Delusive (52 page)

I clutched my racing heart as I stared down at the marble floor.

“The color just drained from your face.” She leaned forward, looking at me with something I wasn’t sure could be labeled as genuine concern. “What I said…does it ring as familiar to you?”

I slowly nodded. I wanted not to think the things that were inundating my mind with the truth. How underhanded Skylar could be. She’d told me a few white lies in the beginning, but I passed them off as her wanting to impress me. Thinking everything she’d ever said to me was a lie, it was hard to swallow from a woman I called a friend. She showed me bits of who she really was when she took me to Bakersfield, and involved me in the clusterfuck that occurred inside the house on Fletcher. I began to think Elias was right—as usual—and she was responsible for what happened at the club.
 

Kirsten’s story couldn’t have been more accurate: Skylar was on her own agenda. While I’m sure she wanted out of the Caris’ clutches, I wasn’t a hundred percent certain she wanted what I had—Elias. The test I gave her in the form of a sugar packet full of poison would definitely tell me one way or the other.
 

“She claimed your husband raped her mother,” I began quietly, “but…she’s not Natanael’s daughter, is she?”

She threw her head back and guffawed. “Simply because she spread her legs for my husband once and called him Daddy when he fucked her”—she could barely say the words through her laughter—“it doesn’t make her his real daughter.”

I audibly gasped.

“Oh, that’s right, Hanley. I caught them together, and I put her in the hospital for a few days. Every woman I catch with Natanael meets some semblance of the same fate…or worse.” Shaking her head, she mumbled to herself, “Natanael’s daughter? Please! Oh, God, no.”
 

Erasing her smile, her tone returned to its normal weightiness. “My husband would have to lower himself to sleep with a woman who was probably born with a crack pipe in her mouth. Have you seen my husband? Do you really think he would want a woman like Skylar’s mother? My husband is capable of many things, but forcing a woman to have sex with him? The idea is preposterous. He would never sink so low. My husband has a fondness for innocent beauties.

“I have plenty of issues with the women who throw themselves at him, hoping to get their hands on his cache of money with a pregnancy. Natanael has a lot of children from other women. Many claim to be his when they are not. He had seven children prior to being forced to get a vasectomy, but he only cares about one. The one he has with me. Do you know why that is? I am the only woman that Natanael Cari will ever truly love.”

I found it hard to believe that when he had issues with keeping his cock to one woman. Maybe he, like his son, wasn’t certain on the definition of love. While in my heart I knew Elias was coming to terms with the true meaning, I couldn’t determine if his father had; especially not after what he had done to Elias the other night.
 

“Skylar said Elias wasn’t his biological son,” I mentioned, waiting for her to debunk more of Skylar’s lies.

“I was a virgin when I met my husband,” she replied, appearing proud of the former title. “The way he prefers them. Stop believing all the lies you’ve been told, especially from the people you thought you could trust. I’m going to do you a favor and open your eyes.”

She reached into the pocket of her robe and retrieved a piece of paper and handed it to me. “Roth’s location.”

I slipped off the massage chair and slid it from her hands. “M-my father said he killed him.”

Her eyes widened in mild surprise. “And he almost did.”

“You knew about Roth all along and you kept it from your son? When all Elias really wants is a family and siblings he can relate to, why would you do this to him?”

“I have many reasons,” she replied dismissively. “Elias and Roth would never have gotten along. Elias wouldn’t have had the patience for Roth’s numerous character flaws. And after Lurdes, it was best he stopped his dream of bonding with all of his half-siblings. Keith is perfect for him. Pliable…and nonthreatening. He didn’t impede on the man Elias had to become—or needed to be, nor will he ever try to compete with him.”

It was the way she said it—not exactly what she said—and the dark shadow in her eyes told me more than she bothered to reveal. “Are you the reason Elias can’t see his sister, Lurdes, anymore? Did you say something to Lula to make her take out a restraining order?”

“That’s really none of your concern. Now”—she dusted off her lap as if she needed to—“I’ve done the best that I could to help you. I expect gratitude for this when the time comes, Hanley.”

“Help me?” I questioned, the disbelief was palpable. “How have you helped me? And why bother when there were so many times I could’ve used your help in the past?” I shouldn’t have bothered to ask when the answers were already known to me. Kirsten had shown me the depth of her self-serving nature and the abysmal well of selfishness that ran very deep and very wide.

“You’re looking at the glass as half empty. Look at what you have now. A gorgeous husband who will dote on you and spoil you rotten. Love. You have love, Hanley.”

“Why
are
you doing your messed up version of helping me?”

“It’s possible I feel obligated. At one time, your mother and I were friends.” Her confidence took a visible hit. Her eyes wandered off into space before sullenly settling back on me. “It’s impossible to expect a friendship to survive when we were both after the same man at the same time. I won him, and your mother was always a sore loser.”

“Are you…are you saying my mother and Natanael were an item?”

“Who do you think her first husband was?”

“Luther, it always was.”

She chuckled wryly. “It baffles my mind what those parents of yours have done to your pretty little head. Luther wasn’t her first husband. She always claimed Natanael was her very first love; he always was.”

Gasping, I slipped back to sit on the massage chair. My legs began to feel unsteady and lacked the ability to stand. “That can’t be right. None of this can be right. My father was her first love.”

“Did
she
tell you that or did he?”

Dropping my chin to my chest, I was unable to answer. I always assumed or thought my mother confirmed what my father had always said, but now I couldn’t remember the exact time when—or if—she admitted my father was the love she lost. She stated it generically, and I assumed it was my father.
 

“I know you expected me to be the evil queen. I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to disappoint you.” She shook her head. “I’m not a fan of hiding the truth because it will hurt the ones we love. But I will hide the truth if it will negatively affect my plans. I was never a maternal one. I did my son a favor by not pretending to be.”

It was delusional of her to cast off the title of “evil queen”. While she might not have been the perfect mold of one, I had a feeling she’d turn out to be something much worse if her actions continued to go unchallenged. “I don’t think Elias would agree with you. He practically had to raise himself.”

“And I think he did a decent job.”

Elias had serious psychological issues. If he’d had parents who loved him, he would be a well-adjusted adult. She didn’t know him at all if she thought Elias turned out to be the best man he could have been. I loved him, despite all his flaws, but I was realistic about his nature. The man was severely fucked up…and I adored every single edge of his jagged little pieces. They were parts of a whole, and even if parts of him drove me mad, they made up the man he was, and he was my entire world.

Awestruck, I could barely formulate the question. “Do you…even know who your son is?”

“I know enough, Hanley. He did everything I thought he would, just as you did everything I hoped you would.” With a warm simper, she looked me over. “I must say, I’m looking forward to having you as a daughter-in-law. The mess between us, keeping us from having a relationship with one another needs to be cleared. I’m not your enemy. I never was. I was never your mother’s enemy, either. It’s unfortunate she didn’t see it that way until close to the end of her life. She knew her days were numbered.”
 

With a wistful sigh, she slipped down from the massage chair and walked over to me. Placing her hand underneath my chin, she lifted my head to meet her gaze. “I’m looking forward to retiring and having more than a few grandchildren. This queen is ready to retire her throne to someone else—you.”

I didn’t peg her as a woman who would secede her crown to someone else. Of all the things she had told me, not once did she say she loved her husband. With the push to get into the drug business, I knew she wanted her husband to go down. With the way Elias hated her, she was in desperate need of someone in her son’s life to manipulate him.
 

There was only one reason for her to do all that she had done. The woman had no plans to retire from the empire that she had and would continue to build.
 

The things Elias had told me the night we came up with a plan together were all true. He had said his mother wanted him to be her lackey to do the dirty work, the things which appealed to his more volatile nature. But he couldn’t agree with where she wanted to take the business. He didn’t know his mother wanted to use me to get him to see a different side of things. She was wrong if she thought I’d do it as payment in receipt of her help.
 

For now, I’d play nice and see where the path toward making her think I aligned with her would lead me.

“What is your definition for gratitude?” I asked.
 

“When you meet with Roth again, you’ll want to hate me. You’ll get over it. When you do, I want you to take down my bastard of a fucking husband once and for all. I want you to have your revenge. Every last bit of it.”

I no longer questioned whether or not Kirsten ever loved her husband, and I no longer questioned all the things that Elias—or for that matter, my father—had told me. The key to uncovering all of my parents’ secrets was right in front of me and its name wasn’t Kirsten Cari.

THIRTY-FOUR

THE PARKWAY BEHAVIORAL AND Rehabilitation Hospital was a private facility in the greater Las Vegas area. The lobby was clean and spacious with a large intake desk situated at the far wall wedged between secure doors at either side that led to the patient and hospital areas. A waiting area was offset in the corner of the lobby with lockers that could only be accessed with digital codes.
 

“May I help you?” a receptionist asked.

“I’m here to see Roth Cari,” I told her.

“I need the patient’s code and your identification.”

I gave her the number Kirsten had written underneath the address and slipped my identification from my wallet.

“You’re not permitted to take any personal items in with you.” She pointed to the lockers and typed a few things on her keyboard. Peeling a stick-it note from her yellow pad, she wrote a series of numbers on it. “You can lock up all your belongings in the lockers while you’re visiting the patient.” She slid the paper over the desk to me. “This is your access code to locker 42. Don’t lose it.” She looked over my identification and typed a few things into the computer.
 

Done with whatever she needed to do with my identification, she handed it back to me along with a laminated visitor’s badge that had a sticker with today’s date placed on the top right hand corner.
 

After I locked up my belongings in one of the lockers, a man in blue scrubs appeared from one of the doors and ushered me inside the hospital. As he led me to the far end of the hall and ran through the rules and regulations of what I could and couldn’t do while visiting Roth, the din coming from the patients and employees served as chaotic background music.
 

He herded me through the recreation room, which reminded me of a high school cafeteria, and out the doors at the far side of the room. The large backyard was fenced with beds of faux turf and a mix of jacaranda, lemon, and bottle trees.
 

The orderly pointed to a man, sitting on a bench between two trees, providing shade from the unobscured sun. I gave myself a minor pep talk before I approached him. A plain-clothed nurse sat with him, reading a hardcover edition of
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
to him.

She glanced at Roth and stood. “Rachel,” she introduced herself and shook my hand a little too firmly.

“Hanley,” I told her.

She asked for his patient code, before she said anything further. I quickly gave it to her. “It’s nice to see him get a visitor. You won’t get much talk from him. His brain was damaged by the trauma and it affected his speech and fine motor skills.”

“Trauma? He was…?”

“Attacked.” Her eyes widened as she examined me. “It was lucky that someone found him and got him care. They never found the man who did this to him.” She sighed mournfully. “I think the person who found him was the one who admitted him here.”

“Kirsten Cari?”

“I’m sorry.” She shook her head. “Without access to his records right now, I can’t be sure. I don’t want to guess and be wrong.”

“Will he ever get better?” My hand shook as I looked over at Roth. I could only see the back of his head and wasn’t sure if I could go through with what I needed to do. There was a tinge of guilt that told me I was the reason he was in this state.