Chapter 4

Mischa and Melissa were sitting together on the couch with Richard. The rest of the family was sitting in different places around the living and dining room. They were having a good laugh before the serious conversations began.

“Don’t get pissed off at me, I told you I’d do everything I could to help you.” Melissa told her. “It’s not my fault that your mind doesn’t work like mine does.”

“You could have warned me that he was there. I might not have made such a spectacle of myself.” Mischa replied.

“But where would the fun in that be? Besides, I think it turned out better this way. You didn’t have time to over think things and start to worry about what you were going to say. Much less try to read daddy’s expressions trying to come up with what he’s thinking.”

“Try all you want to ... Dad is almost impossible to read.” Caleb told Mischa.

“We had a benefit poker night for the women’s shelter in Cody. Everyone that played against him asked us if he was part Vulcan because he showed nothing during the hands they played.” Jennifer told them.

“And where do you think I get it from?” Melissa asked Mischa with a grin.

“Yeah ... I can see that now.” Mischa said looking at her father. She leaned over to Melissa and wrapped her arms around her. “Thank you, sis. I don’t know what I’d do without you sometimes.”

Melissa hugged her back. “You’re a pain in my ass sometimes, but you’re my sister and I love you. I will always do any and everything I can to help if you need it.”

“I have to admit that watching you slide across the floor and grab my legs brought back a great memory.” Richard told Mischa.

“Which memory?” She asked.

“You were 4 and you did the same thing just without the sliding when I returned from deployment.” He told her.

“I did not...” She told him slightly embarrassed.

“Yes, you did.” Richard answered.

“When?” Mischa asked.

“July 1998. My unit was returning from Bosnia and when you saw me with my company, you ran out into the formation and grabbed my legs and begged me not to leave again.” He told her. “I still have the picture that the photographer took of you sprinting across the tarmac. It’s hanging up on the wall in my man cave.”

Mischa was crying and laughing at the same time. “At least I’m consistent.” She said giving her father a hug.

“Can I get a copy of that picture Rick?” Brian asked. He looked at Mischa. “It would look great on the piece of the wall that you’re going to start with pictures of him.”

“How did you know...” She said looking at Brian, but smiled and blushed. “Oh yeah, you watched me re-arrange the pictures downstairs...”

“Let’s get this over with.” Richard said looking at the twins. “Tell me exactly when you found out your mom was stepping out on the asshole.” He said with a large sigh.

Melissa and Mischa smiled at each other.

Mischa spoke first. “I need to preface this by saying that we had already saw and knew the whore and asshole for what they are.”

“Ryan, from the beginning, was always a narcissist. He never hung out with anyone unless they would stroke his massive ego ... and the whore ... Well, the whore was closer to a sociopath than anything. At this point, the asshole couldn’t have cared less about us, so we were almost invisible to him.” Melissa said looking at her father. She saw the sad look on his face and looked at Mischa who also saw the look. “Daddy?”

“Keep going, we’ll circle around to that in a few minutes.” He told her.

“Ok ... It was Mischa that first heard it when we were home for the summer after we graduated college. She had overheard them talking about the fact Ryan’s...” She made air quotes, “band leader wasn’t working much anymore. The whore as usual was making it all about herself and was trying to get him to see it her way.” She raised the tone of her voice and changed to a midwestern accent to mimic her mother. “I need a bit more than you can give me and I don’t want you to feel that I don’t think any less of you. I love you and want to devote the rest of my life to you. I’m trying to be upfront and honest with you. I’m not trying to cheat on you, but my drive is very large since I turned 40.” Taylor’s shoulders were shaking as she quietly laughed.

“You’ve heard the whore’s voice I take it?” Mischa asked smiling.

“Once ... she called for some stupid reason and your dad ‘John Wicked’ her.” She replied. The twins looked puzzled by her statement. “I’m sorry, the John Wick movies are a family favorite. When he answers the phone and doesn’t say anything, that’s what I mean by a ‘John Wick’ call. Anyway, you got the voice completely perfect.”

They laughed a bit and then Melissa started talking again. “The asshole wasn’t too keen on being seen as a cuckhold since he was a well-known thoracic surgeon. He was against it from the beginning. The asshole suggested implants and trying different drugs to help him with ED. He even offered to take an hour-long soak in a cold bathtub to try to get it to ‘rise to the occasion’. But in the end, it was the whore who won.”

“They made a deal that said she could have one lover. She was to never bring him to the house. The man couldn’t be anyone that Ryan might have ANY kind of personal or professional interaction with. And she had to go at least 50 miles away to a hotel to meet him.” Mischa told the group.

“How did you find out about all of this?” Brian asked.

“Someone might have known about a back door into the security system and could record and erase anything she wanted to.” Melissa told him.

“At any rate, after that, all we had to do was sit back and wait.” Mischa told them. “Less than two months later, we had gotten back from a trip up here for job interviews. Melissa was checking the server and oh MAN were we surprised.”

“She had planned for all EIGHT of her lovers to come to the house the same week that the asshole was in New York for his yearly medical conference. When she decided on the date and had everything planned out, we both decided that it would be a good time to go see Taylor Swift in Las Vegas during that time.”

“Long story short, the footage was downloaded to a flash drive and sent FedEx to the asshole at the hospital.” Mischa explained.

“She and I had already received job offer letters and we had put money down on an apartment to share until we got on our feet, so the divorce wasn’t going to hurt us at all.” Melissa told them.

Richard smiled and looked over at Taylor who was shaking her head in disbelief. “I’m glad you had planned and gotten ahead of all of this. I’m proud that you took what I taught you to heart and used it.” He said quietly. Pausing, Richard had a look of uncertainty in his eyes. He looked at Taylor again who nodded her head.

“Be strong ... they need to know.” Was all she told him.

“Need to know what?” Mischa asked.

He leaned over and picked up a faded camo messenger bag, reached in, and pulled out a few items and put them on the coffee table. “I’ve been saving this for years now in the hopes that you would come back to me, and I could tell you about your mother and her ... life.” He handed it to the twins. “This is a letter that I found in her dresser when I was doing laundry one weekend.”

They both read the letter and were shocked. Melissa was the one that spoke. “She wanted to abort us?”

Richard nodded his head. “When I walked downstairs to ask her about it, all she did was to dismiss my fears as unfounded. She told me that this was worse case scenario. We got into a big fight about that, and I ended up sleeping at the unit for a couple days. Monday morning, I talked the brigade surgeon and asked him about what she had told me. He explained that if there was a problem with the fetus that there were ways to remove which ever would cause medical problems for the mother. I went home Wednesday and explained what I had learned. That seemed to placate her.”

“That’s logical.” Melissa said in thought. “One of the fetus’ is causing health problems and she was planning for the worst.”

“You are SO good at playing the devil’s advocate.” Mischa said to Melissa with a smirk but changed the look on her face. She held the letter up to Melissa’s face and her voice took on a harder tone. “But this is an A-BOR-TION clinic, not an obstetrics/gynecology doctor. She wasn’t going to save one of us. The bitch was looking at getting rid of both of us.” Mischa said with an angry tone.

He picked up an old cellphone log and polaroid picture and handed it to the girls.

They looked at it and saw it was their dad and six other guys standing around a hole in the ground. “What’s this?” Mischa asked.

“I overheard a phone call she was making, two months before you both were born, asking about late term abortions and how dangerous it would be to the mother one afternoon. That’s the cellphone log from the month that she was calling the clinic. I highlighted the calls so you can see that she made five total calls to them.” He let them look over the call log for a minute and then spoke again. “I got together with my team and asked a favor of them. This was it.” He said pointing to the picture. “We were out in the field for a week, so this was easy to do. We all got together and dug a shallow grave out in the middle of one of the training areas. That’s me at the top holding the shotgun. The other guys that are pointing at the hole are my teammates, and my platoon sergeant took the picture.” He sighed and continued. “I’ve never regretted my actions with this, not ONE day ... I took that to your mother and handed it to her. She looked at it and asked me what it was. I grabbed her shoulders, spun her around, and told her it was where she’d be buried if she set that appointment up at the abortion clinic.” He smirked at saying that. “She must have believed me because she got VERY pale and had a very scared look in her eyes. After that weekend, everything else up to when you both were born went smoothly and without incident.”

Brian spoke up. “Would you have followed through on it?”

Richard looked at Brian and smirked. “I guess we’ll never know, will we?”

He looked at his fiancé, back at Richard, and then smiled. “That’s what I thought...”

“Why daddy?” Melissa asked.

“Why what baby?” Richard asked.

“Why would she even consider this? I remember she was a good mother when we were young.” She looked at Mischa. “We have memories of the three of us doing stuff when you were deployed or in the field. She wasn’t a bad mother.”

“Melissa, if you don’t mind, I’d like to answer that question. But I want to wait until the right moment.” Taylor told her.

Melissa thought for a moment as she looked at Taylor. “You know what’s in the bag, don’t you?” She asked Taylor.

“I do. Your father told me about this a week before we got married. He said that he didn’t want any secrets between us.” She looked at her husband with an adoring look. “That’s one of the things I love the most about him. He’ll do ANYTHING for his family...”

“We got so screwed...” She whispered to herself as tears came to her eyes. Richard reached over and wrapped his arm around her.

“Save the tears...” He said with a smirk.

“For something worth crying over.” She said smiling and giving her father a hug.

Mischa was deep in thought as she listened to the conversation. When Melissa was finished talking, she spoke. “What else is there, daddy?” she asked with determination.

He smiled a sad smile, pulled a picture of an out of the folder, and let this family look at it.

“Who is this dad?” Caleb asked.

“He WAS Zevarion Omar Wilcox ... He was known to his friends as ‘the Z monster’. He wasn’t a very nice guy.” He told him. “Wilcox had a reputation as a ladies’ man and usually got what he wanted, either by coercion, drugs, or rape. His crew was responsible for about half of the coke and weed that came into Clarksville. He was also into prostitution and human trafficking and was expanding into Kentucky quickly.”

Jennifer was the one that had her phone out googling the name her father had said. Her eyes widened after she finished reading. “This is a news article from the Clarksville Leaf Chronicle dated twenty-five years ago. It says he died from being gunned down in the New Providence area of downtown Clarksville. He was a soldier in the East Nashville Crips.” She looked at her sisters and who were also staring at her in disbelief. “Daddy?”

He looked at Jennifer and then Mischa and then Melissa.

“Baby ... This is your chance to release YOUR burden.” Taylor told him quietly. “You don’t have to carry it around anymore. They’re old enough to understand now.”

Richard sighed and looked at Mischa and Melissa. “Girls, you know you get all your beauty from your mom, right? Blond hair, blue eyes, great skin, and the rest of your features. Your mom WAS a beautiful woman when I met her ... I don’t know if she was targeted or if it was a random thing, but she hooked up with Wilcox one weekend when we were at Granny’s house.”

“The whore hooked up with a gang banger?!” Mischa asked in disbelief.

Richard nodded his head. “Yup.” He told her. “She had no idea about who he really was. All she knew was that he had a big dick and she wanted it.”

“When did she do this?” Melissa asked.

“Do you remember when granny fell off the bottom step of her porch and bruised her hip?” Richard asked. The twins both nodded they did.

“That was our first attempt at brownies...” Melissa told him.

“I remember that. They were burnt and tasted like the bottom of my shoe after going for a run in the mud.” Mischa said.

“Your granny didn’t care what they tasted like, you made them and that was more important to her.” Richard told them. “And before you ask ... She DID eat them all.”

“Wow, she’s a brave woman.” Mischa said with a smirk.

“Anyway, when we got back, there was a message from the Clarksville gang unit asking to speak to me. When I met them, they showed me pictures of them together on the dance floor, walking to his car, and into the local no-tell motel.” He told them.

“Why didn’t you confront her?” Mischa asked.

“Mom wouldn’t have had a leg to stand on.” Melissa added.

“You’re wrong, girls.” Taylor told them. “Most states, their divorce laws are massively skewered in favor of the mother. She could put a gun to your heads, offer to sacrifice you to satan in front of a Sunday church crowd, and she’d still get custody of you. Your father, because he was in the Army, had no chance in that situation.”

It dawned on Mischa first as to what Taylor was saying. “You were making the best out of a bad situation by staying with her?” She asked him.

“Your mother and I were getting along, but that was it. She was more concerned with herself and having the money to do and buy what she wanted. She’d tell me she wanted a new car and I’d tell her to go get one. She’d tell me she found one and ask me to co-sign and I’d tell her no and that would cause a fight.” Richard pointed to the picture. “This was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I asked her about the night on the town after the long weekend she had and if something strange had happened, she told me it was none of my business what her and her co-workers did. When she got confrontational about it, I backed off and reminded her that all her actions had consequences. She tried to fight further, but I grabbed you guys, and we went to get ice cream.

“We remember some of that day...” Melissa told him.

“We were sitting out in front of the house on our bikes wondering what she was so pissed off about.” Mischa told him. She looked at Melissa. “Twenty-three years later, now we know.”

“What happened after that?” Caleb asked.

“She got sneakier and started having her co-workers give her an alibi, I never knew from one day to the next what she was doing. I knew she had been to see Wilcox a few times after I talked to the police. So, I decided that the day before I left for Special Forces selection, I’d take care of the problem. I called the gang unit cop back and asked for a general area where Zevarion hung out for the purposes of gathering evidence for a divorce. He gave me a general location of his home turf and places he frequented. I got a few guys in my squad to help me out with an alibi and I shot him as he got to his car after leaving a night club.” He wiped the tears out of his eyes. Richard pulled three .45 shell casings out and put them on the table. “I’ve thought about that night so many times and I’ve wondered...”

Caleb spoke up. “Dad, stop.” He got up, stood in front of Richard, and held his hand out. Richard took it and Caleb pulled him up to stand in front of him. He wrapped his arms around his father and hugged him. “You have nothing to be ashamed of. You did what you had to do to protect Mischa and Melissa. It makes me even happier to be your son.”

Jennifer jumped up and grabbed him right after Caleb did. “Caleb’s right. You protected your daughters, that’s all. I’m PROUD to know that you’d go that far for me and Caleb.”

“Thanks guys...” He said with a sniff. He looked over at the twins who stared at him in disbelief. “So?” he asked them as he sat back down.

Mischa was the one that spoke first. “I’m not going to pretend that I’m shocked that you would do something like this. I know you would do anything to protect your family. But I always imagined that you’d be doing it like you’d be defending yourself, not committing outright murder.”

“Sometimes, the wrong path is the only path you can take. This was one of those times.” Richard said. “If you think I’m proud of this, you’re wrong. I had to KILL a man to keep you and your sister safe. I didn’t take that decision lightly. I weighed the consequences, and...” He paused to sigh. He looked at Mischa who was getting ready to ask how he really felt about it but beat her to the punch. “I know what you’re going to ask ... I regret doing it, but I’m not sorry he’s dead.” Mischa nodded her head understanding what he was telling her and then looked at her sister.

“I’m fine with it.” Melissa said calmly to her sister. Mischa looked shocked at hearing that. “What? You heard him say the words human, trafficking, and prostitution in the same sentence. Do you think he’d have stopped with just mom? She would be working a street corner or in a house getting fucked for 18-20 hours a day. 6-year-old twin girls are a pedophile’s wet dream. We would have been VERY sought after in the right circles and it makes me cringe thinking that the whore was with a monster like that. If we’d have been taken, no one would have ever seen us again.”

“When you put it like that, I can see your point.” Mischa told her. “It still seems wrong to me.”

“Baby...” Brian said to Mischa. “You’re looking at it from the wrong perspective. You’re looking at it from a non-parental view.” Brian pointed to Richard. “He didn’t see it that way. He looked at it from a FATHER’S point of view. Through no fault of your own, there was a threat ... He ended the threat.”

“Speaking as a mother, I can guarantee you that when you have your first child, your outlook and ideas about what you’re willing to do for your child will change.” Taylor told her. “Same thing goes for your soulmate. NOTHING is out of the realm of possibility as far as protecting those you love.” She said looking at Richard.

“I’ll take your word for it since it seems to make total sense...” Mischa told them. “It’ll take me some time to wrap my head around the fact that my father had to kill someone to protect me, but I’ll be fine.”

“You can always talk to me, I’m a great listener and I’m just a phone call away. Also, daddy is one of my favorite things to talk about.” Jennifer told her.

“Count on it.” Mischa said with a genuine smile.

Richard smiled and looked over at Taylor. She smiled back at him and said, “I told you they’d click.” He chuckled and reached into the bag again and pulled out another manilla envelope. He opened it up and laid out some pages and a micro cassette recorder.

“I want you both to know up front that I’m not going to subject you to the conversations that you had with your mother about leaving and moving to California with Ryan. In my eyes, it’s not an issue anymore.” He said to them. “I have you back and we can move forward and rebuild what we had earlier in life, ok?”

“Ok daddy...” Mischa said wiping her eyes.

“Ok, but I’m not going to forget...” Melissa told him as she wiped hers.

“Nor should you. What happened to your ... excuse me, the whore and I should be one of the best life lessons possible. I WANT you both to remember and learn from it so that you don’t make the same mistakes she and I did.” He told the twins. He handed them a private investigator transcript and they both read it. He watched as their eyes got bigger the more pages they flipped through.

“She planned this from way back then?” Mischa asked.

“Your mother was already planning to leave me and take you with her. I could tell the early stages of her, for a lack of better wording, programming you to turn against me. This is the report from the PI I had hired to follow her for a month.”

“This says she was banging the asshole for almost a year before she left you.” Melissa said in shock.

“She was. I knew all about it more than a year in advance.” He picked up the recorder and hit the play button. They listened as their mom and Ryan planned to cause the maximum amount of damage possible to Richard.

“I’ve gotten an appointment for Melissa and Mischa to go to a headshrinker. This SHOULD be enough in the eyes of the California court system for a personal order of protection from dickless.” Ryan told the whore.

“He’s at Walter Reed for now. Something about a scratch or something he got while he was overseas. What a moron. I SO traded up when I divorced his shitkicker ass.” Their mom said. “If we’re lucky, he’ll die from infection or something along those lines.”

He stopped the recording and looked at the shocked look on the twins faces.

“We never wanted you to die.” Melissa told him.

“No, we couldn’t EVER be that cold and heartless.” Mischa told him.

Richard warmly smiled at them. “I know ... But you see how calculating and how much planning she did after she left me?”

“We didn’t know daddy, I swear it.” Melissa said trying to keep from crying.

“I know Melissa. It’s ok...” He told her.

“Can I answer your question now?” Taylor asked looking at Melissa.

“Please.”

“Remember when you said you had good memories of your mother?” Melissa nodded her head. “Would you say they were good or great?”

Melissa thought for a moment, but it was Mischa that answered. “They were mediocre most of the time, and good very seldom. She was more interested in whoever she was texting than watching or interacting with us.”

Taylor sighed heavily and started speaking. “I can only speak for my mother, but she’s the best mother anyone could ever ask for. She taught me everything I know about life and living it to be as happy as you can. She turns 80 this year, and I STILL talk to her if I need advice about something. From what you’re telling me, yours was an absentee mother, and that’s a shame because I can see how bright and caring you both are.”

“We both have our own issues, but we love and support each other in everything. We didn’t learn that from the whore...” Melissa said to her with a sad smile.

“How did you get all of this?” Jennifer asked her father as she looked through the things on the table.

“Remember I told you what happened with the shrink that had his license permanently taken away from him?” They both nodded yes. “I was contacted by the attorney leading the lawsuit and asked if I wanted to sign on to it.” He pointed to the tapes. “This was part of the investigation that the state and the medical board of California were doing.”

“How much trouble did the asshole get into?” Mischa asked.

“The hospital he was working at suspended him during the investigation, but he still had the group of doctors that he worked with. After the shrink lost his license, the medical board censured him and that was all.” He told her.

“That’s all?!” She asked incredulously.

“I have no problem admitting this ... he’s a VERY gifted surgeon and had probably saved a lot of lives with his gift. I understand why they only censured him instead of firing him. Besides, I got payback in other ways that we won’t go into.” Richard said with a smirk. “But now we come to the hardest part. I’m ... I’m sorry that you have hear this. If there was any other way for you to know what’s on this, I’d do it.” He put a different micro cassette in the player and turned it on.

“I want him to feel the pain I felt when we had to come to this rainy shithole.” She told Ryan.

“Trust me, he will. He won’t even know you’re gone until he gets home next month.”

“Are you sure you’ve got everything taken care of?”

“Absolutely. I had to pay them extra, but the movers are coming around 11pm and should have everything out of the house a couple of hours later. Then it’s just a matter of cleaning out his accounts and leaving him with nothing.” Ryan told her. “Aren’t you going to miss him, even a little bit?”

“He did take good care of his brats. Holy shit, do you have any idea what it’s like to have to deal with two pre-teens? I need this and I need that ... It never ended.” The whore told him.

“Why did you have them? It’s not like you couldn’t have aborted them while he was deployed and claimed it was a miscarriage.”

“You don’t know Richard. He’d have found out somehow that I aborted his precious little girls.” She sneered to Ryan.

“So what? What would he have done, kill you?” Ryan asked.

“Yes ... he would have. I have no doubt he would have killed me. He once showed me a polaroid picture of some of his asshole buddies standing around a shallow grave. He was holding a shotgun and the rest were pointing to the hole in the ground.” She paused for a moment. “Fucking little bitches. I could have left his dumbass YEARS ago if it hadn’t been for them.”

“I can’t do anything about the past, but I can make your future much brighter than it is now.”

“Ryan that’s the nicest thing anyone has said to me in over a year. Can I have the SL500 we looked at last month?”

“Absolutely, we’ll get it as soon as we get to San Diego and unpack. And don’t worry about your girls, they’ll be too busy enjoying the perks of being rich to bother you. You can do your thing without your brats being under foot.” Ryan told her.

“Good. They are such pains in my ass. I should have used better birth control...” She told Ryan.

Richard stopped the recording and looked at the twins. They were devastated at hearing their mom never cared anything about them. He knelt and wrapped his arms around them and let them cry. Brian, Jennifer, and Caleb came over and hugged them as well as the sobbed.

“What did we do to her to make her hate us?” Melissa asked in between sobs.

“We were decent kids, weren’t we daddy?” Mischa asked Richard through her tears.

“You both
are the best children a father could ever ask for. Some people just can’t handle parenting. Your mom is obviously one of them.” He said quietly.

“And she made us like her...” Mischa said quietly and started to sob louder. Brian grabbed Mischa and picked her up into his arms and was telling her to let it out and that it would be ok now. She wrapped her arms and legs around him, squeezed him as hard as she could, and was telling him she loved him repeatedly and that she was nothing like her mother.

“I know you’re not baby ... I know you’re not.” He said to her.

Richard let go of Melissa and Jennifer and Caleb slid in behind him. He stood and Taylor was right there to wrap her arms around him to comfort him. He did everything he could to keep from crying, but some tears escaped hie closed eyes. “It’s ok Rick ... Let it out ... You’re free now.” She told him.

Richard heard Melissa call to him. Taylor let go just in time to avoid being sandwiched between her husband and Melissa.

“I’m so sorry daddy...” She started to say between sobs.

“NO! Stop that!” He told her firmly. “Mischa, come here.” Mischa let go of Brian and joined her sister with their father. He cupped both their cheeks with his hands and smiled warmly at them. “You and Mischa are victims here as much as I was. This is going to sound arrogant, but I forgive you. Everything that you went through with the whore is forgiven. Everything you said to me is forgiven. Everything you might have been part of with them is forgiven. I don’t want either of you telling me you’re sorry for that ... EVER ... again.” He pulled them into a hug and squeezed them tight. “Most importantly, please forgive yourselves and let it go. It doesn’t do any good to hold on to that.” He said as they squeezed him tighter.

“Thank you, daddy.” They both told their father.

“You’re welcome girlies.” He said with tears in his eyes. “I love you both so much ... Thank you for healing the rest of my soul.”

Taylor walked over and joined her husband in hugging the twins. She felt relieved that her husband’s heart could finally heal the way it needed to. But more importantly, he had his daughters back after so many years. She slid her hand over his shoulder and leaned forward to speak into his ear. “Brian has something he needs to ask your permission for when you get a minute.” She said with a smile.