“Mom?” I don’t know how her name escapes me, my breath strangling me as it refuses to leave.
“I told her no one would ever know, and she accepted.” The thumb of his left hand runs along the place a wedding ring would hug his ring finger. “I always wanted you. I always loved you as my own.”
My head shakes on its own and my eyes go wide. Wide with shock, wide with fear in the way my father’s speaking.
“I tried to love you and show you how much you were loved. Yes, I was hard on you. I was hard on you because this life is hard, but also … you look just like your mother.”
I reach behind me for something to steady me, but there’s nothing.
“She never loved me.” As he speaks, the soft reminiscence is instantly replaced by hate. “Until she decided she wanted more. She wanted someone else and would do anything to get away from me. She was a rat. I’m not sure how many mistakes I truly made because of your mother. Taking her in, not killing her sooner, or having her murdered.”
Everything in my body is cold, the numbing kind that makes me feel like I can’t be here. Like this can’t be real. He didn’t. He didn’t have Mom killed.
“No.” The word comes unbidden as fear settles deep into my bones.
“You were never a mistake, Aria. Even when I’m gone, I want you to know that. I know I was hard and cold, but it wasn’t because of you. I loved you.”
I can see it in his eyes, he’s telling me the truth. Every bit of it. Dark and callous.
“You couldn’t have,” I say, but my words are weak and desperate.
The sad smile carved into his expression is riddled with agony. “She was going to have me killed, Ria. It was either her or me.”
“No.” My memory is warped and twisted. My reality even more so.
“I do know she was a mistake, your mother was. One that’s stayed with me and still lingers in this house.”
I almost call him Dad; I almost beg him to stop. To tell me everything he just said was a lie. But I can’t speak a damn word. I can’t even move.
“I always had to see you, though. You were a constant reminder.”
Chapter 20
Carter
“One more hall,” I hear Declan tell me softly from my earpiece. “Two men on the right at the corner.”
The eerie calmness that comes at times like these surrounds me. With four large steps I make it to the end of the hall, stop right at the corner and wait. Listening to every sound.
Sebastian and Jase are quiet behind me, but they’re there, both armed and ready with the silencers. Only Jase is marked with a splatter of blood, but each of us has killed since we slipped in through a window, shattering it during an explosion and sneaking into the dark halls of this forbidden castle.
We’re moving too slow. The thought keeps my pace fast. Every second away from her is another moment something could happen to her. A moment someone could take her away from me.
It doesn’t escape my attention that I almost died here nearly a decade ago. Every quiet step reminds me of what may have been had my life been cut short.
Turning back to my brother, I nod and all at once, the three of us step out into the hall. Holding my breath and then letting it out, my grip on the gun tightens, the metal kicks back, and the bullet whips through the air, hitting the back of some fucker’s skull. There’s a sharp crack, a mist of blood sprayed against the pristine wall to my right. The bang of another bullet and then another are followed by the thumps of limp, heavy bodies falling to the ground.
“Four men coming, from behind you and another to your left. They know something’s wrong,” Declan says in the earpiece as the adrenaline spikes and Jase and I share a glance.
“Get her, we’ll take care of them,” Jase tells me, reaching up and squeezing my shoulder with his left hand. Sebastian nods, holding his gun with both hands and keeping his back against the wall as the sound of footsteps and a yell for someone to answer echoes up the long corridor.
“I’ll have her soon,” I tell them both, “and then I’ll come back here.” I don’t know why, but it feels like a lie. Like I’m not coming back.
Jase gives me a smirk and quickly turns around, the faint sounds of him reloading his weapon carrying over to me.
Sebastian looks over his shoulder one last time to look at me before he follows Jase back down the way we came.
Without them it feels different. It’s not about revenge or murder. It’s not about a war or a power play for territory. It’s only about her. About Aria.