Chapter 28
twenty-eight
Xenia
Luther and Pierce are bloodied and bruised but they’re alive.
“Leave them be. They aren’t a part of this. I came here of my own volition.” I don’t look any of my alphas in the eyes as I speak. I would break in this moment if I did.
“She's ours,” Luther growls, spitting blood onto the ground. “I told you she came here by choice. I told you that she’s alive but you wouldn't listen, you wouldn't hear us.”
Vinny doesn't react, his entire focus is still on my face. On my breath, my cheeks, my lips, my eyes. On me. As if he is examining every part of me to make sure that I am in fact right in front of him, that I am alive.
The sensation causes my skin to crawl. He is a scientist, and I am a creature underneath a microscope.
I can tell the moment he believes that I am in fact alive in his arms. His eyes narrow, his nostrils flare. His tight hold turns crushing, painful. “What would make you come here?”
My attention skirts over my three men. Luther and Pierce are tied to chairs but Wren is quickly undoing the knots and no one is stopping him, but some of Vinny’s men hold guns pointed firmly at my alphas.
“I’ll tell you the truth, but you have to promise not to hurt them. Everything that happened here is my choice.” I use my hands to push off of Vinny’s chest, forcing him to let me go. I stumble a bit as gravity tugs me to the floor.
Carefully, so as not to startle Vinny, I move, placing myself between the alphas and him. Creating a physical barrier.
He raises his hand, and his men holster their weapons. Even so, none of us dare to move.
“Their son witnessed something he shouldn’t have. Explain to me how you ended up here if not for them using you as protection,” Vinny growls, his hands clenching and unclenching into fists. “It's clear to me that they found a Rossi by design.”
“They didn't even know I was going to be here. I got the address from the clinic. They turned me away when they realized I was a Rossi. Thought I was sent here because of you.” I turn to face Luther. To tell him what I should have before now.
His lips are busted, his left eye already swelling, but still he offers me the softest of smiles.
“Just over a month ago, I went to First Chapter Clinic to ride out my heat.”
“You didn’t.” Vinny’s voice is bitter frost behind me.
I don’t turn to face him. “I did.”
“You all get out!” Vinny shouts into the room.
I am confused by who he is talking to, but then I watch his goons retreat, hear everyone leave.
“Boss?” Marcus is seemingly the last straggler. “Are you sure? Serena—”
“Serena isn’t here. Go. I will be fine,” Vinny barks.
When Marcus leaves too, Vinny walks up until he is pressed against my back. His arms wrap me to him from behind. “You’re pregnant.” The words ghost my ear.
Shock, confusion.
How can he possibly know that?
“Stay still,” Vinny warns the alphas.
Luther breaks free from his restraints, but then there is hard and cool metal pressed to my temple.
The sensation is…familiar? But it doesn’t scare me in the slightest.
As if I had guns pressed to my head so often I had become numb to it.
That doesn’t make any sense. None of this does.
“Let her go.” Pierce stands, pieces of rope falling to the ground, he is bowed up and ready to charge. But even still, I can see he is injured. It is in the way he sways forward. In the visible swelling of his cheek where it was clear he had been hit. “It’s us you are after. Charles.”
Vinny shakes against my back, a dark chuckle vibrating into the room.
“It’s not. It was always her. It has always been her.
But as soon as my brother knew. As soon as I showed a spark of interest, he chased her down.
Forced her to be his. Drugged her until she enjoyed his scent.
” Vinny traces the gun against the mark Tony left on me.
“Mated her.” He trails it down my arms. “Tortured her.” He points the gun at my alphas.
I shiver in discomfort at his touch. His familiar sickly sweet scent turns my stomach, but it’s his words that leave the most residual damage.
“Tony was a good man. He kept his distance from the family, from you.” The words are emotionless as they leave my lips. A mantra I repeat. A story I made up to relay to anyone who asked.
I don’t expect for Vinny to twist me around, for him to shake me.
“Do you still not remember? Are you still repressing everything?” His eyes are wild, unfocused. “Tony was the head of the family for fuck’s sake! Until he died! Until you killed him!”
My entire world upends, shakes, dissolves.
Until you killed him.
The gun.
Until you killed him.
The shots.
Until you killed him.
The blood.
“No!” I scream. “No! No! No!”
Bringing my hands up, I cover my ears. My legs give out but Vinny doesn’t let me fall.
It all comes crashing through. Every repressed thought, the pain, the trauma.
The end.
I am a murderer.
A killer.
“Help her!” Vinny urges, and then three scents infiltrate my panic. “Fuck! All I wanted was for her to live. To be safe. To remember. I don’t want her to suffer, not any longer. But she has to face this.”
The citrus and bergamot and sandalwood and spearmint wash through me.
Vinny releases me and my vision blurs as he steps back, allowing my alphas to hold me to them. To keep me anchored in this moment. I recognize Luther’s calm, Pierce’s warmth, Wren’s stability.
They provide the safety for my mind to relinquish itself to the past. To my darkest hours.
Tony wasn’t a good man. He was the worst alpha. And a horrible mate.
“Xenia, it’s time. You can’t keep burying this. Tony was not your true mate, he forced his mark on you. Made you marry him. Threw you in that closet to live most of your days. Until you fought back and killed him.”
My eyes water, as Vinny continues speaking. I want to argue, to disagree. But the truth lands in my chest, it worms its way down to my gut and up to my brain, a parasite. It pries my mind apart and unleashes years of suppressed pain and agony.
“I am not broken! I am not broken! I am not broken!” The words echo around me, each louder than the last, more distant. As if they are coming from down a long empty hallway.
But even still, I know they are mine.
My heart beats into my throat, thousands of spiders trail across my skin, and the syrupy scent fills my lungs to the point I am choking on it.
Tony’s scent. It is the same as Vinny’s. And I realize in this moment…
I never grew accustomed to it. I always hated it.
I can’t breathe.
My world shifts on its axis as I remember what I so desperately attempted to forget.