Page 105 of Chained

"That's why he killed him?"

"The night we were supposed to leave together, I couldn't help but gloat to Father that he'd never be able to hurt me again. No matter how hard he tried to keep me here, I had someone who loved me enough to take me away." She smirks at the memory. "He didn't like that very much. Vincent came in when he'd already ploughed himself inside me for the thousandth time, stabbing him in the throat before he even had chance to blink."

I knew Vincent had killed Archie. Most had been told he'd died from cancer, but I always knew there was more to it.

Every story I'd ever half-heard about that night suddenly makes a horrible kind of sense. All the pieces I'd never bothered fitting together because I never wanted the picture badly enough. I'd told myself for four years it was a power grab, patricide dressed up as inevitability, the natural order of monsters eating each other. I never once let myself wonder if it had been something closer to mercy. I don't know what to do with the fact that the worst man I ever knew might have done the one decent thing of his entire life by killing him, and that even that gets twisted into something ugly, because of everything that came after it.

"So why, Lina? We could have been free."

"I'm a Reigns, Ace. This is my home. Vincent is my family. He saved me from the chains that bound me. How could I leave him after that?"

"I'd have saved you." My voice shakes.

The words come out before I've thought them through, and once they're out, I realise how true they are. How much I mean them even now, even knowing what she's about to threaten me with. Some stubborn, stupid part of me is still that boy in the rose garden, still certain that if she'd just let him, he could have fixed something in her that's been broken since before he ever knew her.

"You'd have condemned us both." She turns to face Amora's balcony. "I've had enough of story time."

"So what happens now?" I follow her gaze.

My stomach drops the second her eyes land on that balcony, because I know exactly what's coming. And I know there's not a single thing I can say that will stop it now that she knows where my mind's actually been living these last two weeks.

"We go inside and you give me what I want." Her voice changes into something sultry, making it hard to keep up with the version of Melina this is. She moves closer, trailing her fingers over my shoulders as she circles me, like an eagle with her prey.

"Which is?" I tense under her touch. Her reveal leaving a sour taste in my mouth.

"You, Ace. It'll always be you."

"And Amora?" I whisper, trying to stay composed.

"You'll stay away from her, Ace. Your nighttime visits end now, or I'll tell Vincent his personal executioner has been sticking his cock inside his prized pig."

"Vincent would kill me."

"He'd kill you both."

"Could you live with that?" I call her bluff, knowing after everything she's done to keep me alive, she wouldn't be the one to end me now. My muscles ache from how tense my body is. Neither of us speak, letting the silence spread. I let her play this little game she's doing in her sadistic attempt to scare me into submission.

I'm tired. Tired of her. Of this place. Of this fucking life.

She grips the collar of my shirt, her touch no longer tender, and drags me to her face. The material scrapes across my neck, friction burning as I try to pull back.

"It ends now, Jax. No more night time visits. You'll stay away from her, because if you don't—" She brings the blade to eye level, twisting it. "I'll gut her like the fucking pig she is. I'll make you watch as I dance in her blood. You forget who I am, everyone in these fucking walls forget that I'm not some hopeless victim. I'm Melina fucking Reigns."

I know this threat is no longer a bluff. She presses her lips against mine, sealing her promise with a kiss, and pushes me away, slinking past me with her hips swaying. She doesn't say another word, and neither do I.

I let my eyes fall on Amora's balcony once more as guilt fights its way through the disgust and shame, knowing that I've just unleashed another monster for her to survive.

I don't move for a second, her body already moving inside and undressing under the moonlight. I let everything she's told me sink in deep. Four years I spent hating her for what she did to me, for the nights I couldn't say no, for the way she made me feel like the only thing I was ever worth was what I could give her. For four years, I never once asked what she was surviving underneath all of it. I don't forgive her for the knife, for the threat, for what she just promised to do to Amora if I don't fall back in line. But for the first time since I've known her, I understand her, and I don't know which is worse—hating someone simply, or hating them while knowing exactly why they broke.

Chapter Thirty-Two

Ace

The dream comes, and it's worse than any before. I want to rip my eyes open, to force myself awake, but I can't. The feel of Melina's sleeping body wrapped around me makes me feel more claustrophobic than any room I've ever been in before.

So all I can do is endure it. To live that moment once again.

I push myself from my bed, grabbing the backpack that sits on the floor with the few belongings I own. I should say goodbye to Jarrod, thank Adrian for everything he's done, but I'm scared. Scared that they'll convince me to stay, or worse, they'll betray me and tell Archie. So I don't. I take one last look around the room I'd spent the last ten years living in, and a part of me feels sadness. A sense of loss for the home I never wanted, but the one I'd gained.