HIS DOE, HIS DAMNATION (An Erotic Billionaire Romance) novel Chapter 116

Alaric’s POV:

A few hours earlier:

“No, Mutti.” My voice was low, but I could tell it was still loud enough for Ingrid Ashford to hear. Her face gave nothing away as usual, but I noticed the slight twitch of her right eye.

“What do you mean ‘no‘, mein herz?”

I pushed away from my desk, my fists clenched at my sides. “I mean exactly what you think I mean. We are not holding a memorial for a man who never so much as looked at you except when he was beating you to a pulp or pushing you down the-”

My mother’s palm landed across my face. If anything, my face only jerked to the side from the pressure. When my eyes meant hers again, her face turned red. She was angry that I didn’t feel the slap.

“You are not to speak of that, Alaric,” she gritted out. “We had an agreement on that.”

My jaw clenched and, scraping my teeth along my bottom lip, I replied: “I believe we also had an agreement on not speaking about that scum either.”

Her nostrils flared.

“What does Nolan think about this?” I asked, narrowing my gaze at the edges. The way she avoided my eyes told me everything I needed to know. “You haven’t told him, have you? I thought you’d want to go through the son who would gladly do anything for you–including holding a memorial for the man who made our lives a living hell.”

My mother swallowed. And I stepped closer to her as my lips twitched. “Or… you know Nolan would hate you for even asking him to do such a thing, and decided to come talk to me instead, even though you know there’s not a single way that I’d listen to you.”

For a long time, Nolan knew our father was cruel, but he never got to see or experience the extent of his cruelty. He was only two years younger than me, and yet, I’d managed to keep certain things from him.

Like the times our father had our mother thrown into a mental institute every single time she caught him cheating–or whenever he felt like it, really.

I spent my life in that household doing all I could to protect my brother from seeing the kind of monster our father was. But of course, that wasn’t going to last forever. Eventually, Nolan got to see him for who he truly was. That night, my drunk father had beaten an eleven–year–old Nolan up until he passed out and had to get up to twenty stitches at the hospital. I wasn’t home to protect him when it happened.

That moment haunted me for a long fucking time. Seeing him in that hospital bed, motionless…

“We don’t…” Ingrid trailed off, heaving a sigh. Her blonde hair wasn’t in a tight bun today–that said a lot about the stress that she was causing herself. She ran her hand through it, lowering herself onto a seat. Wir müssen nicht so sein wie.”

“We don’t have to be like him.” “We are better than him, Alaric. And we have to show him that.”

My jaw ticked as I shook my head. “All we’ll be showing him by having a memorial is that we’re thinking of him. Which is the one thing we’re not supposed to be doing.”

I shoved out a breath, placing my hand on her shoulder. Mutti glanced down to where my hand met her, and when she looked back at me, her eyes were already filled to the brim with tears.

My chest tightened.

“We don’t owe him anything, Mama. And the sooner you realize that, the better it’ll be for you… for all of us.”

I was only thirteen when my father died. Meadow must’ve been three or four years old then, which was why it was a little bit easier for me to tell her about my father’s death. Because she wouldn’t be able to piece it together.

My father’s murderer wasn’t found until seven years later.

Yeah.

That was how long the fucking murderer evaded the police. Clint Russell ruined my family.

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