Chapter 88 Scripted by a demon
CHAPTER 88: Scripted by a demon
Chauncey
The world didn’t just stop; it turned sideways. The air left my lungs in a desperate rush, leaving me staring at my brother as if he had grown two heads while speaking a dead language. I knew about Vera not knowing the man that got her pregnant as a result of what her worthless ex had done. Then to hear Silas claiming that he was the father, it meant a lot of things that were too damning to process.
I waited for the punchline—for the twisted, dark humor Silas occasionally used to mask his stress…but it never came. His eyes were two hollow pits of charcoal reflecting a reality I wasn't prepared to inhabit.
It was the truth.
My breath hitched.
“You…” I started, but my voice failed me, cracking like dry parchment.
Before I could remember how to breathe again, a soft thud echoed from the upper landing.
Footsteps.
Both our heads snapped in that direction. Silas went rigid, his hands disappearing into his pockets, while I turned toward the stairs, my heart hammering against my ribs.
My first thought was Vera. If she had just descended those stairs and overhead what her husband had just confessed, then it was going to be a very messy, ugly situation—it wouldn't just be a scandal; it would be a damn disaster.
Silas didn't move an inch from his spot. I got to the landing of the stairs and stared upward, only to see a small, slumped figure in a pink pyjamas shuffling aimlessly near the railing. It was one of the maids, her eyes glazed and unfocused, her movements, puppet-like and erratic. She was sleepwalking.
A wave of dizzying relief washed over me, though my heart still hammered. I stepped toward her, keeping my voice low so I wouldn't startle her.
“Hey,” I reached out, gently shaking her shoulder. “You’re wandering. Go back to your quarters, okay?”
“For the love of God,” Silas hissed, brushing past me.
He glared at the girl who was now gently bumping her shoulder against a mahogany pedestal.
“You! Go back to your quarters. Now. Get off this floor and stay there.”
“Brother—”
“Not now.”
The girl blinked, a sharp, dazed awareness returning to her face as she looked at us with wide, horrified, confused eyes.
“I-i'm so s–sorry, sir,” she mumbled a frantic, half-coherent apology and scurried away into the shadows of the servant's wing.
Silas turned around and walked back to his original spot. I watched her until she vanished, ensuring the click of her door echoed through the hall.
The moment she was gone, I turned back to Silas. I didn't say a word. I simply caught his gaze and jerked my head toward his office.
It was better to talk there, without the concern of being overheard. I walked into the office and he followed immediately after me. I shut the heavy oak door behind us, turning the deadbolt with a click that sounded like a gunshot in the quiet room.
By the time I turned around, he was standing by the window, calmly overlooking the grounds below, his fingers clenched so tightly I thought the skin might break.
“Explain,” I demanded, taking a step forward. “Explain exactly what the hell you meant by that, brother. Because if this is one of your numerous sick psychological games, I’m not in the mood. I have an exhibition tomorrow,” I threw an arm out. “I have to be in bed right now.”
He didn't turn around. “It’s the truth.”
“Fuck,” I muttered.
Silas turned around and what I saw in his face, made something pull in my chest. He looked like a man who had already been condemned and sentenced to the gallows. He walked to the center of the room and started to speak.
He told me everything. He told me about the bouquet of lilies and the memory fragments it triggered. Flashes of memories that had been haunting him, the scent of a night he couldn't name, and the final, devastating confirmation of the mark that he had just seen on his wife's skin—the final nail in the coffin of his doubts.
I staggered back and sank into one of the leather armchairs, my legs suddenly feeling like water.
I couldn't believe it. I couldn't wrap my head around the hilariously cruel, cosmic joke that fate had decided to play on my brother. It was a twist of fate so dark, so perfectly engineered to destroy him, Vera—us, that it could have only been scripted by a demon.
I leaned forward. “That man,” I muttered, my mind racing to align his confession with what happened earlier. “He’s a fraud.”
“Of course he was,” he gritted, his hands balling into fists.
“Yes. We knew that, but now... now it’s a certainty that…” I stopped right there, unable to go further. “He’s obviously a puppet. But sent by who? Who would have enough information to plant a man like that?”
Silas walked back to the window, his silhouette sharp against the moonlight.
“Damien,” he spat, the name sounding like a curse.
I blinked, momentarily lost. “Damien? The same ex-boyfriend that drugged her? The club owner from Vegas?”
He nodded, twice.
I stood up, pacing the length of the rug. “I still don't understand,” I rubbed my jaw. “This doesn't make sense to me. Isn't he the same guy that gave you the surveillance clip?”
“Yes.”
I scoffed. “Why? What would he stand to gain from all this?” I was genuinely curious. “Why would a man serve up his own girlfriend to another man so callously? Even for a lowlife like him, that’s... that’s a level of depravity I didn’t think any sane person would possess.”
“Leverage,” Silas replied, his voice flat and devoid of emotion.
“For what?”
“For blackmail. I rejected his business proposal. Months ago, he came to me with a proposal so shady it practically bled. I turned him down flat. I’d never do business with a man whose books looked like a criminal’s diary.”
Now I could understand where this was coming from and heading to.
“He must have done it to have something over you.”
“When I went to his club that night, Vane must have seen it as his opportunity to obtain a weapon to keep in his pocket until it was useful to him.”
I rubbed my face, the stubble on my jaw scratching my palms. “But his girlfriend…?” I mused, stunned by the sheer monstrosity of the devil that Vera had chosen to trust.
“Not far-fetched for scum like him.”
I rubbed my face. “Something doesn't add up, brother.”
“What do you mean?”