James could hear the bitterness, the anger in his voice, but he forced himself to continue, one hand clenching into a fist. "Dad barely made it back in time for the funeral. He hired someone to handle all the arrangements while he was out of the country, and when he came back...things were different between the two of us. He couldn't ignore me anymore, and he couldn't very well gooff on months long assignments when I needed someone there who could put up the facade of taking care of me."
"Jesus." Camelia's teeth sank into her bottom lip, her eyes huge in her face. "That's fucking awful."
James chuckled humorlessly. "He didn't have any assignments to focus his energy on, and I didn't understand it before then, but Mom was the one who was mellowing his attitude towards me. Without her around...I became his whipping boy." James swallowed, his heart thudding harder, and his voice broke when he continued. "That was before I knew exactly what had killed Mom. Some of the way my Dad reacted afterwards made sense when I found out."
"What happened to her?"
"Dad pissed off the wrong person while out on an assignment." Camelia furrowed her brow, and James clarified, his voice dull. "Dad works in covert ops. He's a mercenary for a private company, though he'll deny it until the day that he dies. He's very good at what he does, from what I understand, but a mission went wrong and he killed the wrong person. Still a bad guy, so it was no skin off his or his boss' nose, but other people took notice."
"She was murdered." Camelia's voice was sad, so fucking sad, and James wanted to put an end to this conversation, to lean forward and kiss her and wipe that tragic fucking expression off her beautiful face.
"She was murdered," James agreed. Evan pressed a kiss to his shoulder, and James reached down and linked their fingers together, for something to hold onto. "And Dad...he was different after that. He was paranoid, and even angrier than he had been before. His temper was vicious, and I was the only person there for him to take it out on."
"He abused you." Again, Camelia said it as a fact, and James couldn't stop himself from chuckling again.
"Nothing quite so simple, though yes, he was abusive. He trained me. He thought that if I could defend myself, if I was able to protect myself and my surroundings the way that he did in his position, then I would be safe from meeting my mother's fate. Sniping, survivalist training, poisons. Anything and everything that he could think of, he put me through. And not kindly.
"I didn't meet Evan until we were sixteen, and by then I was so closed off to relationships, to the world...I'm sure it was like pulling teeth for Evan to befriend me. Stubborn ass wouldn't let me go, though, not once he had put his mind to it." James squeezed Evan's hand, who chuckled behind him.
"Damn straight."
James nodded, a tiny smile tugging at his mouth before it faded away again. Almost done. "By the time I graduated high school, Dad had decided that he didn't want my hard-earned training to go to waste. He informed me the night before graduation that I was going to come and work with him at his company, and that the paperwork had already been drawn. I had already been accepted to Ridgeview, and the last thing that I wanted to do was give up my future for one that he planned, one that would makehimhappy."
Camelia's eyes flicked over James' shoulder before they returned to James' face, understanding dawning on her face. "And you didn't want to leave Evan."
The denial was on the tip of James' tongue, that he and Evan were just friends and that his insistence at going to Ridgeview had been because he wanted to choose his own fate.
But it would have tasted like a lie, and he was sofuckingtired of lying.
"No, I didn't," James finally admitted quietly. He squeezed Evan's hand. "He was the only thing keeping me sane. For a lot of years." He fixed Camelia with an intense gaze, his heartswelling at the emotion that he saw in her eyes. "Until you. And now...now my Dad is going to take it all away."
His voice broke again, and to James' humiliation, tears burned in his eyes. One slipped down his cheek before he was able to swallow against the lump in his throat and force them down, and a look of determination crossed Camelia's face.
"We won't let that happen. Fuck that. Fuck him, and fuck everything that he did to you." She grasped James' face firmly between hers, forcing him not to look away as she firmly said, "We love you.Ilove you. If you think that a little bit of money is going to stand in the way of us keeping you..."
Evan stiffened behind James, and then he straightened up, running a hand through his hair. "Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck."
James looked at Evan, who was standing and searching for his pants on the floor.
"Get dressed, you two. Come on. Now." Evan turned to look at them, a slightly manic determination lighting his blue eyes. "We're going to go fix this. Right now."
Chapter twenty-five
Camelia
Camelia clutched tighter to James' hand as she strolled up the front walk of Evan's family estate, sandwiched between her Alphas. Her heart was thudding hard in her throat, and she couldn't stop herself from looking at the house in front of her with awe.
Calling it a house was a bit of a stretch, if she was being honest. It was just shy of a mansion, an enormous property in the colonial style, with red brick and green ivy and white pillars everywhere that she looked. The doorknobs were shiny brass, the door knocker ornate, and Evan and James both walked up to the front of the property as if it wasn't one of the most magnificent things that they had ever seen in their lives.
When you grow up around it, Camelia supposed that you got used to this sort of grandeur. But Goddamn.
"Wait." Camelia stopped in her tracks as they drew near the door, anxiety pooling in her belly as she looked at the building.She swallowed, and Evan looked back at her with raised eyebrows.
"What is it, baby?"
Camelia tightened her grip on James' hand, and the returning squeeze settled her a little. "Your...we're coming to meet your parents, right?"
A slight smile quirked at Evan's lips. "They're home, yes."
