Cain (23 page)

~CHAPTER
TWENTY-TWO~

“
My father had been an
abusive man all his life. And my mother idolized him for whatever
reason. It wasn’t until I was nearly an adult before I realized
that she was more in love with him than she was with being our
mother.”

They had come back into house twenty
minutes later and his sisters were both gone. Thomas said he was
going up to bed and told them good night. They were sitting on the
couch with a low fire burning in the grate.

Alyssa loved this room. It was warm and
inviting and the furniture was soft and worn. There were two
couches in a V in front of the large fireplace. A large, round
coffee table took up most of the area between them. The walls on
either side of it were enclosed bookshelves that held more than
just books, but items as well. Things that his children had made
and things their children had made as well. She was staring at a
picture of Thomas and Drew at his graduation when she thought of
her dad and Thomas.

Her dad had told her that when Thomas’
wife had passed away, he wouldn’t let go of anything that had been
hers. Even after all these years, Alyssa was sure her clothing
still hung in their closet and her things still about their
bedroom.

“
Your mother is a piece of
work, but then so is mine. How many times…I’m sorry this isn’t any
of my business. How are your sisters taking—”

“
Don’t. I want you to know
about them. How many times what? Finish, please. I want you to ask.
I’m beyond being embarrassed about them anymore.”

She didn’t think that was quite true,
but she asked anyway. “How many times had your father been in jail?
I mean, from what I heard that night in the warehouse, it seemed
like a lot.”

“
Six times before I
graduated from high school then when I was in my first year of med
school, he went to prison for murder. He’d been drunk and impatient
sitting at a light. The guy in front of him didn’t move fast enough
for him so my father drove around him and up onto the sidewalk.
There was a family just coming out of a shop and he ran them all
down. The man died at the scene and the woman, his wife, was
expecting their first child. She lost the baby and then later
committed suicide.”

“
Oh, Cain, I’m so sorry.
That must have been horrible for you and your sisters. And that
poor woman, to lose so much.”

Alyssa curled up in his lap and held
him to her. He didn’t say anything for a long time. He just held
her and ran his fingers up and down her back, careful even though
he’d taken her hard against the tree not an hour ago.

“
No one has ever thought
about how it affected us. My father spent ten years in prison and
as far as I know, none of us ever went to see him. He’d call me a
few times, Quinn too, but we never talked to him much. My mother
would try to get us to visit him. But again, none of us would. He
was an abusive man. He hit them and me until I started fighting
back. If he was to catch one of the girls alone, he’d knock them
around a bit, but never Sin. Sin would have kicked his fucking ass.
In fact, I think she did once or twice.”

“
I think I’ll like Sin.
Where does she live? And the others, where do they live? Close
by?”

Cain laughed. “Sin is in the Special
Services. She’s overseas right now. She can’t tell us where, but I
hear from her about once a month. Her real name is Sydney, Sydney
Valeria. She and Lilliane Iris, or Lilly-pad for short, are
identical twins. But you couldn’t meet two women more opposite.
Lilly-pad has a lot of fire, but she is a kindergarten teacher. I
suppose she’d have to be tough to do that too.”

“
Teachers need more than
our support, I think. I think they should be canonized. Large
statues should be erected for them. I’m going to try and set up a
fund for the local schools when I get back to work.” She actually
had a whole list of projects that she was going to take care of
when she got back to work. Several of them were already in motion
and a couple more were still being worked on with details. Closing
her eyes, she took several deep breaths to calm herself.

“
Whatever you’re thinking,
it’ll be fine. Your mother can’t hurt you unless you let her. I
know. I have the same problems.”

“
Tell me about the rest of
your family, please. You said you have five sisters. I’ve met Quinn
and Jazzie, both of whom I love by the way, and then Sin and Lilly.
Who’s the last one?”

His voice was a soothing balm over her
nerves. Being in his arms was like being held in a warm blanket on
a chilled night, watching the fireflies flitter across the sky.
Alyssa started to ask him something else when she realized that she
was in love with him. Sitting up, she looked down at him. Cain gave
her a questioning look.

He was so handsome and kind. She loved
the way he made her feel. The things he did for her and to her. She
was in love with him.

“
What is it, baby? Are you
all right? I wondered if I had hurt you out there. That was stupid
on my part. I should have—”

“
I love you.”

~~~

Cain couldn’t breathe. She loved him.
Alyssa Howard loved him. He pulled her back down so that her
forehead rested on his and he held her. “I love you too. I
never…I’ve been such an ass.” She burst out laughing. “No, let me
start again. I’ve been an ass to you so many times over the past
few days. I’ve wanted to tell you at least five hundred times in
the past…I love you, Alyssa. With all my heart, I love
you.”

She lay back down on his chest. He
didn’t know what to say to her now, not that he couldn’t think of
about ten thousand things to say, just nothing came to mind. He
wanted to hold her love secret but also shout it to the world. He
wanted to call Damon and tell him, the man who’d been more a father
to him than his own had been. But he also wanted to savor it just a
little while longer. When she spoke again, he grinned.

“
I’ve never been in…I’ve
loved people before, but never been in love with anyone before. I
loved Rodney, but I wasn’t in love with him. My daddy, I guess, but
not like I love you. He would have liked you. No, that’s not true,
he would have loved you. He always told me that he would need to
approve of the man I brought into his family. Not that I’m saying
we need to get married. I don’t want to, I’ve got…” She sat up and
looked at him again. “He would have approved.”

Cain wasn’t sure what to think about
her not wanting to get married. He would do it tomorrow if she
would say yes. Of course, he should probably ask her first, but he
didn’t think right now was the time. He could tell that she was
stressed and last night when they’d gone to bed, she’d tossed and
turned quite a bit before he’d pulled her to him and held her. She
had muttered about her mother and her uncle for some time. When she
started to tell him about them, he wasn’t surprised. It was a heavy
weight on her mind.

“
I know I told you about
my…I’m going to do something on Friday to her. Something that only
Thomas and Drew know about. I’m going to kick her out of my house,
her and my uncle. And then I’m going to cut her off. I have the
right to do so and according to my daddy’s will, I should have done
it long ago. I’ve been…she’ll hate me more than she does now when I
do it. But I can’t let her continue on as she’s been doing. She’ll
run the company into the ground if I let her. You understand, don’t
you, Cain?”

The fact that her mother was hurting
Alyssa was enough for Cain to want to agree with her. But he knew
that’s not what she wanted or even needed. She needed assurances,
not someone to blindly agree with her.

“
You mother won’t change,
will she? You don’t believe she will suddenly become mother of the
year and want you and her to have the kind of relationship that
other mother/daughters have? If you did, then you would give her
another chance, right?”

“
Yes. She would hurt me
now just as quickly as she did before just for the money. And you
know what? If I thought it would make a difference to her, I’d give
it to her. But she’d just find something else to turn on me with.
Daddy left a video will just for her, he said. He said he wanted
her to see his face when he told her she was a…let me think. Oh
yeah, ‘a lying, two-timing fucking bitch with no morals and no
sense of pride.’ Dad had a way with words.”

Cain started to laugh, hard. He was
sure that he knew that because Nathan’s daughter was much the same
way. And Cain thought that Nathan would have been very proud of
her.

They went up to bed a little while
later. Cain held Alyssa until she fell asleep. He wanted to start
on a life with her as soon as possible and wondered if she’d want a
large wedding or would she be happy with just a simple one? He
thought that a woman of her stature would need to have a big
wedding and decided he didn’t care. As long as she said “yes,” he
didn’t care if they got married in a bar in the lower East side as
long as she was his.

Cain decided that on Friday, he was
going to propose. She would be finished with this thing with her
mom and hopefully ready to move on. He was going to go to the
jewelry store tomorrow and wondered if he should take his sisters.
Then he decided against it. He wanted to do this on his own.
Closing his eyes, Cain went to sleep with a smile on his
face.

~CHAPTER
TWENTY-THREE~

It was Thursday afternoon and
everything was going according to plan. Drew sat at the desk
opposite from Alyssa and watched as she went over the last contract
that they had drawn up. It was a standard agreement, much like the
ten others she’d signed in the past six hours, but she still read
every line. And he loved it.

He looked over at the files on the
chair they still had to go over. He was sure she’d want them
finished before Cain came home. She was nothing else if not a
perfectionist. Nathan Howard had left his billions in the right
hands. Alyssa was going to triple the company’s net worth in ten
years or Andrew Miller would eat his hat.

“
Okay, I guess I can live
with this one too. I don’t like that they won’t let us tear the
company apart for thirty days, but I can see their reasoning. But
we both know that there is no way they are going to be able to keep
it afloat.”

This company she was buying simply for
the building. It was a downtown high-rise that had been converted
into a bunch of shops from top to bottom. It might have worked
except there was nowhere to park to shop at them. Alyssa had bought
the building with the stipulation that she gave them thirty days to
try and reorganize, then they could buy the building back. He told
her it was a sound idea in that it wouldn’t work and she couldn’t
do anything with it until the city gave her the permits. That took
about the same amount of time.

“
Okay,” Drew said as he
handed her two more files. “There are these two things that cannot
wait. The first one is the clinic. I have the building purchased
for that and a line on the medical supplies it will need to run. I
also have a list of doctors who have agreed to help you out by
donating one day a month of their time. The name has been
registered and will be unveiled when the building is
emptied.”

“
The Rodney Kincaid Clinic
is something I’m going to be very involved in. I want you to set up
whatever they need when they need it. Thanks for rushing this for
me. It will help a great many people.”

He nodded. Grandda had told him a
little about Alyssa’s story, but not all. Drew was sure there was
more to the clinic than either one of them had said. But the fact
that the place was going to be named for a fallen policeman was
enough to get him on board. He handed her the two things that he
needed her approval on.

“
The city is asking that
you don’t let the homeless clutter the sidewalks outside the
building and that you make sure that you have sufficient guard when
you’re open. I explained that we’d be open twenty-four/seven and
they aren’t happy with that either.”

“
Hummm, well fuck them. I
purchased the block, right?” Drew nodded even as he smiled. “Then
the only business that I’ll be cluttering up is my own. If they
call again about this tell the current mayor that I’m planning to
run against him if he gives me anymore shit. I have lots more money
and I know how to use it. Next.”

Drew handed her the next file as the
phone rang. He could tell by her face that it was Cain. He’d never
seen two people more in love. He started to rise and she waved him
back down.

Drew knew that she wasn’t going to like
the next file. It was about the mansion and the issues he’d run
into since he’d started his “remove the fucking bitch” job. He
glanced down at the file tab and smiled at what she’d dubbed the
file. RTFB/job. He laughed every time he read it. Drew liked
working with this woman.

“
Okay, I’ll see you
tonight then…I love you too…all right.” She hung up with the
sappiest grin on her face he’d ever seen.

“
Want a minute? Your
cheeks are bright red. I’m sure I can go and find you a freezer to
step into if you want.”

“
Fuck you. Now what else?
And just so you know, I don’t want you to save the worst for last
anymore. I know you do it. Put it somewhere in the middle, or
better yet, the first thing. I would prefer to end on a semi if not
good note when we do this in the future, okay?”