Page 8 of All for her Forgiveness

"I had business to attend to."

"What kind?"

I remain silent, and of course, he soon guesses.

"The usual? Will you never give your mind a break? Just because you're only in your early thirties doesn't mean you're exempt from a heart attack."

"Give my mind a break? That will only happen when everyone is punished. I won't stop."

"I heard Juliet woke up from the coma and is in the prison hospital. Isn't that enough for you?"

I don't tell him what the lawyers just told me, that she might gain the right to plead her case while out on bail. "One is missing. The damn fugitive."

"In your quest for revenge, you're ruining your life, Hades."

"You're the last person who can advise me to forget about revenge, Zeus."

Our grandfather made him swear, on the day our father died, that he would clear the Kostanidis name after our mother dragged it through the mud, and for over a decade, Zeus lived to fulfill the promise and only rested when our name was cleared and the enemy of our family was dead.

We're very alike. He needed to fulfill his vow to our grandfather before he could finally start living again. I have to do the same regarding Pam's death, or I'll never have peace.

We talk for about ten minutes, but I’ve barely hung up when the phone rings again.

"Hades?" The voice of Vina, Pam's grandmother, sounds tearful when I answer.

I close my eyes and lean back in my leather chair in the office. "Vina, how are you today?"

"I feel stronger every day. Could you come see me? You don't need to stay long."

That's not what I want. The property where she lives brings me an inexplicable feeling of loss.

Since Pam was killed, I moved Vina to the main house. Before, she lived in the caretaker's house, but when she told me the smaller residence brought her too many memories of her two "granddaughters," Pam and Kennedy, whom she calls by her middle name, Juliet, I told her she didn't need to stay there anymore. She could choose any room she wanted in the main house.

I hired more staff and nurses to take care of her once she returned from the hospital because her health has never been the same since the stroke she suffered.

However, the only time I returned to that house, shortly after she moved, I felt like I was suffocating as I passed through the library.

After accepting the invitation, I say goodbye to her, and an hour later, I arrive at the property I've been keeping for no other reason than to allow Vina to continue living where she worked almost her entire life.

Like a masochist, I walk straight to the library, the room that brought me an unpleasant feeling the last time I stepped into it.

I enter, trying to understand what the hell that was about, and as soon as I step into the room, the memory of a female moan crosses my brain, making me sure I'm going mad.

Unable to understand why, somehow I know it's hers: Kennedy's—or Juliet, as Vina, Pam, and everyone else called her.

I lean against the wall, searching every corner of my mind for the context of that moan, but all I can think is that the only time I was with Kennedy here was on the night Pam invited me to dinner with them, asking to use the main house kitchen to prepare our meal. But then, because of the rain, she couldn't get home, and the meal never happened.

That day, for the first time, I found out she had told a small lie. Vina wasn't there. It would be just us three. In the end, only Kennedy came to talk to me and then went back to the caretaker's house, where she lived, because I vaguely remember her leaving me alone.

I ended up sleeping in the library itself, and when I woke up the next day, I found Pam watching me.

I told her to leave. I was shirtless, pants undone, which I believe I did to be more comfortable.

She didn't move at first, and when I asked about Kennedy, she told me she had gone to meet her boyfriend in the middle of the night.

She told me her "cousin" had sent her a message saying she was going to Ryan Corey III's house.

I remember the hatred and also the possessive feeling that hit me. I wanted to go to the damn man's house and get her out of there.

---