Chapter 18 Falco #2
“That’s all?” Giacomo snaps, finally finding his voice again. “You saw what happened!”
“I did,” Guido snaps. “But any other punishment delivered to Falco will be detrimental to his ability to protect Aerin, so as it stands docked wages are the limit.”
“You can’t be serious!” Giacomo throws one hand in the air. “He’s lost her! She nearly died under his care and—”
“How did you know she had been attacked?” I ask quietly.
Giacomo’s dark eyes slide to mine, glowering. “She called me last night in tears and told me what happened.”
Is that why she was so quiet last night? She turned to the one person she feels she can still trust.
I remain silent, studying Giacomo until Guido waves me away. “Thank you for clearing that up, Falco.”
“Of course, sir.” I duck my head and retreat from the room while mulling the situation over in my mind.
Aerin’s arranged marriage to that Irish prick feels like nothing more than a show Guido is trying to put on, and his words confirm it.
The marriage barely matters.
The ceremony is only for show to warn Guido’s enemies away.
The real prize here is, apparently, her virginity. Guido’s looks of relief while watching that video will haunt me.
There wasn’t even a hint of distress at his daughter’s fate in that footage. All that mattered to him is that she wasn’t raped.
No wonder Aerin acts out and pushes at me for attention. No wonder she threw herself at me looking for affection.
No one here cares about her.
Her room is empty when I return.
Through messaging the guard I left her with, I find Aerin out in the garden curled up on a bench overlooking the small koi pond with a book in her hand.
She’s subdued as I approach and doesn’t even look up while I dismiss the guard and slowly sit next to her.
“Aerin. I’ll just get right into it. I had to show your father the footage from your attack.”
“What?” Aerin surges forward as if my words activated a switch inside her. The book slips slightly in her grip. “Are you insane? Why the hell would you do something like that?”
“Aerin—”
“No! How dare you? You didn’t even want me to see that footage, but you show it to my dad like it’s some kind of weird movie? What the fuck is wrong with you? I thought you were supposed to be on my side!”
Crimson flares across her cheeks and her eyes, wide and wild, dart rapidly back and forth between mine.
“Aerin, I had no choice.”
“Bullshit,” she gasps, abandoning the book. “Oh my god this is humiliating. How can I show my face? How can I—” She cuts herself off and covers her mouth with one hand. “What did he say?”
“He was going to kill me because he believed you had been raped. I had to prove that wasn’t the case.”
Aerin’s brows dip slightly and a strange look passes through her eyes, something that reminds me of when I told Pidge what happened with my ex. Painful understanding.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t do it to betray you, and I didn’t do it to save my life. I did it because you deserve more than lies sullying your name.”
Aerin slowly lowers her hand as the blush on her cheek fades to a pink. “I…shit.”
“I’m sorry, Aerin. He was very concerned about you.”
She slowly shakes her head. “No, he wasn’t.”
“Yes he—”
“No.” She cuts me off and slumps back against the bench. “Sweet of you to pretend, but I know my father. All he cared about was that I’m still a v…still a virgin, right?”
I don’t want to admit the truth, not if it will hurt her. Remaining silent feels like a confirmation so I shake my head, seeking a way to spin the truth to her. “Aerin, I…”
“It’s okay,” she says quietly. “As soon as he introduced me to Frederick, I knew. No man like that would be interested in someone like me otherwise.”
“Someone like you?” Confusion swirls through me and tightens my chest. Aerin is beautiful. I’m sure Frederick saw that, I’m sure everyone sees that.
“Look at me.” She glances at me, but only for a second.
“I’ve seen the other women in this world.
No important guy wants to be lumped with a woman who has to check the sturdiness of a chair before she sits down, or who gets nervous getting into a car because everyone will feel the vehicle dip, or who is constantly trying to hide herself.
The only thing I have going for me that has any value in any way is the fact I’m a virgin. ”
Each word is a knife to the heart. Since I first laid eyes on her, I thought she was beautiful and nothing else crossed my mind.
Even when she was in the shower drunkenly trying to taunt me, I thought everything about her was crafted by a goddess, but she speaks about herself with such callousness that it almost hurts to listen to.
I ache to tell her she’s wrong. That how she views herself is born from years of terrible remarks and mirrored visions from family and not how she truly is, but I would be crossing another line.
I’m already on thin ice.
“Aerin,” I say quietly. “Your father was worried about you.”
“We both know that’s a lie.”
“It’s not.”
“Oh god…” She groans suddenly and her eyes screw closed. “This means everyone knows.”
My brow tightens. “There’s nothing to be ashamed of, Aerin. You were attacked and you survived. That’s something to be proud of. Half the people in the estate certainly wouldn’t be able to walk away from something like that with half as much dignity as you’ve retained.”
Aerin looks at me and rolls her eyes. “Not that, dummy. Now everyone knows I’m definitely a virgin. This is so fucking humiliating.”