Chapter 3
Lottie
For a second, I think I imagined it.
The machines beep in some new rhythm, the kind that makes the nurse rush in, and I think it’s just my heart breaking again.
It’s been breaking a lot lately.
I swear I feel his hand twitch in mine. It’s faint… barely there. But it’s real.
Suddenly, I’m gasping, crying, folding over our joined hands like I can keep him back here with us by sheer will.
Then I’m ushered out into the hallway with Archer and Oscar. Claire and Will left with promises to be back soon, but they had to take care of a few things to ensure Roman’s dad doesn’t come back to try to finish the job while he’s lying in the hospital bed, vulnerable.
I don’t try to hold the tears back. There’s no strength for pretending I’m not shattered.
“You can go in now,” the nurse appears from his room, dressed in scrubs. “He’s not awake yet, but he’s close.”
I timidly walk past her. Fear running through my chest. What if this is all a dream?
I sit in the creaky chair, pull it closer to his bedside, and clasp his hand in mine. My eyes feel gritty. The last twenty-four hours have felt like hell, and I can feel how tired I am, but the idea of leaving this bedside? Impossible.
He risked everything.
Ruined two years of safety and a life I’ve built for myself, but he was finally human. Finally something other than the monster who tormented me.
Then I hear it.
“Lottie.”
It’s raw. Hoarse. Barely more than a breath, but it’s him.
Alive.
I shoot to my feet so fast I nearly knock over the chair. My hands are shaking, my pulse pounding in my ears like a warning.
“Roman?”
His eyes flutter open, unfocused, bloodshot… but they find me.
He’s not dead. It plays on repeat in my head as I see him crumpled in my arms, blood soaking us both.
A broken sob chokes out of me. “Don’t you dare do that again,” I whisper, voice breaking into too many pieces. “Don’t you ever…”
The nurse is back, hand gently pulling me back. “He needs oxygen. Let him wake up a bit before you read him the riot act.”
I nod, barely hearing her, but she smiles gently at me… like she knows how broken I am under all of the layers of armor I have. My knees fold under me, and I sit back in the chair, gripping his hand like it’s the last rope keeping both of us above water.
“I’ll leave you be, but four other gentlemen are waiting in the hallway.”
“Can you ask them for five more minutes?”
She nods, looking between us both. “Of course.”
The nurse leaves, and I look at Roman. Really look. It’s all there.
The damage. The bruises. The bandages wrapped around his chest.
He looks like death, but his fingers twitch under mine, and that’s enough for now.
“You’re an idiot,” I murmur, laughing through another tear. “You absolute idiot. Why didn’t you just stay away?”
His eyelids flutter again. He wants to speak, I can see it.
“Because now you’re here and Archer’s family…
My family is doing everything in their power to protect you.
You ruined my carpet. You died in my arms,” I continue, my voice getting harder, angrier.
“And now here you are, lying in this hospital bed half dead, like you have one foot in the afterlife if I don’t say I forgive you, and I hate you for it.
I hate you all for coming back when I was finally okay. ”
The sterile room hums with machines and grief and truths I should’ve said years ago.
I wipe my eyes.
“But I’m not okay now, Roman. I’m really not. I’m tired of being strong for people who break me. I’m tired of being locked in rooms you put me in—metaphorically or otherwise. And I’m tired of wondering if the boy who stole my first kiss, who said he loved me, even knows what that word means.”
I pause, swallowing down the lump that refuses to budge, and I look up.
His eyes locked onto me, and I see it all—guilt. Regret. Pain.
And something else, something I don’t want to acknowledge right now.
I don’t let go of his hand, still holding it like it’s sacred, but I lower my voice, knowing the others are outside. “I’m not promising anything,” I whisper. “But maybe I’ll let you explain if you show me you’re more than an emotionless robot his father controls.”
The machine beeps steadily. Another long pause. He breathes.
He’s as pale as a ghost. Jaw bruised, lips cracked, bandages coiled around his chest like a cage barely holding him together.
But his eyes lock on mine.
“You’re still here,” he rasps.
It’s the first full sentence I’ve heard since he crashed into my front door, shouting my name like it’s a plea. Since I thought he was dying.
I exhale a breath I didn’t realize I was holding. “I didn’t want your death on my conscience.”
His lips part to say something, but before he can say anything else, the door slams open.
Crew. Elijah.
Both of them move like storms, their faces a mix of anger and fear for the man they see as a brother.
“What the hell were you thinking?” Elijah snaps immediately, striding across the room like he’s about to shake Roman for being stupid. “You went alone? To your father? You didn’t even take a weapon? How stupid…”
Roman doesn’t look away from me, like I’m somehow the only thing keeping him steady. “Didn’t need a weapon,” he mutters.
“Didn’t—” Elijah explodes, throwing his arms up in the air. “You are lying in a hospital bed because you didn’t need a weapon?”
“Jesus, Roman,” Crew growls, his voice low and sharp. “You’re not fucking invincible. You nearly died…”
“He did die,” I interrupt. “He was very much dead, but Archer saved him.”
Crew glances at me, then at where I’m holding Roman’s hand. Longing fills his eyes before they narrow on his best friend again. I don’t look to Elijah, you know, cause I’m forgetting all about him and his wife.
“You died. Why the hell would you even go there by yourself?”
Roman’s lips twitch. Not a smile. Something bitter. Hurt.
Then the words fall out.
Flat. Simple. Too casual for the weight they carry, and I can do nothing to stop him.
“He hurt her.”
Everything stops.
Crew’s head snaps toward him.
Elijah freezes mid-step.
“What?” Crew says slowly, like the words don’t make sense.
Roman finally looks at them. Elijah and I can do nothing about the car crash that’s hurtling towards us.
“He put his hands on her. His father. And he didn’t say anything,” Roman grits out as he pushes to sit more.
Silence.
I flinch. I don’t want them to look at me.
Not like this. Not with that knowledge.
Elijah steps back like he knows Roman wants to hit him. “Wasn’t mine to tell.”
Roman doesn’t buy it. “Your dad assaulted her, Elijah, and you knew. You knew and didn’t tell us.”
Elijah shakes his head. “I didn’t know until after. The day I found out she was dead is the same day I found out. Why do you think I killed him?”
Crew’s face shatters—composure giving way to something I’ve never seen on him before.
His eyes snap to me.
His hands tremble. “Lottie… why didn’t you tell me?”
I open my mouth and then close it again.
Silence threatens to swallow me whole.
What can I say?
Because I didn’t want to ruin any of you?
Because I knew you would pick loyalty to them over me?
Because I was barely sixteen and terrified of my own shadow after everything?
Elijah narrows his eyes. “That’s not why you did this, though, is it?”
Roman shakes his head, then looks at me. For permission? I stare at him with wide eyes, pleading with him not to make this worse.
“He was there,” Roman says, filling the silence, but his words do nothing to stop the suffocating feeling that wraps around my throat like a vice.
“Who?” Crew rasps.
Elijah looks to Roman, then me, then back to Roman. “Your dad?”
He sounds so broken that my hand jerks to reach out to him, but I hold myself back. Barely.
Roman doesn’t answer right away. His hand tightens on mine just enough to ground himself.
“Both of them,” he says.
Crew stumbles back a step, eyes wide, throat working like he’s trying to breathe through cement. Elijah closes his eyes. He knew. That’s written all over his face, and he’s told me as much about his dad, but hearing it again, hearing Roman say it… It’s different.
“No,” Crew whispers. “You’re saying… they both…”
His voice breaks like glass under pressure.
Roman doesn’t soften. “Lorenzo and James. They were both there. They both—” He chokes, swallows. “They hurt her.”
“They raped her,” Elijah snaps. “If you’re going to reveal her secrets as if they’re your own, Roman, then say the fucking words. They. Raped. Her.”
Crew is shaking his head before Elijah can finish the sentence, but it’s not denial. It’s devastation. His mouth opens like he wants to argue, like he needs this not to be true, but there’s nothing to say.
Silence is a curse that settles again, heavier this time. Crushing.
“I didn’t know,” Roman continues, his voice hoarse. “But then I’m towering over her, and she’s telling me that I look like him. Like the man who…” he chokes. “Like the man who raped her. I snapped. I went after him. I didn’t care if I walked out of there alive as long as he was dead.”
Crew’s mouth opens, closes. He turns to me again.
I see the pain in his eyes, like he wants me to tell him this is all one big lie, to take it all back, but I can’t. “Lottie…”
I shake my head. “I…” My throat closes, and I squeeze my eyes closed as silence threatens to overwhelm me, but I push forward. “I couldn’t. You were theirs. Their heirs. Their tools. And I was just the girl they left broken.”
“I killed James because I found out, but it wasn’t mine to tell you…” He looks at Crew, who looks shattered. “Or you. I did it for revenge for her because I thought she was dead. I got revenge for the girl who couldn’t do it herself.”
Roman snorts, bitter and hollow. “You did it for yourself.”
“I was protecting everyone,” Elijah shoots back, voice cracking. “If the truth came out, everything would’ve exploded. The whole fucking foundation of everything we were working toward—”
“I don’t care about foundations,” Roman growls. “I care about her.”
The silence that follows is deafening.
Crew slowly turns back to me, tears pooling in his eyes, but he doesn’t let them fall. “Why didn’t you let us fight for you?”
I close my eyes. “I tried. I was going to, and you locked me in that cupboard. I didn’t think you would believe me, and I just wanted to forget.”
No one speaks after that.
Tears sting, but I don’t let them fall. Not now. Not here.
Elijah steps toward me. “If I knew…” His voice fractures. “Lottie. I swear—if I knew he… If I knew—God.”
He steps toward me, like he wants to touch me, but I step back.
Not out of hate. Out of self-preservation.
“I know,” I murmur, because what else can I say?
Crew is pacing now. Hands in his hair. “So this is what we are now? People raised by monsters?”
Roman coughs—half breath, half pain. “We were always that.”
No one speaks after that. The air is thick with betrayal and the truth that finally unearthed itself like bones in shallow graves.
Then the door creaks again.
Oscar steps in, unaware of the powder keg he’s just walked into. His eyes go from me, to Roman, to the two stunned men standing around the hospital bed. He frowns and signs, “What’s going on?”
I freeze.
And Roman looks at me. “Does he know?” he asks quietly.
I don’t answer. I can’t.
Oscar is the one person who looks at me like I’m not broken. The only person who doesn’t know that I’m tainted.
Oscar walks toward me, confused but concerned, brushing my arm gently with the backs of his fingers. I blink up at him, heart hammering.
He signs again, slower this time. “Lottie? Are you okay?”
I feel my throat tighten, and my eyes sting. Then I slowly lift my hands to respond, but they shake too badly for the signs to come out clean.
But I try.
“No.”