Page 10 of The Hitman's Secret Love Child

Chapter 4

Robyn

As I dried my hands on the light blue hand towel hanging next to the sink, I growled inwardly. Constantine was still in my living room. I wanted him gone. How dare he come into my home trying to convince me to go back to that monster I was trying to rid my life of! Who in the hell did he think he was? Though if he knew all of what I’d learned about Gabriel I didn’t think he’d be so eager to send me back there – regardless of our history.

Voices.

My entire body froze as I heard a conversation going on in the other room, in hushed tones. Oh god! Austin! Grabbing the door handle of the bathroom door, I twisted it and flung it open. My eyes immediately went to the sofa, but the only one in the living room was Constantine.

My eyes flew to Austin’s bedroom door. It was closed, but I knew I’d heard talking. Maybe Constantine had placed a call? I wanted to think so, but doubted it.

“He’s gone back to bed,” Constantine said as if reading my mind, confirming my fears.

“Oh. He…”

“Is he mine, Robyn?”

“I… Umm.” The back of my neck and shoulders suddenly felt insanely tight. I laced my fingers behind my neck and closing my eyes let my head fall backwards, stretching. I just wanted this day to be over. Correction, what I really wanted was for the floor to open up under my feet and swallow me whole.

What in the hell do I do? Tell him the truth or lie through my teeth? Opening my eyes, I looked directly at Constantine. He’d be able to see through my lie if I did tell him one, I knew that without a doubt. He’d always been able to tell when I tried to fib and I doubt I’d gotten any better at the art of lying over the years. Besides, he wasn’t an idiot. He could do the math, not to mention his son was a dead ringer for him. Sure, it would have been possible I’d been cheating on him, but he’d taken my virginity and he knew it. The evidence had been on the hotel room’s white sheets the next morning. If I hadn’t been in such a worried state at this moment I would have laughed, thinking about that day and how mortified I was over the thought of the maid having to wash my bloodied sheets when she cleaned the room.

There really was no option but the truth. I’d envisioned this day in my mind, feared it in my dreams. In none of the hundreds of scenarios had it gone down this way.

“Yes. Austin is your son.”

His jaw clenched and I could see rage forming in his eyes. While he hadn’t gotten angry with me often when we had been dating, the look of rage in his eyes was all too familiar – and frightening. I’d seen that very rage directed at other people in the past; it never turned out well for those people. “Did you know when you took off on me?”

Slowly I nodded. My body was one big coil of tension, trembling softly. “I’m sorry.” I muttered the apology in a voice so soft that I wasn’t sure if Constantine could even hear it.

He heard.

“You’re sorry,” he growled as he stood. He was so damned tall, his 6’3 towering over me by an entire foot – I hadn’t remembered him being so tall. “You’ve been keeping the fact that I have a child from me and all you can say is you’re sorry.” He took a menacing step toward me and I took a step back.

“Constantine, please –”

“Let’s forget the fact you fucked off on me after prom without so much as a ‘go fuck yourself, Constantine.’ It took me months to accept the fact that I no longer had a girlfriend.” He motioned toward the door of Austin’s bedroom. “You had no right to keep the fact I have a son from me. NO RIGHT!” His voice boomed throughout the small apartment. No doubt neighbors all around me could hear; the walls were as thin as tissue paper. If his rage kept up the cops would be here knocking on the door. They visited this particular building on a regular basis already.

“Hear me out.” What in the hell was I supposed to say to him? Where did I even start? Despite my envisioning this situation in my mind, I’d never actually come up with a way to defend myself.

In the blink of an eye he had closed the remaining distance between us in the matter of a few strides and was standing before me, so close I could get a whiff of the faint smell of his aftershave. “You lied to me. All these years! How could you keep a child from his father? At least given me the option of being his father.”

My eyes widened and I trembled with fright. “There were a lot of factors at play,” I managed to choke out as I backed up a few more steps, but was stopped by the wall at my back.

“God help me, I’m not sure what to do with you right now.” He advanced a step and then stopped. He pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes a moment. His jaw clenched. “You told him I was dead! Jesus Christ, Robyn, dead!”

No matter how bad his temper had been in the past, I didn’t think I’d ever seen him this angry. Escape, I needed to escape. But I couldn’t. I would never leave without Austin and there was no way I could get past Constantine to get to him. “Please. Calm down. You don’t understand…”

When he reopened his eyes the rage had simmered and there was a calmness in his expression. I released a sigh of relief. He’d always been hot-headed and it was his temper that would constantly get him into trouble – with the school, his foster parents and the law. “Of course I don’t, Robyn. Why would I? I just learned I had a son and that you’d knowingly taken him from me. And here you are telling me that I need to calm down!”

“Please, Constantine.”

He took a step back and motioned toward the sofa, giving his head a shake as if he were disgusted with me. I wouldn’t blame him if he were. “Sit down. Apparently, we have a lot more to talk about then I’d anticipated.”

With hesitation in my step, I slowly made my way to the sofa and sat down on the opposite end from him. I opened my mouth to speak, but no words came out. I really didn’t know where to start.

Constantine waited for me to gather my disorderly thoughts and then finally spoke. “Apparently, this is a story I’m going to have to pry out of you piece by piece.”

I shrugged.

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