Page 98 of Seduced By Contract

"I don't know how to tell you this in any other way than in the exact words that this woman told me: your mother was raped when she was a teenager, and everything leads us to believe that it was old Gordon who did it."

"Fuck!"

"Jesus Christ!"

"Shit!"

I don't even know which of us is saying what, but we are equally horrified.

"Listen to him until the end," Christos advises one more time.

We sit down again.

"According to this cousin,” Odin continues, “her parents didn't believe her, or perhaps they preferred not to believe her. Your mother was sixteen years old and had already had sexual relations with your father. Your grandparents knew that if she went to the police, in addition to the obvious scandal, they would discover that she was no longer “pure,” to use Lyra's words. Which, combined with the possible rape, they thought would send their family name into the gutter.”

"Did they betray her? Did they cover up the crime?" The pieces are starting to come together in my head, even though there are still a lot of gaps. The picture that emerges is from a horror film.

"Yes, they betrayed her by not supporting her story, so no charges were ever made,” Odin explains. “It seems that your mother, even though she was a minor at the time, had been drinking the night she was raped, which meant she didn't remember exactly what had happened. But she woke up sore in Gordon's house basement. There were only father and son at home, and knowing what we know now about Adrian, we only have the old man left.”

"Bastard. I'm going to kill him,” Hades says.

"There’s much more," Christos adds. "Without the support of her family, your mother hid the violence she suffered for many years, even from your father. Only her parents, Adrian, and Lyra knew about it."

"Wait. There are pieces missing from this story," Dionysus says. "Dad didn't know that Adrian wasgay?"

"No, according to Lyra. In fact, even she was just suspicious. It was only confirmed on the day he and your mother died, and you will soon find out why," Christos says.

"Okay. Please continue."

"To summarize, Adrian knew that it was his father who’d raped your mother, but he kept it a secret because he feared the old man's wrath. According to what his boyfriend told us, he could no longer live with the guilt and confronted his father, threatening him. You were all grown up—Zeus, a grown man. It was only weeks before your father died. I think that was the beginning of the end. Days later, your mother's cousin, Lyra, received a phone call in which Astra said that she could finally face the man who’d raped her because Adrian had confessed to her that it had been his father, Emerson Gordon. What neither she nor Adrian had any idea about was that, at that point, the old man already had a plan to cover his own tracks. If the secret came out, it would be the end of the Gordon family. So, as soonas Adrian confronted him days before, he started planning how to keep the truth from getting out.”

"Did he kill his own son?" Dionysus asks.

"We'll never know, but what are the chances that, after leaving an argument with the old man, your mother and Adrian died in a car accident?"

"But the story is not yet complete,” I say. “Our father left a letter saying that he had taken his own life because mother had run away with her lover, Adrian."

Odin returns to the laptop, but this time, he skips forward in the recording of Lyra. When he hits play, we hear the woman speak again.

“I know you'll never forgive me, but I was sick and I had lost all my assets in a bad marriage. When Emerson Gordon called me and asked me to tell Thadeas, your father, that Astra and Adrian were having an affair and died because they were running away together, I did. He gave me three million dollars. Astra was already dead, and I swear to God I never imagined Thadeas would kill himself...”

I'm not listening anymore. I leave the room and enter the attached bathroom.

Someone knocks on the door, and I hear screams.

It takes me a while to realize that the roars of pain are coming from me.

My father and mother were killed because of a web of lies, betrayal, and greed.

She was betrayed by all those who were supposed to love her.

The door opens, and my brothers enter.

"Get out," I growl.

"No."

"Get the fuck out. I want to be alone."

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