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"I told you, Benjamin, Jon's hostility with you had nothing to do with your deafness," Prescott added.
Benjamin's eyes squinted together as he glared at his father, the man that had always been his godfather and namesake. "I guess you knew better than anyone."
"From the time doctors told Jon and I you were deaf, he was more than ready to help you in any way he could. He wanted to learn sign language and started to look into doctors who could help you speak. We even began seeing specialists, hoping that if we could discover the reason you were deaf, there might have been a way to reverse it."
"Did Gladys know?"
Benjamin's question pulled Jewell back to the traumatic circle.
Prescott hung his head, his shoulders slumping. When he looked up again, his eyes were red-rimmed and his lower lip pulled tight across his teeth. "I never told her, and she never spoke of it. Whether she suspected, or not, I don't know. As much as I miss her, I'm glad she's not here now to see the mess I've made of things."
"Do Logan and Abigail know?"
The older man sighed. "No. I intend to tell them today."
Prescott rubbed the side of his finger along his upper lip, then raked his hand over his hair. A familiar action that squeezed at Jewell's chest. She had to blink and look away, focusing on the moonlight streaming in through the suite sitting area windows.
Benjamin lunged to his feet, marching across the room to the kitchen area with his back to all of them. He stopped at the counter bar and braced his hands on the edge, hunched over with such tension ratcheting his body that his back muscles visibly bunched. All any of them could do was wait for him to rein in the tumult and turn back to them. Jewell brushed at the hot tears on her cheeks, purposefully refusing to look in the direction of his 'parents.' This was unconscionable and cruel.
When he turned around, the unmitigated rage in his eyes made Jewell gasp. He clenched his fists at his side so hard his hands and arms shook with the tension. When he spoke, his voice was so tight with his anger it barely carried across the room to them.
"Do you have any idea what you've done? Do you know what I've done because of who and what I thought I was?"
The two people who had given him life behind a veil of lies and deceit exchanged looks.
Benjamin took two long strides toward them, stopping short just feet away. He closed his eyes and rolled his head to the side, his lips pressed together in a thin, white line. When he opened his eyes again, he looked down at Jewell, and the rage was now mirrored with a deep, painful-to-see regret.
"I had a vasectomy when I was twenty-one," he confessed, his voice so low she barely heard him. An instant and intense tightening in her chest made it hard to breathe. Benjamin swallowed and focused on his mother and father. "I was so filled with hatred and rage I didn't want to pass on to a child the defective gene pool that had spawned me."
Prescott stood, shaking his head, looking Benjamin in the eye. "But, that doesn't change anything, Ben. The deafness is still hereditary, so whether it was Jon or I?—"
"No!" Benjamin shouted, making all three of them jump. "It changes everything. I didn't exclude the possibility of ever having children because I didn't want them to be deaf. I wouldn't have cared." He spoke through teeth clenched so tight his school speech patterns were difficult to understand. "I didn't want the twisted, hate-filled genes of Jon Roth to carry through me to a child who deserved better."
Jewell couldn't hold back the tears anymore, pressing her curled fingers against her lips in a vain attempt to smother the sound.
* * *
Benjamin leaned into the marble vanity in the en suite, letting the faucet run in the sink until steam curled upward from it. He took a washcloth from the sideboard and soaked it in the hot water. The liquid burned his fingers as he wrung out the terrycloth, and he took a deep breath through the moist heat as he pressed it to his face.
He dropped the cloth on the countertop and pushed his fingers through his now-damp hair. Reluctantly, he raised his eyes and looked at his reflection in the mirror.
Who was he?
Benjamin always believed he was his own man. Because of the way his father—the way Jon Roth—pushed him, it made him the person he grew to be. He was the hated son of Jon Roth.
Now who was he?
He wanted to remember the fact that he was no blood relation to the bastard that almost killed Victoria. Benjamin had worried that whatever sick dementia drove his father to such a rage that he could shoot his daughter somehow dwelled in him. Someday that insanity might snap in his mind and push him into hurting someone he loved. Which had been why he had done what he'd done at twenty-one.
So, now he knew.
But what did that mean? Some part of him was a result of his childhood. His upbringing. Yet other parts of him were a result of his parents. The genetic soup that created him. Ben Prescott was supposed to be just his godfather. His namesake. Not a man who'd spent one night with his mother.
In one night, he went from being the outcast son to an unwanted bastard. Which was worse?
With a deep breath and heaviness in his chest, Benjamin wiped a dry towel over his face and turned to walk into the bedroom. Jewell sat near the foot of the bed, still wrapped in the white hotel robe, with her arms crossed over her chest. Her eyes and cheeks still bore the evidence of her tears. She looked at him when he opened the bathroom door. A small smile bowed her lips.
She hadn't said much since Barbara and Prescott left—he couldn't yet see Ben Prescott as his 'father', and 'mother' seemed too good for Barbara Roth. Benjamin worried about what kind of effect all this insanity and garbage had on Jewell. Never had he imagined he would pull her into such a sick and twisted drama that the first time he'd kissed her in his office. Of course, he never believed then that they would come this far. That she would spend her nights in his arms and look at him with eyes that held a universe of thought and emotion in one glance.
