” I glare at her sitting across from me.