My mind accepted the truth of it, but not the reality. My sworn enemy, the person who had destroyed my life, had fathered the man who’d made me wonder if a new life was possible, made me wish, hope that it was. The irony was grim enough to make me want to laugh.
“Are you in pain?” I asked when I stood beside him.
It was a moot question, and his hoarse, almost guttural grunt said as much. In his state, pain was inevitable.
“Yes, but it reminds me that I’m alive,” he said.
“You’ll tell me if it gets too bad?” I asked.
He didn’t speak, but I took note of the way he trembled. “I’ll give you some medication,” I said, turning.
His hand on my arm, grip surprisingly strong, stopped me.
“No drugs. But I am cold.”
He dropped his hand then, the speaking and his movement clearly tiring him out.
“I’ll get a blanket,” I said.
He shook his head.
“No. I don’t want blankets around me like I’m some feeble old man. I am, but at least allow me the illusion,” he said, his voice still gravelly, the words heavy with his breath, but I heard the pride in them nonetheless.
I hated him, I told myself, hated his family, his clan, all that he stood for. I screamed the mantra in my mind as loud as I could, but it was drowned out, almost swallowed by the grudging respect for Christoph that had wormed its way into me. Drowned out by the feeling his unacknowledged son, the one whose hands I could still feel on my body, whose lips I would forever remember pressed against mine, had awakened.
“I’ll find something suitable,” I said.
He nodded, fell back against the pillows.
I left the room, distracted by my own warring thoughts.
I owed him nothing, should have been excited about him lying there in pain, anxious to dish out humiliation. Braden deserved that, had suffered Christoph’s degradations even if he was unaware of them. Which meant Christoph Constantin deserved so much worse. A warm blanket around his shoulders, the accompanying blow to his dignity, was nothing in the face of all the pain that he had caused.
And yet…the glimpses of decency I’d seen in him, the ones I had seen in his son, made me wonder if possibly, somewhere, there had been good in Christoph, good in this life I so despised.
I paused, the war still raging in my mind, but when I saw the stairs, my decision was made. I had been looking for a reason to go up there, a chance to poke around, and maybe doing so was just the reminder I needed, the focus that would get me back on track.
I rushed up the stairs, telling myself that this was a fact-finding mission, a chance to explore an area of the house that I might not get to again.
A row of closed doors lined the hall, and I went to the end, my heartbeat increasing with every breath. I would get what I had been sent for, and then steal a few minutes to look around.
I entered the double-doored room at the end of the hall. It was huge, opulent, but that wasn’t what struck me about it.
Beyond the glamour, the gleaming hardwood floors, the massive wooden sleigh bed that dominated the room, was the life. People had lived here, had a life here, and it was apparent in every inch of the space.
I headed toward what I assumed was the closet, my steps muffled by the thick Persian rug. And as I walked I took in the personal touches, Adela’s slippers on the edge of the bed, the bare spot on the opposite side where Christoph would never again be. There was a dresser, crowded with pictures, some black-and-white, others color, and my gaze settled on one in particular. Two boys, one Christoph Junior, the other I knew to be the second son, the one who had been gone before I came. And off to the side, another boy.
Anton.
I looked away quickly, reached out for the closet door. The walk up the stairs had hardened my resolve, but one look was softening it.
I glanced around the closet quickly, headed toward the line of men’s clothing that hung to one side.
I grabbed a heavy brocade robe off one of the wooden hangers and folded it under my arm. Then I stood, looking around the closet wildly, searching for something, maybe a safe, some vault of secrets.
I found nothing. Just the ordinary accessories of life.
I grimaced, then tried to relax my expression. There was nothing here, just the remnants of a life interrupted by sickness, one that not even Christoph with his power and reputation could change. Rather than happiness, joy, anger, scorn, I felt nothing but acceptance, something that even a week ago would have sent me into a spiral of angry recrimination but that now barely registered.
I left the room quickly, tried to shut out what I had seen there, though I couldn’t. There were six other doors on the hall, and I headed toward the first. I should have let it lie, stopped and gone back downstairs. But I couldn’t give in, give up. Not yet.