With any vampire of considerable age, he could walk out in the sunlight after a good night's rest. The centuries had been good to him, he'd spent it traveling, wishing he could sip every brand of coffee that had been brought his way though he knew that it would only cause his insides to burn and bubble which would end with him doubled over, emptying the contents of his stomach.
He may have aged well and garnered just as much strength as the very woman that had brought him into this hellish life of vampirism, but being a vampire had not suited him. In human life, Rafael had always considered himself a good, decent, somewhat kind man when it came to the subjects that mattered in life. He'd tried his damnedest to not be as his father was. He'd loved both men and women once maturity took hold of him, never once laying a hand upon them or throwing harsh, biting words in their direction. It was a woman, but not just any woman, it was one of the prettiest women he'd ever seen.
In his small village, it had been so rare for a woman of such alabaster skin to come to visit them, what they considered the lessers of society based solely on skin complexion. But she visited as if societal demands were no such thing to her. Damn the laws that separated them.
When she came to him, so pretty and fashionable in her gowns and updo, he believed for a moment that she was an angel on earth. No wealth, silver, gold, frankincense, or myrrh could keep him from seeking her out. This white woman that dared to visit with the people that were deemed lessers, she was an enigma, and his stubborn will led him to her.
His friends had warned him to let it be, to not get involved, that surely there was a man with more money than they could ever imagine. She wasn't right for him and he'd just make a fool of himself.
But he didn't believe in such a thing. She just had to be different, and that very curiosity had pulled him from the safety of his bedroom that touched against his parents. No more could he stand the screaming of his father or the whimpering, cowering of his mother. He needed peace. He needed to talk to someone and his curiosity needed to be satiated like a man dying of thirst within the African desert.
"She's good, Liv," Barba broke from his memories of how he'd become just what he was, breaking from the secret that he'd never told anyone before this very night, "She brings a good case. Her client's charming the jury."
Just as she had long before she made his life hell on earth.
His lithe fingers pressed against the edges of his coffee cup, always full but never drained. He simply enjoyed the heat upon his icy touch, something that brought back a reminder of what human life had been like, what it could have been like.
He needed to tell her.
"What's it between you two," she asked.
That was his chance to break the dark news. Monsters were more than just humans that lacked morals, there were indeed monsters that lurked in the shadows waiting to lurch out and take what was not there's to take.
He was a monster and Pam James had made him to be just that. No matter how hard he tried to do good, to be that good man he'd been so many centuries before, he felt that he'd never measure up to the line he'd made for himself. He'd murdered innocent people to keep himself satiated and with Pam...it had been damnably enjoyable, almost sexual in its brutality.
"Liv," he cleared his throat, his eyes growing weak as he set his entire gaze upon her and lowered his voice so that just she and him could hear his confession, "Pamela and I go back further than you could ever imagine."
Fingers squeezed tighter around the coffee cup as he felt his nerves attempting to get the better of him. Never before had pulling the truth out been so hard. Telling her the awful truth, a truth that would sentence him to Hell in the end of times, was the hardest thing that he'd ever done.
"Like Interview with the Vampire, she's Tom Cruise and I'm Brad Pitt. She made me into a monster, Liv."
If she were to believe him, it would be a moment where his one secret, a dark one that had hung over his shoulder, would be free. He wouldn't have to bare it alone as Jesus bore the sins of all the sinners of the world. He could feel freer than he had ever before.
His heart fell as he felt Liv's gaze on him. She wasn't saying anything.
"My mother," always 'mother' never 'mami' around her, "She's a monster too."
He couldn't leave her with his father. If he had, he knew he would have never been able to forgive himself. They'd lived in secrecy with Pam until his mother took off to make her own fortune once the world settled to a place where women were accepted without needing a man as a chaperone. Then it had just been Barba and Pam James, a woman that he had thought was so beautiful, a woman that he had tried to love based on blood lines only, until it had turned to anger that could no longer be contained.
Now they were dueling it out in New York through the court systems, a childish affair, but it was better than revealing to the world that monsters were real.
"Don't leave me hanging here, Liv."
Please say something.