Husband With Benefits

Gabe, Ian, Seb and Lucien sat silently in the conference room as they tried to figure out what to do next. As if by mutual agreement, all of them had driven off in a daze from the medical facility and driven here. On the one hand, they wanted to storm into their grandfather’s home and question the old man about his decision to declare a living man as dead.

However, all of them had seen the vegetative state Erasmi was in. Wouldn’t he have been better off dead? Another thing that burned their mind was the most recent fight, Demetri had with their grandfather, to wrestle Erasmi’s medical power of attorney from their grandfather. With Demetri’s decision to release more public shares, all of them had indeed wondered, if only for a moment, whether Demetri was doing all this to protect his wife. But this...

Lucien cleared his throat and asked the questions that had been hammering at each of them since they made the startling discovery," Demon said that as of now Erasmi’s brain function is perfectly normal. But then, why is he not showing any reactions? Did he not ask us all here to induce a reaction from Erasmi? However, I doubt that Erasmi even recognized us. I mean I understand him not recognizing me but the rest of you..."

It was Gabe who quietly spoke," But he did have a reaction, Lucy. None of you noticed because it was negligible... Erasmi’s fingers clenched thrice. First when I held his hand and he recognized us. I thought I was mistaken in my excitement but he repeated the motion two more times after that as if he wanted to add something. The second time was when Demetri mentioned the car accident. When that happened, I started to observe Erasmi. I could feel the rage in his eyes at the mention of the accident as well as the helplessness. The emotion disappeared when Demetri talked about the other person’s death. The third time was when Lucy questioned Demetri if Nora knew about this."

That made Ian frown. Why would Erasmi know Nora? As he thought this through, Ian came to a disturbing and chilling realization. A picture that he had seen in his grandfather’s study a little while ago...

Hurriedly, he started to look through his phone’s photo gallery, looking for that thing. At that time he’e been in a hurry when the small picture had fallen out of the book in the library. When he had seen Demetri’s picture, he had been surprised but because of the lack of time, he had simply clicked the picture and then totally forgotten about it. After all, other than Demetri looking younger, it was a normal picture with Nora...

Finally, he found the picture and stared at it, making sure he was not mistaken. Zooming in, he showed it to others," I found this picture in Grandfather’s study a while ago. Do you think this is Demetri or Erasmi?"

Gabe and Seb both leaned closer to the picture, frowning. Because they had long become used to seeing only Demetri, they had almost forgotten how to differentiate between the two identical twins.

It was Seb who finally spoke," This is Demetri...I think"

But Gabe shook his head and pointed out," No. This is Erasmi. Erasmi was right-handed while Demon is left-handed. It is why Demon wears his watch on the... right hand...but this person is wearing a watch on the left. Ian, where did you get this picture? It should be around the time of the accident. Who is in the picture with him?" Since it was clear that someone else was there in the picture, Gabe looked at Ian curiously.

Ian felt his stomach clench. It was indeed Erasmi. With a dreadful feeling in his stomach, Ian moved the picture so that the zoomed-in picture of the woman could be seen. He hoped that they would be able to give a reasonable or logical explanation but

Seb: "F*ck! What the heck is this?"