Page 82 of Corrupted Memories
Sebastian
Gianna stares at me expectantly.We had put away the food and moved back to the living room, across from each other on the couch. Both of us ignore the tension being so close to the chair and ottoman, a reminder of what had just passed a few hours before.
“I promised not to leave you, Sebastian.” She sighs, crossing her arms across her chest as she leans against the armrest. “But we can’t move forward without some truth.”
“I know.” I nod, swallowing and looking away from her. “I haven’t talked about this with anyone else. It’s not easy.”
“Not even Nico?”
I shake my head, dropping my head into my hands and leaning on my knees. “No. Only my father.”
My chest aches, and I clear my throat, straightening up to stare at her. “They call my father The Butcher within our world. Not only because of his torture techniques, but because every wife he’s ever had, he’s killed.”
Gianna’s eyebrows furrow and her fingers dig into her arms. Her eyes are wary as she nods for me to continue with thinned lips.
“Right,” I mutter, exhaling a long breath. “My mother was his first wife. She died in childbirth.”
She inhales sharply. “I’m sorry, Sebastian.”
I shrug, turning away from her. “You can’t miss someone you never knew and was never talked about. I have a journal she wrote me, but it’s words on paper.”
My chest aches thinking about the next part of what I have to tell her, it isn’t something anyone could hear lightly. I close my eyes and shake my head. “My father… He’s not a bad man. He’s told me he’s never bothered to fix his reputation because it protected me.”
I stop bouncing my knee, and my hands are twisted together as I squeeze them tightly. “My mother was his first wife. He quickly remarried before I was two, and my stepmother got pregnant when I was three.”
I could feel her shifting to move closer to me, her thigh resting against mine. Her hand comes up and strokes the back of my head. “Sebastian…”
The softness in her tone tells me she’s already jumped to the worst of conclusions. I laugh softly, considering the truth is worse than that. “My brother…” I clear my throat at the crack. “I was twelve when we figured out what she was doing to him. To her own child.” My stomach clenches and I look at her. “Never to me, but it didn’t matter. I was supposed to protect him.”
She shakes her head, scooting closer. “No?—”
“The night my father caught her… I can still hear his yelling and her shouting. My father’s guard kept me locked in my room, but over the years I’ve pieced together what happened. She kept a loaded gun near the bed. My brother didn’t know any better, he grabbed it and aimed it at our father. He was just protecting his mom.”
Gianna squeezes her eyes shut. “Jesus.”
“Yeah,” I agree softly. “She grabbed it from him in a rush to shoot my father, but the gun went off. We’re told my brother was killed immediately.”
We sit there in silence. The worst part is I can barely remember my little brother. His face, his voice, and his laugh are all muddled. Even if I look at the few photos that my father kept, it’s hard to recallanything about him. We didn’t even have a headstone to visit him. My father burned everything to do with that house, including the bodies that were left that night.
“And your stepmother?”
I grimace. “My fathertook careof her for most of the night.”
Gianna gasps. “And you heard it? You were a child yourself.”
“That wasn’t uncommon for our world,” I mutter, glancing at her tear-soaked face. “My father gave me a choice at sixteen, but he never shielded me from anything. You and your brother lucked out in that sense.”
Her jaw tightens, and I know she’s about to argue with me again, so I grab her hand, squeezing it. “His third wife is who really put the nail in the coffin of his reputation. We had moved to America after my brother’s death, helped shape Chicago into the power city it is, and I busied myself with school, sports, and girls.” I throw her a smirk that she rolls her eyes at.
“I knew that I didn’t want to be on the criminal side of my father’s business. I was a teenager and had already lost so many friends to it. The amount of death I had seen was unfathomable. So when myfather remarried, the nasty gold digger was determined to create the perfect heir for him.”
I laugh when I think about Meredith and her schemes. “I’ll give her some credit. She was smart. She played everyone like they were puppets, dancing to her tune. The problem is my father had gotten a vasectomy after my brother’s death. I think a part of him was glad I was coming of age to marry and have kids. I don’t think he wanted to feel the death of another child.”
“She didn’t know he couldn’t have kids?” Gianna asks, and I shake my head.
“No, she didn’t at first.” I give her a small smile. “When I was eighteen, she made the mistake of trying to seduce me to get her pregnant. She figured a DNA test would be close enough.”
“Oh, god.” Gianna flinches.
