Chapter 68: HE

My eyes follow her even as she excused herself from the table, clearly flustered, I want to go after her, but the look on Richard’s face stops me.

“You know her?”

His shocked expression gives way to the smug one he has always worn when he thought he had the upper hand on something.

“We go way back, college days, and these days everyone knows Rachel Greene, until recently.”

His words pulls something from my memory, he is the fairy godmother she talked about with such fondness?? He was kind to her, got her a lawyer, and did all of those good things that made my insides tingle with unknown emotion? I couldn’t reconcile the person I knew with the person she knew.

“We also had a pact that if she wasn’t married by age thirty, we would get married.” he eyes my fingers, searching for a ring, I flexed my fingers showing off the matching ring I had put off wearing until this particular dinner, and had been hiding from her.

My father chuckled, finding it amusing that we were once again in competition, he had set us up so much that we were almost always in unconscious competitions against each other, and he loved when that happened. Not this time though, we weren’t in any competition, not for Rachel, she was mine.

I follow the path she had taken with my eyes, she was not back yet, of course, she knew him as a good person, it must be difficult to accept that. Pushing my chair backwards, I follow the path she had taken, and find her in front of the kitchen, her eyes shut as she leaned against the wall.

“You don’t have to think about him as my brother.”

Her eyes flew open and she stared at me, I loved the way she stared at me, like I was something, like I was the only person that mattered, I felt like the man I wanted to be whenever her beautiful eyes fell on me.

“What?”

“Richard, think of him as fairy godmother.” I suppress the urge to roll my eyes, she didn’t think of him as a man if he was godmother to her.

“But he is one and the same person.” Even as she says the words, I can feel her hurt, she was feeling betrayed.

“Richard is my problem, godmother is your blessing, they can be true. I can handle it, plus I think he loves being godmother, that would have been his true self if he was raised by someone else.”

She pushed herself off the wall, in her eyes a new resolve forming, it drew me in, steeling my hands by my side so I didn’t pull her into myself. My father was watching, I couldn’t give him more ammunition.

“You turned out fine, he had no choice about his childhood, but he didn’t have to hurt you.”

I can’t help the way my chest felt, my heart felt like it had grown twice it’s size, nobody had gotten angry on my behalf, nobody had defended me. Was this how it felt? To be the man I desired to be, the man that had to do this in order to be free.

She stormed back to the dining table, where Richard brightens upon seeing her return, his smile huge, I stiffen watching him watch her.

“How is it that we meet again, here of all places?”

She takes the seat far from him, he frowns a little but recovers quickly, reminding me of the kid he used to be, the kid I knew and missed, my heart ached, I can’t believe I get to see him again, I was super grateful he was that way with her.

“I wonder, were you always a two faced bitch boy?”

I almost drop the warm towel I had picked up, the dining table goes silent, Rachel fixes him with a leveled glare, Richard’s expression is frozen, and my father regards them with raised brow.

For some reason I found her really hot, I wasn’t sure it was the cuss word she rarely used, or how defensive she was being, but the urge to have her right here on this table was overwhelming.

“Wow, I never thought I would see the day Rachel Greene would cuss, why is that so attractive?” Richard laughed.

I find myself gritting my teeth, I could not wait for this charade to end.

“When are you returning father?” I ask, his schedule determined the end of this nonsense, and he could not stay away from work for long, lest someone else decides to go rogue, like me.

Richard’s smile vanishes, like the mention of work plus my father was a leash around his neck that snapped him into place.

“This is too much fun to miss, I hate to disappoint you, but I think I would be here a while.”

He flashed a smile that tells me he loves to disappoint me, he always have, he lived to disappoint me.

His cutlery digs into the food in front of him, he slices effortlessly while staring at me, like he did the first day he taught me how to cut open a person, I force my eyes away from him, trying to focus on the food in front of me, but I everything is meat and I lost appetite.

“Seeing as you keep defending my son, sounds like you love him a great deal.”

My head snaps up to find Rachel’s eyes, her expression is controlled, I can tell she is thrown off by the question, we never discussed anything feelings related, it is not in our contract, yet the question must be, since I had bragged to him that unlike him, I would find love, and someone would love me unconditionally.

“Yes, yes I do.”

I don’t even know how hard my muscles tense until they deflate, her answer would have either made or crushed the entire operation.

“Wow, that hurt my feelings Rachie. I can’t believe you went off and found love, leaving me in the dust.”

“You had love and nearly killed it.” Her tone is biting and she pins him with another glare, his smile falters.

My father let out a booming laugh, one that came out when he was genuinely amused, and a person like my father, only evil amused him.

“You did it, you really did it. I knew it, you were never just talk, you were always a man of action, I liked that about you, it is such a shame to see it go to waste.” my father says sucking in his teeth.

I find myself watching Richard out of habit, his jaw was clenched hard, this was after all my father’s way of claiming his favorite child.

“So you see, I can’t just let you have him, he is too valuable, and I hate to lose.” my father says wiping his mouth.

“Father...” I warn,

He waves me away, the cruel smile lining his mouth one more time,

“She has to know, no deserves to know the man she fell in love with, unless you have told her yourself.”

No, please no, god no. I swallow, my cruel father was going to ruin everything for me, not the first time, but this would be the first time it would kill me.

“The man you love, do you know what he was before he became a director?”

I don’t look at her, once again I was a kid, powerless to stop him.

“I don’t care. I love the man he is.”

Her answer forces me to look at her, she was looking at me, a smile on her face, my father’s chuckle cuts through my response.

“That’s because you don’t know how cruel he can be, since he was an assassin.”