Marjorie gasped and clasped her hand over her mouth. Joe put his arm around her and whispered something that I couldn’t hear.
“At least they weren’t ten years old,” Ryan said. “I don’t feel the least bit sorry for them. But I don’t know why anyone would voluntarily put himself through that.”
“Easy,” I said, my voice cracking. “They were paid well, weren’t they?”
“Two million dollars each,” my father said. “Their drug business was going well, but this was more money than they’d ever seen.”
“Two million dollars for their humanity.” Talon shook his head. “Not fucking worth it.”
“They didn’t have a choice at that time. They’d entered into an agreement. It was fulfill it or be killed.”
“I think I’d have chosen death,” Ryan said.
Talon shook his head vehemently. “You wouldn’t have. You wouldn’t believe the survival instinct when you’re in such an insurmountable situation. It kicks in whether you want it to or not.”
“It didn’t kick in for little Donny.”
“No. Because he was doing something he thought he was supposed to do, something that someone he trusted told him to do. But when you’re in command of yourself and think you want to die? Unless you’re truly suicidal, you’ll do anything you can to survive. You submit to things you never thought you’d submit to, say things that make you gag to get the words out, just for the promise of one more minute in your hellish existence.” He looked up at the ceiling. “You just don’t know.”
“Easy, Tal,” Ryan said. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” he said. “I’m all right.”
“He’s right, Ry,” Joe said. “Melanie told me the same thing when she was left in that garage to die. She was willing to do anything to get out alive.”
“I’m so sorry about what happened to you, Talon,” Brad Steel said.
“You let it happen,” he said, his words caustic.
Marjorie still didn’t know why Talon had been taken. I hoped Ryan would stop this. It wasn’t my place. I squeezed his hand, hoping I was conveying my concern.
“I did,” Brad admitted. “But it was never my intention.”
“Let’s get back to the discussion,” Ryan said.
I breathed a sigh of relief.
Steel cleared his throat. “After they were trained and had regained their strength, they were required to participate in the training of others. Once they were deemed ready, they were let go and then required to train and supply a steady source of people. They were paid very well for this, and they were soon all worth over a hundred million dollars.”
“So they no longer needed your money,” Joe said. “Why the hell are you still involved, then?”
“They didn’t need my money. Even Wendy didn’t need my money, because she got a cut of everything they got. But Wendy wanted one thing money couldn’t buy.”
“You,” Talon said.
“Right.” He sighed. “I had married your mother by this time, and Joe and Talon, you had already been born. God”—he sank his head into his hands—“I’m not sure I can do this.”
“Do it,” Joe said through clenched teeth. “The truth, or I’ll beat it out of you.”
Ryan’s knuckles whitened, his hand still clasping mine. Neither he nor his siblings said a word.
“Wendy came to our home one night. Your mother was tired from dealing with a toddler and an infant and had already gone to bed. I found Wendy in your nursery, Talon, holding a knife to your throat.”
Marjorie gasped.
“I knew she was crazy,” Steel continued, “but would she harm a child?”
“I think we all know the answer to that question,” Talon said quietly.
“Yes, now. But then, I wasn’t sure. She’d been broken up over her ectopic pregnancy. And she’d never married. Still, I wasn’t going to take a chance with your life, Talon. I asked her what she wanted. Of course, she said she wanted me. I told her I had a family now. I needed to be there for them. She said she could take care of that, and she pressed the knife against your flesh. I lunged for her and took her down to the floor. Thankfully you slept through the whole thing.”
Silence. I looked at Ryan. His skin had gone pale.
Steel cleared his throat and continued, “I decided to cut a deal with her. For the first time in my life, I was truly afraid. Afraid for my family. I had to protect you boys and your mother, no matter what. She wanted two things, she said. First, my will had to include a bequest to the Fleming Corporation for a hundred million dollars.”
“It was only fifty,” Joe said.
“Right. I changed it later. But she demanded a hundred million dollars. She also demanded my child.”
“She wanted me?” Talon asked, incredulous.
Ryan stiffened beside me. “No, Tal,” he said. “She wanted me.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Ryan
“Yes,” my father said solemnly. “She wanted a child by me. Of course I told her ‘hell, no.’ But remember, she was a gifted journalist. She produced a trail of documents linking me to the Fleming Corporation and threatened to leak them if I didn’t comply with her demands. I would have been imprisoned. I couldn’t leave a wife and two children who I loved more than my own life. So I gave in to her demands. I promised to have sex with her one time, thinking I could keep from impregnating her. She only had one fallopian tube, and if I didn’t ejaculate, I figured there wasn’t a chance.”
“How could you?” Joe said. “How could you do that to our mother?”
I stiffened. This was all about me. They were wishing I hadn’t been born. Maybe not consciously, but that was what it amounted to.
“I didn’t think I had a choice. She said she’d accept the chance of not getting pregnant just to be with me again. I had no idea, but she’d been keeping track of her cycles and was at her most fertile time.”
“What? So this wasn’t an accident?” Joe shook his head.
I wasn’t sure whether I should feel better or worse. So I hadn’t been an accident due to my father’s infidelity. He’d allowed my birth to happen.
“Being unfaithful to your mother was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”
“Yeah, fucking a beautiful woman is a difficult thing,” Joe said sardonically.
Our father seemed to ignore him. “So I had sex with her in this office. Well, the office that looks just like this one back at home. Your mother was asleep, and I hoped like hell she wouldn’t wake up. I figured I could control the situation. I tried not to ejaculate, but unfortunately I wasn’t successful. I did pull out as soon as I could.”
“But one of your little buggers got in anyway,” Joe said. “This is farfetched.”
“It is,” my father agreed. “But that’s how it happened. She did become pregnant, and the timing worked out.”
“Didn’t you think it might not be yours?”
“Of course I did. But I had slept with her, and I knew that it could be mine. No way was I letting her raise any child of mine, so I began manipulating her into giving the baby up.”
“She let you manipulate her?” Joe said.
I piped in. “Yes. I can see that. I’ve been able to manipulate her. She has very strong feelings for both of us. That’s her Achilles’ heel.”
“Exactly,” my father said. “Of course, giving up a child required a lot of manipulation, and I knew I couldn’t get her to do it without payment of some sort. I paid for all her medical bills, of course, and arranged for her to have the baby at the ranch house. I also gave her a lump-sum seven-figure payment.”
“How the hell did you talk our mother into this?” Joe was riled. “Did you manipulate her too?”
“Sadly, yes, I did. I asked her forgiveness for my infidelity and begged her to raise the child as her own. I promised I’d never stray from her again, and I never did. We had some knock-down, drag-outs about it, but finally she forgave me.”
“Was that it? All it took for Wendy to get rid of me was money?”