Chapter 257:

Robert’s POV

The words struck my ears like a hammer blow shattering my skull. I stumbled back with unsteady steps, feeling as though all the oxygen had been sucked out of the room. My grip on my father’s pajama collar loosened, and my arms fell to my sides like lead. Violet... is Julie’s mother? I repeated the sentence in my mind, but my heart refused to process its ugliness.

I let out a choked, hysterical laugh, filled with bitterness, while my father watched me with a gaze that mixed pity with firm resolve. I felt my wound throbbing with sharp pain, but it was nothing compared to the tearing happening inside my chest.

The girl I loved, the one I possessed tonight with both violence and passion, is the daughter of the woman who made my mother commit suicide... the daughter of my father’s mistress who destroyed my childhood.

"Impossible... this is impossible," I said, my voice trembling with shock.

"I warned you, Robert," my father replied in a cold, unsympathetic tone. "I warned you many times, but you never listened."

I clutched my head as a violent dizziness hit me. Everything felt like a nightmare. Out of all the women on this earth, did I choose to fall for the daughter of that woman? "How can she be her daughter?" I asked in a desperate attempt to cling to any shred of hope. "Her mother isn’t Violet."

"Her mother is Violet," he said stoically, locking his eyes on mine. "She was raised by her aunt, Meredith... Julie doesn’t know this."

I felt the air leave my lungs. No, this was unbelievable. In a desperate move to make sense of the madness, a darker thought crossed my mind one that made the blood freeze in my veins. "Is she your daughter?" I choked out.

My mind had stopped functioning entirely. My father shouted in disapproval, "What are you saying? Am I insane enough to let you fall in love with your own sister?"

It was all madness. "Since when did you know?" I asked, sparks flying from my eyes. "And why did you hide this from me?"

"I only found out the day I came to the club and saw her for the first time," he answered coldly. "She looks like her mother... a carbon copy."

My God! Had I fallen for the replica of my father’s mistress? As if he heard my thoughts and decided to sharpen my agony, he said with a hint of spite: "Your whole life, you’ve blamed me for betraying your mother and loving another woman... do you realize now that I couldn’t help but love her?"

"Shut up!" I roared, a primal sound.

But he didn’t stop. He continued to stab me with his words. "Do you see it now? How she made you love her? How she melted the glaciers you’ve built around yourself all these years?"

I couldn’t take it anymore. A raging beast was tearing through my insides.

I turned toward a nearby chair and flipped it with a force that shattered the wood. In that moment, I felt my shoulder tear with pain, and my old wound reopened, soaking my shirt in blood. "Shut your goddamn mouth!" I screamed, gasping for air.

He looked at me with genuine terror, his eyes widening as he watched my body tremble violently. "Calm down, Robert... what is wrong with you?" he asked, trying to regain his composure.

"How am I supposed to go to my mother’s grave now?" I choked out.

"Robert..." he tried to soothe me.

I cut him off with a roar that shook the walls, clutching my head with both hands as if trying to keep my brain from exploding. "I swore I would find that woman and kill her and kill her entire bloodline! I would have killed her children if she had any! How am I supposed to do that now? How?!"

"You don’t have to," he said with a coldness that provoked every ounce of my insanity. "Your mother chose to commit suicide."

My breath caught for a second. Then, I lunged at him like a wild predator. "Stop it, you bastard! Stop talking like that! You... you are the reason... I’ll kill you!"

I lunged at him on the bed and gripped his neck with both my hands, beginning to strangle him with raw, brute force. His face turned deep red, and the veins in his neck bulged under my fingers as they dug into his skin. "Because of you, my mother died!" I hissed, malice burning in my throat. "Because of your love for that slut, she committed suicide!"

His breath began to fail, his muscles weakening under my grip. At the final second before death claimed him, I suddenly let go and recoiled as if I had touched fire. I fell to the floor, panting frantically, while my father coughed violently, struggling to breathe. Every time I tried to kill him, I backed away at the last moment, as if the curse of his blood still haunted me.

"Robert..." he rasped, clutching his throat. "Aren’t you tired of this?"

"You destroyed me," I said with a bitterness that shredded my heart. "You destroyed me!"

"You destroyed yourself with those promises," he replied, looking at me with eyes devoid of regret. "Why do you want to kill Violet? She isn’t to blame."

Was he really trying to defend that bitch in front of me? Did he dare? I rose from the floor, my body heavy with disappointment, and walked out of the room and the house without looking back.

I got into the car and drove with insane speed. I didn’t know where I was going; I was just driving and thinking of Julie... Julie, whom I thought would be with me for the rest of my life, turned out to be the daughter of that woman.

I slammed on the brakes suddenly and found myself at the cemetery. I stepped out with heavy feet, walking toward my mother’s grave through the pitch-black darkness. When I reached the tomb, I collapsed to my knees. "Mother... forgive me... I’ve fallen in love with Violet’s daughter... the woman who made our lives a living hell."

I gripped the cold stone of the headstone, feeling its chill seep into my burning heart. "Those promises I made to you... I am powerless to fulfill them now... forgive me."

I couldn’t kill Julie. Her features tonight, her pleas, the way her voice sounded when she called me "Daddy" it all haunted me. But now... I had to stay away from her. I could never touch her again; I couldn’t do that to your memory, Mother.

I returned to the car with a hollow body, as if my soul had stayed back there under the dirt with my broken promises. I drove mechanically toward the club.

When I arrived, I went straight to the room. I opened the door with a chilling silence. She was still there, curled up on the bed waiting for me.

The black lingerie I had worshipped hours ago now only served to remind me of every stab I received in the darkness of the cemetery.

"Robert!" she said in a worried voice. "You’re back... where were you?"

[Shawnnie thank you My love]