Chapter 31
Elowen
Avi can’t go out because her son will wreak havoc without her, and if she brings him along, he’ll wreak havoc wherever they end up. I completely forgot about my four-month-old nephew’s mood swings.
I asked her anyway, and she laughed. I told her it was for a girls’ day out instead of telling her my real intention. Her answer was, “I’m no longer the girls’ day out type. I have a devil’s spawn who will ruin the whole day if I take him out in public. Ask Lyn, the mother of angels.”
I reach the nursery, where Lyn sits watching the twins play. I settle beside her on the couch.
They’re both growing fast, now big enough to play on their own.
They aren’t identical, Alis takes after Lyn with her curly red hair. Her eyes are different from Lyn’s, though. They’re both blue, but Alis’s look like galaxies, while Lyn’s are like the ocean.
Efrin takes after Leo, almost black eyes and dark, nearly black hair.
And their natures are complete opposites.
Alis can play with literally anything, right now she’s playing with Bruno and Rosie like the absolute doll she is, while her brother is busy picking up and hurling his toys across the room.
In our family, we don’t try to mold children into any particular shape.
When Leo was little, he used to smash his toy cars and play with the engines for hours.
Now he owns the company that makes the world’s fastest cars, which he refers to, quite happily, as his toy shop.
Don’t expect my psychopath brother to be philosophically attached to his businesses; it’s just something to pass the time.
The only thing that truly makes him happy is spending time with his wife and children.
Mom told me Leo showed a few psychopathic tendencies even as a baby, but like I said, in our family, we don’t change children. So even if Efrin looks like he’s on track to become the Hulk with his current style of play, we aren’t changing a thing about it.
“I need your help,” I start without beating around the bush, because it’s completely unnecessary. She’s my best friend. Even though I spent less time with her than with Avi growing up, we still share a very strong bond.
She raises a brow. “With what?”
“I need to see Hunter.”
That shocks her enough to turn fully toward me. “What? Why?”
“Promise me you won’t tell anyone what I’m about to tell you. Not even Avi.” Avi has the heart of a dove, as Zo calls her. He has his own reasons for the name, but she really does have a heart as gentle as a dove.
Lyn nods, her brow furrowed.
“I can’t move on.” My voice drops on its own.
“All I see when I sleep are nightmares of him dying. And in my waking hours, I’m consumed with worry about him.
My mind compares Hunter and Salvario every second, and I can’t stop it.
I’m going crazy from the guilt and self-loathing.
Salvario doesn’t deserve this. I have to get Hunter out of my head, no matter what. ”
She stares at me for a long moment, then speaks carefully. “Are you in love with him?”
I shake my head frantically. “How can I be in love with him? All he ever was to me was Salvario with another face. And my brain still won’t accept that he isn’t Salvario.
” My voice starts trembling as I give voice to the things that have been suffocating me for so long.
“He is exactly like him, Lyn. Do you understand? He looks at me the way Salvario used to. He touches me just the same. Everything about him is Salvario, and I’m trapped in it.
I can’t...” My throat closes up. I try to swallow past the thickness.
Tears prick my eyes. I blink them back. “I can’t live like this.
It’s killing me.” My voice is barely there, reduced to a shaky, exhausted whisper.
Lyn takes my hand in both of hers. “I get it. But I don’t understand how having Salvario here isn’t making things better.”
“I don’t know,” I say, my voice worn thin. “He’s just like before, but he doesn’t feel the same.”
“How do you want me to help?” She strokes the back of my hand with her thumb.
“Ask Leo to let me see him in secret. I don’t want Salvario to find out.
What I’m doing to him with my fucked-up head is already cruel enough.
I need to see Hunter to convince myself he’s alive, so at least the nightmares stop.
And maybe then, the voices will stop chanting his name.
I don’t know if it’ll work, but I have to try.
I need closure. I can’t let Salvario see this side of me, it would hurt him badly.
” With each word, guilt burrows into my bones, feeding on me without ever finishing the job.
Hunter is being held in my family’s hospital until he’s healed enough to be transferred to their prison. Salvario wants him dead, but my father refused. After I came back, he asked me what I wanted for Hunter, whether I wanted him dead or not. I refused.
I told him Hunter saved my life, and I didn’t want to be ungrateful.
My dad had a different opinion, after all, Hunter was the one who put me in danger by kidnapping me, but he still agreed to spare his life.
Hunter will remain in the prison, though.
And since my family’s private prison is in San Diego, they’re keeping him in our hospital here.
As for Logan, no one knows where he is. Logan and Hunter are excellent at hiding, and at finding anyone. I wonder if they found Salvario and decided not to tell me. Hunter would have gotten Naples if he hadn’t played that game.
He will always choose you over any city or kingdom. My subconscious speaks with a confidence I can’t even muster for myself.
I ignore it and focus on the blurry buildings we’re passing. I latch onto the words on passing banners to keep myself anchored in reality, to stop myself from slipping back into my head, where my own thoughts keep betraying me for him.
The car pulls up in front of my family’s private hospital.
Lyn and I don’t step out until our bodyguards open the doors, after making sure everything is secure. It’s eleven in the morning, the peak of rush hour, but we walk cocooned by bodyguards. With these wall of men around us, I can’t even see people’s faces properly.
Without pause, we reach the private emergency elevator and step in with two of our guards.
The elevator takes us to the sixth floor.
Through its glass doors, I can see how empty the floor is, my brother’s men are scattered here and there, but that’s it.
The dim corridor lights and heavy silence make it feel like we’re on the morgue floor.
A shiver trails down my spine at the thought.
The farther we walk down the corridor, the more I look around, the stronger the feeling grows.
I turn to the bodyguard on my left. “Is this the morgue floor?”
“Yes, miss,” he replies, and I freeze mid-step.
“He’s alive. Don’t worry,” Lyn says, taking my hand.
“I know he’s alive. What I don’t know is why they’re keeping him among the dead.”
She sighs. “Must be Matleon’s sick idea of a joke.”
She’s right, no one else would think of something like this.
The bodyguards stop in front of a white door.
“Is he in there?” I ask one of them.
He nods.
“I’d like to speak with him alone.”
He hesitates, his eyes flick to the other bodyguard, but then he nods.
He opens the door, and I step into a room colder than the already cold hallway.
Hunter’s definition of room temperature is four degrees lower than everyone else’s, just like Salvario’s, after spending nearly two decades in Greenland.
I suddenly realize I haven’t noticed whether Salvario still has this habit.
The thought doesn’t linger for long, however, nor does any other thought, as my eyes meet the pair of gray eyes watching me without blinking. Even the cold of the room can’t stop my palms from sweating.
I stay rooted, my back pressed to the door, drinking in the sight of him. He’s sitting on the bed. There’s no sign on his face that he’s injured, if you can ignore the overgrowth of his beard. His expression is unreadable, as still as stone.
I take a few steps toward him. Before I can reach him, his cold, hard voice stops me. “I’m not prepared today, but I will be next time.”
I frown, but before I can ask what he means, he continues. “So don’t come here again, because next time, I won’t let you leave.”
I want to point out that he was the one being a saint just a week ago, telling me to go to the man I love, but I don’t get the chance as he delivers his next words in an even colder voice.
“Now tell me, did that motherfucker touch what’s mine?
” The suppressed rage in his voice makes each word vibrate with an intensity that reaches every molecule in my body. I’m left trembling.
Still, I make my way toward him. It’s an involuntary response from my body, it’s drawn to him; the warmth inside me growing stronger the closer I get.
Only now do I realize I’ve been feeling that cold again, the same cold that had made its home inside me before he came into my life and drove it away.
“How are you?” I ask, keeping my voice steady.
“Did you let him touch you?” He answers with the question, because apparently this is the only thing that matters to him.
I purse my lips. “What would you do if I said yes?”
The rage surfaces in his visage, dredged from the deepest part of his darkness by this primal bloodlust.
“You shouldn’t have let that happen.” He takes his time with each word. “Now wait a few days, and then I’ll fuck you over the tiny pieces of him you’ll help me make.”
I clench my fists. Nausea and fury churn together in my gut. He’s already ruined me to the point where I can’t even get close to Salvario, and now he has the audacity to threaten me like this.