Chapter 34
YELENA
Telling Achilles about Kyle was one thing.
A really big one, that I wasn’t even sure I was going to survive.
But the second conversation about what happened this past summer that I have later that afternoon, at home at Greymoor with my mom, almost breaks me.
Mom isn’t like Achilles. She doesn’t have his near-superhuman ability to be a wall of raw strength to a level verging on psychotic.
I don’t blame her for that at all.
In fact, I think I need a release now that I’ve let what happened this past summer out into the world.
Achilles’ brutally icy strength was what I needed when I divulged what happened for the first time. But now, with Mom, I do need the collapse.
The tears, pain, and heart-wrenching sorrow.
Only after you die can you be resurrected.
But my mother knows me well enough to know that despite the cathartic release of the tears and the pain, I don't need her pity.
Just her love, which is exactly what she gives me.
Mom lets me cry into her shoulder as she cries into mine. She tells me how strong I am, and how much she loves me, and how nothing like this can ever break me, or take away who and what I am.
The first conversation with Achilles was catharsis.
The second with my mother is a healing release.
The third conversation with my father an hour later when he gets home is downright bone-chilling.
Not because I’m scared of how he’ll look at me. Maybe I was terrified of that once, but not now, after sending all my pain into Achilles and letting him consume it.
No, the icy fear that I feel when I tell my dad what Kyle did this past summer is because I’m worried how he might react to the rest of the world.
When I tell him, the room goes utterly silent, and the look that spreads over his face like a storm cloud is apocalyptic.
It’s the low rumble of a vengeful army marching into battle, their war drums thudding in the distance.
The quiet whistle of an atom bomb as it descends from the sky.
The throbbing, flexing wrath of an angry god.
But… There’s no explosion.
No flash-fire release of fury and rage.
There might have once been a time when Nero De Luca would have reacted like that. But in the version of him I’ve known my whole life, thanks to my mother, his explosiveness takes a back seat to protectiveness.
“Little wolf.”
He chokes the words as I start to cry, then lurches from his chair and bolts to me across the sitting area in his office.
A sob rips from my throat as he drops to his knees in front of me and pulls me into his arms, holding me tight and rocking me gently as he strokes my hair, just like he did when I was a kid.
“I didn’t want to tell you,” I weep through hot tears. “I know how much money is tied up with the deal with Angelo, how important—”
“None of that matters, honey,” he rasps. “You could always have told me—”
“I felt like a fraud,” I choke, squeezing his hands in one of mine. More tears stream down my cheeks as my other hand slides up to wrap around the little silver pendant hanging from my neck. “You always call me little wolf, but I felt weak and pathetic, like me and my problems were this drag—”
“Yelena,” Dad croaks, his face haggard as he reaches up to cup my cheek and brush a tear away with his thumb. “I didn’t call you that because I expected you to be a stoic, lone wolf. You’re my little wolf because you’re part of my pack.”
A fresh wave of tears blurs my vision. “B-but you and Mom…you’re like…” I look away. “You’re these larger-than-life gods—”
“I’m no god, honey,” he says quietly. “Just your dad.”
I start to sob. “I didn’t want to disappoint you. I didn’t want to be this burden or mess you had to clean—”
“Yelena, honey, look at me,” he chokes, cupping my face and forcing my eyes back to his as he kneels in front of my chair. “You’re my daughter, and there is no one else on this Earth like you.”
I cough out a harsh, haggard, mirthless laugh. “But I disappoint—“
“No. You fucking humble me,” he hisses fiercely.
“Mom humbles you.”
He shakes his head. “Your mother takes my breath away and makes me forget how to fucking talk,” he smiles. “But we’re partners. She doesn’t humble me. You do, sweetheart,” he hisses. “No one has ever managed to do that but you.”
I collapse into him, crying and clinging to him like I’m a little kid. Dad just holds me, hugging me and stroking my hair, and tells me that everything is going to be okay.
That he’s proud of me.
That he loves me unconditionally. That nothing I could ever do or say or need from him would ever change that.
“What do you want me to do, little wolf?” he finally says quietly, still holding me in his arms and gently stroking my hair.
My brows knit as I lift my face from his shoulder a little. “What do you mean?”
“What I mean,” he says quietly, “is making your pain into my pain is what small men do. Making what happened to you about my honor, pride, or rage—that’s not being your father.
That’s being yet another man deciding what your story is.
” He gently cups my cheeks, his fierce eyes meeting mine.
“You don’t need my outrage, sweetheart. You need to know that what happened to you doesn’t change a single fucking thing about how I see you. Or how much I love you.”
A fresh sob rips from my throat as I throw my arms around his neck and hug him tightly.
“Honey,” he growls, “I will burn this entire city to ash if you ask me to. I’ll go to war this very second and drag that motherfucker and every member of his family out into the street. But only if that’s what you want.”
I shake my head, smiling grimly. “That’s not what I want.”
“Then I’ll wait and do what you want, only when you want it,” he murmurs, stroking my hair. He exhales. “The building deal, obviously, is off, though.”
I frown as I pull back. “No, Dad, there’s way too much riding on—”
“You are my daughter,” he growls, holding me tighter.
“Fuck the deal. There is nothing in this world that matters more to me than my family. Nothing.” Dad pulls back, his face crumpled as he takes my hands in his and looks into my eyes.
“You, your brother, and your mother are all that matter to me. You’re all that ever will matter to me, until the oceans run dry and the mountains crumble. ”
My heart surges as I hug him tightly.
“I love you,” I whisper.
“I love you too, little wolf.”