Chapter 15
Callan
Ethan is going to hit the roof.
But Aidan is right. This is dragging on, and I’m left on the sidelines while they shape her.
The doors ping open, and I walk straight out into the living room of the penthouse, where Ethan is sitting in a white leather armchair, flicking through a file, and Aidan is standing near the window, staring out at it.
They both look over when I stop in the middle of the room with Annabelle trailing behind me, probably wishing she had never started this.
“Oh, you fucking didn’t,” Ethan growls, flinging the file on the glass coffee table and rising swiftly.
Aidan grins. “Oh, he fucking well did. Nice one, Cal. Does this mean it’s you and me against Eth now?”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself. This wasn’t for you,” I murmur, turning to Annabelle, who stands slightly behind me, taking this scene in with eyes that are growing steadily wider as her gaze lands first on Ethan, then on Aidan and then back to me.
She stumbles back, her hand on her stomach. “No.”
“Annabelle,” Ethan says, his voice a low warning as he moves toward her.
She doesn’t listen. She can’t. She hits the wall behind her and slides sideways, her face turning a ghostly shade of grey. Her gaze bounces between the three of us, frantic and jagged. It’s like watching electricity short-circuit in real time.
“Annabelle, breathe,” I say.
She flinches as if I’ve tried to touch her. “Which one—which one was in my house? Which one was at the club? In the shower?”
“All of us,” Aidan says, his grin fading into something sharper, more savage. He steps away from the window, closing the distance. “We’re a set, little bell.”
She let out a sound that isn’t quite a scream and isn’t quite a sob. It’s the sound of a woman watching her last lifeline dissolve into a hallucination. Her knees buckle, and this time, none of us are fast enough to catch her before she hits the floor.
Ethan looms over her, his shadow swallowing her small frame. “I told you it was too soon,” he snaps, directed at me.
“She asked,” I counter, my skin crawling with the need to retreat.
Annabelle looks up at us, her blue eyes wide and shattered. “Who are you?”
“We’re the men who are going to save you,” Ethan says, kneeling in front of her. “And we’re the only thing you have left.”
Her eyes scan over Ethan’s face, his clothes, before she does the same to Aidan and me.
I watch her from where I stand, my pulse a frantic drum against my ribs.
The physical proximity is already starting to grate on my nerves, but I can’t move.
I can’t look away. Annabelle is hyperventilating, her small hands clawing at the hem of her tee as if she’s trying to find something solid in a world that just turned to liquid.
“You’re triplets,” she whispers, the words barely carrying enough air to be heard. “Identical triplets.”
“We are,” Aidan says, his voice dropping into that rough, territorial register that always sets me on edge.
He doesn’t stay back. He drops to his knees on her other side, boxing her in.
“I’m Aidan. The one who made you dinner.
The one who fucked you in the library while you gripped the shelves.
The one who smashed your tile after you called me Ethan. ”
“Jesus,” I groan, sliding a hand down my face.
She flinches, her gaze darting to Ethan. “And you? You’re Ethan.”
“Yes,” he says, his tone cool, reclaiming his position as the architect. “I was at the club. Took you home and had sex with you first. I cleaned your kitchen. I’m the one who told you that you were mine.”
“First,” she mutters, her cheeks going from pale to red in an instant. Her head swivels to me, her eyes filled with a raw, jagged betrayal. “Then who the fuck are you?”
“Callan,” I mutter, my hands shoved deep into my pockets. I don’t move closer. I can’t. “I was at the library this morning. I’m the one who watched you.”
“You’re all insane,” she breathes, her voice trembling. “This is... you’ve been lying to me. Every second.”
“We’ve been protecting you,” Ethan corrects, his hand reaching out to steady her.
She slaps his hand away, the sound of the impact sharp in the quiet room. “Don’t touch me! None of you touch me!”
She tries to scramble backwards, but there is nowhere to go.
She is trapped between the wall and the three of us, three identical faces reflected in her shattered gaze.
My skin is buzzing, the air in the penthouse feeling too thin.
This was the explosion Aidan wanted, and now we all have to breathe in the smoke.
But I don’t regret it. She needed to know. What she does now depends entirely on the groundwork Ethan and Aidan have laid down.
I watch her chest heave, the rapid rise and fall of her breath a frantic signal of the panic I’ve triggered.
My brothers are circling her like wolves, their proximity tight and suffocating.
Ethan’s jaw is set in a hard line, his gaze pinned on her with a proprietary intensity that makes my stomach churn.
He hates that he isn’t in control of this moment.
She lets out a broken, strangled laugh that sounds more like a sob. “I thought I was going crazy. I thought I was imagining the differences.” She looks at her hands, shaking so violently she has to tuck them into her armpits. “You all did it. You all... took turns.”
“We share everything, Annabelle,” Ethan states, his voice dropping into that smooth, terrifying cadence. “Including you.”
I step back, my skin crawling at the collective weight of our presence in this room.
The air is thick with her terror and their hunger.
I wanted the truth out, but seeing her crumpled against the wall, looking at us like we’re the monsters our father raised us to be, makes my pulse spike with a different kind of adrenaline.
“I want to go home,” she says, her eyes fixed on the floor.
“You are home,” Aidan says.
“No,” she says, finally looking up, her blue eyes blazing with a sudden, desperate fury. “I want to go to my house. I want you to get away from me.”
Ethan stands, his shadow stretching over her. “That’s not an option. Not tonight. Not ever again.”
“You wanted to come here, Annabelle,” I say quietly. “Now you stay.”
“No!” she screams and gets to her knees, slamming her hand on the lift button. The doors that had slid closed, open under her command, and she crawls in.
Ethan takes two strides after her and picks her up by her waist, hauling her out of the lift and back into the sitting room.
He doesn’t put her down, even as she kicks and screams until he reaches the chair he was sitting in when we arrived.
He places her down, and I move forward, drawn to her.
My mind is at war between needing to be near her and wanting to be as far away as I can physically get without leaving the room.
I stay by the edge of the glass coffee table, my muscles locked tight.
The sight of her struggling in Ethan’s grip makes my skin feel bruised, a sympathetic phantom pain that I can’t shake.
She is small, a frantic bird trapped in a cage made of our identical faces.
“Let me go!” she shrieks, her voice raw.
Ethan doesn’t budge. He pins her shoulders to the leather of the chair, his strength absolute. “Stop it, Annabelle. You’re going to hurt yourself.”
Aidan paces behind the chair, his fingers twitching. I can tell he wants to grab her, to use his own brand of force to settle the storm, but Ethan’s glare keeps him at bay. I hate the way the room feels—too hot, too crowded with our collective obsession.
“You’re sick,” she gasps, her eyes find mine, and the betrayal in them is a physical blow. “You’re all fucking sick.”
“We’re what you have,” I say, my voice sounding hollow to my own ears. I don’t move closer. I can’t risk the contact. “You said the quiet was too loud. It won’t be quiet here.”
She looks at me, then at the bruised knuckles on my right hand, and then at the identical marks on Ethan and Aidan. The realisation that even our injuries are a curated lie seems to be the final straw. She stops fighting and goes limp, her head falling back against the chair.
“I’m not a person to you,” she whispers.
Ethan leans in, his face inches from hers. “You’re more than that. You’re everything.”
“Annabelle,” I say, moving as close as I can. “You aren’t strong enough to fight us. You are exhausted already. You haven’t been taking care of yourself. Since you let Ethan into your life, we have been caring for you. Don’t you see that we are on your side?”
Her gaze pins mine with a fury that she can’t back up with actions. “Don’t you dare,” she hisses. “You lied to me. You made me feel safe when I was in more danger from the three of you. You had sex with me, and I didn’t even know who you were!”
“In all fairness,” Ethan says, “You invited me to your house for a one-nighter. You had no idea who I was when you did that.”
“No,” she says weakly. “You’re right. I didn’t. I didn’t know you were one third of a psychotic trio.”
“Ouch,” Aidan drawls.
“I’ll let that stand,” I say, edging even closer. “Because you have no idea.”
“Not helping,” Ethan grits out and steps back, letting her breathe.
She pulls her knees up to her chest, her eyes darting back to the lift even though the doors have closed again.
I stare at her from the perimeter of her personal space, my skin prickling with the familiar, suffocating hum of my brothers’ presence.
Annabelle looks like a small, broken butterfly caught in a glass box.
Her hair is a tangled mess of blonde silk, and her blue eyes are wide with a panic that makes my lungs feel constricted.
“I’m going to be sick,” she whispers.
Aidan is already moving, his instincts faster than mine when it comes to the physical mess of humanity. He grabs a silver wastepaper basket and thrusts it toward her. She doesn’t take it. She just stares at the metal as if it’s another weapon we’ve aimed at her throat.
“Take it, Tinks,” Ethan commands, his voice dropping into that smooth, terrifying frequency that usually makes her melt.
She flinches. “Don’t call me that. Don’t use that name.”
“It’s the name I gave you.”
He isn’t used to her fighting back. He expected the same compliant doll who let him change her tampons and feed her like a child. He didn’t account for the fact that even a drowning woman will bite the hand that tries to pull her under if she thinks that hand belongs to a monster.
“It’s a lot to take in,” I say, trying to keep my voice flat, neutral. “But the reality remains. You’re here. We’re here. And you aren’t going back to your cottage tonight.”
She looks at me, and the hatred in her eyes is the only thing that makes me feel like I’m truly standing in the room. “I hate you,” she says, her voice a jagged shard of glass.
“I know,” I murmur, and for the first time since this started, I feel a strange, twisted sense of relief. At least now she sees me. Not the ghost of Ethan. Me.