Chapter 192 The truth hurts - Benedict POV
"You are not well, Benedict." Valentina looks at me with concern.
God, how do I tell her that the child I demanded she hand over to me was raped under my very roof? A roof I told her was safe. She will never forgive me then. She wouldn't even be able to look me in the eye, like I can't look at myself.
I'm trembling, even after finding out yesterday the truth that went on in my house.
It was a fucking house of horrors for my children. No wonder Ben was the way he was. His own mother had sex with him.
I threw up last night, but I'm still feeling nauseous, even though there's nothing left in my stomach.
"I have to go back to New York City." I tell her.
I have to go see Caroline, look her in the fucking eye and let her tell me what she did to my children.
"No, Benedict, you must rest." She says, but I'm already gathering my laptop and check what time I can get a flight back.
"I can't." I won't be able to rest.
My children were harmed, and everything makes sense now. The way Ben acted all his life, and why Miguel had to go to a wellness retreat.
That fucking bitch. I'm going to kill her as soon as I get my hands on her.
Valentina's eyes widen in surprise when I pull her to me and kiss her hard on the lips. If I just did what my heart told me to, non of this would've happen.
What did my children not think when they were going through all that? Why didn't they trust me enough to tell me?
Now I'm convinced I was the worst father ever.
The almost seven hour flight back feels like I'm dying even more inside, and when I get to the house that I'm definitely getting rid of now, I find that Caroline is not there.
I go to her room and search for that damn suicide letter. What did Ben say to her in that letter? Did he talk about the abuse? Did he tell her the way he turned out was all because of what she did?
Will Miguel ever find it in his heart to forgive me for being absent and ignorant? Would he allow me to be close to his child that he's having with Madison? I wouldn't blame him if he wanted nothing to do with me.
"Benedict." Caroline's surprised voice says from behind me. "When did you get back? What are you doing in my bedroom?"
I swivel around, looking at her with a rage I didn't know I possessed.
She looks like she wouldn't hurt a fly, her blonde hair immaculate and wearing a beige pants' suit that probably costs more than what one of our maids make in a month.
She frowns when I walk up to her and take her arms into my trembling hands.
"Benedict, you look pale. Are you sick?" She raises her hand to feel my forehead.
"What did you do to Miguel and Ben?" I clench out. "Did you sexually abuse them?"
"Abuse?" She looks surprised. "I did no such thing."
My hands clench around her arms.
"Benedict, you're hurting me."
"You hurt my kids!" I screamed into her face, my face feeling like it's about to explode.
"Oh fuck you!" She spits back at me. "You're being all fucking righteous! You were never even there for me. You never fucking loved me, I had to do to what I had to do get some kind of love!"
I look at her in disgust. "How could you even say that? Do you even hear yourself? You're sick in the head!"
"Only because you made me that way!" She screams, and I shove her away from me. "Maybe if you fucked me, I wouldn't have had to fuck your son. But don't worry, he fucked me way better than you ever did."
I almost never touched her, and when I did, I always imagined she was Valentina.
"You are really sick." I shake my head at her. "Doing it to Miguel was bad enough, but Ben? I watched as you gave birth to that boy, how could you do that?"
She runs her hands over her face, composing herself. "You wouldn't understand. Ben and I had a very special relationship, one that people like you can't comprehend."
"You are truly psychopathic." I shake my head at her, again unbelieving that I never saw this. Maybe I'm just as sick in the head like she is for not seeing what she did all those years. According to Samuel's diary entries, it went on for most of Miguel's teenage years and she blackmailed him with Valentina.
I have never been so disgusted by another human being in my life.
"Keep Ben's name out of your mouth!" She points her finger at me. "You didn't love him like I did. And it doesn't matter anyway, because guess what? Ben isn't even your son!"
I stagger back. That can't be true. She's only saying that to hurt me even more.
I laugh in her face. "Fuck off, Caroline! You're right, I never loved you, and I never will!"
"Joke is on you, Benedict." She sneers, her voice soft but deadly. I always thought she was a beautiful woman, but she looks like the monster she is right now.
She walks closer to me, a sinister smile on her face. "What makes you think that he is yours? When you only fucked me a handful of times after we got married, mmm?"
She's grasping at straws, Ben looks just like me. Even though she's also blonde, even him and Miguel has the same facial features. If she thought she could kill me with that lie, she's heavily mistaken.
She throws her head back and laughs like a maniac. "You are so blind, Benedict, but your father wasn't. I went to him one day to complain to him that you didn't want to be intimate with me, still hung up on that meager immigrant. Do you know what your father did?"
I shake my head before she even says the words. It can't be. Ben is mine, I raised him. He looks like me.
"Your dearest father threw me on the desk, tore the panties off my body." Tears form in her eyes, and her upper lip starts trembling. "The same panties I bought for you, thinking you would find them sexy. Then he fucked me right then and there, and when he was done, he said there will be a legitimate Cargill born."
"No, my father wouldn't do that."
"Oh, but he did." She laughs humorlessly. "And then he came back every single day when you were at work and fucked me, until the day I said I was pregnant."
"No, you're lying!" I shout at her.
I think I stumble over something and fall to the ground. I might even have passed out. I'm not sure, but when I regain my composure, Caroline has left, leaving me there on the ground with a lifetime of scars.