Chapter 92 Chapter Ninety Two

Chapter 92 Chapter Ninety Two

The FaceTime screen flickered slightly before settling, Oliver's face filling the frame with its usual restless energy.

"How's Elyon doing?" Oliver asked.

"Fine. Thank God I got there the time I did or it'd have been a different story." Cesar's voice was even, but the memory of how close it had come sat heavy behind the words.

"And the guys?" Oliver inquired.

"Dead." Cesar replied flatly.

There had been no version of that night where any of them walked away. He couldn't have let a single one of them go free after what they'd done. It simply wasn't possible.

Oliver's eyes widened. "All of them?"

"Yes. Including... my dad." Cesar said it plainly, though even now he still couldn't fully believe everything that had happened.

That maniac had been his father — the man who'd hurt his mother, whose face Cesar had inherited and paid for every time his mother looked at him and saw someone else.

And in the end, he'd killed his father because the man had kidnapped his wife and hurt his mother for a second time.

Not that he gave a damn about Arya now. Far from it. The damage she'd done to him was enough to last two lifetimes.

"What do you mean? I thought you said your father was dead?" Oliver looked confused. "I didn't know a person—"

"Oh, that was just wishful thinking." Cesar said it drily. "Arya told me something else."

"Wow. So your father kidnapped your wife, mother, and sister to kill them, but he ended up dying by his son's hand." Oliver grinned. "Interesting."

"I want to kill Cassandra." Cesar blurted it out. There was no reason to dress it up. Cassandra was a dead woman whether or not he told his friend about it.

"What?!" Oliver looked shocked. "Kill... as in six-feet-under, never-to-be-seen-again kill?"

"Yeah." Cesar nodded. "That kill."

"Why?" Oliver frowned. "Did she do something again?"

"She paid Dante to kidnap Ellie and kill her. I want her death to look like an accident. One she doesn't survive."

"Er... isn't that too much? I mean, she's a senator. Her family will look into it." Oliver tried to reason with him.

"Not if they can't find anything on me. Don't worry, Olly, I can already see you sweating." Cesar grinned. "This is all on me. Just like Antoinette."

"That was you as well?" Oliver's eyes widened further. "What else have you done that I don't know about?"

"Now, that was her fault. I wanted to release her, but she started running her mouth about killing Ellie and my kids just to make me suffer." He paused, shrugged. "I had to shut her up."

"She'll never walk or talk again." Oliver reminded him. "She's as good as dead, in fact."

"Mark did a wonderful job, then." Cesar grinned.

"If you weren't my friend, I'd have sent you to a mental institution a long time ago, because you're crazy!" Oliver exclaimed. "As president, I shouldn't be allowing this."

"But you're going to." Cesar's tone shifted, quieter now, stripped of the earlier grin. "I'm not just your friend, Olly. We're brothers." He meant it the way he meant few things.

"If not for your godfather, St. John Wallace, I wouldn't be here today. I'd probably have ended up in jail for killing someone. Or dead."

It wasn't a sentence he said lightly. There had been a version of his life — not so long ago — where the ending had looked exactly like that.

"When you get all sentimental like that... I always want to cry." Oliver made a show of wiping away fake tears.

Cesar rolled his eyes.

"Okay. You do what you want to do." Oliver said, then exhaled. "Actually... Cassandra's being a thorn in my katush, so I'll appreciate it very much if you can do something about her."

"Now you're talking." Cesar grinned.

"Now that we're talking... I have dibs on being your baby's godfather." Oliver said.

"Don't worry. You'll be his uncle, godfather, and everything in between." Cesar told him, and meant that too.

"Cool!" Oliver beamed, then sighed heavily. "I have to go. Why can't I get a whole day to myself?!" He grunted in exasperation.

"Er... you wanted to be president. Remember?" Cesar chuckled.

"Don't remind me." Oliver shook his head. "See you laters."

"Laters."

The call ended. A knock sounded on the door of his office, and it opened to reveal Ellie. It was just 7am.

"Hey babe." Cesar stood, skirted his desk, and crossed the room to her. "I thought you'd sleep in."

"I'm hungry." She said.

"For what?" He asked. She could've asked him for the moon right then and he'd have found a way to get it down for her.

"Ice cream." She pouted. "Strawberry ice cream."

"You like neapolitan." He frowned.

"It's not for me. The baby wants it." She muttered, as if that settled the matter entirely — which, as far as Cesar had learned, it did.

"Oh. I'll have Vincent—" He started to say.

"Vincent is not the father of my baby, is he?" She snapped.

"Ookay." Cesar raised his hands in surrender. "Calm down. I'll go."

"Good. Come back with chicken wings as well."

"You got it, boss. I'll change."

"Change?!" She cried.

Cesar looked down at his outfit — pajama bottoms, a gray t-shirt. "I can't go out like this, babe."

"Yes you can." She said, already steering him toward the door.

"Let me change into jeans at least?" He pleaded.

"You have 0.5 seconds."

Cesar shook his head and left, half-laughing to himself. She was being infuriatingly sweet, and there was nothing to do about it but obey.

"Chop chop!" Ellie called after him.

"I'm going!"

Ellie smiled once the door shut behind him. It felt good to be pregnant — good to be wanted like this, fussed over, obeyed at 7am in her pajamas. She could get used to it.

"Where are you going looking like this, sir?" Vincent asked when Cesar emerged from the house, still in the clothes he'd started the morning in, jeans forgotten entirely.

"Her Majesty, Queen Elyon, wants strawberry ice cream, and she didn't give me time to change." Cesar drawled.

"I'll go and buy it." Vincent offered.

"She'll have our heads." Cesar said, already heading for the car. "We'll go together."

"Are you still here?" Ellie demanded, appearing in the doorway.

Cesar jumped and turned to look at her. "I'm gone."

He and Vincent scrambled into the car. Cesar started the engine and pulled off before she could say another word.

"Pregnant women are scary." Vincent said, buckling his seatbelt.

"I agree." Cesar said, and for once he wasn't exaggerating.

"Sir... Mrs. Gomez is here to see you." Maia informed him.

Cesar looked up from his laptop, surprised. "Arya Gomez?" He asked, needing to be sure he'd heard right.

"Yes, sir." Maia nodded.

Cesar closed his laptop, stood, and left his office. In the living room he found Arya smiling at Miesa, who was busy talking animatedly about something — some story that clearly mattered more to her than anything else in the world right then.

"Hey." Arya said when she saw him.

"Daddy, look, it's Ma'am Arya." Miesa said.

"I know." He nodded. "Uh... why don't you go upstairs and play with your brother?"

"Sure." Miesa nodded and left.

Cesar sat down on the sofa opposite Arya, clearing his throat into the silence. He hadn't expected to see her again this soon. He wasn't sure what he'd expected at all.

"Um... I just came to see how Ellie is doing." Arya said.

Neither of them said it, but they both knew she wasn't supposed to be here — not really. Whatever had happened between them didn't erase the years before it.

"She's fine. She's asleep." He said.

"That's good."

"How... are you?" Cesar asked, more out of obligation than anything.

"I'm fine. Patricio wanted me to stay in the hospital another day, but I put my foot down." She chuckled.

"That's good." He said again, running out of things to fill the space with.

Arya cleared her throat and shifted to the edge of her seat, fingers finding the zip of her bag and worrying at it — clearly uncomfortable with whatever she'd come to say.

"Um... about yesterday..." She started.

"That was a reflex kind of thing." Cesar cut her off before she could finish. "I thought he'd killed you."

"Oh." Arya blinked. So there it was. No come-to-Jesus moment, no reconciliation dressed up as tenderness. He still hated her, plainly and without apology.

"I'm sorry if you thought otherwise." Cesar said.

And he was sorry, in a small way — sorry that his reflexes had given her false hope. "It's not something I can just forget and forgive just like that. It won't take away the nightmares. Or the emotional scars. Or the physical ones."

"I understand." She nodded.

"We can be friends, though." He offered, and meant it as far as it went. "I can't be your son. But I can try to be your friend."

Arya smiled, nodding eagerly, gripping onto the offer like it was more than the scraps it was. "I'll take whatever I can get."

Cesar stood and held out his hand. "Friends?"

Arya stood and shook it. "Friends."

Cesar released her hand right after. That much he could give her. Nothing more — nothing more would ever be safe to give.

"Oh, before I forget!" She opened her bag, pulled out a wrapped present, and set it on the coffee table. "That's for, um, the baby."

Cesar looked at it. "He's still a peanut." He said.

Arya laughed. "It doesn't matter." Then, tilting her head, "The baby's a boy?"

"Wishful thinking." He gave a half shrug — the kind that meant he wanted it more than he'd admit out loud.

Arya smiled and nodded. "I'll go." She gestured toward the door.

"I'll see you out." Cesar said, and followed her.