Thank you again for reading and leaving reviews especially MissFleck734, TMara, Brambled13,MarilynKC, RupertBear,grandma paula, kit kat, trrmo77, brintravlr, and of course the ever gracious and helpful Judybear236. For those of you who have not reviewed for a while or at all. I hope that you are enjoying this work. I always love to hear from you too. I used to beg for reviews in my past fics but I figure you will if you want to. Thank you to all that have followed or favorited this work as well. Oh well time to find out what is going on with the crew now that they are mostly on the same page. It's time to figure out how to bring the old lady to heel or a similar word with an l instead of an e if you prefer.

Chapter 39

Nadir's POV

I listened to Christian's story with both pity and anger for his father. Erik's family was even more complicated than he was. I would not have thought it possible that my old friend might be the sanest member of his family. At least at the present time he was. We all owed a debt to Christine for restoring him to the realm of sanity. I hate to think how Erik would have reacted if Christine had not come, and we still had to face this mess. The old woman made a big mistake by bringing her here, it had the opposite effect of what she had intended. In a different world my best advice to Erik would be to abandon his family and return to Persia with me. The Shah was a paragon of virtue compared to the Comtesse. But of course I was not seriously considering that solution, Erik would never return to Persia. He had few warm memories of the place. Erik liked his inheritance. He had started to plant roots in the fertile soil of his ancestral home, and he seemed to find more acceptance here than anywhere else that we had been. I enjoyed watching him relax his guard and let go of his anger and bitterness. I had never before seen him happy and I liked watching the man that he was meant to be come out of the shadows.

The best tactic would be for him to stand his ground and get rid of the Comtesses' threat for good. Erik's family was throwing themselves on his mercy, or at least his Christian was. From what Christian had told us, Otto did not appear to be stable either mentally or physically. It would not take much to plunge him deeper into madness. Both men had been foolish to listen to the vile old woman but they were not the first people to be taken in by her. I met the woman, when she resided here for several weeks and she gave no sign of the fact that she was a lunatic. But to survive as she had, she had to be a very clever murderess. She has thrived too long on using misinformation to get people to do her bidding. It would be interesting to find out what she has represented to the Vicomte to make him so pliable. Perhaps it was time to clear the lines of miscommunication between everyone, even the Vicomte, and address the real threat to all of them, the malicious old woman. In Islam we have a concept called Hudna where we can make a temporary truce between enemies to either let the situation die down or to fight a common enemy. Perhaps it was time to call for a Hudna between Erik and Otto, and possibly even Raoul if such a thing could be achieved.

Christian and Erik both looked to me for guidance. Erik, had almost always trusted in my abilities to see a solution to a problem, when he was too involved to see it clearly. I did the same with him.

I told them "We need to set your father straight no matter what it might do to his sanity. Perhaps if Erik were to forgive him, it might make him more amenable to forgiving himself."

I turned to Erik "I know that this man has harmed you many times over; but he is not the real person behind these crimes. He is a victim of the Comtesse as much as you are. It is she who really killed Georges, Erik, and Charles and set the Vicomte on you. Everyone else was just a tool for her to execute her plot. We must try to bring everyone together in a truce Erik even the Vicomte, although I know that you despise him."

Erik looked at me and fumed "She has been a backbiting snake it is time that she receive her due. If the road to her ruin means cultivating temporary alliances, I will bury my animosity for both Otto and the fop to achieve that end. "

He looked over to Christian "Bring your father here and we will speak with him. If he is willing to switch sides, I will not harm him or seek his prosecution for his crimes, or yours; but he must acknowledge that his actions have been reprehensible. As I told you before, I have hardly led the life of a saint, and I am sure that we will all reunite in hell. In the meantime, we will try to restore the peace in our family for the sake of future generations of Mulheims. Once that is settled, we must find a way to inform the Vicomte that he is being duped, and has been all along. We must assume that he is with the Comtesse, at the current time."

Christine interrupted "I will send him a note requesting that he meet me. I will explain everything to him."

Erik cut her off insisting "Absolutely not Christine, he might attempt to kidnap you or hurt you. I will not take that chance with your life. I forbid it."

I could understand both sides but Christine was unfortunately right she would have the greatest chance of reaching Raoul before he could do any harm.

I looked at Erik "They can meet on neutral ground. The Girys and I will accompany her. You can be there as well, hiding in the background, at least at first. If it goes well then you can come out and join the conversation. If not, then you do not want to be anywhere near the Vicomte."

Christine looked at both of us "No, I must go alone. If I take anyone with me then Raoul will think that I am coming to him under duress. Raoul is not a bad person he will see the truth. I know him very well Erik, since we were both children. He probably has no idea what the Comtesse has been up to for all this time. He sees the world in black and white, and doesn't take the time to understand it. That is one reason why I realized that I love you and not him Erik. He sees people in one way, but fails to understand who they really are. To him I was a damsel in distress. He believes that everything you ever did for me has been evil or self -serving. He has never seen you as a human being or me either. You love me for my true self, angel. Remember Raoul and I were once friends and we have a long history. In the end I think that Raoul will do the decent thing because underneath he is a good person. I just have to make him see what is really going on, I am the only one who can do so."

"I couldn't care less whether or not your boy sees me as human. If he harms you in any way, he will not see my humanity at all. He will feel the death grip of my Punjab lasso."

Erik warned.

Christine walked over to Erik and placed a hand on his arm and smiled up into his face. She looked at him glowingly "He would never harm me Erik, just as I know that you would not do so either. One thing that I do know is that he cares for me, just as you do. All actions that he took against you were to protect me from what he thought had been a threat. He just needs to learn that it is alright to stand down and to let me go. You must trust me with this Erik; I must end this once and for all. Please support me in this. You know that I am right. Trust me and our love."

"She is right Erik; she is the only one that can get through to him. They can still meet on neutral ground…" I started to tell him.

"No Daroga she needs protection just in case, even if he would not hurt her he could force her to go with him, and then the Comtesse would have Christine in her clutches. If she captures Christine then she knows that I will do anything to protect her, even at risk to my own life." Erik countered he was clearly agitated.

Christian cleared his throat and looked at all of them. "I will go with her. I will protect her with my own life if necessary. The Vicomte does not know who I am. They can meet in a neutral location such as a restaurant, and I will stay in the background and make sure that they are in my presence at all time."

Meg gasped "No Christian, it's too dangerous for both of you. Why not just send a couple of armed servants to watch over her. Raoul would know that Christine would need transportation to get to the meeting place. It would be natural to have servants in view. Besides The Comtesse might think to do the same and have someone there with Raoul who knows you, she might even come herself. You have lived in the area for many years you are completely recognizable. What if someone were to address you as Baron von Mulheim and Raoul overhears them speaking to you? There are a lot of things that could go wrong."

I couldn't help but to point out one obvious point "Meg, you are assuming that the Comtesse has already discovered that Christian has switched sides. The Comtesse might not trust Christian to fulfill her plans but she does not know that Christian has told us about her. The last time that Christian waivered in one of her plots, he eventually did as he was instructed to do and killed the old Baron. But since we are all worried about the risks of Christine's approach, I do have another suggestion. Perhaps we have been seeing everything the wrong way. We are getting way too complicated. The simple answer might have been before us the whole time. Perhaps we should do the unexpected and all of us, including Erik, pay the Comtesse a visit to 'announce' your upcoming nuptials."

They all looked at me as if I were insane.

Christine looked at me and told me "I think that it is a terrible idea. Erik and Raoul in the same room once again, without any warning to Raoul. I care about both of them and one of them would likely end up dead."

Erik smiled "It would clearly be your boy Christine. The fop is remarkably easy to kill when he is not creeping up behind me and stabbing me in the back."

Christine looked at Erik in concern "Don't be overly confident Erik, Raoul is an expert swordsman. You forget that he bested you in the graveyard. He could have killed you there, if I did not talk him out of it."

Erik squeezed her hand tenderly "Thank you for your concern Christine, but I can handle a sword as well as he can. I slipped on the ice that day; but if the boy will be restrained I can control my temper. I already won the day, when you surrendered your heart to me."

"But I don't know if I can talk him out of fighting with you, he is mad about what you did to his face. He hates you." she told him.

"As I do him; the boy is both foolish and arrogant, but I swear to you that I will control the Phantom inside of me. I know that it was the Vicomte's cowardly attempt to kill me that made you question your commitment to him. I will not make the same mistake as he did. I probably shouldn't have gone to the boy and threatened him. I was very angry at the time, and still more than a little in the throes of insanity; but I made sure that I did not do him too much permanent damage. At the time I intended to teach him a lesson in humility. By now it should have faded to an angry red welt." Erik added.

Erik looked at me. "So what is this great idea of yours that we go to the Comtesses' Chateau? How does this end this nasty business once and for all?

I replied "The Comtesse has always relied on miscommunication to accomplish what she sets out to do. Misunderstandings have been the key to every conflict between all of you, since the beginning. If we lift the darkness that she has woven around all of you for so long, and bring it into the light, then she will lose her power over all of you. It will not bring back the dead or turn Erik and Raoul into the best of friends but it will change the dynamics of the situation. For it to work we must all stay together, and we cannot leave the room until all has been revealed." I looked at my old friend "You will have to keep your temper to yourself. No matter how convinced that you are that you can repress your darker side, your temper has always been the true instrument of your downfall. You may not think that you care about what the Vicomte thinks of you but you must act in the opposite manner to what the Vicomte has come to expect from you. Any sign of temper or intimidation from you will reinforce what he has been conditioned to think of you. It would be better yet if you apologized for what you did to his face."

Erik looked at me in shock and outrage. "You want me to apologize to him? You must be crazy Daroga. I may think that I was a little out of line but he did try to kill me in the lair."

"Didn't you kidnap his fiancé and threaten his life?" I asked him calmly.

"Didn't he steal her from me and send in the gendarmes? Am I to forgive everyone?" Erik replied hotly. "Perhaps I should ask the Comtesse to be Christine's maid of honor." He added bitterly.

"Your sins towards one another are great, but like with Christian and his father they are ultimately borne from misunderstanding. Can you honestly say that if it had been you in his position, that you would not perceive him as he perceived you?" I asked Erik, hoping that he would see where I was going with my argument.

Christine looked at both of us and then turned to Erik and told him softly "You know that he is right Erik, you scared me to death when I unmasked you that first time. I might not have turned to Raoul to begin with, if you had let me get used to how you looked without the mask. Yes, I admit that I was repulsed by your face, but I was frightened by your temper even more. By the time that we argued in the lair, it was your temper that bothered me the most, not your face."

He stared at me threateningly but then relaxed his shoulders in defeat. "I guess that I can see his point of view. I guess that I can see the advantage in your plan but we have little time left. The wedding is in only two days, and it is too late to go there today."

"Well we still have two things to do, we have to win Christian's father over to our side, and decide what to do with the Comtesse." I told them.

"I have never yet harmed a woman, not even Carlotta, but my Punjab would make a nice fashion accessory for her." Erik intoned bitterly.

Christian chimed in "There is a lunatic asylum on the outskirts of Strasbourg, I know the physician in charge. We can arrange for her to be brought there and kept there for the rest of her life. She clearly belongs there."

"My solution is more permanent cousin. She has spent a lifetime doing away with anyone who she sees fit to dispose of. Why not return the gesture. It would make a just outcome to the whole mess." Erik mused.

"Your neck would be the next one to be stretched Erik with a noose as your fashion accessory. I am sure that Christine would not like to see that happen. To take justice into our own hands is still illegal Erik. I am sure that we could find enough evidence to convince the police to deal with her but most of her crimes are very old, and it would mean that both Christian and his father would likely be prosecuted as well. I am not sure that you want that outcome Erik do you?" I told him.

Erik looked over to his cousin "I meant what I said. It will not change the past if I were to seek vengeance for the two murders involving my immediate ancestors. My life has not been an easy one, in many ways due to what they have done, but not everything that they have done is bad. Christian probably could have kept my existence a secret and inherited this entire estate, and his crime would have likely stayed buried. I had little curiosity about my father's family. I believed that they had rejected me as my mother and her family did. I will not risk their lives by telling the authorities what we have learned."

Christian looked at his cousin gravely "Thank you Erik. I promise that you will have no further trouble from me, even if you decide not to have anything to do with me after this is over."

Erik looked back at his cousin warily "We won't discuss the future yet until we have resolved the present, go get your father and bring him to us."

At that moment I was very proud of Erik. The Phantom would have dispensed his own form of justice upon his relatives. Erik remained calm and judicious.

Christian's POV

For my entire early life, my father was a godlike presence. He commanded my complete obedience to all that he asked of me, and I complied like a good soldier would. From the point of view of a five year old, he could do no wrong. He was infallible and therefore his pronouncements were law. My mother was a more down to earth creature, beautiful, charming but infinitely sad; as if she lost something precious that she could not retrieve. I later discovered that what she lost was her husband, not in the physical sense but in the spiritual. Their once strong love died from both guilt and recrimination, but I did not know until the end of my mother's life, a few years ago. It could not sustain either my father's excessive drinking, or his one lapse of judgment when he had betrayed her with theGräfin

My mother had been well brought up and her beautiful face did not show any of the worry and despair and shattered dreams that ate away at her insides. Her vivid blue eyes revealed her inner soul. When I was a child they were filled with life and merriment. I inherited my love of life from her. In the end they were haunted and vacant. I was the only part of their marriage that had not been sullied. When she found out what I had done, that betrayal was the last straw. She only lived a year or so after learning what I had done. She simply lost the will to continue and wasted away. She died of a broken heart. By then I had been living here, far away, and never had a chance to say goodbye. My father had been out drinking and came home to find her dead. If one were to keep a tally of the Gräfin's victims, she was an unintended one, but her responsibility for it remained.

I wondered what brought my father here. She must have summoned him, as she did before. She would not have cared that he could barely function. She did not care about anyone or anything but her own warped sense of vengeance. I was angry with myself for not resisting her sooner, and for not bringing my father around to see things in the right fashion. I really had little excuse for my inertia but my own weakness of character. Life was so much simpler when I could remain aloof and forget my troubles and concentrate on making wine, and hunting.

I went into the study where my father was waiting seated on a chair by the fireplace. There was a second chair which was empty beside him. We were in the same place as where I first met the old Freiherr. For a moment I felt as if I were imbibed with his old spirit as I took my place in the room. The room even now still retained a faint odor of his old cologne. I could feel a wave of nostalgia gently make its way into my consciousness. Perhaps his grandson's compassion for me had cleared the way for my new sense of being. Somehow I felt as if the old man had forgiven me but perhaps it was just wishful thinking. I took his vacant seat beside my father. The old man looked terrible even worse than the last time that I had seen him several years before. He had never been to the Schloss, and I only rarely returned to Bonn. The death of my mother had rendered such visits intolerable. I could not stand to watch my father's slow decline and tolerate his drunken rants. I was surprised to see that he was more alert than normal, but he looked even weaker than ever.

"What are you doing here father?" I asked him "There is nothing here for you to do."

He looked around the room as if to be assured that there were no eavesdroppers and then replied fiercely "There never was but I have as much a right to be here as you do. It is my inheritance as well as yours."

"It belongs to neither of us." I told him gently. "It belongs to our cousin. It is his due. We need not covet it. We have our own wealth." I added.

"You do." He replied bitterly "Your grandparents gave you money to live on, I have to live on my own son's charity. I have nothing left of my own."

"You drank it away father, you once were a very wealthy man in your own right until she came and ruined everything for you and mother, for all of us." I told him.

He shook his head in denial "No it was he who ruined us. He murdered my parents, his own brother in cold blood, and left me an orphan dependent upon the charity of others and now we must stand aside and let his grandson receive what was our due; a deformed murderer."

I told him patiently "His grandson is a good man. He has killed but he is not a murderer, you and I are the murderers. We killed our own family. He is willing to share his inheritance with us…."

He cut me off. "He is willing to share what should be ours? What we have done is not murder, it is restitution."

I looked at him and told him firmly "No, father we were wrong. It was the Gräfin who had your parents killed. Erik's friend has uncovered the evidence."

"He is lying both to gain your sympathy, and to do away with us as his grandfather did with my parents. I saw the court records, the man who did it confessed to everything. You do not know the full story." He told me insistently.

"No father, it is you who do not know the story. Erik's friend was a chief of the Shah's Secret Police in Persia. Erik asked him look into everything including your parent's deaths. He found irrefutable evidence that the murderer was in the employ of the Gräfin, not your Uncle. Come with me to meet Erik and his friends, listen to what they have to say. Erik is willing to forget everything that we have done, even what you did." I told him.

He looked away from me and turned back angrily. His green eyes were blazing at me "You have been hypnotized by him, the Gräfin told me about his powers and who he really is, the Phantom of the Opera. She told me how he duped that poor soprano into doing his bidding, all of his subterfuge and murders. He is a madman and you believe him over your own father."

"No father, the Gräfin is manipulating you yet again. You can speak to the soprano yourself. She is here and is engaged to marry our cousin. She is a sweet girl and a brave one at that. Erik wanted nothing to do with her after he believed that she tried to kill him; yet she stood up to him, and withstood his anger, until she convinced him that she was innocent. She too can tell you the truth. It is time to end this ridiculous war between the two sides of our one family. Look at what it has done to you, to me and to him. You were an orphan but at least you were handsome. He had to endure hatred and rejection from everyone because of his face. If his father had lived or even his grandfather they would have known that he had 'Apollo's touch' and would have accepted him and protected him. We stole that all away from him, and forced him to wander the world in search of a place that he could call home. You and I are broken on the inside because of what we have done. You know that you are father; that is why you have spent most of your life trying to kill yourself by drinking and gambling. It destroyed you and killed my mother as well. She had to watch and endure as you changed, away from the handsome and ambitious young man that she married into a vindictive shell of a man."

He turned and slapped me across my cheek in anger "How dare you say that, you forget your place son."

My cheek tingled in pain but I stood my ground "No father you have forgotten yours, but it is not too late to do the right thing, to help our family. Please father." I pleaded.

I was getting nowhere and decided to change my approach to find some sort of chink in his armor of anger and denial "You know that this was his favorite room." I told him.

He looked back at me alertly "No. I did not. You know that I never met him."

"He never understood why you wouldn't come. Why you sent me in your place." I told him.

"I couldn't." He admitted softly.

"Why father? Why couldn't you?" I asked. Down deep I knew the answer which was why I asked him the question one last time. It was my final hope for getting through to him.

"I just couldn't." He told me. "I knew after I did it that it was the wrong thing. I almost killed a child, an innocent child. I stood and watched while my cousin went in to save him. He knew what he was doing and that he would not make it out alive, but he went in anyways and pushed the boy aside. I was much closer I could have rescued the boy and lived. The boy almost died and his blood would have been on my hands."

"You started drinking after that." I reminded him gently. "You came back from France very different. Mutti saw the change and didn't understand."

"I confessed everything to her. She told me to go to my Uncle and beg his forgiveness but I could not go to that monster and grovel to him." He admitted tearfully.

"You do not have to beg his grandson. He will give it to you freely. You just have to admit the truth, especially in your own heart and stop this war between us once and for all." I told him gently. "You will feel better about the past, about everything; but you must face Erik and accept him as the rightful heir to this place. Then we can all go after the real person who has hurt us for so long. Please father, open yourself up to the truth."

He glowered at me, and I thought that he would still stubbornly cling to his position but then he dropped his guard and asked me "Where do I meet this kinsman of ours; this mysterious Phantom who has gained your loyalty?"

"I will take you to him now, father he is waiting, but first if you don't mind, I would like to check your pockets. I do not trust your change of heart completely.

Of course I pulled out his old revolver. The old man never changed. Hopefully he had not hidden another one somewhere else.