Sirius gasped. “What is talking about, Nicholas? What did you do to my mother?”
“Nothing,” Nicholas answered.
“Don’t fucking lie to me.”
“I’m telling you the truth,” Nicholas said looking at him over his shoulder. “Naheem is trying to get you to side with him. I’m in love with Bedwyr, that is the truth, but I would never intervene with a mating bond to satisfy my own needs. I respected your parents too much to do that. Not a day goes by that I didn’t wish I could have stopped your mother from leaving, I would have done everything to protect you both back then as I am trying to do now. So, listen to me when I tell you that I need you to get the fuck out of here and get some help.”
Sirius believed Nicholas and felt guilty that he’d suspect the man of doing something to his mother. Finally listening he went to run but realized that he couldn’t move. “What the hell?”
“What’s wrong?”
“I can’t move!”
“Fuck…son of a bitch…Naheem, let him go.”
“No,” Naheem said to them.
“Why the fuck are you doing this?”
“Because you took him away from me,” Naheem screamed. “And you should never have been born. I waited so long for him to notice me. After everything, I did to show Bedwyr how much I loved him, and I could replace his mate, he turns to Nicholas for comfort behind my back.”
“So, you’re doing this out of jealousy?” Nicholas yelled. “You were young when you came to the coven, Naheem, Bedwyr has always seen you as a child.”
“This is more than jealousy,” Naheem shouted back. “I never wanted to be seen as his child. I wanted to be the one to carry his child, not that bitch! I was supposed to be his everything. Even after I got rid of her, he still held out hope that she would come back to him.” He pointed his finger at Sirius, scowling at him menacingly. “And then you had to show back up. Why the fuck didn’t you stay wherever the hell you were?” He started pacing back and forth mumbling to himself.
“How did you kill her?” Sirius asked.
Naheem stopped and looked at Sirius. “What?”
“I said how did you kill my mother?”
“Slowly and over time,” he said with a smirk that would make a bad guy in any cartoon jealous. “I cursed her. I knew that if I got Brigid out of Vale Valley, she’d want to come back one day. So, I made sure that every time she thought about coming back, she would relive her worst nightmares. What they were I never knew, but they must have been horrible. Maybe it didn’t help that I implanted a few of my own. And all of that drove her insane, we all know how she died, right?”
“You’re a sick fucking bastard,” Nic yelled. “Your infatuation with Bedwyr was the root of so many misfortunes. Did you think once Brigid left, he would turn to you? You were a fucking child!”
“If you haven’t noticed, I’m no longer a child, Nic.”
Sirius couldn’t speak, he was dumbfounded that someone would go through such lengths to get Bedwyr to fall in love with him.
“You played with the lives of people I care about because you were jealous of what they had together.”
“I wish you would stop saying that. I am not fucking jealous. I simply went after what I wanted. Don’t get angry because you didn’t think of it first,” Naheem snapped.
Sounds a lot like jealousy to me. This dude is out of his mind. How did he keep a tight lid on his emotions for so long?Sirius thought, and then an idea came to him.Alphonso, can you hear me? Please, gods, let him hear me.
* * *
“Areyou sure you want to put your dollhouse here?” Alphonso stood in the center of Tamia’s room finally unpacking the last of her boxes.
“Uh huh, caweful, Daddy, don’t bweak it,” she told him.
He’d noticed she was becoming a bit bossy. “Yes, dear.” He looked up when he heard chuckling coming from the other side of the room. “What’s so funny?” He asked his grandmother.
“I knew she had you wrapped around her little finger.”
“Yeah…yeah.”
They’d moved into their new home a couple of days ago, everything on the inside was complete, and the outside would be taken care of once the weather broke. He had set up his home office and had informed his clients of his new business address. He knew there was a possibility of him losing clients, so he was surprised when they were all okay with him moving out of Los Angeles. Everyone had helped them move in, and even Jacqui’s who seemed to be enthralled by Vale Valley or it could have something to do with a certain doctor.
