Another betrayal

We were back at his house, and as we walked upstairs towards the nursery, I saw my father waiting by the door.

“Dad.” I gave a quick bow and looked up with a squint, a little surprised.

He smiled and walked up to hug me tightly. 

When he stepped back, his eyes were shiny. I noticed him and Blaine exchange a look and Blaine kissed my temple, tapped my shoulder and disappeared into the nursery. 

I could not help frowning. “Is everything OK?”

“I have to talk to you. It’s important.”

“Sure,” I said quickly, although my heart was already beating. What did he have to tell me? Was it about Kan? 

My eyes scanned our surroundings, thinking about where we could talk uninterrupted. 

I could definitely not take him anywhere on the top floor, because I still had some shame. The study then?

“Can we go to the living room?” I asked, thinking about how that place was the place I still found coziest in the house.

We got to the living room and I could hear the sound of the water trickling down from that wall, and it calmed me. 

I took a seat on one of the couches, and he sat beside me.

“All I am going to tell you may come as a great shock, but please promise to listen to me to the end before you make a decision.”

I nodded, even though my heart was beating faster, because I knew this could not be good. 

My father was no great talker, and he was not one to scare you unnecessarily. Him speaking like this now scared me a little.

He nodded too, and brought his hands together. 

He was nervous. How was this the first time I had noticed he made the same gesture I made whenever I was nervous? 

Well, I had not known him for very long.

“When I met Ruby, I was twenty,” he said, and I felt my hands shake. 

My mother was sixteen when she had me. So he was dating a minor? I was not sure that I wanted to continue listening, but I forced myself to say nothing.

He asked me to make a conclusion only after I had heard everything. But if something like this was the first thing, I wondered what the other part of ‘everything’ was. 

“I liked her, but I kept my distance because there was the age gap, and then there was Blaine,” He said, and I began to feel weirded out. 

I hated to think that Blaine had been with my mother, fought with my father over my mother, had cared for her throughout her pregnancy with me because he thought I was his child.

I closed her eyes now and looked away, blinking rapidly. 

“I’m sorry, my girl.” I heard my father’s gentle voice and I nodded and turned back to him. 

He sighed. “I only found out later that Ruby liked me too but I was hesitant to go near her because of those two reasons I stated earlier. At this time, she was dating Blaine.”

I nodded. 

“Until someone made me an offer. They wanted Blaine away from Ruby so he could marry their daughter.” He bent his head in shame now as I watched him. “I took it,” he said.

“What?”

I sat frozen, just staring at him. 

This was something that had puzzled my mother all her life. She would always insist that my father loved her even though I rolled my eyes, but she did not know why he would up and ghost her like that.

“You took money to sleep with my mother?” I gasped, trying to clarify that the champagne had not dulled my mind, and I was now hearing nonsense.

“No, Ariel.” He looked up quickly. “I took money to date and even marry her.” He blushed red all over now, “The sex part just kind of happened.” 

I was shaking my head now, date, marry, fuck. What did it matter? 

He took money to deceive my mother. 

But I managed to stay calm. Just like that day I found out Kan was cheating on me. I stayed calm.

“But I could not see it through. Our relationship only lasted one week. I traveled out of the country after that.”

I turned away now in deep thoughts, despite what everyone believed, even Blaine up there, my mother was not a whore. 

She would never play two men, or double date.

“How did she agree to be in a relationship with you when she was already with Blaine at the time?” I asked, desperately hoping that he would confirm what my mother told me. 

What I have believed is the truth this whole time.

He looked up now, “No. They had had a fight at that time and had broken up for a whole month.”

I sighed in relief. 

It was almost the same thing that happened with me and Ophelia. I simply met Blaine when he and Ophelia had broken up, something that became a ‘break’ when he went back to her.

I thought back to what my mother told me when I was old enough to understand these things. 

She genuinely had no idea that I was not Blaine’s child and was just as shocked by the DNA results.

But she did not try to explain herself anymore when no one listened the first time. 

Ruby Balian was a very proud woman, and closed her ears and held her head high even when everyone called her a whore.

I suddenly missed my mother so much.

“Why are you telling me this?” I spoke up finally. “Is that why you did not want to have anything to do with me before?”

He shook his head. “I was scared, a coward who lived a coward’s life. Even now, no one knows my real identity.”

“What?” 

“I am the investigator.”

"What?” I could not help repeating, because none of what he was saying made any sense. “What investigator,” 

When he continued to stare at me without a word, my brain seemed to start working again. 

All those bugging devices, trackers, and the information he gave me. 

I flew up from the chair, staring at him. I wanted to scream and yell at him because he was the last person I had expected would be lying to me too.

But I remembered my promise and sat back down.