THE PLEDGE – CHAPTER 16

"Are you disappointed?" she asked, breaking the lingering silence.

"Because you didn't want him killed?" He shook his head. "Never, you were right. He was scum and stupid and deserves to spend the rest of his life in abject misery with no end in sight. I'll have him watched to make sure he doesn't die any way other than a natural death as an old man."

"The older the better."

"Do you feel justice was served?"

Turning away from the window, Dara faced Sonny and shrugged her shoulders. "I don't know. There are so many emotions coursing through my body. And with these hormones, I don't know what's me and what's the baby," she said quietly.

Unbuckling his seatbelt, Sonny moved across the flying jet and sat next to Dara. "Your patience through all of this has amazed me."

"That's because you have the patience of a gnat."

He smiled. "That maybe so at times, but watching you through everything. Tags couldn’t have asked for a better wife."

"He probably wouldn’t have wanted a wife who was a murderer."

He could lie to her and say she wasn't a murderer which was technically true, but he wouldn't do that to her. He knew in her heart she would always feel as if she were the one that murdered Salvador, Victor, and the other two losers that were part of Elvis' crew. "I always said the man was a fool."

Dara slapped Sonny on the arm. "You're not suppose to speak ill of the dead."

"I'm not speaking ill, I'm telling the truth. The same truth I told Taggert to his face. You were too good for him."

"That's not true. If Roy had really killed you, you would've been okay with Carly killing him in order to avenge your death?"

Sonny laughed out loud; Dara looked at him, puzzled. "Did you hear what you just said? Do you really think Carly would have had the patience to even find my killer? Much less correctly kill him?"

Dara started laughing, trying to imagine Carly avenging Sonny's death.

"Carly would try to kill the first person she heard killed me. Jason, of course, would run after her trying to stop her and probably would have ended up the one shot instead of whomever she was aiming for."

"She shot Tony Jones."

"He was two feet away from her; Stevie Wonder couldn't have missed Tony. And even that is a sign of her impatience."

"Why in the world did you marry her- - never mind, she was pregnant. How and why did you sleep with her to begin with?"

Sonny didn't want to discuss Carly, but if it got Dara's mind temporarily off of the Elvis mess and Taggert's imaginary disapproval, he would. "Passion, lust, and I was horny," he answered, looking directly into her eyes.

She loved that he would always, always tell her the truth. "Was it worth it?"

"When she was Caroline Benson, she was loving, caring, loyal to the death, and a great mom. I loved that woman, she kept me trying to keep our marriage together. But Carly's insecurities and guilt about her parents' divorce, her adoption, finding Bobbie, deceiving Tony, being a good mother, and I think most of all, the way Virginia Benson died kept the woman Virginia would have been proud to call daughter buried. I think those glimpses of Caroline keep Bobbie and Jason there for her 24/7 and Michael believing in his mom."

His insightfulness moved her. Could Marcus have answered a question about what made him love her so eloquently? After all their years of marriage, she felt he could. But now looking down on her and seeing her actions, would he have answered the same way? That was the killer question.