Pinnacle (ONGOING)

Chapter Eleven

     Shannon looked down at Michael's sorry form on the ground. If I had only seen her reaction and not his state, I would have thought she saw a horrible demon.

     "Shannon Rhodes... Like his sister who passed?" I blanched. I admit I had not met Shannon but had heard of her legacy years after she passed. She had been a beautiful, prized debutante, dead before I could enter my first season. Society talked of nothing else for months. I blinked and noticed the resemblance; the low brows, the smiling mouth, the cat-like eyes.

     "Not dead, just... hidden." She said, skirting around Michael who used every last ounce of its strength to grab for her, but slumped back as he surrendered to exhaustion.

     "What do you mean?" I frowned, holding Shannon's hands. They were shaking as I did so and I massaged her knuckles with my thumbs to soothe her.

     "Michael..." She breathed a shaky breath as her sightless eyes lived in a memory. "Wanted me as one should not want their sister..."

     If my heart could detach from its cavity and fall onto the ground, it would have justified the feeling that punctuated the violent silence of that moment.

     "My God..." Mama gasped behind me.

     Shannon straightened herself, "I have come to testify against Michael and see to it that he is hanged."

     Another beat of silence. "I have also come to clear the name of William who they are bound to take into custody once they hear Michael's attempted defamation of character."

     "Why does Michael blame William for your death? I am confused." I said, leading her inside the chapel.

     "Let me start from the beginning." She sighed, "William's father was a friend of my father's and he took William on as his ward when William's father passed away. Something about military promises and a child out of wedlock."

     We sat down on a bench before the fire and stuck out feet to thaw our toes.

     "And what of his mother? Did she die too?" I urged.

     "No. We do not know of her origins or whereabouts. It is strange, but papa would not tell the children such things even if he had known."

     I nodded, realizing that William's mother may have been a woman of ill-repute. It did not deter me from loving him to know this, and Shannon continued.

     "Father loved William like his own son, raised him as his own. Once papa had died however, Michael, who was not yet 5 and 10, became the new Lord of Rhode's Manor and our family estate. He had always been a bad seed, even when we were little. Used to bite our nurse-maid's breast as a wean and laugh hysterically. He just... was never right, you see."

     I nodded, biting my lip.

     "Anyway, after papa's death, I entered my first season. Michael began to grow jealous at the attentions I was receiving. He was always too close to me as children, but it never got... inappropriate until this time. I- I do not want to go into the details, but you can assume what happened. Me being trapped under his thumb, and William being father's favorite... We all essentially became his slaves. He treated William horribly. Since William had never been out in society by the time papa died, it was easy for Michael to put him in his place... It was different for me, however... I was already in the center of it all. I could not take it anymore, William helped me escape, and we ran away from home when we turned 8 and 10. He helped me into London and establish myself there, but Michael was hot on William's tail as William used the name Rhodes wherever we went. It was our only way to freedom, and it nearly cost our undoing. Michael had traced us to London, and the only way to convince Michael to leave us be was to fake my own death."