Page 58 of Delirium
“I knew,” he whispered. “But I knew you weren’t together in that moment, so—”
“So you stood there, pretending to be my friend, all the while knowing that you made a deal with the man I love. A deal I would never be okay with. You know better than anybody else what it’s like being controlled by your family, having to do what they tell you to do, not once being able to be yourself. You know, and yet you still made this deal!”
“Ophelia, please,” he pleaded. “It isn’t like that. I didn’t make a deal to hurt his future daughter. I didn’t make it to hurt you. I made it to protect my—”
“You made it to protect your family!” I bellowed. “And what about my family, huh? What about the little girl whose life will already be planned? What about your son? What if they fall in love with somebody else? What if they hate each other?”
“Phee—”
“What about the fact that I’m tempted to drive to fucking Ventus City just to stab you myself? Once Alessia finds out about what you did, I’m sure she will help me.”
His silence was louder than any of the words he could have spoken, and I knew I hit the nail on the head when I mentioned her. But no matter what, I knew that there was no way out of this. There was no way out for my little girl, and I hated feeling powerless in this situation.
“We signed a contract, Ophelia,” Nico said, and I could hear the shuffling of papers in the background. “We signed it in blood.”
“Nico.” I huffed. “If you don’t tear that fucking contract apart, I’m going to be wiping your blood with that same paper. I swear to all that’s holy, I’m going to skin you alive.”
“It isn’t wise to threaten the head of the Italian Mafia, Phee. Even for you.”
“Oh, yeah?” I scoffed. “It isn’t wise crossing Ophelia Aster, yet both of you already did that. What is it with you men that you think you can control us? Why are you always thinking of selling your children, never once asking the mothers what we think about it?”
“Mothers?” he asked. “Wait. You’re not—”
“I’m pregnant, you fucking dimwit, just like Alessia is. And I’m tempted to stab you in the eye the next time I see you.”
“Shit,” Nico cursed, his voice muffled as he spoke with someone in the background. “Ophelia, I’m gonna have to call you back.”
“Don’t you hang up on me, Nico!” I growled. “You made this mess and you will fix it. I don’t care how, I don’t wanna know. But you will fix it, along with Storm. And Nico,” I said as I stood up, walking toward the bathroom. “You better tell Alessia. If you don’t, I will. And trust me, better she hears it from you than from me.”
“Ophe—”
He started speaking just as I hung up, throwing my phone on the ground before entering the bathroom, slamming the door behind me.
Stupid, motherfucking dimwits. Why? Why wouldn’t they tell us?
Even if I wasn’t pregnant, I would still feel the same. I didn’t want my kids to be trapped, to feel that they needed to prove something. I didn’t want them to have mine or Storm’s life. I wanted them to have a choice.
I wanted them to be able to think for themselves, to make mistakes, to fix them, to learn from all of it. I didn’t want them to have to run from their family, from their friends, from everything they held dear, because they couldn’t deal with the pressure their parents were putting on them.
I pressed my hands against my stomach, already getting rounder as the days passed, and I vowed I would always protect them, even if it meant going against Storm and every other human being that wanted to harm them.
“I won’t let them touch you,” I whispered, dragging my finger around my belly button, going upward then and down, imagining that it was the two of them I was caressing, showering them with the love I didn’t think I was capable of.
When Ava got pregnant, happier than she ever was, I couldn’t fathom the idea of me being pregnant one day. Kids, happiness, love, all those were foreign concepts I couldn’t even imagine, because I knew they weren’t planned for me.
I pushed the idea of them so far to the back of my mind because I didn’t think I deserved them. I didn’t deserve the happiness shining from Ava’s eyes, or the love that she had for her little family. But now that I was here, faced with reality, I knew I deserved it.
I deserved these two kids, and they deserved a better life than I had.
If Storm decided that he didn’t want to fix this mess, then he would never get to see them. Parents were supposed to protect their kids, not sell them to the highest bidder.
Nikolai didn’t sell me, but he sold Maya. He fucking sold his biological daughter because she couldn’t agree with the shit he was doing, and she didn’t want to be a part of it. If Storm thought that I would ever be okay with this, he had another thing coming.
A soft knock came through the door, his raspy voice breaking through the fog in my head. “Phee,” he whispered, his energy pulsing all around me.
The funny thing with this connection between Storm and me was that no matter what, I could always feel him. He was buried deep beneath my skin, his heart beating in the rhythm of my own, and these two kids holding pieces of both of us only tethered me closer to him.
“I know you hate me right now,” he croaked. “But I need you to know, I’m sorry. I didn’t think it through when I spoke with Nico, and things between us didn’t look good.”
