I fight to keep my face passive, but when his eyes turn even more murderous than they were a few seconds ago, I realize I didn’t do a very good job.
“You let him torture her?” He advances on me, and this time I don’t step back because I deserve his wrath. I deserve death for what I allowed to happen to Chloe Weaver. I may have spent the last decade convincing myself she was this terrible person who broke my brother’s heart, but the reality is she was a scared girl who took the only chance she had at survival.
I’ve often asked Dad what the plan was if she’d died alongside her parents, how he would have spun that to Ronan, but if there’s one thing to be said about Salvatore Lombardi, it’s that he doesn’t play with “what-ifs.”
His fist comes out of nowhere, and I don’t get a chance to block him before it’s too late. Pain radiates across my cheek and eye, tearing a grunt from my chest.
Fuck that hurt.
When did he get such a good right hook?
“Did that make you feel better?” I deadpan.
Another fist flies toward me, but I manage to duck out of the way before it can connect.
“You get one free shot, brother. The next time you take a swing at me, you’ll regret it.”
“You’re lucky I haven’t killed you,” he growls.
“Really? Your own brother? For what? A whore you haven’t seen in a decade? A woman who never took the time to let you know she was alive?”
“Don’t call her that,” he grinds out.
I shouldn’t keep pushing him. He’s already too wound up, and yet I don’t stop. The words keep coming even as my mind screams at me to shut up.
“It’s true, brother. You know as well as I do how badly she wanted to fuck me. Didn’t I ever tell you about the night of my engagement party? She wanted me so fucking badly because someone else was going to have me.”
“You’re a liar.” He shoves me back, but there’s a flicker of uncertainty in his eyes.
“I’m not lying, Ronan. You can ask her if you want. If you’re as good at reading her as you think you are, you’ll see the truth.”
I don’t give him a chance to reply before I’m stalking toward the door.
If we stay locked up in this suite together for another moment we’re going to kill each other, and somehow I don’t think I could explain murdering my brother to our father.
And besides, it’s time Chloe and I had a little chat about the past.
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHLOE
NOW
Iused to think I’d lived the worst days of my life, that there was no way there could be anything as traumatic in my future as what I’d lived.
But today is up there.
I may not have been physically hurt or watched anyone I loved die in front of me, but today I’ve had all those scars torn open, and just like I was all those years ago, my heart bleeds the same way it did then.
Every inch of my body is so raw the air around me burns, and every ragged breath I drag into my lungs is like a million razor blades cutting into the organs that keep me alive.
I stare ahead at a wall of posters promoting various services the hospital offers, but I don’t see any of it. All I see is the look in Ronan’s eyes when I told him I lost our baby.
It wasn’t my fault, and I’ve long since forgiven myself for not being what our child needed in that moment, but that doesn’t stop the guilt from eating away at me.
All these years he thought we had a kid, he thought there was a little being running around that was half me and half him. And God, I wish there were.
Every day I long for the little girl with her daddy's eyes and my hair. Of course I don’t know if it was a girl because I was far too early in my pregnancy, but from the second I saw those two pink lines on the test, I just had a feeling.
