Page 60 of Merciless Wager
“King—” Cillian started to say, but my uncle silenced him.
“Zarren had been in our care for about a year when he’d had a nightmare one night. I remember going to his room and watching his face as he thrashed around while fully asleep. He’d kept crying out for his father while begging them to let him breathe. I tried to wake him, but he was too far gone. For over an hour, I watched as he relived likely torture from goddamn Ronan—waterboarding if I had to guess—and I felt the strangest fucking presence in the room with us. It’d swept by me so quickly, and right in the middle of another of Z’s tortured screams, he quieted immediately. I know it was Princeton. I knew it then, and once I made sure he was calm again, I left the room. Just outside that door, I made a vow to help my nephew... To make sure I could keep the promises to him that I’d once made to my brother.”
“What are you saying?” I asked.
“If you love this girl as much as you believe you do, I'll be by your side in this.”
Cillian smiled at Kingston, then turned toward me. “I’ll be as well. To have loved and lost is a fate I'd never wish upon you. Money, territory, and everything else we have doesn't equate to power. At least not when it's never actually been in our hands. True power has never been ours when it's held not by oneself, but rather the one who controls our heart.”
The boulder weighing me down finally lifted, but there were now more questions than answers. I wanted nothing more thanto race upstairs to tell my Bellezza that she was mine, now and forever, but I needed to know a few things first.
“So, what happens now?”
Kingston clapped the top of my shoulder as he approached me. “Let us deal with that. Just be ready when the chips fall.”
“I was born ready,” I muttered, and both men chuckled.
“Spoken like a true Brannington,” one of them said, and it didn’t even matter which one because all that did was that this chapter of the nightmare was finally over.
My body ached in places I didn’t even know it could ache, but I would still take that kind of pain over the agony currently aflame in my chest. It’d taken everything inside of me not to crumble in Zarren’s arms as he took such care with me in the shower.
His hands had been everywhere, touching nearly every inch of my body as he ran the soft loofah sponge over my skin. I almost thought he might even try to take me again while under the scalding spray, but he didn’t, at least not in a sexual manner.
Did it really matter after he’d fucked me so ruthlessly? Hearing him admit to loving me had been too little too late. Normally, I’d have been overjoyed by his confession that matched mine, but it only made things worse. We were both going to suffer, and no matter how many times he’d purposely made me endure it, I’d never wish it upon him.
We loved each other, but in the end, it meant nothing. After all, we’d both drunk the poison from the same vein. As he’d told me time and time again, my fate wasn’t my own, and in the end, his hadn’t been, either.
It should’ve made me feel better somehow, but there was no satisfaction to be found in something so fucked up. And that was the only way to describe what this all was. I’d already been forced to mourn the loss of the life I’d once lived, and now I would be forced to mourn this as well.
I’m sorrywas what his reflection kept saying to me. Again, too little too late. Zarren had eventually turned off the water, dried me off, and even helped me get dressed before escaping downstairs.
Will you smell my scent in the air? Will it haunt you like yours will haunt me?
Will you hear my screams in the dead of the night? Will they echo in your soul?
Will you see my face each time you close your eyes? When they’re wide open?
Will you find pieces of my heart strewn across the floor? Will they be lying there beside yours?
Shaking my head, again, it didn’t matter. Nothing ever would. I had no choice but to be handed off to someone who might be a complete monster. I was having to pay for the sins of my father, and one who’d never lifted a fucking finger to do a damn thing for me. All he’d done was try to use me, then pawn me off like something he possessed.
Mikhail might have me in body, but he’ll never possess my heart and soul.
What’s left of those will lie squarely with the man downstairs. I wanted so badly to run to him and try to plead to his confessed feelings toward me, but there was no use. He’d rather bite off his own ear than stand up to his uncles... For himself... For me...
“You need to pack whatever you want to take with you,”he’d said to me after leaving me on the bed.
And he was right. Begrudgingly, I forced my limbs to move. I got up and retrieved my suitcases from the closet. I had nosooner pulled everything from the hangers when the sound of a doorbell pierced the air. As soon as it did, something struck my chest, and I staggered over to the chair in the corner.
As reality hit me that time had truly run out, I was afflicted with lightheadedness. My vision blurred, and as I tried to collapse onto the chair beside me, my limbs wouldn’t move, and I fell to my knees in front of it instead. My heart started to palpitate as everything got hazier, but I was paralyzed. Body, and especially mind.
Fear twisted around my arms and legs like a rope binding me to my uncertain future, while also slipping inside and wrapping around my lungs. At first, my breaths became labored, but as the incessant roar of my blood in my ears beat in my head like a snare drum, it slowed to a stop completely.
Mentally, I clutched at my chest, but in reality, I began to choke. I wanted to cry out for Zarren, but each time I tried to open my mouth, my windpipe would close more tightly. It didn’t take long to go from a kneeling position to one flat on my face.
I knew I was heavily sweating as the perspiration created a small puddle underneath me. I was also wracked with chills as goosebumps rose up on my flesh despite feeling as if I’d been thrust into an inferno.
Unable to do more than hyperventilate, I found myself praying to whatever God was out there to finally show me some mercy. I’d been the perfect daughter, friend, girlfriend, and nurse in my life, and I deserved better than this.
