This Game Called Life (Kingdom Book 4) (19 page)

Chapter 27

MacKenzie was the
first to break the silent tension that seemed to hold everyone in its grip.
“There is something seriously wrong with that woman.”

“You don’t know
the half of it.” Jake looked at her and thought about the way she was with
Noelle. Then he thought about how he and his brothers had been treated by the
woman who had given them life.

“What is it,
Jake?” MacKenzie asked.

Jake looked over
at his younger brother who held his gaze for a few moments and then nodded. By
mutual agreement, he and his younger brother had never spoken of their time
spent with Diana.

In the past when
Jackson had probed, he and Josh had clammed up. He knew their silence
frustrated their father, but they had always stuck to their pact, only giving
as much information as was necessary to placate Jackson.

Turning first to
Jason and then his father, Jake gave them a barely perceivable smile before he
bowed his head. When he began to speak, he held all their attention.

“Josh and I
spent around three years with Diana. She moved us around a lot. We didn’t go to
school. Occasionally we had tutors. When we realized that we were smarter than
most of them, we lost interest.

There was one
tutor, a man. He was kind to us, not that bright, but he was kind. Josh and I
discussed it. For some reason, we thought he would help us get away from Diana.
That was one of our biggest mistakes.”

Breaking off, Jake
glanced between MacKenzie and Aviva. “Diana is probably one of the most
beautiful women I have ever seen. However, she is also completely incapable of
any form of affection towards her children. I’m an intelligent man, yet I’ve
never been able to work out why she hates us so much.”

“It’s her loss,
Jakey darling. She has no idea what she’s missing.” Aviva said, blowing him a
kiss as she cuddled closer to her husband.

Jake was surprised
when MacKenzie left her seat and sat down beside him. She didn’t touch him. All
he received was a soft smile, but it was enough for him to continue.

“Diana loves
beautiful things and our tutor was a very handsome man. That night, after our
appeal to our tutor, the butler, and I use that word loosely, came into my
room. Diana wouldn’t allow Josh and I to share a room. The first thing I became
aware of was the hand over my mouth. To look at us now, you wouldn’t imagine
it, but when we were kids, we were little runts.

I fought, but I
couldn’t get away. I was placed in a travel chest with holes bored into the
top. I was left there for what seemed like an eternity. How many days I
remained there, I didn’t know at the time, and Diana would occasionally come
and speak to me. I won’t tell you the type of things she would say, because
they didn’t matter then, nor do they matter now.

All I could
really think about was what was happening to Josh. Was he okay, was he locked
in another box? That was the thought that nearly drove me mad. I stayed awake
as long as I could, but at some point I must have dozed off. I awoke to the
sound of the lock being turned, the lid being opened and the butler standing
over me.”
Jake broke off and looked over at his
younger brother.

Josh took up the
story. The room still deadly silent as all their attention switched to him.

“I never could
stand that woman. Always the talker, I didn’t care if she knew it, so I told
her as often as I could. At first it was just childish gabber, but it was
enough. For the most part, she just ignored me. Jake tried to stop me, but I
never listened.

Although it was
obvious, she hated us both, for some reason the feeling appeared to be more
strongly directed towards Jake. We used to think it was because he had blond
hair. As dumb as that sounds, we couldn’t come up with any other reason.

Jake had been
missing for a couple of days. I remember being scared that something bad had
happened to him. I was locked in my room and the only person I saw was the
maid, Jake and I couldn’t stand. As Jake said, Diana loves beauty, and the maid
was no exception. Yes, she was beautiful, but she had dead eyes,”
Josh shuddered as though recalling his feelings of those years so
long ago. With a visible shake of his head, he continued.

“I tried to
ask, Dead Eyes,
as we used to call her, where
Jake was. All she did was laugh at me. I remember going after her and kicking
her because she wouldn’t answer me. For that, I didn’t get any more food. I
didn’t care. After two days with no sight of my brother, I decided to go and
look for him. The only problem was, I had no idea where to find him, and I was
locked in my room.

My room was at
the top of the house, but I managed to get the window open. When I swung one
leg over the windowsill and saw the drop, I nearly gave up. That thought only
lasted for a few moments. I knew that if I were missing, Jake wouldn’t stop
until he found me.

My heart was
beating so hard and fast, I could feel its pulse thumping in my palms as I
clutched onto the window ledge.

I remember the
howl of the wind, as it tried to rip me from my grip on the drainpipe. I
remember my lament of; I don’t want to die, please don’t let me die,
as I moved my hands and feet. That prayer was the only thing I
had room for in my brain as I hung on and kept sliding and gripping the pipe.

I don’t know
how long it took, but finally, I was on the ground. I was so thankful I sat
down and cried.

When I pulled
myself together, I made my way to the back of the house, all the while hoping
and praying that nobody spotted me. I could hear people, and I didn’t want to
be discovered. I think that was the day I realized that I was a daredevil
because I felt a rush at swiping a knife from right under their noses—”

“Are you crazy,”
Aviva broke in. “What if they’d caught you?!”

“They didn’t,”
Josh stated in a matter of fact voice.

“Yes, well...
sorry I interrupted, go on.”

“I—”

“What the hell
were you thinking, Joshua? What were you going to do with that knife?” Aviva
demanded cutting him off again.

“If you let the
man finish, we’ll all find out,” Jason told his wife.

Casting her
husband a disgruntled look, Aviva turned back to Josh, “please continue.”

With an indulgent
smile, Josh again started speaking.
“When I took the knife, I honestly
didn’t know what I intended. It wasn’t until I got into the hallway that I
started to put a plan together.

I could hear
that Diana was entertaining
,
so I snuck up to
her bedroom. Each morning, whenever she was home, wherever we were, Jake and I
had to go and see her in her bedroom to get our orders for the day. During
those meetings, she was always propped up with a breakfast tray over her lap.

It came to me
that she loved that bed otherwise she wouldn’t spend so much time in it.

I slashed it. I
destroyed all her fancy pillows, silk and satin bedding. When I was finished, I
laid the knife in the middle of that bed and left.

I retraced my
steps with difficulty, got back into my room and waited. A while later my door
was flung open, and there she was, Diana was standing in my doorway.

I didn’t
pretend to be asleep. I just stared at her, and she at me. She looked around my
room; I could see her mind racing, attempting to figure out if I had done it.
The only thing I said to her was, ‘where is my brother?’ She didn’t answer. She
left without saying one word to me.

I didn’t sleep
for the rest of the night. I was scared that if I closed my eyes, someone would
come into my room and hurt me, or take me away the way they had done with Jake.

The next
morning, I was still sitting in a chair, my eyes on the door when it opened.
Jake was pushed into my room.

That incident
happened when, we’d been with Diana for around two years.
Josh stopped speaking and again a look passed between the brothers. With
a nod, Jake again took up the narrative.

“By the time I
got out of that box I was a stinking mess...”
Jake
found and held Josh’s gaze before he continued speaking.
“My little brother
didn’t care. He hugged me... we hugged each other and cried.”

The retelling had
been harder than he had expected, and Jake found that he was over his walk down
memory lane.

“I’m not going to
detail everything we went through during our stay with that woman. Suffice it
to say, we were beaten, never by Diana though. The punishment was always meted
out by the beautiful people. We were starved and separated, sometimes for
months on end. For us, that was the cruelest thing she could do, and she knew
it. You see, we were just two little boys who only had each other.

No matter what
they did to us we always found a way to get even. It didn’t matter if we were
beaten; it didn’t matter if they didn’t give us food and it didn’t matter what
one or the other of us did.” Jake chose that moment to look at MacKenzie.
“That’s why we never judge the people we love.”

Jake saw the
moisture in MacKenzie’s eyes, and his gaze followed a single tear that refused
to be contained as it spilled down her cheek. He didn’t care who was watching;
he extended a hand and caught the tear on the tip of his finger.

Leaning close to
her, he spoke for her ears only. “You don’t need to cry for us, Lovely, we made
it just fine. If you let me, I want to make sure that the little girl upstairs
knows only the kind of happiness our father showed us.”

By the time he
finished speaking, MacKenzie was sobbing. That hadn’t been Jake’s intention. He
hadn’t meant for her to cry. He had just wanted for the newest members of their
family to know that no matter what adversity was put before them, they would
find a way to resolve it. That the resolution frequently suggested that if
necessary, they would take matters into their own hands, wasn’t something she
needed to know.

Although he and
Josh had said nothing, he knew that like himself, his younger brother agreed
with Jason. It was time Diana was permanently removed from their lives.

**********

 “Promise me you
won’t do anything foolish.”

Jason pulled his
wife back until she was nestled more firmly between his legs, surrounded by
bubbles as they took part in their nightly ritual of bathing together. He loved
these moments of relaxation. He didn’t even mind that when he emerged he would
smell of some type of flower.

“I promise not to
do anything foolish.” Jason capitulated, his mind having already moved on to
how he was going to make love to his wife.

“Do you even know
what you’re making a promise about?” Aviva asked as she looked at him over her
shoulder.

“Yes, ma’am. I
agree not to rip out Diana’s heart.”

“Jason, stop being
so flippant. I’m serious, you will not do anything I can’t live with, do you
hear me?!”

“I hear you,
Angel. I don’t know if I ever told you this, but you have a very powerful
voice.”

Suddenly, Aviva
was on her feet with one foot hanging over the side of the bathtub. The look
she threw in Jason’s direction told him that she expected him to stop her. When
she registered that he wasn’t about to tell her to stay, she retracted her leg
and sank back down in the scented water.

“What do you have
in mind,” Aviva asked.

“Only you, my
angel. That’s what I have in my mind.” Although she didn’t know it, Jason was
consumed by the intensity of his feelings. Until tonight the opportunity had
never arisen for him to ask about what his brothers had been through at the
hands of their mother.

Instinctively, he
knew they had left out the most harrowing aspects of what they had gone
through. His mind however seemed to be on a mission to fill in the gaps. From
the moment Jake had started his story, Jason’s anger toward Diana had been on
the rise. He had tried to hide his anger, but he knew Aviva had picked up on
it.

“Baby, what Diana
did to you and your brothers was unconscionable, but because I love you, I
refuse to allow her actions to define you. You and your brothers are loved. I
love you so much, please tell me that my love is enough for you.”

It occurred to him
for the umpteenth time that he was a very lucky man because he had found this
remarkable woman. Whatever she needed to hear, he was prepared to tell her.
“Thank you for loving me. I promise you here and now; I will do nothing to
Diana that will cause you a moment of distress.” Aviva was quiet for so long,
Jason began to doubt the construction of his promise.

“You are the
trickiest man I have ever met, Jason Kingdom. I just needed a moment to analyze
what you just said.”

Jason couldn’t
help but smile. His angel had an angle on him. He didn’t intend to cause Aviva
any distress, but Diana was a whole other matter. She was going to rue each and
every one of the wrongs she had perpetrated against him and his brothers if it
was the last thing he did.