All because of Victor’s two, spoiled-rotten, dead-rotten children.
He was to blame for this. Victor.
His past sins had come home to roost.
“Nathaniel, we have to talk,” he tried again.
Nate’s head slowly turned from the window he was staring unseeingly out of and his eyes focussed on Victor. At the look in his son’s eyes, Victor immediately had nothing to say.
Then Nate spoke.
“Eight years,” he said.
Victor closed his eyes in pain.
“They cost us eight years,” Victor heard Nathaniel say.
Victor opened his eyes again. “I’ll take care of Danielle and Jeffrey,” he vowed.
And he most definitely would.
A muscle in Nate’s jaw jumped and he turned his head back to his contemplation of the scenery.
Victor went on. “Son, I swear to you, they’ll wish they were never born.”
And he meant it. They were his children by blood but they were his children no more.
Neither Nate nor Victor for a second questioned that Jeff and Danielle had done exactly what Lily’s attorney had said they’d done. The whole time Laura ranted and raved and Victor cursed and shouted after Lily disappeared, they didn’t say a word.
It wasn’t as if Lily had a great offer to go shopping in Milan that she couldn’t resist and that’s why she left Nate. She was at home in Indiana grieving the loss of both of her parents. Then at twenty-two years of age, grieving, also pregnant, she came back to Nate only to be told he was dead.
And his children knew and neither of them said one single word.
Not only that, they’d participated in this terrible deception. Jeff likely took the note and Danielle…
Victor shook off his thoughts. He’d deal with them later.
“What are you going to do?” Victor asked.
Nate sat silent.
Victor continued. “Nathaniel, you saw her. She’s –”
“I saw her,” Nate bit off, his voice eloquently stating, without a great many words, exactly what he’d seen and exactly how it affected him.
“You have to…” Victor started but didn’t finish. How did one go about piecing together a shattered person?
Victor thought that Nathaniel could do anything he put his mind to doing. He believed this with everything he was.
However, this was going to be his son’s mightiest challenge.
“What are you going to do?” Victor asked again.
Nate took in a deep breath and then slowly let it out.
He turned to Victor and looked him directly in the eyes.
“I’m going to put my family back together.”
* * * * *
Nate stood at the floor to ceiling windows that made up the entire wall to the vast living room in his penthouse apartment.
As he drank from a tumbler that was filled with two cubes of ice and a lot of vodka and smoked what would be one of his final cigarettes (Lily didn’t like his smoking and he was not about to smoke in front of his seven year old daughter), he watched the sun set on London.
Lily had come back to him.
He tried to make this his only thought. Any of the others that were determined to crowd in his head were too painful to bear.
Like her pale, lifeless face, her fidgeting hands, her once-curvaceous, now nearly-too-thin body.
Like the fact that his brother and sister had connived, lied and stole away eight years of their happiness.
Like her horrible voice saying, “Let’s just get this over with.”
Like her haunted look when Nate’s attorney had suggested that the news of her parent’s death would be “entertaining”.
Like her flinching at feeling his hand on her arm.
Like her once expressive eyes now blank and looking through him like he wasn’t there.
Like the fact that he’d purposefully, with great relish, got her pregnant which nearly caused her to die.
Like her telling him, “You told me you’d always take care of me.”
Like the fact that he made promises to her, promises he didn’t keep, promises he didn’t even attempt to keep.
Like her whispering, “You told me you’d never let me go.”
On this final thought, he turned swiftly from the window and threw the tumbler of vodka across the room so savagely his arm was a blur. The tumbler exploded on the wall well across the room, dead centre of an exorbitantly expensive painting.
And then he heard a small, fearful noise and his head came around.
Laura was standing just inside the front door.
She was wearing a stylish dove grey skirt and a soft blue blouse. Both of these were crinkled and in disarray. Her face showed she’d been crying, it was mottled and red, her makeup smudged and worn.
She looked ravaged.
Nate turned fully to her. “How did you get here?”
“I have a key,” she explained unnecessarily for of course he knew she had a key.
“That’s not what I meant, tell me you didn’t drive in that state.”
She didn’t answer for a moment and they stood there, mother and son, the colossal expanse of his living room separating them physically; something else entirely separating them emotionally.
Then she smiled but it was a terrible, sad smile.
“Of course, my Nathaniel, after what happened to you today, you’d worry about me driving.” She shook her head. “I took a taxi.”
Nathaniel made no response; instead he leaned toward a table near him and put out his cigarette in a crystal ashtray.
Laura kept watching him then she said softly, “Victor called the children to the house. He’s disowned them. He sacked Jeffrey. He cut off Danielle’s allowance. They both only have their trust funds of which, Victor tells me, they’ve already used a significant portion.”
Nathaniel kept his silence. There was nothing to say except that it was all too late and everyone knew that fact quite painfully well enough already.
“He did this with my blessing,” she whispered. “I can’t say, I can’t explain how sorry…”
She didn’t finish and he watched her swallow convulsively, fighting back the tears.
“I now have only one son,” she finished, her voice aching.
The pain on her face was wretched, unlike anything Nate had ever seen before. She was watching him closely, waiting for a reaction but he didn’t move.
She seemed to come to some conclusion. She nodded slowly and then started to turn to leave.
That was when Nate spoke. “And a granddaughter.”
Her head snapped around and she stared at her son.
Nate went on. “And, if I can convince her, a daughter-in-law.”