Deserving | ✔

Chapter 48

"No," I deny immediately. "I don't believe it for a second. Not Denver."

"Phillip," Daniel sighs but I shut him up with a louder no.

"Daniel is telling the truth, Phillip." I turn my head to see Elaine on the other side of the room. Her brown eyes are right on mine as her facial features soften to a blur. I can't concentrate on anything else but those eyes. They're speaking something else, telling something else to me: something that cannot be said out loud.

Her lips part suddenly and my attention shifts to them in a swift. But before I could hear a syllable out of her mouth, my ears capture the sound of crisp heeled shoes kissing the floor. My vigil eyes turn to the door on the other side and I see two men walking in. One of them is Penny and the other is in fact, Denver Cohen.

My heart feels thrice as heavy every second my eyes take in the view of Stephanie's biggest traitor. Steph had lived under Denver's roof for eight years; her parents had been his friend for all their lives. But he, he turned out to be the biggest traitor as he backstabbed them to death, quite literally. And how he acted for all these years... As a good step-father to Stephanie, as a great friend to the Scotts. He had acted to me as well, pulling off as an amazingly selfless person. Wow, what an act.

"You deserve an Oscar, Denver," I say.

Denver just smirks at me. "Quite accepting you are today, aren't you? Good improvement from the old, whining, always-in-denial Phillip. I like this strong facade version of you."

Uncontrollable hot tears stream down my face as I hear the vengeance in the voice of a person whom I had deemed the most compassionate and selfless. "You killed your friend and their daughter! How could you?! Stephanie did nothing to you! She looked up to you as her father!"

Denver shakes his head and clucks his tongue. "This, this is what I don't like about you; and quite a lot of others as well, to be honest. You take everything to your heart. You feel everything. Want my advice? Don't. Be practical. Be sensical. Be logical. That's the most profitable way to live life."

"Life isn't about profit and loss," I grit my teeth.

"Well, it certainly is the easy way to lead life. But I don't blame you. Even my own partner doesn't get most of what I say. He's too emotional in fact. Takes everything to the heart, damn you, Penny," he says. Penny and Denver laugh together at that.

"Okay, I'm sure Penny must have loaded you with so much of the emotional bullshit behind Scott's deaths. And I'm sure you also won't let it go till you know everything. First off, I joined the gang for my love, Rose. I met her at the end of high school and really liked her. When I was in college, I slowly started pursuing her and that required to impress her brother, aka Penny, so I joined the gang. It was an easy transition to get into the gang because Christopher wasn't present much in the first two years. He wasn't there to stop me from doing things I love like he always did in high school. Emily, my wife, was actually just absolutely smitten by me so I just let her be like that and leave her after college ended. But then I came to know that Christopher was actually going to become an NDA cop. So I couldn't legally marry Rose as that will tip him off and I didn't want that. That's why I resorted to marrying Emily. Well, apart from this, her family was heavily loaded and we needed a lot of funding. So it was win-win.

"Now, I'll be honest with you. Ian was a mistake. He was born out of a heavily drunken night. I only ever loved Rose, and Elaine is my only truly born out of love daughter. Now, back on the track, your parents filed a case on us, then years later the Scotts took over the case... yada yada. Then, those motherfuckers killed Rose. They fucking killed my love. But even then, I tried to control everything fueling inside me because I didn't want the rest of my family, my true family, to be destroyed.