PARKER MANSION

The Parker family didn’t start in a normal way.
The founder, Miss Parker’s great-grandfather, the crypt keeper’s of the isle of Carthis – that cursed place where Jarod and Parker had found those damned Scrolls – arrived to America in the early 1900s, after getting crazy and leaving behind an exterminated family.

He soon created the Vespasians, a secret society that used to meet in Boston, in the basement of the building that later would become the Alley Sports Bar. He amassed a fortune by deceiving the followers with the false myth of the so-called-Prophecies and by obtaining donations from very important people of the high society. He later used that fortune to found the Centre, of which he had left inheritance to his son John Adrian Parker.
John had two sons. His first-born, Abraham, to whom he had destined the whole family heredity, and the second, Abel, almost died at birth and born with very serious health problems. The weak limb of the Parker family – according to Mr. Broots.

Knowing the family motto, ‘Never depend on anyone but yourself’, there is no wonder that John decided to fake his second-born’s death to arrange an adoption to avoid a lifetime at doctors’ disposal. The Raines family who was given custody of Abel had always been an important sponsor of the Centre. The family’s scion, William Raines Sr., was John’s coetaneous and fellow student. He was shrewd in business, but he also had to hide a dirty secret: his wife was infertile, so she couldn’t give him any heir. Therefor William had willingly accepted his old friend John’s proposition to adopt the baby as his own and, after a few years and after many donations to the most innovative hospitals, the young Abel – by then renamed William Jr., had survived his neonatal illness. John decided not to tell the truth to his son Abraham if not in a letter to open after his own death. Abraham received that letter shortly before getting 18, seeing that his father passed in a plane crash prematurely.

In that very letter, will of a lifetime of iniquities, Mr. Parker had found out about the importance of the Scrolls. Talking with his grandfather, survived to his son John, Abraham had discovered that the Scrolls were the real foundation on which the Centre based its richness on, seeing that the most important financiers (the Africans of the Triumvirate among them) truly believed in their huge power. Mr. Parker’s grandfather had eventually revealed that the Scrolls hadn’t been buried at sea, but they were somewhere safe on the isle of Carthis because his first daughter Angel, who had tragically died, had hid them with the help of a priest named Father Theo.

So Abraham, at 18 years old, had found himself chairman of the Centre, with a huge fortune to administrate and the responsibility to continue the evil empire founded by his grandfather.
To proceed it, though, he had wanted by his side his lost brother, William Raines, who had in the meantime gotten a medicine degree. He soon became the most important doctor of that Mad House.
Mr. Parker and Dr. Raines had mutually agreed not to reveal their real blood relationship to anybody, they were certain that sooner or later this strategy would be much to their advantage.
Their foresight rewarded the two brothers when, years later, William had to donate his semen to allow Mr. Parker to obtain the heir he was craving to have, seeing that he and his wife Catherine weren’t successful in having kids.  
William had his revenge when he decided to make everyone believe that the boy has died at the twins’ birth. He later entrusted the Bowmans with the baby, hiding the truth from Catherine and Abraham. Since then, the story of the Parker family had become more and more like a soap opera drama. Or at least, that was what Lyle thought.

How could he consider himself part of the family? Mr. Parker, the man he had thought being his father for a couple of years, actually wasn’t. And William Raines, his biological father, was the outcast of the Parker family, never accepted for his evident inferiority. 
Unlike Lyle, Miss Parker had probably experienced some happy moments as a kid, when Catherine was still alive. His sister had those memories to lean on, at least. Few but good, Lyle pondered.
He didn’t even have such mementoes!

Lyle was unaware of the SIM conducted at the Centre in June ’71, the one where he had worked in a team with Eddie, Alex and Gabriel. The Centre had made him forget about it, just like they’d done with Jarod and Miss Parker.
Therefore, Lyle was sure that his very first contact with the Parker family was with the appearance of Mr. Raines in his life when he was 15 years old. The doctor had started to shape the young Bobby, radically changing his character, to persuade Bobby to become another person.
At that point, his adoptive parent, Lyle Bowman, had tried to domesticate the young man in the worst possible way: He closed his son into a cabin and abandoned him, sure that this punishment would help him to become a normal kid.

Actually, Bowman had fomented young Bobby’s obsessions and pushed him more towards the abyss, convincing him that Raines’s teaching about human malice were true and that control is the only thing that men are interested in.
Surely it was Raines who had turned Bobby into a mad man, but Lyle Bowman had given the final shot to his adoptive child, who later would assume the identity of “Mr. Lyle”.
Bobby had decided to run from his family but he knew that he needed to disappear without awakening any suspicion. He wanted to totally change his identity, he also wanted to clean up from the Bowman name that he despised so much. Thus he had used his friend Jimmy Radloff’s death.
He hadn’t killed him, it had really been an accident: while they were climbing the mountain, Jimmy had made the wrong move and had fallen down a ravine. Bobby had decided not to declare the truth about his death: He used the chance, instead, to fake his own death by using the decapitated corpse of his friend Jimmy. He had also found a way to frame his adoptive father. This was his first act as “Mr. Lyle”, the perfect hangman.

Obviously, it had taken him a few years to come back to the Centre as an heir, and William Raines’ help had been fundamental. Thanks to the doctor’s contacts, Lyle had made a reputation inside the criminal system and after a few years he had been called to the Centre. Raines had never revealed his parenthood and Lyle had discovered that Mr. Parker was his father only after finding out about the Red Files and his twin sister. Actually, Lyle had learned about Mr. Parker being his father more or less at the same time as Jarod had revealed to Miss Parker that she could only have two brothers (Lyle or Angelo). Eventually Lyle had gained his place as the heir of the Parker family.      

Lyle was thinking about his family history as he got closer to the Parker Mansion.
His father’s house had been empty for the last ten years. His sister had been the last one to get inside, before disappearing with the pretender. Lyle didn’t want to know about living there, maybe he didn’t want to run into the curse that had tormented the Parker family for a century. And he was sure that he would certainly weaken if he had decided to stay in that house for too long, since that was the house where Catherine and Abraham had lived a normal life, even if for a very short time.
And Lyle didn’t want any regret.

In spite of his reluctance, Lyle didn’t wait for the twelve hours to reach the house for the meeting. He wanted the whole situation under control, he wanted the advantage to see Jarod coming – even if he was sure that the pretender would come to the appointment.
Lyle had been waiting for Jarod’s appearance for two hours. For the most of the time he sat in his father’s studio, trying not to think about Chuntao.
What were they going to do to her? Why kidnapping her?
At the moment, the only one to know the answers was Jarod.
To save Chuntao, Lyle was ready to pact with the devil.

So, he was willing to pact with Jarod.