Anna arrived at the apartment and went straight to the bedroom of the man she loved, to see Allister. Suddenly, she sensed that something was wrong, even though there were no indicators. The apartment was dark, only the dim light of the lamp in the boss's room, with the door open, had any light. Anna thought that this was a good moment to flee. There was no sign of the men in black suits, and not even of the servants. But she was no coward. She couldn't abandon the man she loved in this shameful way, and she forced herself to go down the corridor and into the bedroom, where a nurse was asleep in the chair next to Allister, with a magazine lying at her feet.
Anna approached, picked up the magazine that had probably slipped out of the nurse's hand, placed it on the medicine table and ran her hand gently over Allister's face.
"I'd do anything for you, my love, but I feel I won't have the strength to deal with your son's anger. It's more than I can bear."
"He won't listen to you."
Anna looked back and Mrs. Lens was leaning against the doorframe watching her. She was wearing pink silk pajamas and her appearance was not severe.
"I didn't..."
"The nurse gave him morphine. A high dose."
"He's in a lot of pain and hiding it from me, right?"
She smiled as if remembering something pleasant.
"All would never admit that he's in pain around me." She said and turned her eyes to the sleeping man. "He was having trouble breathing and started to get agitated..."
Anna looked at Allister again.
"You still love him." She said, not knowing how to feel about it.
"I never stopped loving him."
"Not even when he chose to stay with me?"
"I don't want to offend you, Anna, but he didn't choose you because of your beautiful eyes."
"I suppose you'll enlighten me as to why?"
Suzy approached slowly, but stopped before she got close to the bed.
"We call a woman a 'product'. Allister always keeps a woman to fulfill a need that he inherited from his father, and it seems that his children inherited from him, unfortunately... But while he was negotiating you with your father, All watched you all the time and created expectations, something he'd never done before, and when he finally managed to buy you... Well... He refused to share you with the men in the family. I still don't know why he felt a father's affection towards you, but... The young men from the families of our clan, suspicious that the old chief had fallen in love, came to me and told me about it. I couldn't tell them that I knew, and that I was complicit in everything All did, without them throwing my reputation in the mud. So we both decided to pretend to be apart."
"To sully your reputation? But... Wouldn't that dirty his too?"
"No. Everyone who knows about it confesses that they would do the same, if they had the same resources as All. Men always get away with it, miss."
"And what exactly does it mean to be a 'product' of the men in the family?"
Suzy looked into All's wide, attentive eyes and smiled.
"That's something you should never find out, which is why I advise you to do what your intuition tells you." She said and moved closer, leaned over Allister and kissed him lightly on the lips and then looked at Anna. "Don't think. Just do it. You're running out of time."
"I... Are you saying I should kill myself?"
"You don't have that option anymore..." She said and looked down at the dress that showed off Anna's generous curves. "Someone should have handed over their only recourse to you by now..."
She spoke very mysteriously, but Anna understood immediately. She remembered the White Hand. So the poison was Suzy's doing?
"Allister asked me not to choose that path." Anna said uncertainly. She didn't want to risk handing over the only person who had tried to help her.
Suzy looked at her with pity.
"He loves you, but he still believes that his youngest son has salvation, and that you can change him."
"You don't share the same belief, do you?"
"Let's just say I'm not as optimistic as my husband. The chances of Adam turning into something even worse are much greater now. Allister refuses to see this, because he believes that the degeneration he inherited may have influenced his son to be like this, but I'm more realistic. Adam takes pleasure in cruelty, and I don't believe that a twenty-year-old girl is going to make him any different." She said and looked pityingly into Anna's eyes. "You also know that you can't change my son." She said and hurried out of the room.
Anna swallowed and took Allister's hand, who squeezed it and she saw a tear run down his cheek and wet the pillowcase.
"She's right, isn't she?"
He shook his head negatively.
"She's jealous. That's all."
"You're keeping something very relevant from me about your children and your nephew..."
"They won't hurt you. Being a 'product' is the worst thing that can happen to you, but it's not so bad. You might even like it... But it's not what I planned for you. I always saw something in my son, when you were the subject... Something happened that I'd never seen before, and that means something..."
"What did you see in him?"
"Emotions."
"I don't doubt that you saw it in his eyes, All. Your son is a murderer, torturer and cruel. The emotion you saw in his eyes is hatred."
"Hatred? Maybe, you're right. But how important that a person lives from extreme emotions, don't you think?"
"I don't understand."
"Adam is cruel because he is devoid of emotion. He doesn't care about his own pain, let alone that of other people. He kills as coldly as he opens a door. He's... Strange. But ever since he saw you... Anger and conflicting feelings began to torment him. That was visible to me. And I've always been a good observer. You arouse extreme emotions and I know that when he can't find any more reasons to hate you, he'll go to the opposite extreme."