Chapter 208
#Chapter 208 – Hard Lines
When Victor and Evelyne down the stairs ten minutester, Rafe is sitting at the kitchen table
looking down at his folded hands. Evelyn doesn’t say a word, barely nces at him as she instead
goes to her boys, who are standing by the open front door.
“Mama!” Ian says, breathless with excitement. “Did you see it!?”
“See what, baby?” Evelyn says,ing to put a hand on his back between his shoulder des and
see what the excitement is about.
“The house,” Alvin says, leaning against the door and looking up at her with wide eyes. “The car
house!”
“Oh,” Evelyn saysughing and looking at the driveway. “It’s called an RV, boys – a Recreational
Vehicle. Apparently,” she smirks and looks over her shoulder at Victor, who pulls out a chair to sit
across from Rafe, “your dad buys the newest model every year. Just in case.”
N?velDrama.Org ? 2024.
“It’s awesome,” Ian says, his wide eyes eager. “Can we go travel in it?”
“Can we go live in it?!” Alvin shouts, sping his hands beneath his chin in excitement.
“You’d want that?!” Evelyn asks,ughing and gesturing towards it. It really is beautiful but…live in it!?
“You’d want to live in that thing, like living in a can of sardines?”
“Well, our other house did burn down,” Ian says, pouting, “we should get a new one and this one is
already here.” Evelyn can’t stop theugh that starts to spill from her at his earnest kid logic.
“Yeah,” Alvin says, as if it’s obvious. “And we can take this one to the beach.”
“Okay, okay,” Evelyn says, reaching for the coat hanging on the peg by the door. “Let’s go explore it,
and then we’ll decide whether or not we should move in.”
The boys run out the door, happy with this deal, and Evelyn looks over her shoulder at Victor before
following them. Victor gives her a deep nod as Burton hands him a fresh cup of coffee.
Thank you, Victor says into her mind, for distracting them. I’ll handle this in here.
Anytime, Evelyn replies with a wink. Then, she pulls the door shut behind her, following her sons to the
RV.
When the house is quiet again, Victor turns his attention to Rafe. “Evelyn told me what she knows,” he
says, his deep voice rumbling with disappointment. Hearing his tone, Burton quickly makes himself
scarce.
When the butler is gone, Rafe lifts his eyes to meet his brother’s. “Listen, Victor. I f****d up.”
Victor lets his head fall a little to the side, giving Rafe a look that suggests what he has said is an
understatement. A massive, horrible, disgusting understatement.
“Victor,e on. Evelyn already yelled at mest night,” Rafe says ruefully. “I get it. It’s not like I don’t
already know that what I did was horrible. I’m going to make it better. You don’t have to yell at me too.”
“What is it that you’re afraid of here, Rafe?” Victor asks, starting to get genuinely confused as he sits
down at the table. “That I’m going to repeat back to you your actions in the past few months? And
you’re going to have to face what you did, instead of making excuses for yourself? Orforting
yourself that it’s okay because nobody knows about it?”
Rafe looks at his brother, rueful.
“Fine,” Victor says, shrugging. “I’ll leave that to Evelyn – she’ll be more than happy to go through the
details and pin you to the wall for each one. I’ll skip right to telling you what a rotten piece of work you
really are.”
Rafe grimaces at the thought, but Victor continues, cutting to the chase. “What the f**k is wrong with
you, Rafe?” Victor growls, leaning across the table and ring at his brother. “That is a good woman,
who by all appearances loves you – or loved you, at least. How could you treat her like that? What,
genuinely, went through your mind to make you do it?”
Rafe exhales a huge sigh and puts his head in his hands. “I just got so wrapped up in it, Victor,” he
says, his voice muffled against his palms. “In all the s**t after the wedding – in all of the s**t before the
wedding. You weren’t there – you didn’t hear everything Dad was saying about you bringing those boys
into your life. About how you were failing the pack.”
“Is that seriously your excuse?” Victor says, sitting back in his chair, a little further disgusted. “That dad
made you do it?”
“Of course he didn’t,” Rafe says, taking down his hands and ring at Victor. “I did it. I’m man enough
to take responsibility for my choices, even if…well, if not for much else.”
Victor just holds his coffee in his hands as Rafe takes a moment to sort his thoughts.
“At the moment when I started the lie,” Rafe says slowly, perhaps figuring it out for himself as he goes,
“…nothing, in my life, seemed more important to me than ripping this pack from you and taking it for
myself. In getting that approval from dad.”
Victor sits quietly, listening.
“But as time passed, after all that I did – to you, to Evelyn, to Bridgette – I realized that…dad was just
using me, as he does all of us. He’s just like John Walsh in that way, do you know?” Rafe looks up,
then, meeting Victor’s eyes seriously.
“They’re all from a different generation of Alphas,” Rafe says then, shaking his head. “Where it’s fine,
encouraged, even, to just take whatever the hell you want, and shape the world into the image you
want it to fit. But these past months with you, with the world that you’re making…”
Rafe pauses, sitting back in his chair, studying his brother. “How did you get out of it, Victor?” he asks.
“How did you…not be them, like dad and Walsh? Like I did?”
“I’m not sure I did escape it,” Victor murmurs, holding his coffee tight. “I think I only started to change
when…”
Rafe can read the end of the sentence on his face though. “Evelyn?” Rafe says, leaning forward in his
chair, a little disbelieving. “Seriously? One womanes along and everything is different?”
Victor just shakes his head. “I treated her…I’m ashamed of how I treated her, Rafe, at the start of all of
this. I have trouble even thinking about the things I said to her. But I was the Alpha, I was just repeating
things dad said to mom for years, things I thought were right.”
“And then?” Rafe asks, genuinely curious.
“And then,” Victor says, shrugging, “I started to see her as a person. She forced me to start seeing her
as a person. Not as a Luna, or as a surrogate, or as my kids’ mom. But as a full person, who loves and
fights and speaks and breathes. And the way she loves,” he shakes his head, still bowled over by it. “I
had to be a different person, to even begin to deserve her.”
Rafeughs a little at that. “You certainly blew up your life to do it.”
“It was worth it,” Victor says, dead serious and a little mad that his brother wouldugh. Rafe holds up
his hands, though, apologizing, and Victor forces himself to cool down.
“So what,” Rafe asks after a moment, shrugging. “Is that how I have to change? I have to find the right
woman? I have to –“
“Seriously, Rafe?” Victor hisses, leaning forward, the disgust back in his voice. “Are you seriously
looking for a woman to make you treat her well? Bridgette is also a person, if perhaps less strong-willed
than Evelyn. But Bridgette didn’t have the resources that Evelyn had, the upbringing in an Alpha
household that told her her entire life that she deserves more. Are you going to use that as an excuse
for why you treated Bridgette like trash? That everyone else in her life treated her like trash, so it was
okay for you to do it as well?”
Rafe looks down at the table, ashamed.
“Evelyn’s right, Rafe,” Victor says, shaking his head at him. “You’re not wee in this house. I don’t
want you around my boys, teaching them that your version of being a man – of being an Alpha – is
eptable.”
Rafe snaps his gaze up to his brother at this, his mouth falling open in shock.
“You’re still an Alpha, you’re still my left-hand man,” Victor says, stern. “I need your help in running this
pack. But you can’t treat people like this. Until you make some serious moves to change the way you
understand the world, the way you treat people, I’m sorry. You’re not wee in our private world.”
“Well, how do I do that?” Rafe asks, frustrated. “I can apologize, but I can’t go back in time and change
anything.”
“You can only change how you act in the future,” Victor says immediately. “And until then, deal with the
very real consequences of your actions. Words don’t mean much, apologies don’t mean much. Actions
mean everything.”
“Please,” Rafe says, putting his head back in his hands. “I need some breadcrumbs, bro. I don’t even
know where to get started on this path.”
Victor shrugs, even though he knows Rafe can’t see him. “It’s your path, Rafe,” he says, holding firm.
His brother has been petted and indulged his whole life, allowed to do precisely what pleased him.
Now, finally, he wasing up against some hard consequences. “It’s not my job to tell you how to do
it.”
Rafe sighs, his breath hitching, and Victor can tell that he’s close to tears, if not already there.
“I will set you up with a therapist, though,” Victor says, leaning forward. “Who can help you find that
path.”
“Seriously?” Rafe says, peeking over his hands. “You want me to talk to someone about this?”
Victor nods seriously. “It helped me. Well…” he smirks a little, considering. “My situation was…a little
different. But yes, it’s a therapist’s job to help you find that path, to get started on it.”
He leans back in the chair and smirks at his brother. “I even have a phone you can borrow.”
Rafe frowns at him, confused. “Wait, what? I need a special phone?”
“Yeah, sure,” Victor says, standing up and gesturing to him to follow. “Come on, we keep ours upstairs
in the closet.”
“What?”