Her sincere gratitude only heightened his guilt. “It’s my fault you were attacked. I should have been there sooner,” he said gruffly.
She looked at him with faint puzzlement. “But, Silas, how could you have possibly known? It isn’t your fault.”
He turned and walked out, knowing damn well it was his fault.
His first call was to Drake’s doctor, who ran a clinic in Drake’s apartment building, and he demanded that the doctor drop everything and get over to Silas’s place as soon as possible. Then he called Maddox and briefly told him what had happened and that he needed a cleanup crew, and the details and the location. Then he said he needed the rest of Drake’s men to get to his place immediately to ensure that nothing like this happened again. Maddox seemed bewildered because Silas was not a man who ever got rattled, and Silas knew he sounded like he was on the edge, but Maddox didn’t probe, merely telling Silas to consider it done, and that those not on cleanup duty would be over within minutes. But he didn’t question Silas. That wasn’t the way it worked in their tightly knit group. When a brother called with a request or a demand, no questions were asked. It was simply done. They always came, always taking each other’s backs, prepared to do whatever necessary to help.
Family.
What Evangeline had made them all. And Hayley was part of it even if she had no idea she now had family or that any one of them would die for her. Just as they would for Evangeline or for one another.
While waiting for the doctor to arrive, he slipped back into his bedroom, expecting her to have succumbed to the medication he’d given her. To his shock and dismay, she was sobbing as if her heart would break.
He flew across the distance and carefully arranged himself on the bed next to her, cradling her gently in his arms so as not to jar her ribs. Hell, he hadn’t even cleaned the blood from her, but he hadn’t wanted to do anything for fear of hurting her or making it worse until the doctor examined her.
“Princess, what’s wrong?” he said urgently. “Are you still hurting? Do you need more pain medication?”
She buried her face in his chest, her tears wetting his shirt as she shook against him.
“It was all I had left of him,” she sobbed. “Oh God, Silas, what am I going to do?”
She pressed her face more firmly into his chest as if to stifle her cries, but he pried her away, not wanting to do further damage to her battered face.
“You’re breaking my heart, baby. Talk to me. Tell me why you’re crying. You have to know I’ll do anything to fix this for you.”
It seemed a stupid request, but he knew this wasn’t about the attack. There was something else that had devastated her and if someone else had hurt her, he’d hunt the bastard down and kill him with absolutely no remorse.
“You can’t fix this,” she said dully. “I wish with all my heart you could, but no one can. No one can make my dream happen now, and now I can’t fulfill my father’s dying wish.”
She broke off into another round of heartbreaking sobs that made his own heart ache as he shared her pain.
“Tell me about it, Hayley,” he said gently. “The doctor won’t be here for another ten to fifteen minutes. Tell me what’s upsetting you so badly. Besides the obvious.”
“They destroyed my violin,” she choked out, tears streaming down her bruised and bloodied face. “And now I havenothing. No way to fulfill my dream. I can’t afford even the cheapest violin, and while I can borrow one for classes at school, they have a strict policy about them leaving the premises, which means I won’t be able to practice at home. It’s over. Everything he worked so hard to make possible for me is gone, and it’s my fault.”
“Oh, baby, no,” Silas protested. “You can’t blame yourself for what those bastards did to you.”
Hayley continued on, lost in her bittersweet memories.
“It was just him and me after my mom died, and we were poor, desperately poor. It was everything we could do to make ends meet and have food on the table. He worked long hours at a local paper mill. Every opportunity for overtime, he was on the job, saving to buy me a violin. He wanted so badly for me to follow my dream of playing and becoming a master violinist. But then he got sick. Cancer. I wanted to quit school, get a job so I could pay our expenses and get him the care he needed. I wanted to be with him so he wouldn’t die alone. I couldn’t bear the thought.”
She broke off in a sob and he slid closer to her and gently stroked his hand through her hair, carefully resting the uninjured side of her face against his chest.
“But he wouldn’t hear of it,” she said, sorrow heavy in her voice. “I received a partial scholarship to a prestigious school of music in Manhattan, but I refused to leave him and I couldn’t afford the cost of living here much less paying the rest of my tuition, but before he died, my father told me not to worry, that he had provided for me. It was so important to him that I follow my dreams. I think it became his dream every bit as much as mine, and I truly believe he held out as long as he did so he would know I kept my promise of moving to New York to enroll, because he died just after I moved here and I wasn’t with him,” she sobbed. “He died alone. Oh God, I left him to die alone, Silas. I’ll never forgive myself for that.”
“Shhh, baby,” he said, running his fingers through her matted hair in an effort to comfort her. “You did exactly as he intended. It was what he wanted, and he waited, he held on just long enough to know you would be okay. You gave that to him. Peace. He didn’t die alone, princess. He died knowing that his daughter was going to achieve her dream and his.”
She was silent for a long moment, and then she slowly nodded. “Thank you for that, Silas. I guess I never looked at it that way.”
Then tears clouded her vision, and she looked away, grief consuming her once more, but he saw something else in her eyes. Not pain, sorrow or regret. He saw unfettered rage. He was so taken aback that he could only stare in stunned silence at the abrupt change in her demeanor.
“Hayley?” he asked tentatively.
“My father wanted so badly for me to be taken care of, for me not to want for anything. He wanted only for me to attend school and not have any financial worries, so without my knowledge, he took out a life insurance policy on himself.”
Her words took on a bitter note, the hatred in her eyes glowing like neon.
“When I found the paperwork and filed the claim I couldn’t believe how exorbitant the monthly payments were. I can’t even imagine how he afforded them or what he had to do in order to afford the payments. But the payout would have been enough to see me through school and pay my living expenses without me having to hold multiple jobs.”
