Achilles schooled his face to look unreadable. Probably so I wouldn’t see the pity in it. I took another swig of my wine.
“I went to the woods that night with five boys. They said they had beef jerky, and I believed them. I think I was hallucinatingfrom hunger at that point. Immediately when we got there, I knew that time was different. They were drunk. Very drunk. They stole alcohol from Igor. As soon as we were off camp, they pinned me down to the snow and started…experimenting with me.”
I closed my eyes, rattled by my own admission. I hadn’t told this to anyone. Not my friends. Not my family members. Not my therapists. Many filled in the details in their minds but I never outright spoke the words.
“They stuffed snow into me until my body temperature dropped and I fainted. They cut me. They hit me. They bit me to a point that, when Tiernan later found me, he thought I’d been mauled by wolves. And they raped me while I was unconscious, including with the vodka bottle. So many times, I nearly bled out.”
My body was wrecked with the force of the truth. I hated that I spoke these words but loved that, finally, someone else could carry the burden of them with me.
“The broken bottle inside me tore me to shreds. Tiernan found me some time later, naked and wounded. He carried me back to camp, which was a forty-minute walk, hefting my injured body through the snow. When he got there, he didn’t go to the camp’s doctor. She was one of Igor’s mistresses and knew how much Igor wanted us dead.
“Instead, he went to a woman named Olga who ran the camp. Threatened her with a kitchen knife. She called the local vet to come save me. The vet liked us better. He mostly dealt with the camp’s animals—horses, hunting dogs, Igor’s beloved cat. The vet operated on me. I was still unconscious, so I didn’t feel anything. But when I woke up—a miracle in itself, I was told—he said he had to remove my uterus and that I would never be able to have children.”
“Bear children,” Achilles corrected.
I blinked. “What?”
“You won’t be able tobearchildren. You will be able to have them. There’s surrogacy. Adoption. There are many ways to become a parent that don’t require a uterus. It doesn’t make you less of a parent. If anything, going through the trouble, the angst, the bureaucracy makes youmoreof a parent. Means you fought for it, tooth and nail.”
I’d never thought of it this way. I was so messed up about not being able to give Achilles what he was born to have—successors—that teenage me hadn’t stopped to think there were other options.
“A teenager wouldn’t process it the same way that we do now,” I whispered. “All I knew was I wasn’t good enough, and that if I let you marry me, you’d find out, be disappointed, and fall out of love with me.”
“Not even you trying to kill me and handing me over to Agent Rothwell could make me unlove you.” He stared at me like I was a complete dumbass. “And nothing ever will.”
“I never tried to kill you.” The truth tumbled out of my mouth on its own accord, making the ground slip beneath my feet. “I wanted to be gone before you got there. You were early. I never wanted you to save me, Achilles. I wanted to saveyoufromme.”
“You said you tried to get rid of me.”
I pressed my lips together. It was time I came clean. Abouteverything.
“I didn’t want to.” My entire body was trembling; he noticed, his palms immediately engulfing mine protectively. It gave me strength to push on. To confess. “Luca made me.”
“Luca?” He scowled.
I nodded. “The first thing I did when I woke up was rush to see you. Luca was there. He only let me through on the promise I’d break things off. He said he’d kill me if I didn’t. As much as I thought I wanted to die, I realized when I woke up I’d rather loveyou from afar and see you happy with someone else than die and not have you.”
A low growl of pain ripped from his throat. “He didwhat?”
“A lot of time has passed.” I pressed a hand to his chest.
He swatted it, standing up.
“Why the fuck didn’t you tell me?” He began pacing the backyard.
“He was right, Achilles.”
“No, he waswrong.” He stopped to roar into my face, snarling. “I’d have chosen you over the Camorra any day of the week. I’d have joined the Irish if I had to.”
“Your family would have killed you,” I said quietly.
“I’d have killed them first.”
“Your entire family?” I shook my head in disbelief. “For me?”
“Minus Lila and Enzo. Pretty sure they’re not shitty enough to make me choose.”
I believed him. And still, at the time, complying with Luca’s demand seemed like the best option. I was broken, devastated by all the things I couldn’t give Achilles, and weak from the fire. I couldn’t see us—two teenagers—standing against the entire Italian Mafia.
