“Something you may or may not know,” He stood back up to his full height, beginning his pacing in front of me yet again. “Is that my father, Archibald Rhodes, is dying. In fact, he’s probably on his way out the door as we speak.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Because he said something a couple months ago that completely upended the family.” Lafayette nodded, tilting his head and sliding his slitted eyes my way. “He admitted to stepping out on our mother. Once and only once.”
Okay, and? Why the fuck did I care about this family? Lafayette knew I didn’t give two shits about him. He’d learned that from our stare down backstage at the show. So why was he still doing the monologuing he swore he was going to refrain from doing?
I remained quiet until he finally lifted his lips once more. “He admitted that while it had only been the one time with this mystery woman, who’s name he couldn’t quite remember, their one night only had resulted in the birth of a child.” I kept the veil of unknowing on my face because I still wasn’t understanding what this little tale of family woes had to do with me. “I was put in charge of figuring out who the long-lost Rhodes half-sibling was. So I visited the town that my fatherdidsomehow remember, visiting her old home that she had vacated only months prior to my visit.”
Now it was my turn for my eyes to narrow. Because this was feeling really familiar. But…there was no way that…
“That’s right, Alistair.” Lafayette sighed, ending his pacing again to stand abruptly right in front of me, unmoving and stoic. “As fate would have it,youare the Rhodes half-sibling.”
My mind swam, drowning in the waters of his words. That...was impossible. I searched for a reason that would explain why Lafayette would lie to me, specifically about something like this. Too many contradictions afflicted me to make sense of his proposal that I was secretly related to the Rhodes family.
“You're wrong.” I spat, announcing his falsehood flat out. “My father was James Finneson.”
“No.” Lafayette placed his hands on his hips, as if that made his point more valid. “He might've been your dad, but he was never your father.”
My stare was stuck on every crease that made Lafayette Rhodes. I'd never wished more than in that moment that I could insight flames to skate across someone's skin, wishing I could make him spontaneously combust and saving me from having to face his loose accusations.
I decided to try and poke holes in his theory. If this was the conversation we were going to have, then I was going to milk it. “I’ll pretend for the sake of argument that you're right. How do you know I'm this long-lost Rhodes sibling?”
Lafayette's simper was entertaining as much as it was devilish. If I didn't already hate him so much, I'd be impressed by his layered levels of facial expression. “Well, my first inkling that it was you was when you just so happened to be standing outside of the very dwelling that my investigation of my father's confession had led me to.”
My eyes flared in response. As I glared at him, one piece of this confusing puzzle started to lay itself into place. That weirdly sensitive feeling I'd felt outside of Spider Way...
“It was you." I finally surmised. “You were watching me when Van and I were visiting Spider Way.”
“That's right.” Lafayette affirmed. “I’d only arrived minutes before you did. I'd barely had enough time to hide among the trees before you tried to spot me.”
So I hadn't been losing my mind. Lafayette had been in the building both at the first show when I'd felt that obtuse feeling of being observed as well as backstage at The Gab. All three instances that I’d felt this loathsome stare, dripping with bad intent, had come from one person and one person only.
All along it'd been Lafayette.
“Then when I met you backstage at your show,” Lafayette continued his explanation. “And I shook your hand, I had this feeling. That it was you. But of course, I needed more than a feeling. I needed proof.” He began to rustle around in the pocket of his white slacks as my patience began to sheer thin.
“There's no way you managed to get proof of this crazy hunch.”
“Oh, but I did.” He snarled with a smile, producing a rolled up wad of papers. “But here, read it for yourself if you still don't believe me.”
As he tossed me the consolidated papers, the sickening sound of his stifled laughter filled the space, and it truly made me want to gag.
I started scanning over the papers, dumbfounded that it was actually DNA test results. My eyes flared as I read Lafayette's name next to someone labeled only as 'Subject B'.
“It wasn't that hard to break into your dressing room, considering there was no security and no lock.” Lafayette shrugged innocently. “After you left my wife and I, I busied myself with stealing your hairbrush while my wife used the bathroom before our departure. One little trip to a family friend associated with one of the hospitals my family owns, and your DNA sample became Subject B,” he smiled. “To protect your anonymity, of course.” Ugh, he was speaking like he’d done me a fuckingfavorand it made my stomach churn. “And so,” he gestured to the papers, and I looked back down at them to see that Lafayette and Subject B were fifty percent related, theresults saying that they likely shared a parent and were half-siblings. “You're Subject B, Alistair. And youareone of us.”
He’d just unloaded a lot of information at me, and I'll admit, I was struggling to take it all in. What I couldn't deny though, was the results right in front of me. I had no idea whether or not they were faked or not, but the truth was right here in front of my face.
I'd never questioned whether or not Wanda and James Finneson were my parents. I'd lost my dad when I was six, so young that I barely had any memories of him. I wished the same could be said for my mother.
The mention of my mother brought another question to the forefront of my mind. “Are you the reason my mother left Phoebe?”
“No.” Lafayette's immediate answer made me believe him for some reason. I wanted to understand my mother completely uprooting her life on a level nearing desperation. “But I'm assuming I'm the reason she reached out to you.”
My head whipped from the test results to read his face. “You spoke with her?”
He nodded. “I met with her. She admitted to sleeping with my father, and that James Finneson wasn't the father of her child. She claims he always knew that you weren't his, and he hadn’t cared. That he loved you like you were his own. And then she said she'd call you.”
