Chapter 43 #3
My body was wrecked with the force of the truth.
I hated that I spoke these words but loved that, finally, someone else could carry the burden of them with me.
“The broken bottle inside me tore me to shreds. Tiernan found me some time later, naked and wounded. He carried me back to camp, which was a forty-minute walk, hefting my injured body through the snow. When he got there, he didn’t go to the camp’s doctor.
She was one of Igor’s mistresses and knew how much Igor wanted us dead.
“Instead, he went to a woman named Olga who ran the camp. Threatened her with a kitchen knife. She called the local vet to come save me. The vet liked us better. He mostly dealt with the camp’s animals—horses, hunting dogs, Igor’s beloved cat.
The vet operated on me. I was still unconscious, so I didn’t feel anything.
But when I woke up—a miracle in itself, I was told—he said he had to remove my uterus and that I would never be able to have children. ”
“Bear children,” Achilles corrected.
I blinked. “What?”
“You won’t be able to bear children. You will be able to have them.
There’s surrogacy. Adoption. There are many ways to become a parent that don’t require a uterus.
It doesn’t make you less of a parent. If anything, going through the trouble, the angst, the bureaucracy makes you more of a parent.
Means you fought for it, tooth and nail. ”
I’d never thought of it this way. I was so messed up about not being able to give Achilles what he was born to have—successors—that teenage me hadn’t stopped to think there were other options.
“A teenager wouldn’t process it the same way that we do now,” I whispered. “All I knew was I wasn’t good enough, and that if I let you marry me, you’d find out, be disappointed, and fall out of love with me.”
“Not even you trying to kill me and handing me over to Agent Rothwell could make me unlove you.” He stared at me like I was a complete dumbass. “And nothing ever will.”
“I never tried to kill you.” The truth tumbled out of my mouth on its own accord, making the ground slip beneath my feet. “I wanted to be gone before you got there. You were early. I never wanted you to save me, Achilles. I wanted to save you from me.”
“You said you tried to get rid of me.”
I pressed my lips together. It was time I came clean. About everything.
“I didn’t want to.” My entire body was trembling; he noticed, his palms immediately engulfing mine protectively. It gave me strength to push on. To confess. “Luca made me.”
“Luca?” He scowled.
I nodded. “The first thing I did when I woke up was rush to see you. Luca was there. He only let me through on the promise I’d break things off.
He said he’d kill me if I didn’t. As much as I thought I wanted to die, I realized when I woke up I’d rather love you from afar and see you happy with someone else than die and not have you. ”
A low growl of pain ripped from his throat. “He did what?”
“A lot of time has passed.” I pressed a hand to his chest.
He swatted it, standing up. “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me?” He began pacing the backyard.
“He was right, Achilles.”
“No, he was wrong.” He stopped to roar into my face, snarling. “I’d have chosen you over the Camorra any day of the week. I’d have joined the Irish if I had to.”
“Your family would have killed you,” I said quietly.
“I’d have killed them first.”
“Your entire family?” I shook my head in disbelief. “For me?”
“Minus Lila and Enzo. Pretty sure they’re not shitty enough to make me choose.”
I believed him. And still, at the time, complying with Luca’s demand seemed like the best option. I was broken, devastated by all the things I couldn’t give Achilles, and weak from the fire. I couldn’t see us—two teenagers—standing against the entire Italian Mafia.
“Promise me you won’t hurt your brother. He only wanted the best for you.”
“Promising you I won’t kill him is the best I can do, I’m afraid.” He shook his head. “He will hurt.”
I pressed my lips together, nodding.
“But, baby…” He rushed back to me, his face crumpling in pain as he took my hands. “Why did you start the fire in the first place? Why couldn’t you just break up with me?”
“I knew if I broke your heart, a part of you would hate me. If I died in what was deemed an accident, you’d forever remember me fondly.
You wouldn’t take it personally, and you’d be able to move on with your life.
” Why was the truth so much harder to tell than the lie?
My stomach was in knots. “You have to understand, I managed to suppress my memories, but the pain was still there. Always. I knew my father and older brother found me useless and disappointing, that I was a burden to Tiernan. You were the only reason for me to stay alive, and I was scared once you found out I couldn’t be the wife you needed me to be I’d disappoint you too. ”
“You wanted to die for me?” His throat worked, and a flash of that humanity crossed his beautifully scarred face.
I nodded, struggling to swallow. “I thought if I died in a fire, you’d eventually move on. You’d know I always loved you. So many people let you down. I didn’t want to be one of them.”
He closed his eyes, drawing a breath.
“I’m so sorry,” I croaked out, reaching to touch the jagged, coarse flesh of his cheek.
The scars I had put there myself. “I was a coward and a fool.” Tears streamed down my cheeks, hot and heavy.
I’d been wanting to issue this apology for years.
Had been convincing myself I hated him when really, I sought his forgiveness.
“I have tarnished your beautiful face, and though you will always be the most gorgeous man in the world to me, I know it changed the trajectory of your life.” I leaned forward and kissed those scars, every inch of them.
He closed his eyes, his chest heaving as he tried to regulate his breathing, his pulse.
He didn’t move. Didn’t waver. He’d been waiting for this, too.
“I’m sorry for your face,” I whispered. “And I’m sorry for your heartbreak. But I’ll never be sorry for putting you first. I’ll just try to do better when I do it next time.”
Those last words seemed to release all the pent-up emotions he’d been locking in.
A guttural growl escaped him, primitive and elemental, and he reached to cup my cheeks, ripping me from his face, from kissing him, as he stared me in the eye.
“I’d walk through fire every single day for you, Tierney. ”
My chin wobbled, and I nodded, accepting his words.
“You poor thing.”
“Over the years, I tried to explain myself to you…”
“But I refused to listen,” he finished for me.
“And I can’t blame you.” I shook my head. “My weakness, my insecurities, almost got you killed.”
“Living without you was no life at all.” He narrowed his eyes.
“But I want you to know, no part of me ever did anything to hurt you. All I ever wanted was for you to be happy. With or without me. You were my first friend. My first kiss. My first love…”
“Your last love too.” His expression smoothed into something dark and impenetrable. He rapped the table. “Write down the names of the men who hurt you in the camp. I’ll find them.”
I waited for the terror to kick in at his words.
I never wanted to think of them again, let alone come face-to-face with them.
A few years ago, Tiernan had pledged to go back to Russia and deal with them.
I’d made him promise not to. I wanted to bury that part of my history as deep and as far as I could.
But these days, there was no escaping my past. It seemed to froth out of every corner of my thoughts, like an overflowing cesspool.
“They’re probably in Russia,” I muttered.
“They could be on Mars and I’ll still find my way to them.”
“I…” I hesitated. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Why?” he growled.
“Because…” Say it. You think it, so say it. “Because I already told you, it was my fault that they did that.”
The person who said those words wasn’t twenty-nine-year-old Tierney. It was the girl I left behind in that camp, hungry, dirty, and so malnourished, she lost her uterus before she even got her period.
“Your fault?”
“Achilles I…” I trailed off again, forcing myself to push out the words. “I did what I always do. I bartered with them. Sex for food. For extra clothes. For whatever I could get my hands on.”
The look on his face tore my gut like a hungry beast devouring it whole. Guilt dripped from his expression. After all, he, too, had benefitted from my barters not too long ago.
“Tier,” he croaked, his voice snapping like a thin twig.
“It wasn’t your fault. Not with them. Not with me.
It was never your fault. Fuck.” He kicked the earth, gripping the back of his neck and pulling in anguish.
“You should never be put in a position to bargain your freedom and the food in your stomach. They were to blame. I am to blame. I’m sorry.
I’m so, completely fucking sorry. You didn’t ask for any of this.
You were just a kid, trying to survive in a work camp, doing what you had to do to see tomorrow.
They were the predators. And there was nothing, nothing, that you did wrong. ”
“That little girl in the camp didn’t know that,” I whispered, staring down at my shoes. For the first time, I felt like she and I merged into something whole, not two different entities. Her vulnerabilities hit roots somewhere inside me, and I gave her some of my fieriness.
“That girl is still going to be stuck there.” He pointed sideways. “Unless you give me their names.”
I owed it to that girl I turned my back on.
And I owed it to myself.
“Write it down.”
He took his phone down and started typing, then, without further ado, swiveled and stalked toward the main house.
“Wait.” I shot to my feet, almost enraged by the anticlimactic goodbye. “Aren’t you going to kiss me?”
He shook his head. “I’m going to give you a little time to digest. Besides, when I kiss you again, you’re going to be willing and begging for it, Piccola Fiamma.”
I grabbed his wrist on his way out, looking up at him. “Now that you got all the answers from me, tell me one thing: Why is my father in your basement?”
“Tiernan didn’t tell you?” His eyebrows shot up.
I shook my head. “He and Lila refuse to.”
“He ratted you out to Vello.”
I was surprised but not shocked. I’d never trusted Tyrone, just as I’d never trusted Fintan.
Fintan ended up paying for his sins, and Tyrone would follow eventually.
The only reason they’d accepted Tiernan and me into their family was because they realized we’d be beneficial to them.
We built their empire. They watched from the sidelines and got rich while we hustled.
Achilles slipped his hand from my hold nonchalantly. “I’ve been keeping him alive for one reason.”
“And what reason is that?”
“Breaking his body, then his spirit, so you could watch him die for what he did to you.”