Page 1 of Lost In The Dark
CHAPTER 1
ELI
“Dad, please just try to rest,” I pleaded as he turned in the bed and reached for me. I stood from the chair I had been stationed in at his bedside for days now, and took his hand, hoping to settle him.
“N-no. I…I have to…to tell you something important,” he told us breathlessly, the words forced out through the pain he was in.
I wished there was more I could do, but the nurse, who we hired a couple of weeks earlier, had already assured us he had been given the maximum pain meds she could administer. It had been weeks like this, my father, who had always been this imposing figure throughout my life, now laid in his bed, unable to move. He was nothing but skin and bone. The man who had terrified me as a child, and judged my adult life as one failure after another, was now long gone. In his place was this frail old man who was slipping away with every moment that passed.
“We know dad,” Asher interjected from where he sat at my side. He glanced to me and I saw the resentment brewing behind his softly spoken tone.
My dad had never been a good man. He had raised the two of us with an iron fist and we had suffered because of it. We had both agreed to be at his side though in these last days, because hehad no one else who cared enough to be there. I had the feeling Asher, my brother, was beginning to regret agreeing to it all now though.
“You already told us a dozen times. We’ll take care of the business and keep it running. The business comes first.” His tone sounded calm but I could see the ire all over my brother’s face as he spoke.
Who could blame him? The business had always come first for our father; before us, before our mom, before everything. It was very likely the reason our mom had taken her life when I was barely ten years old. She just couldn’t take anymore of the violent, angry tyrant she had married.
It was also why Asher had joined the military at twenty years old, desperate to escape not only my father, but all of the expectation piled on him that he would one day takeover theLyleempire.
He returned home again two years ago, scarred by all he had seen and not the same brother I had grown up with. He had taken his place at the head of the business, seemingly no longer caring about his future and the dreams he had once held. Now he was cold, and standoffish, his only focus the business, and training in the gym during his every other waking moment. He had been changed greatly by whatever he saw in his time overseas, and I worried about him a lot, almost as much as he seemed to constantly worry about me.
I worked for the family business too, but my father would never have handed me the reins. To him I was never strong enough to head the empire he had spent forty years amassing. He liked to tell me often that I was too sensitive and soft, and he loved to put me down. I’d stopped allowing it to affect me a long time ago though. I did what was asked of me in the business each day,then I got the hell out of there and turned my focus to my real interest – painting.
“No,” our father gasped. “L-listen to me. Th-there’s s-something else. You n-eed to know.”
“Okay, tell us. We’re listening,” I told him as I straightened his pillows, hoping it would help him to breathe. He was hooked up to oxygen, via a tube beneath his nose, but the cancer had ravaged his lungs. All of those years of smoking were coming back to bite him in the ass.
“Th…there was a woman,” he began, and Asher looked to me and rolled his eyes. We both knew there had been so many women over the years, both before and after our mom took her life. “Ruth. She…she w-worked for us. Ruth Brooks. You h-have to find her.”
“I don’t think we’ll have time to run the business,andtrack down every woman you fucked over the last forty years, dad,” Asher told him dryly.
“No! Listen, God damn it!” dad snapped as he turned his rage filled eyes on both of us. It shocked me to realise the tyrant was still in there somewhere. “You h-have to find Ruth because sh-she had a child. M-my child. I turned her away when she t-told me. I sh-shouldn’t have done that. You h-have a…a sister,” he continued, the words causing a fit of coughs by the end.
The nurse hurried over and tried to help him get resettled higher up the pillows, handing him water, and adjusting his oxygen. The entire time his eyes remained fixed on the two of us. I looked to Asher to gauge his reaction. Could this be true? Could we have a sister?
“What exactly do you expect us to do about it?” Asher asked coldly, once the coughing had stopped.
“She may need h-help. I didn’t help her. I r-regret that. I should have t-taken care of her. At least s-sent money, but I just fired Ruth and chased her off with threats. You h-have to find my daughter, You have t-to take care of her.”
“So you knew you had a child out there and you didn’t even provide money to care for her?” I asked with shock and disgust. My father may be a tyrant, but I never thought he’d be so cold hearted to his own blood.
“Y-your mother. She would have f-found out. I had no choice,” he gasped.
“Mom knew damned well that you were sleeping around behind her back,” Asher hissed as he buried his face in his hands.
“J-just promise me. Ruth Brooks. Y-you have to find her and y-your sister. You h-have to make up for my mistake.”
“We’re going to spent the rest of our fucking lives making up for your mistakes, dad,” Asher spat bitterly.
We sat silently as my father drifted into sleep, his wheezing breaths getting louder and slower with every single one.
“It won’t be much longer,” the nurse told us both as she came to straighten the heavy blanket over our father.
“You think he’s telling the truth?” I asked Asher. “Do we have a sister?”
“Who knows? The way he fucked around we probably have dozens out there,” Asher shrugged.
“Are we going to look into it? Find this Ruth Brooks? We should know her, right? If we have a sister out there we should at least meet her?”