Chapter 18 #2
Waiting for judgment, punishment, or rejection, is always the worst part.
I can’t bear to look at their faces and see the moment that they turn cold.
I can’t bear to see the love drain from their eyes.
“When I am a bad boy I deserve to be punished because…” D’Angelo starts to read out my essay with so much fury in his voice that my head snaps up.
Anguished, I rush to explain, “Blythe made me write it before the last game. She always liked to make me write essays like that. She has photos and videos of me, darlin’, and she said that they were ready to publish in thousands of places, along with her story about my time as her sub if I didn’t.”
“That’s why you were so distracted,” Eden says.
I swallow. “I’m sorry.”
I can’t read D’Angelo’s expression, and that’s making me shake harder.
I dare to glance at Robyn. I expect judgment or maybe pity. But instead, there is only understanding in her eyes.
She abandons the phone and drops to crawl across the floor toward me. “I want to hug you so fucking much right now. Is that okay?”
I blink at her in confusion.
Does she still not understand what’s going on? What I’ve done?
But I want her touch just as much. Selfishly, I nod.
Robyn dives to wrap her arms around me, dragging my head onto her shoulder.
“It’ll be all right,” she murmurs. “I swear. It must have been frightening and lonely having this weighing on you. But it’s out in the open now. We’re in this together with you.”
With Robyn’s warm arms around me, I can let myself believe that.
“What are these emojis?” Eden’s voice is low.
“A code,” I force myself to reply. “Blythe would use them to tell me what to expect would happen in a scene, before I met up with her. I hated the ace of hearts the most because it’s the punishment card.”
“She must have sent you over hundred threatening texts over the last few weeks,” D’Angelo says, icily. I stiffen. “Interesting. Do you have a different definition for contacting directly? Maybe you need it to be an engraved handwritten note to count?”
I wince. “I lied.”
“Why? Don’t you trust me?”
When hurt flashes across D’Angelo’s face, before he can hide it, my guts twist.
Something else that’s my fault.
“I don’t trust Blythe,” I insist. “She—”
D’Angelo’s fingers tighten around my phone, cracking the screen. “According to this, she made you write degrading insults on yourself, which I know breaks your hard limits. It’s clear now why you’ve struggled to play hockey. How could I be a good captain to you after that?”
Robyn pulls back from me in shock. “Is that the ink that was smudged on your inner thigh that time?”
Miserably, I nod. “Sorry, love.”
“I knew that something was wrong,” D’Angelo says, “and I didn’t want to push you because I thought that moving in with me may be part of it.
Or possibly, that I introduced you to On the RACK too soon.
This is a big adjustment for all of us. I wasn’t sure if you were having second thoughts and I was too scared to examine that in case I was right. ”
I stare at him in shock.
How can this legend of a man think that? This is a bloody mansion. He’s invited Eden and me to share his glamorous life, including his decadent nighttime world.
Yet he’s now anxiously leaning on the top of the piano and tapping rhythms of three on the gleaming top.
He runs his fingers through his curls. “But that was my mistake and my responsibility. I was at fault for not realizing that Blythe could have found a way to hold power over you even from a different country. I should have remembered that your safety comes first over everything else.”
I gape at him.
Is he serious?
How far do I have to push this man to find his limit? Smash that Steinway behind him? Steal the keys to his beloved Alfa Romeo and drive it off a bloody cliff?
Isn’t he ever going to break and beat me?
Suddenly, Eden growls, snatching the phone from D’Angelo. He hurls it to the marble floor, smashing it. Then he grinds it under his heel.
We all freeze.
Eden is breathing hard.
“Well,” D’Angelo arches his brow, “that will make retrieving the information harder to make a case against Blythe. But Garcia is up to a challenge. Your brother has made it clear that you’ll be receiving a new phone, Shay, which security will be making damn sure Blythe and her aliases can’t get the number for.
We are playing and winning these next three games to make the playoffs, then we’ll work out a solution together that puts that bitch behind bars. ”
I stare at him. “She hasn’t broken any laws.”
D’Angelo’s expression becomes feral. “She’s actually broken multiple state and federal laws. I have the best fucking lawyers, and if Blythe thinks that she is going to walk away from this, then she is fucking na?ve.”
Desperate, I scramble to my knees. “Wait, we can’t do anything before we win these games.”
D’Angelo tilts up his chin. “We are winning them.”
Doesn’t he understand the stakes? How truly dangerous Blythe is?
She isn’t Heine.
And Heine still poisoned Robyn and me and locked up D’Angelo in his own playroom. The difference is that Heine was motivated by a toxic love, whereas Blythe is much more dangerous because she never loved me.
She only wants to possess me.
Now, she’s motivated by nothing more than a toxic hate.
“Dee,” I push myself to my feet on shaky legs, stumbling toward my brother because he’s the only one who was there the first time and so knows the most about Blythe, “tell D’Angelo why we can’t—”
“How can I tell him anything,” Eden takes a smart step back from me like he can’t stand to be touched right now, except he’s never backed away from me before; it drives the breath from me, “when you didn’t tell me anything?”
I stop dead.
“I wanted to protect you.” It sounds weak.
It is.
Eden’s dark gaze meets mine unwaveringly. “You swore after what Blythe did last time…after how I found you…that you would always come to me.”
I know what he’s not saying: if I hadn’t been able to talk about what Blythe had been doing to me with Robyn and D’Angelo, then he would have understood, but I’d made a promise to tell him.
We never break promises to each other.
I become ashen, swaying. “Dee…”
Eden’s eyes flash, before he grabs me by the arm and tugs me closer. “You will always tell me if you’re being hurt. We’re the Circle of Twins. I’m not invisible.”
“You’re not.” I grab him around the neck, yanking his forehead to rest against mine; we’re both breathing too hard. “I know that.”
“Swear to me.”
“I swear.”
I hurt my twin.
The guilt is making my skin itch. I want to scratch it off.
I twirl away to face D’Angelo. My eyes are wild.
“Punish me,” I more demand than beg.
D’Angelo shakes his head, exchanging a complicated glance with Robyn, who pushes herself to her feet.
“Do you want me to beg?” I grit out. “Bloody punish me. I lied to your face. I hid that someone else was domming me. I hurt all of you. I…”
“Want to admit that you’re Jack the Ripper as well?
Take responsibility for the sinking of Atlantis?
” D’Angelo snatches me by the scruff of the neck and yanks me closer.
His gaze is chilly enough to make me shiver.
“You will be punished, cucciolo.” He shakes me.
“But only for hurting yourself by writing those untrue words on your body and writing that essay, which breaks our negotiated rules. You know better than to punish yourself. Only I have the right to discipline you. But all the rest…? I don’t victim blame.
Blythe is the guilty one here. You know what I want most… ?”
He tugs me even closer, and my breath stutters.
I can’t look away from D’Angelo’s intense blue eyes. His words are so unexpected that I don’t know what to think.
It’s like falling off the edge of a high cliff, but instead of breaking your bones on the hard ground far below, you find that you’ve landed on the soft mattress placed underneath.
“I want you to show her how strong you are,” D’Angelo says, fiercely. “I want you to show her that you are going to win both these ice hockey games and the game of cards. You’re going to call her bluff.”
“What if she’s not bluffing?” I ask, quietly.
“She may play poker online professionally. But I play it in real life, and the stakes are the man I love’s entire life.
It gives me the advantage. And I say that she’s bluffing about sharing the photos, videos, and the story.
She would be admitting to crimes, even if she spins that it was consensual. She won’t take that risk.”
“We’ll protect each other.” Robyn walks closer, laying her hand on my shoulder.
“It isn’t all on you to do that. It never was.
You’re going to slay in that game tomorrow.
Then we’ll meet up with Cody and Neve for our Friday night out at Merchant’s Inn and together, we’ll work out how to kick Blythe’s ass.
You have friends now. Family. No matter how much Blythe tried to drag you back to a place where you felt that you were alone, you’re not. ”
She didn’t abandon me.
I still have a place here.
Warmth spreads through my chest.
Then I hear Eden speak, and his voice is rumbling and filled with the type of danger that has bubbled beneath his quiet surface his entire life, whenever I have been threatened, “And I’ll find a way to take revenge.”