46. Hendrix #2
“Bro-brother?” I stammer, needing to make sure my ears are still working, but Dante mistakes it for ignorance.
“ Sì… his name was Luca Salvini.”
Luca Salvini.
The deranged monster who killed hundreds of people, including Nikolai Ivanov’s only son.
My eyes dart to my mother, then to Vic, even to fucking Darla, waiting for the punchline of this sick joke.
But…the punchline never comes.
Yet still, like an idiot, I turn to my mom, clinging to hope that I’m not the product of a monster. Or at least, if I was, she’d love me too much to keep it from me.
“Mommy...please.” The naive little girl inside me whimpers, and this time when my heart breaks, it’s for her, not me.
“I’m so sorry, baby,” is all she says right before my last bit of hope turns to agony.
Like a house of cards, my knees, along with my entire world, fall to the floor. I close my eyes, hanging my head as a sob rips free from my chest.
There are hard truths, then there are merciless ones.
And right now, the pieces of the second are emptying into me like a round of bullets.
My violent impulses.
The eggshells she’s always walked on around them.
Mom wasn’t scared for me…she was scared of me.
Of who I could become.
Fast forward to a year ago, the bullets, they keep on coming.
When my eyes open I find my mom dropping to my side, wrapping her arms around me as I stare at the floor.
“Hendrix, listen to me…” She starts, but I cut her off.
“This is why you married Vic, isn’t it?”
“No. I married Vic because I love him.”
“Then it’s why you two moved so fast.”
“It’s more complicated than that.”
“Is it though?” I look at her through the corner of my eye.
“Luca took out Nikolai’s only successor.
Dante took over the business after Luca died.
Then Nikolai found out about me, the only child of the monster that killed his son.
Dante proposed a marriage to you for our protection.
One which you denied to marry Vic.” I shrug.
“Maybe because you loved him, maybe because you thought he could offer us the same level of protection.”
“Oh, baby.” Mom releases a drawn out sigh, not at all expecting me to put the pieces of her betrayal together so quickly. “I’m so sorry. I never meant for any of this to happen…you have to believe me.”
“I can’t believe anything you say ever again. You made sure of it.”
“I was just trying to protect you. All of us were.”
If I had a nickel for every time protection was used as an excuse to hide shit from me…
Mom. Auntie. Vic. Saint. Carlo.
Oh my God…Carlo.
Like one of the bullets that just hit me, my head shoots to Dante, who looks as sympathetic as one can with a stockpile of murders on his desk.
“The car bomb,” I press him, shrugging my mother off me. “Was it really payback for the guy Carlo shot in the alley?”
Every crude surface of Dante’s face melts into a look far less dangerous and far more regretful.
If I had to guess, I’d say for refusing to listen to Mom.
Well, fuck that. He doesn’t get to show up here, call me Caterina , his family, and whatever else just flipped my world upside down, then backpedal like a little bitch.
Dante’s silence when it comes to Carlo riles a storm inside me, and I don’t even bother trying to contain it.
“Tell me!” I demand, even though the logical part of me already knows the answer. “Was the car bomb meant for Carlo?”
“No,” he says flat out, and far too similar to Carlo when he would avoid a full answer. Which tells me I’m right to believe the rest of this one won’t end well for my heart.
I press on anyway, because the truth about Carlo’s death is the only piece to this fucked up puzzle I still give a shit about.
“Who was it meant for?”
One, two, three seconds pass as Mom pleads with Dante not to answer. Four, five, six more as Vic plays his hand at convincing too.
Seven, eight, nine seconds are saved for Dante’s disregard of their wishes, leaving ten, just for his decision, and the final bullet that kills me.
“The bomb…it was meant for you.”
This time when my mouth opens, it’s with a lung shattering cry.
“Hendrix! Please just listen!” Mom begs when I push her away, but gets no further before I scream at her to leave me alone, and run out of the room to get to Saint.
My cheeks are drenched and lungs are screaming by the time I’m moving down the hallway to our rooms, where I catch Theory, dressed more for a party than for bed sneaking out of the utility closet.
No doubt fresh off the old dumbwaiter she’s been using to sneak out of the mansion.
At first she seems ready to hit me with some made up excuse as to why she was in there, but then takes in my gutted appearance and panics.
“Hendrix, what the hell happened?” she whispers, tiptoe rushing past Saint’s room.
My unwillingness to trust anyone but Saint has me sidestepping Theory, leaving her with no choice but to slide into her room when I twist open her brother’s door.
Doing my best to remain quiet, I click it shut, and through tears in the shadows of the doorway, watch the steady rise and fall of Saint’s chest in hopes his peace will bring me some too.
A pathetic attempt, because all I can picture is the monster version of me, with blacked out eyes and a venomous grin similar to Saint’s monster from my nightmares.
You were born sick just like Saint.
Vicious’ words haunt me.
Making me wonder if somehow my subconscious knew more than it led on. If it lied to me, too, just like my mom.
A sob bursts out of me, too loud for me to stifle it, making Saint jump out of the dead of sleep.
Unlike most people who take a few seconds to return to full consciousness, Saint’s already alert, searching for me on the bed, then around the room when he realizes my side is empty. He calls me by name, which makes my attempt to stop crying impossible.
“She knew…” I choke, stepping out of the shadows. “This whole fucking time…she knew everything.”
The second Saint’s feet hit the floor, he’s gunning over to me, not bothering to cover himself up.
“Who knew what? What are you talking about?” He cups my face to wipe the tears away.
“My mother…she knew it was me that the Ivanovs wanted dead.”
There’s a million different reactions I expect Saint to have with the long-time-coming revelation, not one of them involving his hands freezing.
His jaw clenching.
His eyes turning to glitter in the moonlight.
Everything about Saint’s beauty that grounds me, jolts me at this moment.
“Saint?” I call out with a calm I don’t feel, waiting for his smile, his shushes, his strong arms to ground me, prove me wrong.
Anything that symbolizes reassurance or the anchor he’s become.
Saint looks away, and this time, when the merciless truth hits me, it’s with a shotgun bullet, blowing my chest wide open, guts at my feet.
“No…” I stumble back, shaking my head. “Not you too…”
My words may sound halfway convincing, but when Saint blinks away the moisture in his eyes, there’s no denying the guilt drowning them.
But I love and trust him too much not to try.
“Please… please tell me you didn’t know.”
When he says nothing, my plea turns into a desperate cry.
“Saint…I need you to tell me right now that you didn’t know who my father was!”
“Hendrix…I can’t.”
“No.” I shake my head vigorously this time. “I don’t believe you.”
“I’m so fucking sorry.” Saint cups my face again. “I was gonna tell you, I swear. But shit hit the fan and I couldn’t.”
I tilt my head, unable to wrap my head around the idea that Saint, after all we’ve been through, would keep such essential information from me. “You really knew?”
“Yes…I did. But…”
Disbelief officially turns to outrage, outrage into guttural heartbreak.
“How!” I cry, ripping his hands from my face. “How could you keep this from me?!”
“I know…I fucked up! But I had no choice if I wanted to protect you.”
“Carlo died, Saint! He died because I didn’t know I was the target.”
“No, Jimi. Carlo died because of that sick fuck Nikolai Ivanov!”
“Who was chasing a vendetta against my dead sick fuck of a father!”
“If you would just give me a second to explain, you’ll understand why I couldn’t!”
A breakdown of Saint’s ultimate betrayal is not something I can bear as the world proceeds to crumble around me.
So, when a noise from the hallway distracts him, I use it as an opportunity to escape to the bathroom, locking myself inside just in time to avoid him getting in.
I can feel the rumble of Saint’s fists against the door as I lean my back against it, begging me to come out and talk to him.
But there’s nothing left to say.
I gave Saint everything: my trust, my heart, my body, my soul.
And he spent months slowly breaking each of them.
For a while we continue this way, with me swallowing tears and Saint unraveling apologies, pleas, even empty threats to break through the door. Then, after one final blow of his fist, a beat of silence falls from his side.
I wish I could say the same for mine.
Through fractured breaths, I slide down the door, not stopping until my ass meets the cashmere runner that leads to Saint’s shower. Not quite what I imagined rock bottom to feel like, but I’ll take whatever small mercy the universe is willing to give after eviscerating me.
I look around Saint’s immaculate bathroom, every corner of it haunted with days old memories that feel like a lifetime ago.
The shower at the far end, where he spent hours worshiping my body.
His fancy “don’t you dare touch my towel” towel hanging off the hanger.
The toothbrushes on the vanity where we’d brush our teeth and compare spit.
Which, now that I think of it, sounds just as gross falling in my head as it did in the sink.
Another onslaught of tears makes their way past my clogged nose, dipping inside my mouth as I struggle for air.
Every kiss, laugh, his need to take care of me…
Was it all driven by Saint’s lies?
Or worse? His guilt?