Page 62 of All for her Forgiveness

I do as he asks and see Kennedy leave the house, at dawn, without talking to Pam again. The video ends.

In the next lot of footage, Pam is entering the library to talk to me.

“If she were alive, you would eventually have discovered who she was, but by then, Pam would have destroyed your life and Kennedy’s.”

“Even though her plan didn’t work, Odin, she enacted it.”

Minutes later, he tells me he’s going to wait with Beau outside so I can watch the video of what happened between me and Kennedy in my grandfather’s library.

Hades

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

I thoughtit would be like watching a movie. Until I hit the play button, my memory of that night was of Kennedy entering the library and leaving less than five minutes later. I had been there for some time and already had at least one drink of the whiskey containing the drug, which means I was not in my normal state.

From her expression, she seems surprised to see me, and this is confirmed when she asks in the footage,"What are you doing here?"

"I came for dinner. Pam invited me. She said Vina would be here too, as well as you."

"What? No. Mrs. Vina is traveling, and I wasn’t even supposed to sleep at their home tonight. I only stayed because it started raining heavily. Pam called me a little while ago saying she was trying to get back but the traffic is crazy. She didn’t tell me anything about you being here. I heard a noise in the main house and was afraid it was a burglar."

Yes, it’s becoming increasingly clear that Pam planned everything.

"You said you weren’t going to sleep here. Where were you planning to go?"

"I was going to . . .”

The unfinished sentence obviously makes my temper rise, and I ask,"Going to go where? To meet your damn boyfriend?"

"I don’t have a boyfriend, but if I did, it wouldn’t be any of your business, Hades Kostanidis. Go to hell!"

I see her leave and remember serving myself another drink. In this first encounter, I might not have been completely drugged yet, but it’s obvious that the substance was already taking effect because in my memory before watching the video, Kennedy had entered quickly, said goodbye, and left. Now, I realize it wasn’t quite like that.

We had an argument. I confronted her, and she didn’t react well.

She told me to go to hell.

Little did she know that most of my life, my brothers and I lived there. All of us, not just Zeus, grew up seeking revenge for our father, eager to fulfill the promise that Zeus made to our grandfather, the promise that we embraced as if his vow were our duty too.

I don’t remember a single moment from the time of our parents' death to this day that I can say I felt at peace. The hell I plunged into after Pam’s death was just confirmation that my life would always be filled with hatred, pain, resentment, and a desire for revenge.

About ten minutes of the video passes, and then I see myself getting up, going after Kennedy. I’m sure that whether I had been drugged or not, my body and mind knew what I wanted, and it was her.

Odin must have made a compilation of the footage from various cameras because then I see myself entering the housekeeper’s house.

Kennedy is standing in the living room, as if she was about to leave too. Was she coming to meet me? Was her need for me as great as the one I felt . . .that I still feel for her? Maybe I’ll never have that answer, but the fact is that the second we are face-to-face, I take her in my arms, and she responds, as she always did every time I touched her.

It’s strange to look at us like this, but at the same time, it confirms what I always knew: we were madly in love with each other.

The kiss turns into foreplay, and as if I had a bit of consciousness left, I pick her up and head towards the exit of the house.

The video ends, and the next one is of the two of us in the library. As I watch it, I realize that the dreams I had of her all these years, even to this day, were not a desire for something that never happened—they were memories of when I made her mine.

Past

"I shouldn’t be here. You don’t even want me in this house," she says when I put her on her feet in my grandfather’s library.

"I want you. Anywhere, anytime. Now come here. We’ll have time to talk later."

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