Scarred Regrets (Bellandi Crime Syndicate 5)

34

IRINA

A white-hot blade sliced through the flesh of my belly, hacking through the tissue there with rough, jagged cuts that jolted every time he shoved —

I woke up, a scream tearing out of my throat as my eyes flew open. My back left the bed as my hands went to my stomach and pain shot through the arm protecting my belly from the assault that I thought I’d escaped. Shoving it away, waiting for the knife to cut through the fleshy underside of my hand when I interfered, I cried out when hands touched my shoulders and tried to guide me to lie back down. “No!”

My broken and torn nails dug into bare skin, scratching through my attacker’s forearms as I thrashed. “Shit!” a woman gasped, pulling her hands away as I shook my head from side to side. “Irina, it’s Samara.”

My eyes were already open wide, staring unseeing at the ceiling above me, while I was lost in the memory of Darragh’s face looming over me. Of his evil smile as he carved through my flesh at the same moment he took a part of me that I would never get back.

He’d been inside me.

Tainted me.

“Irina,” Samara said again, pressing her hand to the worst of the scratches on her arm. I stared down at the well of blood in horror, feeling my eyes turn glassy as I finally understood what I’d done.

Who I’d hurt.

Revulsion like I’d never known filled me, forcing me to gather the blankets, which had shifted down my waist, with my good arm and pull them up to cover me more. I turned to my side, sinking into the pounding pain in my ribs and leg when I did.

I deserved it.

“Sweetheart, it’s okay. I’m okay,” Samara said, sitting on the bed behind me. Her fingers brushed against my back, stroking it gently as she sat with me. I couldn’t bear to look her in the eye. I couldn’t stand to see everything she thought she knew in her stare.

Samara had survived being raped by her ex-husband. She’d come out stronger on the other side. She’d found a way to cope, to thrive in a life that had tried to beat her down.

But Samara and I were not the same. Where she’d been forced, I’d willingly laid myself down on the table. I’d taken my clothing off for Darragh while his men leered, ready for the live porn they’d been promised.

I’d let him ruin me.

“I’m so sorry,” I whispered, sniffling back the tears that made my nose run. Samara’s hand came up to stroke my hair, soft and soothing just like she was.

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” she said. She had no idea how wrong she was, no concept of just how sorry I needed to be. A good man was dead because of me, and I’d honored that sacrifice by giving myself away.

By allowing myself to break, knowing that I would never be able to come back from it. That I wouldn’t even want to.

For what I’d become, death would be a gift.

The door swung open as Scar pushed into the room, his lungs heaving with exertion. Madison followed at his heels, and the two of them exchanged a glare when she inserted herself at my side next to Samara. The girl didn’t seem to mind Samara’s presence, but she kept her distance from Scar.

He came up on the other side, kneeling by the side of the bed and touching a gentle hand to my cheek. The twitch to his features was almost unnoticeable, disguised to the point that the other two women probably didn’t see it. But I knew him, I knew how much it had pained him to touch me even before.

Now that I’d dirtied myself?

It must have been agonizing.

“Are you alright, Butterfly?” he asked, his brow tensing as he looked down at me. I shook my head, sinking further into the mattress and the pillow as if I could just disappear.

I’d loved when he called me Butterfly, but now all I felt was like a dead husk, pinned to the case for study alongside countless others who looked just like me. Nothing unique, nothing special. Just another statistic.

One in five.

I let my eyes drift closed, finding comfort in the darkness. A place where I couldn’t see the pitying faces of people who’d once been my friends. People I’d loved before everything went numb.

Now there was just nothing. Just a hollow void where everything that made me me had been.

“What happened?” Scar asked, his voice barely above a whisper. He worried he might wake me, as if sleep could ever come easy again after the nightmares had filled it. After the haunting memories that made me relive all the pain.

The agony.

“She must’ve had a nightmare,” Samara said. “I tried to calm her down. I shouldn’t have touched her.”

“Go home,” Scar ordered. “Lino won’t want you here until she calms down some. She needs to settle before you come back.”

“I’m not leaving her,” Samara denied, sniffling as if she might be crying.

“She would never be able to live with herself if she hurt you again. The last thing she needs is that guilt to cope with,” Scar said, running a hand through the hair at the top of my head. Even in my numbness, he knew me. Even with me ready to leave this place forever, he understood what would drive me.

In another time, another situation, I might have wondered how two souls could understand one another so profoundly. So naturally.

In this one, I just hoped he’d be okay when I was gone. I hoped he would find real love with someone strong enough to be everything he deserved.

I hoped she was everything I could never be.