Soren and His Sisters

***

Torrential rain that evening forced Mrs. Duke and her daughter to invite their guests to stay the night despite the fact that that wasn't part of the plan. Soren protested that he needed to get back home to his family, but relented under the teasing of Mara and Savannah that he sounded like a henpecked old man, and the reasonable arguments offered by the Dukes that he was likely to go over the precipice trying to get back that night. He accepted the hospitality of two bedrooms, one to be shared by his sisters and the other by Kyle and himself, and called his wife to explain the situation to her.

Later that night Cyn surprised the two men by showing up in their room and offering to exchange with Soren. He seemed confused and frightened. Kyle was stunned.

"I'm sure that Mara and Savannah won't mind," she said quietly.

"What?"

Soren and Kyle couldn't meet her eye and Kyle felt sorry for his friend when the embarrassing tenting in his jockeys confessed what he would never have been able to say verbally to his favourite sister. He left the room quickly without another word.

"So you know," Kyle said after Soren left them alone.

"Yes; and obviously so do you."

"How long?" Kyle asked ignoring her accusing tone.

"Since Christmas when he and Mags had that quarrel. You?"

"Since the day we arrived. It was when I went to help with the dishes. I saw them."

"I've been watching him, trying to see what's wrong," Cyn continued reflectively after a while. " I see how he looks at them sometimes. I see how they look at him all the time. It's like they want to eat him alive! It's the same way that Mara looked at my ex-husband, Brian," she paused.

"It's the way she looks at you, Kyle."

Kyle could see that the memory of Mara's relationship with her husband made Cyn furious. He stammered a denial that Mara was in any way interested in him.

"Kyle, I'm not stupid. In fact, I'm quite the opposite. I can be surprisingly dangerous if I choose to be, but for the sake of my parents I did not give Mara what she deserved when she stepped into my marriage. Brian was a nice man but she ruined it for us!"

Kyle wasn't sure how to respond to what Cyn was saying. He had never thought her unbalanced, but the echo of Soren saying that he had thought to kill his sisters, and seemingly meaning it, impressed itself on him uncomfortably.

"Do you think that Soren really wants to stop what's happening with them?" Cyn asked after a while.

"Y-yes! Yes, I think so. I think he's wanted to stop for a long time. He knows it's wrong."

"So, they're blackmailing him? Brian tried to say that that's what Mara did to him. He said that the first time was a mistake. He said that he was drunk and he woke up and found her in bed with him. She had pictures. He said that she threatened to tell me if he stopped! Would you have believed a story like that?"

Cyn sounded surprisingly angry. Kyle said nothing. He was frankly afraid to. Eventually, he hazarded a question:

"If it upsets you so much why did you send him there to them tonight?"

"I wanted to see if he would go. I had strong suspicions about what was going on, but the fact that he went to them without a peep told me everything that I needed to know for sure. It has to stop though. I'm not letting any of them hurt Maggie!" she said fiercely.

"What are you going to do, Cynthia?"

"I'm going to make sure that my sisters never touch my brother again after tonight."

Kyle was not surprised that his libido dried up for the evening. Though both of them were awake, he and Cyn lay next to each other in the dark room, staring at the ceiling and thinking about the future.

***

Cyn was not in bed next to him when Kyle awakened in the morning. Soren was already fully clothed and trying to move about the bedroom quietly.

"Mrs. Duke," he whispered by way of explanation to Kyle's raised eyebrow.

"The girls went out early this morning; all of them."

He paused, obviously still wrestling with a decision.

"Look, Kyle, I'm going to confess everything to Margaret when I go home. She's going to leave me but I can't go on like this. The law says that I get to see my children sometimes and that's the best I can hope for, I guess. I'm just sorry that you had to see this ugliness. I'm ashamed of myself. My sisters and I have behaved very badly. Please don't take it out on Cyn though. She's a good girl. She genuinely didn't know about it. I don't know when she found out, but I'm sure it hasn't been long."

"She knew for sure when you accepted her invitation to swap rooms last night," Kyle deadpanned.

Soren froze. He sank to the bed, clutching his mouth as if he wanted to throw up.

"Look, she said that she's going to talk to them. She said that it's a scam. It was the exact story with her ex."

"You told her?"

"No, didn't have to. She told me what happened with him. It was the same story. God knows how many other men they've done this to..."

"Wait! Cyn said that she was going to talk to them?"

"Yeah; she said that they wouldn't bother you again."

"Did she say where she was going?" Soren sounded frantic.

'"No? Why? What's wrong? You said that you want to stop. She said that she could fix this.'

"She won't talk to them!"

"What do you mean?"

"Has Cyn ever told you what she does for a living?"

Kyle paused. He did not like how this conversation was going. He did not like anything about the Caine family now. They gave him the creeps. Cynthia had never discussed her work with him and now it seemed a sinister omission.

"No, she never has. We have always had more interesting things to talk about than our work. What does that have to do with anything? What does she do for a living?" he asked a little hysterically. "Kill people?" he laughed trying to lighten the mood.

Soren only stared at him.

"This isn't funny Soren! What are you talking about? What will Cynthia do to Mara and Savannah? Last night she said that she could be dangerous but I didn't know how to take that!"

Kyle's rant was interrupted by the sound of Soren's Prado rushing up the driveway. Cyn leapt out of the driver seat and sprinted toward the house calling for help. Not for the first time Kyle noticed how athletic and panther-like she was. There really was something about her. He should have realised what she was.

"Help me! We've had an accident!" she screamed.

Kyle's blood ran cold. Soren turned and sprinted down the stairs to go to her in the yard. Kyle knew that he would be hard-pressed to believe any story about an accident if Mara and Savannah were dead. He followed Soren down the stairs, reluctantly.

Cyn was gesticulating wildly and pulling Soren toward his vehicle. She saw Kyle and ran toward him, clinging to him in a tight hug. He did not return the embrace and she stepped back and looked at him quizzically. As if reading his mind she looked toward the car and explained in a surprisingly calm voice that they needed to get Mara and Savannah to the hospital since they had broken a leg and an arm, respectively. Beyond the pain of those injuries they were unharmed. She was vague about what they were doing in order to sustain the injuries in the first place.

Soren did not have the equipment in place in order to help his sisters himself and so after a hasty departure from the Dukes they rushed the two women to the hospital and called their parents to explain the mishap.

Sitting in the hospital later Kyle asked Cyn for an explanation. She tried to be evasive but he would not allow it.

"I work for Amblin Securities," he said softly. 'Who do you work for, Cyn?"

She considered him gravely.

"I'm a private contractor."

"Ahh! Assassin?"

"Nasty word."

"You broke your sister's arm? Mara's leg?"

"I warned them that if they ever touched Soren, or threatened Margaret again, that I'd break their backs, leave them in wheelchairs for life. They will not disturb him again. They and my parents will get over them breaking limbs while here on holiday."

"I see."

Kyle looked at the little woman who had first intrigued him by her smile. That friendly mask had hidden so much from him, a man trained to know these things that he could not just let her walk away from him; she was too good.

"Cynthia-Anastasia Caine; will you marry me?"

"I think so, Kyle Kantorowicz," Cyn said after a pause in which she flashed him that million-dollar smile. "I think you really are my type."