46. Forty-Six
Forty-Six
Joe
It’s truly a tragedy that dead people don’t get to experience coming back to life. It’s monumentally unforgettable to stare into the eyes of the person whose heart you once broke when buried underground.
One moment their soul, happiness, and reason for living shifts and become desperate for a lost bond, a lost future, a lost unfinished story.
Life is cruel that way; it can divide, but over time, it shapes circumstances into new, powerful chapters, full of complexities and begging for a fighting chance.
It sank in for me that as much as I decimated Sara’s heart and mine, my death was her fighting chance.
A chance for her to fall in love again, a love unquestionably deeper after the pain of losing the one before…
after losing me. Somehow, when she retrieved what was never truly lost, a heart-wrenching truth stares back at me—I am on the other side of the mirror.
Watching them consume what I wanted so badly for myself, their reflection meeting mine as their bodies join and trap silent words worth of the loudest explosions of hearts colliding into a pure, agonizing promise that I now grieve, even though I was the one who was grieved just a few months ago.
She chose him, that much is clear.
There are a lot of things I should’ve done differently, one of them being more honest. I hesitated countless times telling her about the poker games and how Mimi was helping me, no other than her friend.
Fear played with my nerves, and I thought I had it under control until I crossed paths with a devil’s bargain, one that Charles had threatened me with. Resulting in me faking my death.
They arranged for a cadaver from the morgue to burn with my motorcycle while it engulfed everything around me, as I watched my life burn in flames and my heart so slowly charring.
And fuck, I thought I knew what pain was.
I didn’t until I had to watch Sara’s heart break over me, her tears at my funeral as I hid inside the back of the church, managing to softly whisper, 'Don’t cry, baby.
Don’t cry. I can’t stand seeing you cry.
' I don’t know if she heard me, but I hoped it reached some small place within her soul.
I never meant to hurt her or break her as much as I did, and sadly, that’s what death does.
No one intends to die and leave you completely frail from the pain of loss.
I became death.
Believing their threats, I slowly died too, unable to reach for her as I watched her grieve me. My grief for her was so profound that I detested every day I was denied lying next to her, laughing with her, touching her, or making love to her… I was supposed to be her first.
The hollowness I felt, and the loneliness ate at me.
I considered ending it. The noise and dark tentacles wrapping themselves around my lungs left me feeling not good enough to even take a breath.
I watched myself wanting her… extending my love to a vacant space that I took away from myself.
I am the only one to blame, and I will live a lifetime of regret.
Though Liam always protected me, I should have told him about all of it.
I wanted my hero’s story.
I wanted to feel like I could take punches and survive like he had when standing between life and death on so many nights with our father and mother.
To this day, Liam’s screams from when our father beat him still haunt me.
I wanted to rise up against my reflection for once and make Liam proud.
The irony is that the only reflection I see is of two people madly in love, one of them being the woman I could hardly breathe without.
But now, I have put a stop to the concept of a future with her, specifically the one I had yearned for.
Somehow, I can see the inconceivable truth, one that she belongs to my brother.
So, I am rising. I am forgiving. I am protecting. No matter what, I will always protect her.
And that’s exactly what I fucking do, after looking over all the details on the Velastra.
I knew my mother’s maiden name wasn’t a coincidence, even though Liam and Sara were very skeptical.
The date the Velastra was purchased coincided with the time our uncle acquired a lot of money, and other details solidified my gut feeling that I was overlooking someone; this person, who loved my mom and whom I believed cared about us, had never crossed my mind.
Until it did. He seemed better than my father, but monsters don’t always hide under the bed…
They can be in plain sight, drinking your own drink while spitting behind your back.
I called Charles to strike a deal with very specific numbers as a price for a buyer, non-negotiable, to which he agrees.
Then I made a second call to a friend who’s a spyware guru.
He didn’t need to use much of his talent to get into Charles’s phone and see that indeed he had my uncle’s phone number logged as a contact. Under Velastra’s.
Bingo.
I had him send a text from an unknown number to Fred with Sara’s price, a different price than Charles’s. I wanted to confirm he was the one in charge, and I’d know when the buyer revealed the price they were offered.
I knew someone had accepted the deal when they left the bedroom empty and took Sara.
The guilt ate at me, that’s when I went to the source and found her before anyone else could, before Liam.
I found her, terrified on that boat, so beautiful and chained to the hope that she’d come home… to my brother.
Liam extinguished that deal with a bullet, as always. Tyler had revealed to him that Fred Laurent was behind all of this, and we wasted no more time to find our uncle after the helicopter dropped us back in Saint-Tropez.
Liam doesn’t hesitate to break the door down when we arrive at Fred’s house, and I admire the raw power my twin commands.
We storm inside, Liam leading with murder in his eyes, Riviera right behind him, then Mateo and Damien flanking our sides like trained soldiers.
Sara trails beside me, arms wrapped tightly around herself, her face pale with shock.
I dropped Mimi off at her apartment and told her I’d come back later to check on her. Leaving her alone after all of this made me feel wrong. We may have only worked together, but I cared about her. She’s safe now, like Sara is, and for now, that's enough.
Fred doesn’t even flinch. The bastard sits at his dining table, calmly sipping what looks like expensive whiskey from a crystal glass.
The setting is almost mockingly serene, with sunlight streaming through floor-to-ceiling windows, casting everything in a golden glow.
Lush green plants thrive in every corner, giving the place a meditative quality that feels obscene given what we know about him.
“Joe, Liam,” he breathes, a smile spreading across his face. “This is unexpected—”
“Go Fuck yourself,” I spit, “Don’t pretend you didn’t know about my fake death. Don’t pretend you weren’t fucking delighted when you destroyed my life or when you ordered my brother getting shot.” His mouth hangs like the piece of shit he is.
My eyes wander across the space, taking in the astral maps and constellation charts lining the walls. The names of stars—Arcturus, Sirius, Vega. It’s like stepping into some cosmic shrine. And naming his yacht Velastra makes sense.
“You always had Mom’s taste,” I say coldly, nodding toward a detailed painting of the Andromeda galaxy. “She loved the stars, too. Too bad you could never make her see any.”
Fred’s eyes flicker with something—pain, perhaps—before hardening again. “Elizabeth understood the vastness of possibilities. Something your father never could.”
“Is that why you did this? Some twisted revenge because my father won her heart?”
“Your father didn’t win anything,” Fred snaps, and I realize this might be the only connection I’ll ever share with this man; both of us losing the woman we loved to our brother. But at least I can take comfort in one thing, unlike my father, Liam will never hurt Sara the way he hurt my mother.
Liam cuts him off, tired of the charade. “We know you’re trafficking girls through the Velastra.”
But Fred stays stoic, taking another sip of his drink when one of the hallway doors clicks open, and Tyler emerges. Everyone freezes. I feel as if something punches me in the gut.
What the hell is he doing here?
Liam had mentioned Tyler confirmed Fred was behind all of this. Also that he had been under a leverage he was holding over him and had no way out, but he failed to specify what kind of leverage Tyler was under, and why the fuck he was in his home.
Tyler’s eyes meet mine, then dart to Liam’s murderous glare.
“Ah yes, boys,” Fred says, setting down his glass. “Have you met Tyler?”
No one moves. The air in the room feels electric, dangerous.
Tyler takes a few steps forward, his gaze unfaltering and especially pausing on Sara’s and I want to crack his head open.
He leans against the kitchen island, studying us with that same calculating gaze we have on Fred and him. A standoff.
“That’s my son,” Fred suddenly blurts out, pointing at Tyler. “Well, technically,” he adds with a dangerous smile playing on his lips. My mind races, trying to process what he said.
“What do you mean, technically? How did we not know you had a son?” Liam asks, a ticking bomb about to happen as he approaches him to where he’s sitting, towering over him.
Fred is a good-looking, well-maintained older man, but Liam next to him is all muscles and lethal energy.
Fred’s eyes drift over to Sara, who’s gone pale beside me. “Well, let’s see. Sara, you have a way to get around Laurent’s... Can you sniff a brother when you see one?”
His laughter echoes through the room, demonic, and something snaps inside Liam when he lunges forward, grabbing Fred by the collar and slamming him against the table as the glass he’s holding in his hand shatters on the floor.