facial expression was a mix of accusation, anger, and questions.
She didn’t answer right away and although she had wiped it away quickly, fear had flashed in her eyes at her brother’s question. I don’t believe she anticipated this situation nor had she expected her brother to question her.
“I know this is Arlo’s father, but did he become his father of his own free will?” Gemini asked. He demanded an answer, and his sharp-eyed glare was boring a hole through his sister.
She brushed away his question with a wave of her manicured hand, but the stress of her dirty laundry being aired out allowed me to see more tension ripping apart the armor she boldly stepped onto the patio wearing.
“We’re not here to talk about me. I’m here to meet my niece and for you to reunite with your daughter after that bitch stole her away and kept her hidden from you all these years.”
She was deflecting, but it was too late. I don’t believe she was expecting Tywin. Gemini stared at me and Tywin with unmistakable embarrassment embedded in the tense creases set on his face. His jaw ticked so hard that I was waiting to hear the crunch of teeth.
“I’m sorry you had to hear that harsh accusation,” he said, rolling his eyes at his sister.
“Patrena, I can assure you we are not all, beasts who take without giving. Your mother and I had a loving relationship for eighteen months. Mr. Vallin, on behalf of the Bishop family, please accept my deepest apology for what you went through.”
Before Tywin could respond, Sophia went into a rant. “You were her target. She didn’t love you. That’s why I take what I want.” She glared at Tywin without an ounce of remorse in her.
“You speak out of turn one more time, and I’ll carry you away from here myself,” Gemini warned Sophia, his tone calm but as cold as liquid ice.
“I loved your mother, Patrena and I had no doubt she felt the same way about me. You weren’t conceived behind any tricks or schemes.”
I didn’t know what to say. How was I supposed to respond?
“I know this is a lot to take in. I have a medical team on standby if you would like medical proof that I’m your father.”
I nodded. “Yes, I’d like confirmation,” I replied. I squeezed my hand around Tywin’s who appeared ready to leap across the table to choke Sophia to death.
“Will you consider staying for a few days?” he asked. “It will give the team here time to conduct the DNA test and await the results,” he explained.
“No. I will not stay here,” I told him and turned hateful eyes on his trifling sister. “Do you think I would be so insensitive that I’d stay in a place where Tywin was drugged, sexually abused, tortured, and kept prisoner?” Though I was responding to Gemini’s question, I was glaring at Sophia who smiled in my direction like my eyes weren’t stabbing holes in her demonic ass.
Gemini also glared at his sister with eyes so cold that it gave me a chill. Our reunion was being overshadowed by the evil troll sitting across the table from me.
Had Gemini truly been unaware of what his sister had done to Tywin this whole time?
Tywin
Now that I had seen this bitch again, the disjointed memories in my mind, the ones I could never clarify all of a sudden, made sense. It explained why Patrena’s tattoo was so familiar. I had seen the same image on Sophia’s back. Since I was drugged, it was like seeing the image through a dream, but it had always remained there, locked in my head.
Although being on an island had never registered when I was taken, the grounds and the house had caused alarm bells to go off in my head when we’d first arrived. The bitch was raising my son in the house she had raped and tortured his father in.
Now, I was sitting here using every mind meditation chant I remembered to keep from hopping across the table to choke out the mother of my son. One, this was not my time but Patrena’s. Two, I’d been taught never to put my hands on a woman. Three, my son was somewhere inside this house.
I eased up on the grip I had on Patrena’s hand and breathed through my anger. She needed me. The shock of being reunited with a father she’d known nothing about after all these years of thinking he was dead,