The Devil's Masquerade: The Poison (28 page)

Chapter 34

Galena

Father’s orders to find any and all of Dante’s offspring are a tremendous. The man rarely left a woman without fucking her. I search every possible place and option there could be, all the while ignoring the one. It would be easy for me to find her. Nicky supplied her name. I know about her mother’s store even. Though the information comes easily to me, I find myself avoiding it for some reason. Father would kill me if I lied, if I failed even. Maybe death would be better than life. I spend two weeks going through every other possibility and find no blood relation anywhere. My final day, I turn back to the
one
. I wish she had been harder to find. I wish she was stronger than she is. They have a cozy home and a sweet, loving life. I have to laugh when I find out her husband is none other than the one Nicholas has been so set on protecting all this time. Oh, Nephew, your good deeds could have nearly cost you. It is a good thing Father was too busy concentrating on the one want he had in front of him rather than looking past it to see the obvious potential traitor. I wait by myself outside their home. I don’t know why I hesitate. I know what Father would want me to do, but my curiosity has been piqued. When she arrives home, I step out of my car and to their door.

The door flies open, and my jaw locks open. “Hi, can I help you?” Lena asks. I look into her eyes and recognize them immediately as any mother would of her own child. My legs nearly give out from under me.

Taking a breath, I have to look away from her to speak. “I hope so. I have been looking for my cat, and I thought I heard him in your back yard. Would you mind if I took a look?”

“Oh, of course not. Come on in,” Lena says, stepping aside to show me to the back door. “Excuse the mess. We are in the midst of remodeling.”

“Expanding are you?” I ask, looking over the cozy home with fresh pictures of their wedding.

“Yes, and my husband is determined to make everything perfect, although he spends way too much time on expanding the details and not enough time just getting it done,” she says with a laugh.

“Men can be more of a problem than a help sometimes,” I laugh with her.

“Don’t I know it, but Brady is the best thing that has ever happened to me, so I guess I will put up with his minor faults.” She manages to clear a path to let me out the back door. “Okay, here you go. I haven’t heard any cat meowing, but there are a lot of places for him to hide out there. We hope to clear that up soon, too.” I smile, step outside, and breathe as she rushes back in to answer a ringing phone. She is definitely her. I see myself all over her. I have to kill her now. She is already suspicious of me. I can tell by the way she looks me over. Her senses are good, but her strength is not good enough. Father would never approve of her, and she would be better off with me killing her than Father. He would never forgive me if he found out what I did. Forgive me, Dante, but you know as well as I do that she is better off for me to do it now and spare her the suffering. I turn back to the house and ready myself.

“Lena?” A man calls out suddenly before meeting her with open arms. “Hey, Honey, how was it? I tried to call you from work, but you never answered and then some idiot decided to start trouble in the station. Hundreds of cops and this moron thinks he is going to start throwing punches and just walk out. Absolute insanity … I would have been much better going with you.”

“It’s okay! You had to work, and neither of us could wait for us both to have the same day off. Besides, it was great. I’m great, and …” She smiles wide at him and he returns the favor.

“Yeah, so we are sure now?” he says.

“Yes! We are going to have a baby,” Lena says happily.

He lifts her up into his arms and tells her how happy and in love he is. They look so content and excited that I find myself gleefully happy, too.

My mind drifts, and I wonder if this isn’t some kind of punishment for me. The day I found out I was pregnant was a happy one. I couldn’t wait to tell Marius, but Father found out first and wouldn’t allow it. He gave me time to carry the child to full term, but when she was born, he knew immediately she was not good enough for him. I pleaded and pleaded with him not to force me to give up my baby. I loved her from the moment I laid eyes on her. It was all I wanted. I would have done anything,
anything
to keep her. My pleas fell on deaf ears, and there was nothing I could do to convince him. There was no one to help me convince him. Saldean didn’t care about anyone by that point, and Dante had gone, but I knew he would fight for her if he knew. I had two days to kill her myself or father would have it done for me. I carried her out one night, wrapped up completely. Thankfully, he assumed and let me be … just long enough. When I found Dante, I had little time to argue or be assured of his dedication to the secret I had for him. I just handed him my baby and kissed her goodbye. I never bothered to find out what happened to her. When Father found Dante years later and said there was only a small boy with him, I assumed the worst. I assumed my brother was still angry with me and gave my baby up to save himself. Now, I know better. He didn’t kill her. He hid her and made Nicholas believe she was his sister and not my daughter. I look over Lena with pride. She is so beautiful and so… happy.
Thank you, my brother, I owe you. I owe you.

Father is engrossed in work when I return home. My first instinct is to avoid him and cower off to my room before he can speak to me. Then, I think of Nicholas, Nick and his family, my brother, and of my daughter. To run from him would alert my father, and I would never be able to lie to him. No, it is best to face him and tell him straight to his face. I turn back towards Father and walk up on him with my head held high. “I exhausted every possibility Father, and I found no evidence that Dante has any living children outside of Nicholas or Ryan. There was one other that was a possibility, a daughter, but she was killed some years ago when she got caught in the middle of a gang shootout. Her mother still mourns her obviously, but it is probably for the best as far as we are concerned.”

“Very well. Now we can move on to more important matters. Good work, Galena. Return to your usual duties tomorrow.”

“Thank you, Father,” I say, pausing only briefly to smile my appreciation before retreating to my room with a strange feeling rushing through me, a feeling that causes my head to sit a little higher on my shoulders.

Chapter 35

Ryan

There is nothing in Father’s notes that tells me anything more than what I already know, or from what I picked up from watching Adair and Nick. I have spent days going through everything, over and over, and there is nothing here that tells me how to kill Savage. I can’t believe that our only choice is that chair. There has to be something else that Dad was expecting to find at some point. The door to Nick’s office cracks, and I look up. I don’t see anyone until the dog comes around the desk and lays his head on my knee. I rub his ears and smirk at his insistence to receive attention. “For a mutt, you sure do have some answers that the rest of us have not been able to get. So, do you have any for me now? Is there anything out there that I am missing? I toss all of my papers on the floor in front of him. If it’s in there, please find it for me because I have no idea what to even look for. I am afraid I wouldn’t even know it if I came across it.” Eey looks down at them all and wags his tail. “No, I’m not playing with you. Maybe if I get down on your level, I can see things differently?” Lying on the floor, I grab a notebook and go through it as Eey lies down with his head comfortably on my chest. Hours go by and my eyes begin to grow heavy.

As a light whimper echoes within my head, I drift away into a dream.

The room I enter is open, bright, and beautiful, with a beach breeze blowing through. A woman enters with the sun outlining her image, and with her arms outstretched to me, I instantly smile. “Sam? Oh Sam.” She enters my arms with so much warmth that I don’t want to let go. I don’t want to wake up, ever again.

“I can only stay here with you for a short while,” she says.

“No, please don’t go. I miss you so much. I wish I was dead, so I could be with you again.”

“Oh baby, you can’t do that. They need you, and you have so much to offer this world. You can do this without me. I know you can.”

“I can’t do anything without you. I don’t want to do anything without you,” her soothing scent crushes my heart, and I get down on my knees and plead that she come back to me. “Don’t leave me. Take me with you. I will stick a knife through my heart right now to be with you again.”

She places her hand on my face and smiles, “You are my everything, and I am your shadow. Remember? I will shine upon you in the sky forever, happily waiting for the day I can kiss you again. I will never let you down, you can be sure of that, just as sure as I am that you will never let me down.” My tears flow like never before as I pull myself tighter to her. “It was not your fault, Ryan. Do you hear me? It was not your fault. I love you. I will always love you, and I wouldn’t have changed a single thing, not when it comes to you. I would still run for you. I would still chase you down to the ends of the earth, and there wouldn’t have been a damn thing you could have done about it,” Sam whispers into my ear.

“I am so sorry… I’m so sorry. I should have never left you alone. I should have never … I should have never chased after you. I should have made sure you moved on, stayed away from me, and became happy with someone else, someone more deserving of you, someone that could have kept you safe.” I ramble my failures to her while she shakes her head until she quiets me with her fingers to my lips.

“Don’t do that. Don’t regret knowing me. Don’t regret our moments together. I don’t.”

“Take me with you. Don’t leave me here without you, Sam. I would do anything to be with you now,” I cry, hiding my tears deep into her hair.

“Don’t be foolish and chase after me now when you are so desperately needed where you are. Your family needs you. Your friends need you, and you need to kill Savage. You did everything you could have done. You did everything completely right, but it just happened that it was my time to go. I am needed elsewhere now. I need to help you find what you need,” she says, smiling up at me.

“You know what I need to look for?” I ask her.

“I know the blade, the blade with his family crest on it. You will know it as soon as you see it, but it won’t be easy to find. Savage is not about to make it easily available to anyone.”

Her stunning smile revives my heart but only until I remember that she has to go away. “Will I see you again Sam?” I say, caressing her face and kissing her lips.

“I will always be with you. I will always be there to make sure your handsome ego stays in check.” She smiles. embracing me tight … “I love you forever, Ryan.” I breathe my love for her into her vanishing image and fall to my knees, begging to be with her again, somehow.

Unfortunately, I wake without her but feel better for seeing her again.

“Ryan?” Franky comes through the door, already trying to get on the floor with me. I get up as soon as she does. “What is wrong with you? First, you kick me out of your room for no reason, then you avoid me for days, and now you run from me? Did I do something wrong?”

“No, I just think it is time I grieved on my own. Thank you for your help but …”

“Thank you for your help?” she yells back at me. “Are you serious? All I did for you and you are just going to pretend I don’t exist anymore?”

“What do you want me to say, Franky? You’re not Sam, and as much as I wish you were, you’re not,” I say to her steaming face. She doesn’t hesitate to smack me across the face, hard.

“You are just like your brother. You take what you want and then leave when you’re done. You will regret letting me go. I could have made you very happy.”

“You probably should make arrangements to move out, too. I can’t hold Kayla off much longer, and since I am such a disappointment to you, I’m sure you don’t want to be here around me anymore either,” I say to her calmly before sitting down behind the desk, expecting her to leave.

“Ryan, no. I’m sorry. I am just a little upset. I’m scared. I don’t want to go back out there on my own,” she says, gripping me with a fearful expression. “Please, I don’t know what will happened to me on my own.”

“You go out all the time on your own, why are you scared now?”

“I go out briefly and unexpectedly. To live on my own day and night, that is more than enough time to give these attackers to kill me.”

“You need to move out Franky, you will be fine, I will have guards watch you for a while to make sure. I will give you a couple of weeks to make proper arrangements.” I say removing her grip from my arm. “For now I suggest you lay low, from everyone in this house. You haven’t made to many friends here since Nick left.” She storms out crying and nearly knocking Elijah over on her way out. He doesn’t say a word as he walks away with a fresh drink in his hand and smile on his face.