Chapter 21 Roman #2
“It is,” I cut in. My voice is rough, splintering at the seams. “Because no matter how many times I told myself I was better than him… part of me wasn’t. Part of me wanted to do it.”
She flinches, but she doesn’t pull away. That undoes me more than her words ever could. I step closer, hands trembling as I cup her face. She feels like the last good thing in the world.
“Don’t you get it, Reyes? I wanted to break you.
Not violently, not all at once, but carefully.
Lovingly. I wanted to shatter you slowly, until you thanked me for every piece I took.
And now look at me—” My voice cracks, and I drop to my knees in front of her.
For a second, I’m not the man who once held power over everything.
I’m ruined. Hollow. “Now I’m the one broken.
I’m the one kneeling in the wreckage, begging just to hear you say my name like it doesn’t make you sick. ”
My voice cracks. The mask I’ve worn for years—the control, the arrogance. It all shatters at her feet. Silence stretches between us like a blade. I can feel her eyes on me, and it’s unbearable and holy all at once.
“You still want to hurt me?” she asks.
I shake my head slowly. “No. Not anymore. I never really wanted to hurt you. I just wanted to share my pain with someone.”
“Then what do you want now?”
For a moment, I can’t find the words. Then, hollowly, I say them. “I want forgiveness. I want to believe I’m capable of something more than destruction. I want to know there’s something left of me that’s worth saving.”
She should walk away. I deserve it. I deserve the emptiness, the silence, the closing of the door.
But instead, she steps forward.
It’s such a small thing. Barely a shift in the air. The sound of her feet against the floor is softer than breath. But for me, it’s an earthquake.
My chest tightens, a hard, burning knot. My first thought is that she’s coming closer to hit me, to spit in my face, to finish what I started all those years ago. I deserve that. Part of me wants it.
Pain, I understand.
Pain, I can take.
But she doesn’t hit me. She doesn’t recoil.
She just moves toward me like I’m not poison.
The air smells like her—warm and human and sharp, like soap and rain on concrete.
My pulse is hammering so hard it shakes my ribs.
I can hear the blood in my ears, the old reflexes screaming brace, brace, brace.
I don’t move.
I don’t breathe.
Her face is calm, but her eyes are full. Anger, grief, something I can’t name.
Something I’m too afraid to name.
She’s so close now I can see the little tremor at the corner of her mouth, the way her fingers twitch like she’s reaching for something she isn’t sure she should touch.
I think of my father’s hand, shoving me forward. Take what’s yours.
I think of the word carved into my back. Coward.
And for the first time in years, I feel… nothing. No rage. No armor. No mask. Just a hollow, shaking boy kneeling in front of someone he’s destroyed, waiting for a verdict.
I shut my eyes.
If she hits me, I’ll take it.
If she walks away, I’ll let her.
If she says she hates me, I’ll carve it into my skin next to the others, and it will be no less than what I deserve.
But then I feel warmth.
Her fingers brush mine, and the breath I’ve been holding collapses out of me. “You broke me, and seeing this can’t erase it all… but I do get it.”
I want to tell her she’s insane, that she should run, that nothing good lives in me. But the words won’t come. All I can do is stand there, trembling like a man who’s been handed something fragile and holy that he has no right to hold.
Her eyes don’t look like disgust. They look like defiance.
They look like a girl staring down the monster under her bed and refusing to be afraid anymore.
We sit back down, neither of us saying anything, and she’s distanced herself again. Like everything I’ve told her is pressing down on her more and more.
Finally, I break it with a whisper. “Will you drive me somewhere?”
Her head snaps up. “What?”
“My car’s totaled,” I remind her. “Crashed it when I was bleeding out trying to get to you. Haven’t replaced it yet. I just… I need you to take me somewhere.”
Her fingers dig into her sweater sleeves, knuckles white. Her voice is quiet, trembling, but sure. “That idea terrifies me.”
The words land harder than any bullet.
“Why?” I ask, even though I already know.
She doesn’t look away. “Because you still remind me of him.”
Her words slice me open.
Because you still remind me of him.
I sit there, swallowing the sting, and force myself not to flinch. I’ve taken bullets. I’ve taken beatings so bad I couldn’t walk straight for days. None of it compares to this.
“I’m not him,” I murmur. It comes out hoarse, broken. “Lottie, I’m not.”
She doesn’t answer. Just hugs herself tighter, her knees pulled up like a shield.
I could let it end here. Let her wall me out, keep the distance safe for her. But I can’t. I need something—anything—that isn’t just sitting here drowning in her silence.
“Please.”
She stares at me like I’ve grown another head. “Roman, are you out of your mind? You think I want to be stuck in a car with you?”
“I think,” I say carefully, “that it’s the only way I can prove I’m not him. You drive. You hold the keys. You decide when we stop, when we turn back. I won’t say a word unless you want me to. Just… give me this.”
Her jaw clenches. I see the flicker of fear there, the hesitation that burns hotter than any insult she could throw. I’m losing her again, so I push softer.
“Please let me prove I’m not him,” I whisper. “That’s all I’m asking.”
The silence stretches. My pulse pounds in my ears. Then—finally—she exhales through her nose, sharp. “Fine. But if you so much as—”
“I won’t.” I cut in, too fast, too desperate. I soften my tone. “I won’t, Lottie. I swear.”
We walk out together, but the space between us might as well be a mile. She keeps her distance, shoulders stiff, and I let her. I’ve earned that wall.
At the car, she slides into the driver’s seat, her hands immediately gripping the wheel like it’s a lifeline. I sink into the passenger seat and hand her my phone.
“Put the address in yours,” I tell her.
Suspicion flickers again. “Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”
She doesn’t like that answer, I can tell, but she plugs it in anyway, the map lighting up between us. A blue line stretching out of the city.
The engine hums. She pulls out onto the road, and the silence wraps back around us like barbed wire.
We drive. Past neon signs, past neighborhoods that bleed into empty fields. I keep my gaze fixed on the window, on the blur of dark countryside rushing past.
Every now and then, I sneak a glance at her. The way her hair catches the passing light, the tight set of her jaw, the way her knuckles whiten around the wheel. She’s wound so tight she might snap. And it’s my fault.
I try not to speak, but the words grind out anyway. “Back then. When you stopped talking at school, you don’t know how much that killed me.”
Her eyes flick to me, sharp, but she doesn’t say anything.
“I thought it was about me,” I go on, voice low.
“That you were punishing me. I’d call you names, shove you around, do everything I could to get a rise out of you.
But when your eyes went dead? When you went silent?
That cut deeper than any punch he gave me.
I hated you for it. Because even when I hurt you, you used to fight back.
And when you didn’t… I thought I was nothing to you. ”
The tires hum against the road. Her face stays forward, unreadable.
“But I get it now,” I whisper. “It wasn’t about me. It was about surviving. About what he did. What Elijah’s dad did. And I hated you anyway, because I was too fucking selfish to see past myself.”
Her grip on the wheel trembles just slightly. She doesn’t look at me, but her throat works like she’s swallowing words she’ll never let me hear.
I lean back, pressing my head against the seat. “I don’t hate you anymore, Lottie. I don’t think I could if I tried.”
The GPS pings softly, telling her to turn. She follows it without question, though I can feel her curiosity prickling under the surface.
Ten minutes later, the lights of the town flicker ahead. She slows as the map directs her down a narrow street, until finally the car rolls to a stop outside a squat brick building. The sign above it glows in bold letters.
Voodoo Tattoo
She stares. Then turns on me, eyes sharp. “You dragged me all the way out here for this?”
I don’t flinch. “Yeah.”
“Roman—”
“I need it,” I cut in. My chest tightens, but I force the words out. “I need something permanent. Something I can’t drink away, or fight away, or pretend never happened. Something that reminds me, every single day, of what I’ve done and what I owe.”
Her eyes widen slightly, then narrow. “And you think a tattoo’s going to fix that?”
“No.” My voice cracks. “But I think it’s the only way for me to show you that I’m not him…”
The silence between us is heavier now, but it’s different than before. Not just fear. Not just hate. Something else, sharp and fragile, waiting to snap.
I don’t move. I let her sit with it. Let her decide whether she’ll walk in there with me or leave me to do it alone.
Either way, I know this much… I’ll walk out with ink under my skin and a reminder carved into me that I’m no longer Lorenzo’s son.