I meant what I said to her. I won’t let anyone hurt her. I will protect her. And it’s not for what she can give me. Because I have what I want. Her.
“Not going to answer?” He takes a swig of tequila. “I have a request.”
“What’s that?”
“You be the one to do it. You pull the trigger.”
Fuck.
Christ.
Fuck.
“I thought you’d found some peace when you stayed away so long after Annabel,” I say.
He shakes his head. “Not even close.” His shoulders are slumped, and I’m not sure if it’s tequila or life that has him looking like he does. “You?” he asks, surprising me when he turns to look at me.
I smile. “Peace? In the Di Santo house? Not even close.”
He smiles a sad smile. “I’m ready. I want this. I want it over. I’ve wanted it over for a long time.”
I look at my twin brother. The brother I don’t recognize anymore and not just because of the scars. Hell, maybe I haven’t recognized him in a long time. Since we were kids.
I stand. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
He looks up at me, eyebrows furrowing together.
“Disappear, Lucas. Don’t let me see you again. Just disappear and find some peace.” I walk to the door, push the curtain aside, then begin to step through.
Tobias stands aside. I know he’ll disapprove. He knows Lucas and doesn’t have any of the attachments I do. In a way, I wish Lucas were to me what Tobias is. A friend. A man I trust.
“Hey!” Lucas calls out.
I keep moving.
“Wait,” Lucas says.
I turn back to find him on his feet.
“Find some peace?” he asks, disbelief on his face. “You think there’s peace for me? You think I want to go back out there and find fucking peace?”
“I don’t know what you want from me.” I take a step out.
“You owe me this,” he yells at my back.
I turn to study him. My brother. He doesn’t hide his hate for me, and I realize at that moment that he’s far past finding peace.
And I understand something about him that scares me more than anything else ever could.
“You fucking owe me,” he repeats a little more calmly.
He wants to die. My brother wants to die.
And he wants me to be the one to do it.
“I don’t owe you that.”
26
Cristina
Because I love you.
The words won’t stop repeating.
After I take a shower, I’m lying on the bed in the dark, wanting to sleep but wide-awake. It’s the middle of the night and my brain is whirling. After what he told me, how he told me, and what I saw in his eyes, I’m baffled.
Damian is a monster. He warned me long ago and I never doubted it. Not even in the moments I took shelter in his arms. But he’s more than that.
The thing about the beatings, I can’t begin to wrap my mind around that. His family is fucked up, their relationships enmeshed and unhealthy. But that? A father having one son beat the other? A father turning brother against brother and in that way? I just can’t understand. I can’t process.
But it’s what he said last that I keep coming back to.
Because I love you.
He loves me. And I feel a strange joy knowing it.
Without thinking, I reach to scratch my arm. It’s itchy and painful, and I think Damian may be right that it’s infected. But it’s not a spider bite.
Because I love you.
My phone buzzes under my pillow. He left in such a hurry he must not have remembered to take it from me. I’m sure he will tomorrow, but for now, I sit up, squinting my eyes as they adjust so I can read the text.
Liam: Put on the news.
Me: What?
Liam: Just turn on the TV.
I look around for the remote and see it on the nightstand on the opposite side of the bed. Reaching over, I grab it and push the power button.
CNN comes on and I watch as a news anchor speaks while the headline ticker scrolls across the bottom of the screen. Red lights flash and the aerial image shifts as the helicopter with the camera circles the fire fighters battling the fire on a loaded container ship.
The TV is muted so I switch on the lamp beside the bed in order to find the volume button and turn it up.
The scene has changed to a different location where a fire rages on board another ship.