Chapter Thirty-Five Tyler
Chapter Thirty-Five
TYLER
HEAD SNAPPING TO the side, I welcome the fresh throb smarting my jaw before my eyes focus on Tobias. Sitting at the edge of my coffee table, he stares back at me, looking exasperated and disheveled.
“Christ,” he utters on a relieved exhale. “I’m sorry, brother, but you’ve been catatonic for two fucking days.”
As I sink into the present, I frantically search his eyes for my answer, and I get it when he lowers his own before he even speaks.
“They went straight back to Barga. She’s gone, brother,” he relays hoarsely, carefully weighing my reaction.
“How?” The one-word question loaded with my need for far more than one answer, which he immediately starts to address.
“I was with Tula when Peter was shot, and she heard our exchange, so when you hung up, she panicked and told me the truth about what Larissa was hiding.” He runs a hand through his picked-through hair, dark circles etched beneath his eyes.
“None of us could have anticipated any of that. There was no possible way you could have known. She should have come fucking clean. And with the way things went down, how were you supposed to believe differently?”
Because she told me. Over and fucking over.
Exhausted herself with words I refused to hear.
And when things got intense and feelings got murky, I ridiculed her.
Told her I didn’t want her, or anything to do with being with her in any real way.
Which kept her most vital truth from escaping her at every turn.
Regret filters in as the dire need to go after her starts to seize me. But to what end? Whatever she felt for me, what remaining belief she had in me, I destroyed. Too filled with rage over Peter to hear a word she spoke, until I couldn’t see anything but her truth.
There’s no future with her—never has been. Although it was always going to end badly, I’m the one who made the situation impossible.
All of it is on me.
Knowing that forgiveness is inconceivable, and that she could never view me the same way, I can’t, for any reason, let it go.
With the mess I made, there’s no hope. I left us on opposite sides of an unnavigable aftermath, desecrating everything between us that could have been sacred.
What’s left of me now—which is next to nothing—can’t handle this reality.
Tobias reads this easily within seconds and speaks to it as I begin to implode at that truth.
“Going after her right now would be suicide and may mean another war. Tula meant it, brother. Our hands are tied until I can talk—”
Blink. Black.
Heated whispers have me coming to as I fasten a towel around my waist.
Sliding my hand across the mirror to wipe it free of the steam, the movement becomes metaphorical when I’m only able to make out my muddled, foggy outline.
Faintly aware that I’m still breathing. Inhaling and exhaling in the right combination to keep my body functioning.
Thankful it’s involuntary. Knowing that if given the task for my own survival, I couldn’t fulfill it.
Nor any other demand made of me. Unable to recall a second of my shower or the hours before, I blinked myself into a muted abyss.
Going deeper into the black than I’ve ever dared, I rejected all reality to remain blissfully ignorant.
A dissociation I’ve never allowed myself before for fear of the mental fallout.
The truth being now that the reality I’m sinking back into means hurling myself straight back into a mental war I can’t snap out of.
One with myself. Where my enemy now stares back in my reflection.
My hate for him born of disgust and outrage.
No ceasefire to be had, no grace to be given.
No sense of duty to hide behind. No reason he can summon will ever be good enough for his crimes against himself, against a woman who never deserved the full extent of his wrath.
But in seeing him now, recognizing him for what he is, I realize it’s all I ever did—punish her.
But it was in my muted abyss her memory found me.
In the firelight, nothing existed outside of the way we connected.
It was there, as we moved against one another, we had no agenda or loyalty other than to each other.
In that blissful escape, my ravaged heart was reminded of the ability it had long since abandoned, after it lost its purpose in that field of wildflowers.
Larissa had somehow managed to identify it in its withered state, feeding it tiny breaths until it began to pump again.
Nurturing it with her touch, her kiss, and her honest whispers, along with her unwavering belief in me.
Holding her scars up to mine to show me how similar they are, and how different.
Even if I rebuked every similarity. Wiping that recognition from my psyche day after day to protect us from another atom bomb—another Dom.
Knowing we collectively couldn’t survive it.
Even with that justification to cling to, it now feels insignificant in comparison.
It’s that fear of loss that’s been weighing me down, weighing us down from enduring it a second time.
A fear that started my war with life, its cruel whims and definitive decisions when taking those who matter most to us.
In hindsight, it was never my war with Larissa, but my battle with the cursed fucking stars, with how they’ve aligned against me and those I love in the past. It’s my mistrust in fate, in my late wife’s God, that led to Larissa’s brutal punishment, though she was just a bystander of my declared war.
And within my declared war with fate itself, life has delivered once again.
As I sink back into that reality, shame filters through every fiber of my being, blanketing me, as does the surfacing image of her recognition at the sight of that perfume bottle.
Now haunted by the change in her expression as she realized the depth of my deception.
The cry that left her lips echoing in my ears as I brace myself on the counter to keep from hitting my knees.
Part of me wishing she had pulled that trigger on me when she had the chance.
Within minutes of blinking back into hell, I relive every single exchange between us since the night she graced my doorstep.
Now able to see each of those moments for exactly what they were.
Thankful when the residual steam starts to distort my reflection, offering a true representation of the man staring back at me.
While I was self-aware enough during our time together to know I was in danger of giving in to the feelings she was evoking, I was more aware of the chance she would turn on me if I did.
More than a chance, a certainty. It was a certainty.
In knowing that it was inevitable, I stopped myself from fully allowing anything I felt to guide a single decision I made, save our time in that firelight.
Her training was just as intensive as mine, her life experience shaped by those who’d played the game far longer than us.
Knowing we were worthy opponents playing the same game on the same level, my vicious, calculated plays against her were far crueler and more damning.
Deceit was the game, and yet it was never really her intent to deceive or hurt me.
In a way, she did betray me by using me to carry out her own agenda. The difference is, she never hid that from me. While she came to use me to take down her biggest rival, she also came to protect me from unknown enemies. To reveal her secrets, to fucking love me.
Her true nemesis and real vendetta truthfully confessed—Ciro.
The sickening images of what we found in that mansion flit to mind.
Of the horrific acts committed there. Hundreds upon hundreds of videos, a virtual theatre of sick fucking horrors, along with Ciro’s arsenal of whips and other torture devices.
The same unimaginative shit one would expect, and yet still mind-blowing in its level of depravity.
It was the severely worn handle of a particular whip that had me cringing with the knowledge that he most likely used it on his daughter.
Branding her with a scar I’ve now pressed my lips against multiple times.
The sight of it was unforgettable—as were the rest of her scars, as well as her confessed truth about Roc and what was done to him.
A don with so much power forced to pledge allegiance by subjecting his succeeding heir to do the unspeakable?
Though unbelievable in truth, it’s that exact type of dark folklore that has me believing it as fact.
As well as my firsthand knowledge of the depravity of power-hungry demons disguising themselves as humans, who mandate that type of act to elevate their position—a puppeteer’s demand for obedience.
The exact type of sick shit Dominic had waged war against.
Why else would a don go that fucking far?
It’s Larissa’s own words about Ciro looking to gain leverage, along with her suspicion that he was seeking the same leverage to keep everyone in line, that solidifies it for me. All of those participating in the same sick circle—the dark carnival.
In deducing that much, my new mission sorts itself within seconds.
It’s the strength to fight for anything or to lead any charge that evades me now as I stare at the reflection of my failure.
Hating him. Loathing him for the latest sins he committed to complete his mission.
Knowing that the soulless man staring back at me has far surpassed any possibility of redemption.