And then there’s Samuel.
The man who impregnated her.
My hands ball into fists, and I slam them into the concrete floor over and over until my knuckles bleed.
“I’m going to rip their corpses from their graves, summon their spirits from the afterlife, and kill them again just to make them experience an inch of the suffering they gave to her!” I yell.
Orion kneels beside me and puts his arm around my shoulder.
“They’re the ones who destroyed her. This is where it happened. This is how they did it.”
“And she got her revenge,” Orion says.
“No,” I growl, glaring at him. “Samuel still walks. Wehaveto find him.”
I wipe the snot and tears away, jump to my feet, and swiftly snatch Atreus’s gun from his holster and haphazardly point it at his face. “You were the one who found her. Tell me where.”
“In the woods, not far from here,” he replies, holding up his hands. “Think about what you’re doing, Xavier.”
“I know what I’m doing. We have to go back to the hospital you brought her to,” I say, marching toward the exit, still carrying his gun.
“Hold up, what the fuck are you planning?” Atreus asks.
“I need to see her files,” I say.
He grabs my arm and forces me to stop, and I nearly hit him with the barrel.
“You’d better have a goddamn good reason to stop me, because I will raise hell on this motherfucking earth for breaking the only woman I have ever adored.”
“You can’t just go and break into a hospital, Caruso,” Atreus says.
“No? Then what’s your plan? Because you know damn well everything you’ve been doing has only made things so much goddamn worse!” I yell in his face.
“Calm down, guys,” Orion says.
The gun in my hand sways back and forth. “No, if he’d done his job, those fuckers would’ve been arrested. Heknew. He knew about all of this.”
It’s so goddamn tempting to shoot him down and end it all. Even if he isn’t the cause of her wounds, it’s because of him that they continue to bleed to this day.
“No, I didn’t, and I would’ve arrested them if she’d told me the fucking truth about what happened to her.”
My eyes widen. “She … she didn’t tell you either?”
“No. She refused to talk to anyone.”
“Because she knew you would never give her justice,” Orion says, licking his lips.
“I would have,” he says. “If she’d given me a chance.”
Orion ponders. “Who could ever trust, when man always abuses?”
And I realize, even if I am a man, that he is right.
Men …
Are always the ones to hurt women.
No wonder she couldn’t trust anyone with her secret.
