Chapter 31
Not even an hour later, I was downstairs awaiting the imminent arrival of my uncles. After I’d fucked Aurora, I’d taken her upstairs where she’d become nearly despondent on me. All the fantasies I’d harbored about breaking her had quickly turned into nightmares upon actually doing so.
On occasion, she would silently sob, and all I could do was hold her in my arms as each tremor not only tore something from her, but from me as well. I hadn’t been able to touch her enough, but I forced myself to do so anyway.
After, I dried her off and helped her into something comfortable enough to wear on the long flight across the Atlantic. My silence continued as I’d stood in the doorway watching her sitting with her back turned toward me and her knees up to her chin. I’d had no words to make her whole again.
I have none to make myself whole, either.
Eventually, I shook my head, then went downstairs to wait. Now, I knew they were minutes away from here. Cillian had called me the moment their flight had touched down, and Kingston followed that up with a message announcing their location.
KING:
About two blocks away.
A’ight. We’re here.
At least I was in the flesh. In spirit, not so much. My thoughts were all over the place, but they were not on the pool table, upstairs in the hallway, or even anywhere else in this godforsaken penthouse.
They were in Russia, which was a place I’d only been once in my lifetime.
They were with my Bellezza as she walked through the gardens holding the hands of a child that wasn’t ours.
.. Then later, smiling across the table during dinner at a man who wasn’t me.
.. And finally writhing underneath another and crying out his name as she came. A name that wasn’t mine.
These thoughts seemed to replace every real one inside my head. I hadn’t ever been so far outside of my own mind since I was a young boy. The more torture training my great-grandfather delivered, the more I’d imagined an actual father, and what mine should’ve been had he been alive.
I’d imagined the things the two of us would’ve done together, and each test I passed would cause the pride on his face to grow as he would look down at me and tell me how proud he was of me... And how I was such a great son...
Then another lash would come. Sometimes, my head would be plunged back into the tub of water.
And other times, I’d feel the fiery burn of hot pokers being pressed to my skin, and in places now covered by tattoos.
No matter what I endured, those foolish fantasies would disappear as my current Hell reminded me of what was real.
I hadn’t felt this desolate since those early years until now.
Only, I’d something to thrust me back into the here and now back then, but not right now. Not anymore. All I had now were those memories, along with ones of another stuffing her mouth with his cock, and my Bellezza choking on it as she had once done to mine.
Balling my hands into fists as more visions taunted me, I pounded them against my skull, managing to do nothing more than make my head throb.
Despite my state of pure exhaustion, I knew what my future entailed, and it was nothing like the roses, sunshine, and orgasms that hers did.
Once she was gone, I would return to that damned fight club, and I might never leave again.
The sound of the doorbell jolted me from my thoughts, and reluctantly, I walked to the door to open it.
Kingston and Cillian stepped inside, and I could see Conor and Liam there, along with a few of their own trusted soldiers.
When mine looked up at me, I shook my head in a silent command to stay outside.
They both sat down on the hallway bench as I closed the door between us. After, I turned to my uncles. I tried to school my emotions the best I could at the moment, but obviously not successfully, because King pursed his lips together and his eyes narrowed.
“You look like shit, Z,” Cillian said, perfectly describing my current state.
“It’s five in the morning, Cill,” I responded.
“Which is around midnight for the rest of us,” King added, and I simply shrugged.
Walking farther into the penthouse, I retrieved a bottled water from the refrigerator and held one up for them. They both declined and were silent as I twisted off the cap and forced down two aspirin from the bottle on top of the counter.
“This won’t take long, as we don’t have much time,” Kingston said.
Little did he know how wrong he was. All I had was fucking time, and with the pain sitting like a sharp weight on my chest, it’d likely be a long and miserable life at that.
“The private plane is fueled and ready on the tarmac,” Cillian said.
“So what’s the plan?” I asked, although I knew what it was.
They’re going to cut the rest of my heart out, then leave me broken and empty.
"We're going to turn the girl over, then—”
A final vision of Aurora flashed in front of my eyes, and this time it was after our final orgasm when I’d told her in no uncertain terms that she was mine. Goddamned mine at that.
"I can't let you do that. I won't let you do that."
Kingston let out a growl, but Cillian gripped his arm as if to tell him that he would straighten this out. Straighten me out. Kingston was having none of it as he tore his arm from his cousin’s reach.
“What the fuck are you talking about? You knew the plan up front."
“Plans can change—"
"Not this one, Z. She has to go," Cillian interjected.
Rage filled me, and I suspected that this was what Aurora had felt when she’d heard me earlier.
Panic filled my veins, and I was willing to do anything to keep her here with me.
As I looked at the only two men I’d ever respected, I realized what foreign territory this truly was.
I’d never denied them a thing, and their incredulity might’ve matched my own had the circumstances not been so dire.
“Over my dead body. Unless you're prepared to take me out, Aurora stays with me.”
"Do you hear yourself right now?” King asked me.
"Are you in love with her?" Cillian asked.
“She’s mine, and I refuse to let her go.
Call it love, lust, or some deranged and twisted obsession, but whatever it is, it's real.
I will not turn her over to another man, no matter who the hell he is and what the hell he can do for us.
No one else will touch what's mine and live to breathe afterward.
I'll take out anyone who comes between her and me.” Both men stared dumbfounded at me, until I added, “That includes family as much as foe.”
“You fucking ass—” Kingston started to say but was cut off by Cillian.
“They're going to be out for blood.”
“Then shed mine because I won't live without her.”
Kingston threw up his hands as Cillian sighed deeply. The two men walked to the other side of the room, and I downed what was left of my water. The seconds ticked away, and with every one that passed, the weight on my chest grew heavier. Finally, my uncles returned.
“You're actually willing to start a war over her?” Cillian asked.
Staying resolute, I nodded once before solidifying my response. “If need be, then abso-fucking-lutely.”
“Fuck! The position you're putting us in...” Kingston said as his voice trailed off.
I glanced upward, expecting the pause to have been because Aurora surfaced from her room, but there was no one up there. His pause had been because of me, and as my gaze met his, I could see the disappointment in his. But I also saw something else I couldn’t quite describe, either.
“Don't expect an apology because I'll never feel sorry for a single second I've spent with her. Not a goddamn one of them.”
“You're as stubborn as your father. If he could only see you now, he'd—"
“No! I'm nothing like him. I'm me, and I wish this family could finally see and accept me for who I am and not who they want me to be.”
“While your father lay on his deathbed, I'd promised him that he’d live a full life if he’d only come back to me. I couldn't fulfill that vow to him, but I realize now that I can keep my promise to his son instead.”
“King—” Cillian started to say, but my uncle silenced him.
“Zarren had been in our care for about a year when he’d had a nightmare one night.
I remember going to his room and watching his face as he thrashed around while fully asleep.
He’d kept crying out for his father while begging them to let him breathe.
I tried to wake him, but he was too far gone.
For over an hour, I watched as he relived likely torture from goddamn Ronan—waterboarding if I had to guess—and I felt the strangest fucking presence in the room with us.
It’d swept by me so quickly, and right in the middle of another of Z’s tortured screams, he quieted immediately.
I know it was Princeton. I knew it then, and once I made sure he was calm again, I left the room.
Just outside that door, I made a vow to help my nephew.
.. To make sure I could keep the promises to him that I’d once made to my brother. ”
“What are you saying?” I asked.
“If you love this girl as much as you believe you do, I'll be by your side in this.”
Cillian smiled at Kingston, then turned toward me.
“I’ll be as well. To have loved and lost is a fate I'd never wish upon you.
Money, territory, and everything else we have doesn't equate to power.
At least not when it's never actually been in our hands.
True power has never been ours when it's held not by oneself, but rather the one who controls our heart.”
The boulder weighing me down finally lifted, but there were now more questions than answers. I wanted nothing more than to race upstairs to tell my Bellezza that she was mine, now and forever, but I needed to know a few things first.
“So, what happens now?”
Kingston clapped the top of my shoulder as he approached me. “Let us deal with that. Just be ready when the chips fall.”
“I was born ready,” I muttered, and both men chuckled.
“Spoken like a true Brannington,” one of them said, and it didn’t even matter which one because all that did was that this chapter of the nightmare was finally over.