Chapter 151 - What Haunts Her

Lena had to take some time together her thoughts and think about how she wanted to tell Samuel everything. This was an event in her pat that she hadn't ever bothered talking with an outsider before because she never thought that it would be worth her time and she didn't want to the usual fake sympathy and empathy that came with telling strangers about a difficult event. She didn't need that kind of fake support, thus she always thought that it was better to keep it to just her family knowing since they were the ones who were affected by it.

Samuel was different though, he wasn't just some outsider, he was engaged to her already even though it wouldn't technically be official until after the actual engagement party. This was someone that she was committing to spending the rest or however long her life with it. It would be unfair to not let him know about it if he was genuinely intending to stay together with her for however long their time together would last.

"First, can you and me the glass of water you brought?" She asked as she ran her tongue over her bottom lip only to realize how cracked it felt and how dry her throat and mouth were. She wouldn't be able to talk much like. Samuel complied without saying anything and simply handed it to her before sitting back down quietly. It seemed he didn't want to say anything that would distract her from telling him what she wanted to say.

"I honestly don't quite know how to go about talking about this so I'm just going to try to be as straight about everything and hope it makes sense." She averted her gaze to a somewhat of a downward angle before she continued speaking.

"This situation wasn't my fault anymore than what just happened with you was your fault. You can't know what you don't know and there's some situations you can't anticipate even when you think you know what might happen. That's something that's really hard to understand when you're younger though and you feel like something horrible happened because you didn't know any better but if you understood then nothing that had happened would have occurred." She paused for a second to collect her thoughts.

"I'm sure you have been seen the picture in my office of me and Leo when we were younger with the woman who was standing behind us, that was our mother with us in the that picture. I think one of the last ones we took together." She explained. Of course, she knew that he would want to look around her office and see what was there. Such natural curiosity was quite common for people when they were in a place that they hadn't been before.

"Leo was seven at the time and I was eight. He was off at school that day but I was home with mother because I hadn't been feeling well and she wanted to be able to keep an eye on me. She even took me with her when she went to go do the shopping which was one of my favorite things when I was younger because mother always spoiled us with small treats when we were good." It was one thing to remember the event and to have it at the back of her mind all the time, but another thing for Lena to have to recount it to someone else. It somehow hurt more than she thought that it would. Samuel was being very quiet and understanding however as he waited for her to continue with the story.

"We were supposed to go home early that day to celebrate the fact that we would be going on vacation soon. I was going to help her cook dinner before father and Leo came back. I was so happy to enjoy the fresh air on the way back that I wanted to play for a while longer and enjoy it before we headed back." Samuel touched her hand as she continued speaking, but she didn't even react to it as she was too deep in thought about what had happened.

"I'll never be sure if my mother was just worried about me getting sick again or if she knew something was wrong with how insistent she was being about heading back compared to how she usually was. Either way I didn't understand asked her for five more minutes. That however was when my great uncle on my mother's side decided to make his presence known." Her eyes became cold at this point.

"I thought that he just wanted to talk with her since he had visited me before at the school and seemed kind of enough and had mentioned the good relationship he had with my mother. I had been wrong though. He wanted to use her and me as bait to get to my father. He was a man high up in law enforcement and thought that if he could catch someone like my father, it would secure him a good position for the rest of his life." Lena paused again, letting out a shallow breath as her emotions started to get the better of her again.

"She refused of course. She wouldn't sell out my father because of how much she loved him and knew that he wasn't as horrible a person as everyone else thought he was. Of course, this didn't go over well with my uncle who had come prepared in case such a situation happened. My mother didn't have the right skills to defend herself or even try to protect me, but that didn't stop her from trying, but there wasn't much she could do against three men while also trying to protect me." This was always the part that was the hardest to think about. Talking about it wasn't any better as Lena left the weight resting on her chest getting heavier as she continued speaking.

"She had managed to use her phone to send a message both to Clive and my father as best could to let them know what happened, but by the time either of them got there, he had already disappeared with both of us and left no traces behind except a note that said if my father wanted to have us back he would meet them alone at a time and place he directed." She felt her eyelashes get damp as she blinked, but she refused to cry right now until she had finished telling Samuel everything that he needed to know.

"My father did everything that he could to try and get us back and did what that man asked even though he knew against his better judgement that he wasn't going to be that easy to negotiate with. He wasn't that kind of person. The kind of person who would even use his own family as bait to get ahead if he thought that it would get him to the places that he wanted to go." Lena stopped speaking after she said this, trying to take a few seconds to reign her emotions in and breath before she finished saying the last part.

"What happened?" Samuel asked softly when Lena was quiet for a while longer and wasn't certain if she was finished saying everything. She shook her head for a moment before she spoke again, not looking up to meet his eyes.

"He killed her when she tried to protect me after refusing to convince my father to give himself up for her sake even though he was willing to do it if uncle agreed to let us go. She knew better than to believe him though. He never would've let her live anyways. He wouldn't accept someone who was part of the mafia back in his family, ever. Instead, my father had to watch her die in front of him as she shielded me." The princess had always been haunted by the sound of the gunshot going off so close to hear and watching the life leave her mother in order to protect she who was a mere child.

"My father didn't let it end there of course. There was a heavy price for them to pay after what happened and wasn't hidden either." Lena paused again before she spoke with a heavy tone to her voice.

"Aside from her father and brother who tried to help my father when they found everything out and came to speak with him, my father killed every other male on my great uncle's family, including great uncle." Samuel had to take a moment to process what Lena had just said as it was something rather heavy.

It was one thing to consider what things might happen in the kind of family and world that Lena came from but another thing to her about such events from her that happened. Hearing this however, he could understand some of Lena's past behavior better even if he still didn't appreciate certain interactions all that much still.