Chapter 190 Shaken ground - Benedict POV
I'm both in heaven and in hell, sitting in the early morning sun as I watch Valentina water the plants outside. She's breathtakingly beautiful, her dark hair tied on the top of her head and she's wearing a sundress, her legs exposed for me.
This has become the favorite part of my day, watching her tend to her garden with a smile on her face while humming. I don't know the tunes, probably something from her home country.
I think I'm still in shock about what I uncovered in Samuel's journals, and I have only been through five now. I still have so much work to do for the firm, but the journals have had most of my attention, and I'm not even through half of it.
Valentina doesn't seem to mind me being here. We spend all our meal times together, yesterday I went with her to the grocery store. I can't even remember the last time I was in one, my heart hurting to think that was part of Samuel's job. And that I didn't even know him at all.
How could I have been so blind? Was I that ignorant to my own family? I definitely knew that him and Caroline despised each other, and it's clear in the way he talks about her. He hated both Valentina and Caroline, because they were the women in my life.
Just thinking about it leaves me in disbelief. The man who I thought was my friend.
My phone rings, and I look down to where it's lying on my lap, seeing Miguel's name. I was wondering when he would call me, his mother told me I was here. He's probably going to tell me to get my things and leave his mother alone.
I get up from my chair in the garden and walk inside the house, away from Valentina's ears.
"Son." I pick up the phone. "How are you doing?"
"Dad." I close my eyes when he says that. He never calls me Dad, only on very rare occassions, and I savor it each and every time. "There is something I need to ask you."
"Anything, son."
"It's about Samuel."
I stiffen, thinking what a coincidence it is that I was just thinking of the deceased butler. "What about him?"
"God, I don't even know how what to say." He sighs on the other side. "To be honest, I'm kind of confused. An associate of mine tried finding out who shot at me and who ran me off the road. It was a hired asssassin."
"Well, thank God that assassin wasn't successful." It still surprises me how Miguel is like a cat with nine lives. He seems to get up each and every time he gets hurt.
"She traced the money, to who hired him." Miguel continues. "It traced back to Samuel, Dad."
The earth beneath my feet shakes, and I have to clutch the kitchen table to keep myself steady.
Samuel tried to have my child killed?
But why?
"Dad , are you there? Do you think Samuel would even do something like that?"
I don't know anything anymore. My whole life feels like it was one big, fat lie, and the only truth is Miguel and Valentina in it.
"He has journals, Miguel." I rub my eyes. "Journals where he wrote about us. I will check the most recent ones, and see if he mentions anything."
Miguel is silent on the other side, and I check the screen to see if he's still there. "Miguel?"
"He has journals?"
"Yes." I confirm. "Like diary entries about our life. I'm reading it chronologically from when he started working for me, but I can check if I find anything and if it was really him who hired that assassin and why."
"Fuck." Miguel swears. "Listen, whatever you find in there, just know that I never wanted any of it, okay? And that I'm sorry."
What the hell is he talking about? Why would he be sorry? I want to ask him about it, but the line goes dead, leaving me even more confused. Am I even more in the dark than what I thought?
I look out the kitchen window at Valentina, thinking that this simple life is so much better than the one I lead in New York where people were deceiving me while I was chasing my father's dream.
My dream is outside, the sunlight glinting off her dark hair and her gloved hands in soil with a smile on her face. It feels like I wasted years of my life and that of hers doing things I never even really wanted, and then forcing those same ideals onto my sons.
I'm no better than my father.
I go to the room I frequent in the house, the suitcase with the journals open on the ground, and I start looking for the one that has the date of the time just after Ben's death.
I find it in the last journal, the one that hasn't been filled yet because it was probably the last one Samuel wrote in.
My eyes scan over the neat handwriting quickly, stopping when I catch something disturbing and reading it over again.
Miguel is sloppy. I thought he was smarter than leaving a drink unattended around Caroline. That witch is just waiting for a chance to catch him unguarded again so that she can rape him the way she did when he was a child. I stopped her this time, though.
The word "rape" blurs before my eyes and I fall on my ass next to the suitcase. The date is from the night of the dinner that I couldn't make because my campaign manager wanted to discuss something over drinks.
Did Caroline molest Miguel when he was a child? How did I not know? When did this happen?
His words from earlier come back up again. He said he never wanted any of it, and that he's sorry.
What did that woman do to my son?
I page to the time frames after Ben's death, trying to find out if Samuel had anything to do with the attacks on Miguel.
I hired an assassin, I paid him with some of my savings. I have to get rid of Miguel; for Benedict. He's making Bendict even sadder because he is frolicking with the Smith girl. They don't deserve Benedict. None of them do. If I eliminate Miguel, I will be the only thing he has left in this world. Miguel has to die.
Everything I thought I knew. My whole life.
Nothing was what it seemed.
I spend the entire day in those journals, finding out exactly how deprived Caroline was, molesting not only Miguel, but Ben too. Her own son.
Samuel writes that Ben was jealous of the attention Miguel received form Caroline, that he wanted her to go into his room, but that she favored Miguel instead.
How could he not tell me? How could he keep something so monumental from me?
I love Benedict. His family doesn't love him like I do. One day, he will love me back, even if I have to destroy everyone else around him.