Synching With the Devil's Son

Chapter 74

Lucien's P.O.V.

After I scare and threaten our new inhabitants, I return to my father's office and find him sitting behind his desk. He glances up at me when I enter, and immediately stands up, placing the papers he was looking at down in a neat pile. I glance around me quickly and am astounded I never noticed how neat and organized everything is. I have really been a bad son, and as this realization hits me in the gut, my father begins to speak.

"Lucien," he says, "I heard you were here." He walks to the other side of his desk and leans against it, crossing his hands over his chest. "You obviously have something more important to discuss than your new girlfriend if you came here to see me."

I clear my throat, nodding at his astute observation. "I just want to know how you convinced Mom to stay with you once you told her who you were."

He looks at me, but doesn't say anything. I know this tactic. Stay quiet, and let the other party fill in the silence. Unfortunately for me, my father is an expert in just about everything. After a few too many seconds tick by, I say, "Dad?"

"Why do you want to know?" he asks me quietly.

"This has everything to do with the woman I told you about. She's really important to me, and I want to keep her in my life."

He uncrosses his arms. "I see, and who is this woman?"

"Who she is doesn't matter, Dad. What matters is how do I convince her I am worth sticking around for and not leaving the way Mom left you? I need to know what you did to make Mom choose Heaven over us so I can avoid doing anything even remotely similar," I spit at him. The subject of my mother is something we rarely discuss.

He sighs heavily. "Do you really think I didn't try to come up with an explanation as to why she left us?" he murmurs quietly. His shoulders slump, and my crown of anger falls off when I am suddenly presented with the person my immortal father has become - a man tired of his existence, lonely and forsaken by his family. I've been blaming him for my mother leaving us when the person I really should be angry with is her. When she died, we went to Hell and waited for her soul to return to us, but she never came. We spent a few months where one of us was always in Hell to make sure she didn't pop up unexpectedly, until we decided we should check in Heaven. Since Dad is not allowed to return there, I went to determine if there was a miscommunication, hoping to uncover the reason she left us, but I couldn't find her. When I asked around, none of my Aunts or Uncles had seen her or knew where she was. We had to assume she didn't want to be found because souls don't just disappear. About six months after she died, I came back from Hell to find the house we lived in completely trashed. My father had broken every mirror, every dish, every picture frame, ripped apart the couches and beds, incinerated the bathrooms and kitchen. It's something we never mention, the taboo between the two of us, but after that incident my father seemed...lesser somehow. His eyes were never as bright, and I would catch him staring at nothing. Now that I've found Bella, I realize he lost a part of himself when Mom left us, and I understand how devastated and desolate he has been without his soul-mate. With a heavy heart, I look up at him when he begins speaking again.

"I know you blame me for your Mother choosing Heaven over us, but she gave me no indication she was feeling that way." He stares down at the ground. "I never understood why she would leave you...I mean living here, with me...I can see why she wouldn't want that, but you? She loved you with every fiber of her being," he says, so softly I can barely hear him.

I scoff. "Apparently not or she would have been here the last three hundred and fifty years."

"Three hundred and sixty years, seven months, three weeks and four days," my Dad says quietly, the hurt and anguish evident in his voice.

I walk over to him and stand in front of him, taking one of his shoulders in my hand. "Dad," I say entreatingly, "I'm not going to pretend I wasn't angry at you, blaming you for something you had no control over, but I understand now. The person I should be angry with is Mom," I tell him, meaning every syllable. He moves to interject, but I speak over him. "But I can't really be angry with her either. She made her choice, and whether we agree with it or not, it was still her choice to make, her free will." I look into his eyes, no longer the actively engaging dark brown eyes of my childhood. He lost a part of his soul when he lost my mother, and of the two of us, he suffered the greatest. He had to forge on, support me, an angry and rebellious half angel bent on causing him as much pain as I blamed him for causing me. No, those time are over, the past should be left as a memory, especially since it's not a fond one. "At least we have each other, right?" I ask, my eyes shining.

I see tears streaking down his cheeks and he grabs me, holding me in a fierce embrace. I hold him tightly while his shoulders shake as he cries. "We're going to be okay Dad," I tell him softly. "We made it this far, right?"

He nods his head and then straightens, wiping angrily at his face. "I think I needed to hear you say that, Lucien," he says quietly. "I blamed myself for your mother leaving us, a lot more viciously than you could have ever done, but you're right...it was her choice to make." He's silent for a moment, then he says, barely audibly, "I miss her though, and I always will."

I nod in understanding. I'll always miss her too, but as a child who misses his parent, not as a man who misses his wife. What I've lost will never compare to what he has forfeit - an eternity full of love, respect, intimacies, laughter, and sharing. "I'm sorry Dad," I manage to say past the lump in my throat. "Sorry for blaming you, sorry for acting like such a self-centered ass."

He brushes off my apology with a wave of his hand. "Do you think I, of all God's angels, don't understand?" He looks at me speculatively. "This girl you have met," he says, straightening his shoulders again. "Tell me about her."