Abducted By Styles [IN RE-EDITING]

• S I X T Y - S E V E N • (Pt.1)

"I will be."

I kiss Marcel's face. "I'll be back, sleep tight. I love you so much, baby potato." Lucy gives me a weird look at the nickname I give my son but nevertheless waves goodbye as I disappear into the chilly autumn air.

----

H A R R Y

"I lied, dear friend, I lied."

My eyebrows crease in utter confusion. I've been confused about many things in my life, but never have I been this confused about six simple words.

I look over to my side and the look on Desmond's face is no different than mine. He speaks up first.

"I'm afraid I don't quite understand, Ivan."

Ivan sighs. "Lacey," He calls loudly and a maid walks into the room, "Grab me some champagne." The maid nods her head and scurries out the room. I bring my head back to Ivan and he looks at both my father and I intently in the meantime.

The maid comes back with a whole cart of thin bottles. Ivan carefully browses through the selection, almost making me want to take one and smash it at his head. "Pour me the Cuvée Rosé Laurent-Perrier. " The maid complies, pouring a decent amount in his wine glass.

Ivan innocently turns to us again. "Would you care for a drink?" I shake my head and my father refuses too- which quite surprises me.

"Very well." Ivan nods curtly at the maid, telling her to leave. "As I was saying, I lied about something I shouldn't have." He pauses to take a long sip from his glass, looking at us through the corner of his eye. It pisses me off so I knock it out of his hand, Desmond reaching out to me and grumbling my name at the same time. I shake out of his touch and breathe out heavily.

"Just get to the bullshit already." The words come out slow and gritty. Ivan, rather amused, glances down at the broken glass on the ground.

"If you want the truth right away, so be it." He simply says.

A pause.

"Des," Ivan starts to say. My father blinks slowly, nodding. "When your wife, Anne, was alive, she was astonishingly unfaithful of you. We'd host dinner parties and she'd always come to me."

I interject. "My mother was nothing like that." She just couldn't be.

Ivan chuckles lightly. "Oh, but she was...you remember the evening of Anne's nineteenth, right Desmond?"

My father nods silently. "When I was planning to propose to her."

"You went out to get more beer for the guests but got caught in a thunderstorm. The power went out, the guests were stuck in the hotel banquet with nowhere to go, and Anne and I had quite a few drinks ourselves." Ivan circles Desmond as he recalls the details.

Desmond's expression becomes more serious as he looks down. The clicks of Ivan's footsteps continue to echo through the nearly empty courtroom. "Well, while you were caught in traffic, Anne insisted we get a hotel roo-"

It is unexpected of when Desmond growls lowly, grabbing Ivan by the collar and backing him up aggressively into the wall. "YOU FUCKING BASTARD, YOU SLEPT WITH MY WIFE?"