20. Fae #2
“Fuck you,” Roman spits, leaning forward as every muscle in his body locks tight.
Longstaff makes a soft tutting sound, “I taught you better than that.”
Roman’s face flushes deep red as fury burns in his eyes whilst he stares at the phone like he could tear through the line and reach him.
“How could you do this?” he demands.
“Because you put your heart above duty, Roman,” he snaps. “You chose Fae after I forbade it. You killed Quinn. You destroyed an alliance I spent years building.” His voice rises, sharp with rage. “And you tried to get the bitch pregnant!”
The word makes my stomach twist but Roman doesn’t glance toward me. His chair scrapes violently across the floor as he pushes to his feet.
“And you let men rape women,” he snarls. “You think Mum wants anything to do with you after that? You think I want anything to do with you?”
Silence greets him on the other end of the line. Roman’s mouth curls into a dark, vicious smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. There’s a wildness in his expression I’ve never seen before.
“Did you rape girls too, Dad?” he sneers. “Does it make you feel like a big man, taking something that was never yours to take?”
“Roman…” Longstaff warns but Roman isn’t listening.
“You chained her to a bed; you let Fisher touch he—”
“And yet she’s alive, isn’t she?” Longstaff cuts him off. “Which is more mercy than most would have received for defying me the way she consistently did. She was meant to be at the compound with the rest of the whores.”
“You do not call my woman a whore!” Roman roars.
“Your woman?” he chuckles. “That’s interesting because the last time I checked, she was chained in my house. Not yours.”
A low growl tears from Roman’s chest as his hands curl into tight fists at his sides, the tendons in his forearms standing out beneath the skin.
Felix shifts, stepping forward like he’s seconds away from snatching the phone off the table and ending the conversation himself.
Roman lifts one hand without even looking at him and the movement alone stops Felix in his tracks.
My fingers fumble with the loose string on the sleeve of the hoodie, twisting it between them as my vision blurs.
Tears gather before I can stop them as the room dissolves into moving shapes around me.
I can feel Victor and Riggs watching from somewhere across the lounge as their attention settles in my direction.
Beside me Fiona’s hand moves gently through my hair, brushing the strands back from my face with a quiet tenderness.
“And now she’s pregnant,” Longstaff adds casually. “Tell me, son… are you raising Fisher’s child or mine?”
The words shatter through the room like broken glass.
The urge to tell people he’s lying explodes through my mind.
I want to scream that he never touched me, want to reach through the phone and force the truth back down his throat until he chokes on it, until Roman hears it and understands that he’s manipulating him. But...
But its kind of is true, isn’t it?
Fisher could be the father. That possibility exists whether I want it to or not, and the only reason it exists is because of Longstaff.
He built the room. He locked the doors. He allowed it to happen.
Without him there would have been no chains, no warehouse, no man with permission to do whatever he wanted whilst I lay there unable to stop it.
The difference between the two men blurs in a way my mind can’t untangle.
Longstaff’s responsibility bleeds across the lines I drew in the sand until the truth feels just as poisonous as the lie he’s trying to plant in Roman’s head.
Roman goes completely still and the sight of it freezes me just as effectively as Longstaff’s voice.
My limbs feel heavy, my thoughts scattering in too many directions to grab hold of.
I want to thrash. I want to scream at him to stop talking, to take the words back, to erase them before they carve something permanent into Roman’s mind.
Instead, I sit there barely breathing.
Behind me Fiona stiffens and the movement pulls me back into my body just enough to realise my hands are shaking. I lift one of them to my mouth, pressing it hard against my lips to smother the sob trying to break free.
“You should be thanking me, Roman,” Longstaff continues, his tone almost conversational. “Without me you would still be wandering around the country chasing ghosts and dead leads. I brought the girl exactly where she needed to be.”
“You had your men torture her,” he hisses
“They corrected her,” Longstaff replies flatly. “There’s a difference.”
“Fuck you, Dad, what’s the end game here? Hmm? You think this ends with you winning?”
“Oh Roman, I’m not the one standing in a house full of traitors with nothing but anger and three stolen women.” A beat of silence follows. Then his voice hardens. “You’ve taken something that belongs to The Company.”
Roman leans over the table, “then come and take them back,” he says coldly.
Longstaff doesn’t hesitate, “I will.”
And the line goes dead.
Every eye drifts toward me. I can feel the weight of their attention pressing against my skin as the knowledge of what Longstaff said hangs in the air between us like poison.
The room tilts as the words echo back through my head again and again, before they twist themselves into knots that won’t loosen no matter how hard I try to untangle them.
My fingers are still clamped over my mouth but it doesn’t stop the sob as it forces its way through my chest.
Roman moves.
One second he’s across the room and the next he’s in front of me, the distance between us disappearing so fast it makes my head spin. His hands find my arms immediately, pulling me toward him before I even understand what’s happening.
“Hey—hey,” he murmurs quickly, the fury that filled his voice seconds ago now gone. “Tink… breathe.”
But I can’t.
The air catches in the middle of my chest no matter how hard I try to drag it in.
Sharp, choking panic claws up my throat and my whole body shakes as the room spins around me in slow, nauseating waves.
Roman pulls me down into his lap as one arm wraps tight around my back and the other cups the back of my head before he presses my face into his shoulder.
“Shh,” he whispers against my hair. “It’s alright. I’ve got you. You’re safe.”
He repeats the words in a quiet, steady rhythm whilst I fall apart against him.
My fingers clutch the front of his shirt and my knuckles turn white as another sob tears through me.
Somewhere nearby I hear chairs moving. But Roman doesn’t let go.
His hand moves slowly up and down my back, the motion steady and grounding even while my chest keeps seizing with panic.
“It’s not tr—true,” I gasp. “IT’S NOT TRUE!” I scream through laboured breaths.
“Breathe with me,” he murmurs softly. “That’s it. Just breathe.”
I try.
God, I try.
But the air still won’t come properly and the panic keeps rising, squeezing tighter and tighter around my ribs until the world starts narrowing at the edges.
The room dissolves into smears of colour even as my body trembles uncontrollably in his arms. Then suddenly the pressure shifts.
The ground disappears beneath me and the panic spikes higher before I realise what’s happening.
Roman lifts me, his arms slide beneath my legs and around my back as he stands.
Soon, softness meets my back. The sudden gentleness breaks through the panic just enough for me to realise he’s laid me down on his bed.
I hear fabric shifting before my body jolts and he pulls the hoodie over my head and tugs the loose trousers down my legs; his movements are quick and careful like he’s trying not to startle me further.
His skin feels burning hot when he pulls me back against him, bare chest pressed to mine as I cling to him, wrapping myself around him like a koala.
The darkness of the room eases the tightness in my chest as he wipes the tears from my cheeks.
His forehead rests against mine.
“I’ve got you,” he whispers again.
And even though my body is still trembling and my lungs are still fighting for air, those words help anchor me whilst I’m deep inside the storm.