Chapter Thirteen #2
Gunnar squeezes Joshua’s shoulder in passing. It’s a small touch. It carries weight. Then they’re gone—footsteps quick down the hallway, a door opening to the bright morning, the distant grind of tires over gravel.
Silence settles for a beat. Then Bridget claps once. “Eat somethin’ before your thoughts chew holes in ya,” she orders, and somehow I love her more for it.
I try. I pick at a slice of toast, a piece of apple from a plate someone set down without me noticing. It tastes like nothing. I want to be helpful. I want to be steel. I want to be anything other than a woman whose hands won’t stop trembling.
Alisha edges closer and drops her voice. “Surry, love… I think it’s time.”
“For what?” I croak out. My throat knows before my brain does.
“To tell them,” she says gently, eyes flicking to Brenden, to Joshua and June, and the others who are all pretend not to stare. “Brenden, Josh and June don’t know why we’re here. It’ll help them help you.”
“I—” The room tilts. Words knot behind my teeth. Shame, old and shapeless, licks up my spine. It’s stupid. I know it’s stupid. Shame belongs to him, not me. But it lingers like smoke you can’t wash out.
Richie comes to my other side, warm palm at my elbow, that soft look he gets when he’s dead serious. “Start at the beginning,” he says. “Like you told us. We’re not going anywhere.”
Hazel nods. “No judgment. No pity. Just us.”
I look at Brenden.
He doesn’t push. He doesn’t prompt. He just tips his head the slightest bit, a yes that says I’ll stand here as long as you need me to.
I turn toward the kitchen. “Bridget?”
She’s already moving, clearing the end of the long island like she’s done this with me before—because she has. Kettle on. Mugs down. Honey. A plate of shortbread, because sugar helps even if science says otherwise. The domestic sound of it eases something sharp in my chest.
We file in. Take places. The kettle sings. The steam smells like chamomile and safety.
“Where do I even start?” I ask the rim of my mug.
“With the beach,” Alisha says, voice steady. “With how young you were.”
So I do, but I go back even further.
“It started when I was seventeen,” I say, and my voice doesn’t break, which feels like a miracle.
“Gavin Kelly was kind. He was—God—he was perfect at pretending. Flowers. Notes. He said I was his future. It felt… safe. Looking back, I now know he meant future as in the mafia, not the love of his life future.”
I talk. The words feel like stones I have to carry from one side of a river to the other. I set them down, one by one. Meeting him. His family’s shadows I told myself not to see. The proposal on the sand, the ring I thought meant forever, the wedding, the early sweetness.
“How old were you when you found out about your parents?” Joshua asks carefully.
“On my wedding day,” I answer. “I thought my dad was in private security. Sam knew. Selene and I didn’t.
Looking back, that was the point.” I take a breath.
“We got married. At the alter, he threatened me, but I thought maybe it was the stress, or showing he was powerful tot he rest of the congregated mafia in the chapel. But three months later, what was left of the kindness curdled entirely.”
I talk about the trying. The not conceiving. The first miscarriage. The second. The way he folded grief into a weapon and used my body to sharpen the blade. I keep my voice flat, because if I add feeling, I won’t survive the paragraph.
“When I ‘misbehaved,’ he’d slap me,” I say. “When I lost a baby, he’d make a show of it. Drag me out. Humiliate me. Sometimes worse.” The room goes very still. “Some of his men tried to stop him. He made examples of them.”
Brenden’s hand finds mine under the counter. His palm is hot. His thumb rubs that slow, grounding circle again and again like he’s telling my nervous system a story where I live.
“Eventually,” I say, and the word tastes like blood, “a doctor said I was ‘ready to try again’ after the fifth miscarriage.” Ready. Like a switch you flip. Like I’m a machine that just needed maintenance.
The next part lives in my throat like glass. I can’t swallow it down or cough it out.
I stare into my tea until the leaves blur. The room waits. Alisha’s hand is on my back, between my shoulder blades, an anchor.
“Do you want to finish, or do you want me to?” She asks quietly.
I shake my head, but it’s not a no. It’s an I don’t know.
Brenden’s voice comes from a softer place than I knew he had. “Siren.” I look up. He holds my gaze. “We can step out. Just you and me. You don’t owe anyone the worst parts unless you want to.”
The relief that floods me is humiliating and holy. I nod once. “Okay.”
I don’t remember moving. I only remember arms—his—under my knees and behind my shoulders, lifting me like I’m not heavy, like this isn’t.
“Go ahead and finish with the story for them,” he tells Alisha as he backs us out of the kitchen, and then we’re in the hall, the cool air a mercy on my face, the noise of the house falling away behind us as he carries me somewhere quieter.
Brenden carries me down the hall like the floor might splinter if my feet touch it.
His shoulder is solid under my cheek, his heartbeat steady and human in a way that keeps the world from spinning.
The smell of coffee and rain through the open window hits as he steps into the smaller sitting room off the terrace, a song playing through the window.
I would recognize it anywhere because it’s been my theme for so many years now.
You Should Be Sad by Halsey, her words hitting every single feeling I have had since that night in the hospital.
When we sit down, it’s quieter than when we were next to the window—dim light, soft leather, the hum of distant conversation fading behind us. I let the lyrics sink into me for a moment.
Oh I feel so sorry I feel so sad…I had no warning about who you are. I’m just glad I made it out without breaking down and then ran so fucking far. You would never touch me again. I’m so glad I never, ever, had a baby with you…
He doesn’t say anything. Just lowers me onto the couch, sits beside me, and waits. His hand stays on my knee—warm, unmoving. He has this way of making silence feel like permission, not pressure.
I stare at my hands. At the faint scar on my ring finger that’s never gone away. “It’s pathetic,” I whisper. “How much it still feels like he owns parts of me.”
Brenden shakes his head. “He owns nothing.”
I laugh, sharp and wrong. “He took everything. You can’t undo that.”
He doesn’t flinch. “Then we’ll build new things.”
The quiet stretches. The tea’s gone cold in my hand. I keep talking because if I stop, I’ll break.
“When the doctor said I could ‘try again,’ I knew what that meant. I knew what he’d do. But you can’t imagine what fear makes you agree to until it’s standing in front of you.”
My voice thins to a thread. “He wanted a son. Another chance to prove he was worth the bloodline. He said if I failed again, there wouldn’t be a next time.”
Brenden’s fingers tighten slightly on my knee—just enough to say I’m here.
“I hadn’t taken a test yet, so I didn’t know. It had been over a month since the doctor said I could try again. But I was pregnant. The sixth time. Early, but it was there.”
Brenden’s thumb was rubbing along my knee, his face looking pained. But not in a she was knocked up by another man pain. But more of a fear of what I was going to say next. And he was right to be afraid.
“I have had enough of you, you fucking cunt. You won’t give me an heir, so I am done playing games and waiting on you.”
“No—please, Gavin, don’t say that. I’m trying, I swear I am.
I can go back to the doctor, I’ll do whatever they say.
Just… don’t leave me.” The words spill out before I can stop them, fear flooding me, because I know when he says he’s done, it never ends well.
“No, you stupid bitch. I am not giving you up. How do you think I will take over the entire Western region if I don’t stay married to you?
Your father will never give it to me if you aren’t my wife.
” I am in shock, completely appalled by what he is saying to me. He never really loved me, did he?
“Instead, I am going to have you filled with cock all day and night to ensure that you don’t forget your most important job.”
The memories flooding back from that night into my mind.
“He said he was done waiting, and if I couldn’t hold his heir, he would make sure that–he would make sure that I at least held an heir.”
Brenden’s eyes darken, his face morphing into something more than angry. I look down once again and kept talking. Getting it out before I can’t any more.
“I’m not sure how many of them there were.
I think I stopped counting around twenty men.
Back to back. They raped me on the floor, lying my face on the couch, my knees on the floor.
I couldn't breathe. I had carpet burn for months afterwards everywhere. They tore me inside so badly I needed reconstruction surgery later on.”
I pause, catching my breath, sipping my cold tea, trying to gain strength from the dregs.
I take a deep gulp of air and continue, feeling as though I can’t catch my breath, the words coming out higher with tears accompanying them. “They kept pushing my face into the couch cushions.”
I stop talking for a moment, catching my breath and wiping my tears.
“Finally, mercifully, these two random women walked into the house. They screamed and left, and I was then moved to my room and locked in.”
“They gang raped you? He let his men fucking rape you? What does that accomplish for him?” Brenden’s eyes are wild, his face still in something more than anger, he can’t comprehend.
It took me a long time to realize that it wasn’t about getting an heir.
Not that night at least. It was about control.
I shake my head instead of replying to him, and continue the story, building up my nerve for this last part of the horror movie of a life.
“Next thing I know, I hear sirens, then a scuffle outside. I was locked inside, so I couldn’t go find out.
But then I heard the police calling for me and I started to pound on the door, knowing this was it.
It was my chance to escape. I was bleeding.
God–I was bleeding so badly. Officer Martin.
I’ll never forget him. He knew exactly what I needed, and couldn’t handle.
He was a blessing that night. They called an ambulance and took me to the hospital, where my mom, Selene, and Alisha met me. ”
The words scrape coming out. “I had passed out, and something went wrong. I was bleeding too much. They said they had to—” I stop. Can’t say it. My throat closes. The memory is all metal and antiseptic and the smell of burned fabric. I can still hear and smell it now.
I press a fist against my mouth, shaking. He moves closer but doesn’t pull me in; he lets me choose. I lean into him anyway.
“They took it,” I say finally, the words muffled against his shirt just trying to get anything out. “Everything. I can’t have kids. He made sure of that. I was hemorrhaging so badly, they had to take my uterus out.”
Brenden’s breath stutters once, like he’s trying not to break with me. Then he exhales, slow and controlled.
“I know what people think when they find out,” I say quietly. “They get that look. Pity. And part of why I never got close to any man ever since, outside of never wanting to be powerless ever again, I can never give a future partner any children.”
He turns my face toward him, thumb tracing the edge of my jaw. “You’ll never get pity from me, Siren. Only awe. For surviving that and still having enough left to care about anyone at all.”
His eyes are fierce, his sky blue eyes now dark and glassy like bottled stormlight. “I don’t want children out of you. I want peace with you. Whatever that looks like.”
Something cracks open in my chest. “You’re too good.”
“I’m just learning from you,” he murmurs.
We sit like that for a long time. My tears slow. His thumb keeps moving, patient circles over my skin. The window light shifts, washing the room in pale gold. For the first time in years, the ache in my ribs eases.
Brenden leans into my side, placing his lips against my ear, whispering only for me to hear. “I’m not going to let him keep living rent-free in the parts of you that deserve peace. We’ll deal with him. On our terms.”
I nod against his chin. The strength in his calm steadies me more than any promise of revenge.
After a while, I lift my head. “How do you do that?” I ask. “Sound angry and gentle at the same time.”
He half-smiles. “Practice. My mom taught me.”
“The one who said love shouldn’t feel like fear?”
“Yeah.” He looks away, eyes unfocused, voice low. “She believed it, even when it stopped being true for her. I was too young to stop it. Too young to understand.”
He pauses, ruminating in the old hurt. “She used to hum when she was scared. Same three notes. Like she could drown out whatever was coming. I didn’t get it then, but I do now. Sometimes, surviving is just finding a sound louder than the fear.”
Something in me unclenches. The confession isn’t loud or dramatic—it’s simple, human. And it feels like he’s handing me a matching scar to hold.
I touch his wrist. “Tell me more about her? About your childhood?”
He nods slowly. “Yeah,” he says, and his voice goes quieter still. “I’ll tell you.”
The light outside fades to silver. The sound of the river threads through the open window. He starts talking—about her laugh, the way she burned every meal, the way she once punched a cop for yelling at Corver—and the world feels small enough to fit in the space between his words.
For the first time in forever, I let it.