Roman's Redemption: Roman: Book II (Roman's Trilogy) (25 page)

The long silence is enough to drive me mad before he answers, putting me out of my misery.

“Lore, it was always her. It could have never been you, and you know it. You knew it then, and you know it now, yet still you defy me. Continuing to lie to yourself, make believing you were anything other than a sure thing, a piece of ass from a piece of trash from the dirty side of the tracks.” His chuckle is so evil and sinister my skin breaks out in chill bumps. When his dark silver eyes land on mine he smirks, “I can’t describe how happy I am to know that bastard of yours will die. I may make being in attendance my dying wish. I’m sure my real son will allow me to be a part of the audience. It truly fills me with joy.”

I won’t explain the level of pain his words leave scarred across my heart. As far as I’m concerned it needs no explanation. You know what it feels like to love someone so much, that decades later those feelings still remain. Then you also know how much it would destroy you to hear the words I just suffered through.

I hate the tears in my eyes as much as I hate my simple stupid heart. It doesn’t stop the tears from pooling in my eyes and when I blink they cascade down my face. At the same time the last shattered pieces of my heart break all over again.

This is all my fault.

And Richard, as evil as he is, he is absolutely right. Roman will kill Sebastian. I’ve known that child all my life, I watched as the same evil I see in Richard’s eyes began consuming him at a very early age. I tried very hard, I did my very best to raise Roman to be a good man, even going so far as to put him and his needs for a maternal figure before that of my own son. And for that, I will pay dearly. I will pay with not only my blood, but the blood of the first born Chaisson son in over a hundred years.

This is all my fault, I just can’t see where I could have done anything differently. My last sin was committed trying to finally give my own son the peace he chased his entire young life.

Revenge is indeed best served cold, at least cold it will help numb some of the pain.

I never really considered myself part of the Chaisson family. I certainly wasn’t raised in the same house with them. I certainly wasn’t treated with the same respect or kindness as Sebastian.

I spent my life as an outcast. Just another damn female born to the Chaisson whores from Orleans Parish. Never anything more, never anything really at all.

After I finish braiding Winter’s hair I sit her on my vanity chair and slip shoes on her stocking covered feet and glance up smiling at her. “Winter, do you like it here?” If I had a heart left in my chest cage it would probably feel pain when her eyes widen and she anxiously chews on her bottom lip.

“Sweetheart, I’ve never tried to trick you, I’ve never hurt you, nor have I ever done anything for you not to trust me, have I?”

Her head shakes, but she keeps her eyes on her folded hands in her lap for several seconds, then clears her throat and looks back up to me, “No ma’am.”

“No ma’am? Which question are you answering, child?”

“Bof of em.”

I nod, smiling reassuringly at her.

“You know what I think?” She shakes her head slightly, “I think since you have been such a good girl, you deserve a treat.” Winter’s face lights up with a smile.

“Did you know there are airplanes that sell tickets, and if you buy them, those airplanes will fly you to Disney World in less than half of a day?”

Her excitement is almost palpable and I question my decision to reveal all my cards to the child so quickly.

“Really?! Oh wow! Do you tink I’ve been so much a good girl that I can getta ticktict?!” Her shrieking voice is like something piercing your ear drum.

“Well, first you have to promise me two things. If you promise, cross your heart, hope to die, stick a needle in your eye, then yes, sweet child, I will promise to buy you one of those tickets. Can you promise me?”

Winter nods her head enthusiastically as she goes through the hand motions of crossing her heart and hoping to die.

“Good girl. The first promise is you can’t tell ‘him’. Is that understood?”

“Yes! Yes, ma’am!”

“I mean it, Winter. Not one word.” She nods again. “The second promise is I’m gonna need ya to act sick, child. Otherwise he’ll never let you go. We have to make him ‘think’ you’re going to the doctor. Okay? Do you understand me, Winter?”

After a salute or a Scout’s honor, I’m not certain which, she slowly nods her head and the little devil smiles like the cat who ate the canary. I question just how much all of us have underestimated this little girl with blue fire eyes.

As I head downstairs I transform my determination with steel, preparing for not only goodbye, but the fight of my life.

Elizbeth Gorman does not ask questions, and she never voices her opinion.

Not until tonight.

This is the beginning of me living for me.

“I said no, Lizbeth. No. There’s no way I’m allowing Winter to miss school tomorrow. I don’t care how sick she is.” I turn back to the laptop screen in front of me.

“Seb, I’ll take her first thing in the morning. We’ll be gone before you even awake, she’ll be back in her preschool class before lunch. Go feel her head, she’s piping hot with a fever. Do you want to draw attention to us by having her seize from a fever, is that what you want?”

“Goddamn IT!” A second later the laptop of course slams against the floor, shattering.

“Fine!” I storm around my desk and grab her face, my fingertips biting into her pale flesh. “So help me God, if she isn’t in her class by lunch, YOU will be the one who pays, understood, freak?”

It appears as though she swallows a lump the size of a baseball and her eyelashes flutter before she nods once and answers, “Of course, brother. I understand perfectly.”

“Good.” I motion to the laptop, “Pick that mess up and get out of my face. I don’t want to see either of you for the remainder of the evening.”

I don’t wait for her to answer before turning and leaving the office.

The sound of a tornado tearing through the first floor of the house catapults me from the bed. After I pull my pj bottoms on I head towards the door and my feet falter as I remember Lizbeth is taking Winter to the pediatrician this morning. I glance at the clock and see it’s barely six am and stumble my way back to bed. There are other plans apparently. As soon as my head hits the pillow the double doors of my master suite crash open and heavy booted feet slam into my room.

Before I’m able to roll over, much less see who just bum rushed their way into my room I see five huge male silhouettes surrounding my bed. At the same time I feel the cold, hard end of a gun barrel shoved against the base of my skull and my arch nemesis, Roman, speaks. “Don’t open your fucking mouth unless it’s to tell me where the fucking hell my baby girl is you coward.”

His body towers over my prone frame as he pushes the barrel of his gun deeper between my cervical vertebrae. He leans his face against the side of mine and spit flies from his lips, landing in and around my ear as he growls, “I swear to fuck if you don’t point me in the direction of my daughter within five seconds I’ll make the call needed to expedite your mother’s demise in the basement of Payne Manor while she’s still shackled to the cement wall like the pathetic old hag she is. Better yet, I’m more than certain you remember my sexual preferences, I think I’ll wait to kill her. Wait until you have front row seats to her execution. And don’t think for one second I won’t violate and pillage every fucking hole your mother possesses as I carve the skin from her before slitting her throat from ear to ear. Don’t assume, brother that my soul isn’t as fucking sick and twisted as yours. I have every intention of choking her with my cock as she suffocates on the blood pouring down her esophagus from the clean sever created by my favorite ten-blade scalpel. Directly before I give my girl Mace the honor she deserves of ending your life. That will happen long after you suffer. You will watch her body turn rigid while rigor mortis sets in, petrifying her dead, contorted body.”

I feel nothing but disgust towards the mother Roman speaks of. The woman who carried and bore me from her body, but decided to love and raise another man’s son while her own son watched from the outside in. Always hoping to be picked, but instead always left feeling less than an outcast.

It was just after midnight when a sleeping Winter and I boarded the plane bound for Orlando. I’ll take her to see her precious Disney World, but not for long.

Mother waited on Sebastian hand and foot, she made no bones about which child she loved more, and which child she despised. I blame her for every wrong doing, for the mess of the life I was forced to live, as well as the drastic measures I’ve had to take to end Sebastian’s ridiculous little game of house.

I often wondered after my first Christmas holiday visit home, if my father had been the great and powerful Richard William Payne, would my mother have loved me the way she loved Sebastian?

I don’t wonder about it any longer.

Her love and a normal childhood was never in the cards for me because my father was a one night stand who coincidentally bears a striking resemblance to old man Payne.

Speaking of my father, we’ll be meeting at the airport in Orlando tomorrow night. He may not be Richard, but great and powerful among the circles of people living on the wrong side of the law, he is. Edward Cage and his men are more than feared with connections that would make the scariest outlaws avoid eye contact.

He also has been holding a lot of animosity for a very long time against mother dearest. To say he was shocked Lores Chaisson did not terminate the pregnancy of his daughter twenty-six years ago is an understatement. And now with the long overdue chance to meet his only child less than a day away, he has and continues to do everything in his power to make and keep his Elizbeth safe, hidden, and happy.

It took more effort than I originally thought it would to find dear old dad, but the rewards for finally finding him greatly out weight the efforts.

After our short trip to Orlando, my ‘daughter’ and I board the plane bound for Toronto, and it will be by the names of a thirty year old woman named Blythe and her three year old daughter Summer.