Agony tears through my chest, my heart shattering into a million pieces because those shots can only mean one thing.
Rowan and Asher are gone, and once again, I’m completely alone in the world.
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
HANNAH
Inever realized heartbreak was a physical pain. I never knew that when the organ that keeps you alive shatters, it’s like everything around you stops, and you’re left with the worst kind of agony imaginable.
The physical and emotional pain wars inside you, each trying to best the other, leaving your body and mind ravaged and broken.
Everything around me is quiet, or maybe I just stopped processing sound after I heard those shots. The shots that took the lives of the men I love.
Loved, I guess.
No. That’s not right. Love.
Because I’ll always love them with every single piece of my broken heart.
Until my own dying breath, I won’t know another love like theirs.
I was lucky because I didn’t just have one true love.
I had two.
Two hearts that beat in time with mine.
Two souls destined to walk this mortal plane beside me.
I curl further into myself, desperate to stop the pain, to wake up from what has to be a nightmare, and for the second time today, I regret the time I wasted on shit that didn’t matter.
Who gives a fuck about losing some clients when I just lost the only two people to ever make me feel seen?
The car moves quietly through the streets of New York, but Jeffrey could be taking me straight to hell right now, and I wouldn’t give a fuck.
Everything I cared about just died right alongside my men.
I guess there’s a freedom in having nothing left to lose.
The car descends into darkness, and it takes me too long to realize we’ve pulled into a parking garage.
Maybe he’ll take mercy on me and kill me too.
Sadly, I don’t think I’ll be so lucky. I’m far more valuable to him alive than dead, and that thought brings on a fresh wave of sobs.
“God, you’re a disgrace,” he sneers. “At least your mother had the self-respect not to fall apart like this.”
For the first time since he dragged me into the car, I meet his eye as he stares down at me with disgust. “What do you mean?” My words are barely audible.
“When I had that delinquent father of yours taken care of. He was a liability, and he had to go, especially when he started making plans to take you away. I couldn’t allow that. I needed you to ensure the future of the family.”
I open my mouth to say something but quickly snap it shut again. Because what do you say when you’ve spent your whole life thinking your dad abandoned you, only to find out he’s been dead all these years?
I don’t know how to react to finding out I’ve been resenting a dead man for leaving me, when he died because he wanted to take me away.
Oh god.
Just when I thought the agony in my chest couldn’t hurt anymore, I’m proven wrong once again.
