6. Hayat
CHAPTER SIX
hayat
If my face hadn’t felt like it was one massive throb from the blows I’d received from Sancho and his goon who had helped snatch me from the mall, I would have thought I was in some kick-ass action thriller.
Definitely one where my cousin Arella would wear some sexy, stiletto-heeled boots and a skintight outfit that showed off a body that defied the laws of nature. I mean, it was like she popped out a kid every other year, but no sooner had she given birth than she was back to being Hollywood’s most beautiful bombshell.
Not fucking fair at all.
But no high-beam spotlight blinded me as Arella’s silhouette slowly swayed her hips into the scene. Reality wasn’t nearly as sexy as the movie industry wanted viewers to believe. Worse than the letdown of all that exciting beauty, the stench that came from whatever explosives were being used made me lose control of my ability to keep the churning bile in my stomach.
Leaning over, I puked again and again. I groaned. Tears spilled down my face, mixing with the snot flowing from the force of my heaves and the stinging smell of the acrid gases polluting the air in the room. I heard creaking sounds coming from all around me, flames shooting out of a power outlet on one wall. If I hadn’t felt like total shit, I would have been more concerned about the structural integrity of the building. All it would take was one more well-placed blast, and the entire place would cave in on top of me.
But other than a queasy stomach and continuing to gag from the fumes and dust in the air, I felt oddly unafraid.
Especially when I heard a deranged giggle, followed by Sammy singing “Hush Little Baby” in the creepiest, most terrifying tone I’d ever heard.
Ah, fuck. Now, I was never going to be able to sing that nursery rhyme to my baby.
I could almost picture the path she’d taken to get to me, no doubt littered with the kind of carnage not even Arella’s supervillainess movies could generate.
Sammy appeared in front of me like she owned the shadows. They were under her control, just like everything else she touched. With the overhead light still flickering, I saw the craziness of her eyes, the mania she could normally disguise coming out to greet me like a dear friend. She gently smoothed my hair back from my face. Deceptively gentle, tender. I knew she was a killer. I’d been witness to how depraved she could become when that crazy switch got flipped.
Lynn Berkeley’s screams occasionally filled my nightmares.
But the love I saw blinking back at me from those startling, beautiful blue eyes always reminded me that I was safe with Sammy. Bending, she brushed a kiss over my brow before using a blade to cut the cable ties that had held my wrists to the chair.
“Abi?” I rasped. “Amala?”
“Both safe with my brother. Abi had some Braxton-Hicks when she first realized you were missing. But she’s fine now,” she assured me, and I nearly sagged in relief. Carefully, Sammy rubbed the blood flow back into my wrists before helping me stand.
Of all the things that could have stuck out as odd when it came to the Vitucci siblings’ relationships with one another, that Sammy always referred to Vaughn as her brother was the strangest. But when it came to Ryan, the second-eldest son and the heir to the Vitucci dynasty, she typically only sneered.
That Sammy had only discovered Vaughn’s existence around roughly the same time as Abi had fallen in love with him, yet she had grown up with Ryan, didn’t seem to matter. Ryan was always cold with everyone, with the exception of his wife, their two children, and Anya. There was one of their cousins, Ciana, whom he was affectionate toward. But Sammy always muttered curses in Russian under her breath whenever Ciana and her husband were around.
Vaughn’s dynamic within the Vitucci family had confused me in the beginning as well. He was tender with Sammy, openly affectionate to their father, who suffered from dementia, and he tolerated his mother’s presence for Abi’s sake. He didn’t converse with Ryan unless it was a life-and-death situation. And so far, I hadn’t been present for any such events between the two brothers who shared the same father biologically, but had different mothers, yet looked almost identical.
My knees buckled, but Sammy was there to hold me up. “Your men were right behind me. They should be here soon. I move faster on my own, and I knew you would be worried about them, so I cleared a path for them to find us easily.”
Leaning into her, I pressed my face to her shoulder. She smelled like smoke, blood, something a little floral, and… safety . It was a bizarre combination of scents to inspire the relief of feeling protected. Sammy was easily the villain in many people’s stories, but in mine, she was the heroine. One of my safe places. Abi’s and Amala’s protector. And that made her one of the most important people in the world to me. I would do anything for her.
Anything.
And she had shown me time and time again that she would do anything for me.
The adrenaline rush was fading, exhaustion weighing down on me heavier than the piece of ceiling that pinned Sancho to the floor. “Did I kill him?”
“Do you want to be the one who killed him?” she asked quietly. No judgment, but genuinely wanting to know for no other reason than my own sake.
“I just don’t want Sparks to be the one to do it. I don’t want him to have his father’s blood on his hands.”
“But it’s okay that his blood is on your shoes?”
“Yes.” I didn’t even have to think about the answer to that question. Sparks had already been put through too much because of Sancho Guerrero. I didn’t want his blood on my love’s hands.
“He wants to be the one who takes Sancho’s beating heart from his chest.” I shuddered, but she smoothed her hands down my arms, her upper body taking most of my weight since I was losing more energy by the second. “His heart no longer beats, Hayat. That’s not just blood on your shoes. You’re wearing his brains as well.”
“His brains…are on… His brains are on my shoes. ” My voice cracked, the first hole in the armor around my heart making itself known. Tears filled my eyes. “My shoes.”
“Yes,” she whispered, as if she knew the answer would break me, but she wouldn’t lie to me.
“They are my favorite shoes. Were. They were my favorite.”
“I’m sorry,” she said with sincerity, her blue eyes darkening with remorse.
A deep gorge opened in the center of my chest, memories crumbling off the sides. Washed away. Gone. Forever. They were only shoes, damn it. But the last part of me that had held on to the love I still felt for Pop-Pop and Nana—for Maddie… That had held on to the hope that maybe one day we could all be a family again…
None of that was possible now. It never had been. Not after all the years that they had left my hurt to fester.
Sobbing, I hugged Sammy crushingly tight to me with the last of my strength. Heartbreak and loss were tearing me apart, but not for the right reasons.
I’d just killed a man. I’d kicked him so hard, countless times, that I had squishy brain matter on the soles of my shoes. And I couldn’t bring myself to care that I’d taken someone’s life.
Yet my heart was broken over the loss of a pair of shoes.
It wouldn’t make sense to anyone normal. But thankfully, Sammy was beyond such mundane bullshit as normalcy. She hugged me back, murmuring promises that I never questioned whether she would keep. She held me together until I felt three pairs of arms surrounding me, and then she melted back into the shadows while Ky, Sparks, and Jamie wrapped me back up in our bubble that was just for us.
They were all breathing heavily, their entire bodies trembling against mine so forcefully that it felt like my bones rattled. Or maybe that was just me. I honestly couldn’t tell.
Sparks and Ky carefully checked my face. Those chocolate browns had darkened with his wrath and fear as they searched mine. Ky’s storm-cloud gray eyes bobbed over my hair, forehead, nose, cheeks, lips. Every injury he and Sparks saw only accelerated their breathing, that trembling turning into the warning of what my three men would do to protect me.
Not that I wasn’t at fault.
I should have told them about the suspected stalker.
Jamie brushed his hands carefully down my arms before he got to my wrists. My fingertips still tingled from the lack of blood flow, but I had deep grooves across the skin of my wrists. Holy fuck. I hadn’t realized that the cable ties were so tight.
But then again, I had been struggling against the restraints pretty forcefully. No wonder my skin was a bruised mess.
Sparks swallowed hard, never once taking his eyes off me. I was glad for that, because I didn’t want him to see the crushed-in face of his dad on the floor a few feet away. With his pinkie, he brushed a few curls back from my face.
His voice was laced with torment, his eyes glistening with tears. “I’m so sorry, goddess.”