Chapter 34 Mikail
MIKAIL
The bullet rings as loudly as the anguish ripping me apart.
Everything happens in slow motion. My first thought is Dahlia.
If the bullet even grazes her, I am going to fucking murder the asshole.
I scan her from head to toe, getting the irrefutable proof she’s not injured, and I instantly calm down, breathing a deep sigh of relief.
I don’t even care to check on myself. I knew the risk and went with it, disregarding reality.
She’s patting me erratically as if her touch alone could heal me. Her sobs go straight to my chest, wreaking carnage.
I am still standing while Enzo keeps the gun pointed at me. So, I am not dead. Yet. Glancing down at my body, I see no bullet has entered me. No hole. No blood. Looking to my left, I notice the bullet embedded in the wall.
Knowing it’s not over, I shield her from the showdown.
Cupping her face, I tell her, “I need you to go to the bedroom and wait for me.”
Through blurry eyes, she shakes her head. “No,” she stammers through a full-body shake. “I can’t.”
Witnessing her disarrayed state makes me murderous. I’d like nothing more than to end Enzo for pulling this shit with her present.
“Don’t fucking touch her,” he roars.
I snap my head at him, narrowing my eyes to slits. “Be pissed all you want, but not even if you empty all the bullets into me, will I stop touching her.”
I wrap her in my arms, needing to comfort her as she sobs in my chest. “I’m so sorry. So sorry.”
“Please, stop crying. It’s killing me, baby girl.” I kiss the top of her head, and she claws her fingers in my chest as if making sure nothing can take me from her.
I stare down the asshole who came to my house to discover the so-called betrayal. Fuck, I should have known that the moment he suspected something, nothing would have stopped him from pursuing the truth.
One more night and I would have told him. But the asshole is fucking impatient. It’s my fault. I should have told him the first moment he returned.
“Let’s go home, Dahlia. Now,” he says with finality.
From deep within me, the need to claim her unfurls, and I grit my teeth. “She’s not going anywhere.”
His eyes turn to arrows ready to strike me down. “You really want to die, asshole?”
“Fucking try. You can rip my cold, dead body away from her,” I snap. Pulling her to my chest, I erase every inch of space between our bodies.
When Dahlia stops shaking, I urge her to the bedroom, but she rips herself from my arms and runs down the stairs.
For a moment, I forget Enzo is her brother, but an enemy I want to take apart for being a potential danger to her. I take off after her.
Luckily, he lowers the gun before she reaches him. She pushes at his chest, looking so hurt, my need to comfort her overriding my self-preservation instincts.
“If one bullet hits him, you can forget that you have a sister. I’d kill myself just to be with him.”
Her words rip through the air, more lethal than any bullet.
His eyes widen, eyeing me with pure malice. “What the fuck did you do to her?”
Glaring at him, I gnash my teeth, trying and failing by the second to keep myself under control.
I pull her to my side. Turning her around, I palm her face, watching him from the corner of my eye, needing to stay alert.
“Baby girl, please go upstairs.”
I must tread carefully. Not for his sake or mine, but for hers, the sunshine in my life who warms the cold nights, brightens my dark world, and lights up my entire being.
“We were planning to tell you. Tomorrow. You couldn’t have waited one more night?” she cries out, switching from an emotional mess to an angry one. They have that in common—being temperamental as fuck.
Enzo blinks at her as if not understanding what to think.
He paces, waving the gun through the air. “Since fucking when?” he demands.
Just then, my sister bursts through the door and notices the scene.
She rushes to Enzo, and they have a quiet, heated argument. I can’t hear with the adrenaline rushing through my body. The fight instinct blares in my ears, deafening me.
She stretches out her hand. “Give me the gun.”
He reluctantly slaps the Glock in her palm and leans against the wall, sulking.
Then she turns to us and stabs us with a hard look.
Dahlia’s head falls in silent apology.
Fuck if I’ll allow her to feel sorry for loving me.
“Dahlia, look at me.” She does and I continue. “Remember who you are.”
She offers me a small but filled with assurance smile, and then I snap my head to my sister. “Sorry we messed up your plans,” I say, my tone condescending. “Now, take that hothead of a husband and leave us the fuck alone.”
“I’m not leaving without my sister,” he grits out.
Calla rolls her eyes at him as if saying, really?
His chest heaves with a sigh. “How long have you known?” he asks his wife.
Still in my arms, I tuck Dahlia to my chest. She is motionless, resembling a damn statue. It doesn’t sit well with me and only makes my anger worse. I barely control myself as it is.
“I realized from the first moment I saw them together,” Calla murmurs, her voice laced with apology.
He slants me a deadly glare that I hold firmly, staring right back at him. I need a damn outlet just as much.
“Was I the only blind idiot who thought you saw her as your sister? Since when—”
“I would never have touched her like that,” I snap, interrupting him.
“And I wanted that really badly,” Dahlia whispers.
If it weren’t such a dire situation, I would have chuckled at her words. That’s my woman.
When our eyes lock, I forget we have company. And that company wants to end me.
“Stop looking at her like that,” he shouts again.
I march into his face and slam a fist to my chest. “Like fucking what? Like she’s my life. The only reason I wake up every miserable day of my life?”
Taken aback, he opens and closes his mouth for a moment before he throws a hook to my left cheek.
Dahlia shrieks, and my sister rolls her eyes.
Cracking my jaw, I spit the blood coating my mouth at his feet. He throws a punch like a pussy. It takes everything in me not to say that out loud.
Calla snaps her fingers, getting our attention. She sweeps the gun from me to her husband. “Don’t make me use it because I will, you stubborn idiots. You’re both in time out.”
“My fucking sister. The girl he watched grow up.” He eyes Calla as if to make her understand. My sister arches a brow at him, seemingly unimpressed.
I gnash my teeth so hard my molars might crack.
“He’s not a pervert.” Dahlia tries while I drag in a lungful of air. He’s pissing me off so badly that I am really struggling not to pummel his face.
“Fucking when was the first time?” he asks, staring me down.
I glance at Dahlia, needing her to understand I don’t want to lie anymore. I can’t regret the first time because that interlinked our souls forever.
“When she was eighteen,” I confess.
His eyes widen, figuring out, and my sister rushes to his side, the hard part only now commencing.
“It was your father who killed mine. He wasn’t a savior. He was a killer. And he kidnapped my sister for three fucking days,” he spits as if I need a fucking reminder.
The memories throw a bucket of grime on me. Not even if I submerge in holy water would it cleanse me. It’s her soft touch that brings me back.
Right next to my side, Dahlia squares her shoulders, shifting into a woman you don’t want to mess with. I am in awe of her.
She stabs a hard finger at him. “He killed his father, his men, for me. Do you want the gory details of that, brother?” That one word causes him to flinch, and she continues, “He did what he had to do, literally and figuratively, to get me out as unscathed as he could, and when he got his chance, he didn’t hesitate. He slaughtered them all.”
She looks up at me and smiles softly. “I wouldn’t have made it without him.”
“You wouldn’t have needed to if I hadn’t invited him into our lives,” the asshole mumbles.
“You fucking asshole.” I am about to march over to him and punch him when Dahlia presses a hand on my chest, holding me in place.
“Nothing you could have done would have changed it. He’s my destiny. Not even you have the power to bend fate to your will, big brother. He’s your best friend, but he has always been mine—my everything.”
“Did you fucking brainwash her?” he says through gnashed teeth, but the fight slips from his hard features.
Calla swipes her head toward him. “Stop being a damn asshole. They love each other.”
He grumbles something under his breath and turns to leave.
“You betrayed my trust,” he sighs, looking at a fixed point on the wall. The jab could be intended for me as well as for all three of us.
No bullet could have come closer to injuring me more than that one sentence.
“Let’s go, Enzo, or I’m dragging you home by any means necessary,” Calla says.
“Climb down the moral ladder. I guess I haven’t been the only one who kept secrets,” I retort. I am guilty, but he’s no better.
Yes, asshole. Let’s not forget that.
He comes to an abrupt stop, flips me off, and stares at his wife. “You knew.”
Calla glares at him. “Stop looking at me like I betrayed you, or you’ll sleep on the fucking couch tonight.”
They stare at each other, trapped in a battle of wills.
His jaw tightens. “You wouldn’t dare, wife.”
She tilts her head. “Try me, husband.”
He mumbles something unintelligible, moving reluctantly to the door.
“I’m sorry,” Calla mouths over her shoulder.
We should be the ones to feel bad about putting her in this precarious position.
I know it’s up to me to fix the situation, but I have no damn clue how.
At the door, he grips the handle. “Will you come home with me?” he asks Dahlia, his tone losing the hardness.
She runs to Enzo and hugs him tightly. “You’ve been the best brother I could have wished for. But I love him. And home is wherever he is.”
He sighs. “So you choose him over me. Over your family?”