“Please, Liam… I did this for us. I did this so we can start living.” I say, my voice shaking.
“That’s where you’re getting it all wrong, Sara. My life hadalreadystarted. The day I decided to protect you, long before Itold you how much I loved you. My life started when I held you every night. That was all I needed. It was enough, forme.” He grippingly lashes out, and I feel his anger, his disappointment in my bones.
I did this so we can have forever…
I lower my head. “I’m sorry, Liam. You almost died once in front of me… I couldn't live through that again.” I've drained my emotions, and that's all I can say.
“How could you risk letting me go, then?” His eyes harbor sadness I never meant to cause.
I reach for him, pleading for him to forgive me, but he backs up as he lifts his hands, not to touch him, and the rejection is agonizing.
He opens the car door.
“Get in the fucking car, Sara.” And shuts it behind me, shattering my heart with it.
Forty-Six
Joe
It’s truly a tragedy that dead people don’t get to experience coming back to life. It’s monumentally unforgettable to stare into the eyes of the person whose heart you once broke when buried underground.
One moment their soul, happiness, and reason for living shifts and become desperate for a lost bond, a lost future, a lost unfinished story. Life is cruel that way; it can divide, but over time, it shapes circumstances into new, powerful chapters, full of complexities and begging for a fighting chance.
It sank in for me that as much as I decimated Sara’s heart and mine, my death was her fighting chance. A chance for her to fall in love again, a love unquestionably deeper after the pain of losing the one before… after losing me. Somehow, when she retrieved what was never truly lost, a heart-wrenching truth stares back at me—I am on the other side of the mirror. Watching them consume what I wanted so badly for myself, their reflection meeting mine as their bodies join and trap silent words worth of the loudest explosions of hearts colliding into a pure, agonizing promise that I now grieve, even though I was the one who was grieved just a few months ago.
She chose him, that much is clear.
There are a lot of things I should’ve done differently, one of them being more honest. I hesitated countless times telling her about the poker games and how Mimi was helping me, no other than her friend. Fear played with my nerves, and I thought I had it under control until I crossed paths with a devil’s bargain, one that Charles had threatened me with. Resulting in me faking my death.
They arranged for a cadaver from the morgue to burn with my motorcycle while it engulfed everything around me, as I watched my life burn in flames and my heart so slowly charring.
And fuck, I thought I knew what pain was. I didn’t until I had to watch Sara’s heart break over me, her tears at my funeral as I hid inside the back of the church, managing to softly whisper, 'Don’t cry, baby. Don’t cry. I can’t stand seeing you cry.' I don’t know if she heard me, but I hoped it reached some small place within her soul. I never meant to hurt her or break her as much as I did, and sadly, that’s what death does. No one intends to die and leave you completely frail from the pain of loss.
I became death.
Believing their threats, I slowly died too, unable to reach for her as I watched her grieve me. My grief for her was so profoundthat I detested every day I was denied lying next to her, laughing with her, touching her, or making love to her… I was supposed to be her first.
The hollowness I felt, and the loneliness ate at me. I considered ending it. The noise and dark tentacles wrapping themselves around my lungs left me feeling not good enough to even take a breath. I watched myself wanting her… extending my love to a vacant space that I took away from myself. I am the only one to blame, and I will live a lifetime of regret. Though Liam always protected me, I should have told him about all of it.
I wanted my hero’s story.
I wanted to feel like I could take punches and survive like he had when standing between life and death on so many nights with our father and mother. To this day, Liam’s screams from when our father beat him still haunt me. I wanted to rise up against my reflection for once and make Liam proud. The irony is that the only reflection I see is of two people madly in love, one of them being the woman I could hardly breathe without. But now, I have put a stop to the concept of a future with her, specifically the one I had yearned for. Somehow, I can see the inconceivable truth, one that she belongs to my brother.
So, I am rising. I am forgiving. I am protecting. No matter what, I will always protect her.
And that’s exactly what I fucking do, after looking over all the details on the Velastra. I knew my mother’s maiden name wasn’t a coincidence, even though Liam and Sara were very skeptical. The date the Velastra was purchased coincided with the time our uncle acquired a lot of money, and other details solidified my gut feeling that I was overlooking someone; this person, who loved my mom and whom I believed cared about us, had never crossed my mind. Until it did. He seemed better than my father, but monsters don’t always hide under the bed… They can be in plain sight, drinking your own drink while spitting behind your back.
I called Charles to strike a deal with very specific numbers as a price for a buyer, non-negotiable, to which he agrees. Then I made a second call to a friend who’s a spyware guru. He didn’t need to use much of his talent to get into Charles’s phone and see that indeed he had my uncle’s phone number logged as a contact. Under Velastra’s.
Bingo.
I had him send a text from an unknown number to Fred with Sara’s price, a different price than Charles’s. I wanted to confirm he was the one in charge, and I’d know when the buyer revealed the price they were offered.
I knew someone had accepted the deal when they left the bedroom empty and took Sara. The guilt ate at me, that’s when I went to the source and found her before anyone else could, before Liam. I found her, terrified on that boat, so beautiful and chained to the hope that she’d come home… to my brother.
Liam extinguished that deal with a bullet, as always. Tyler had revealed to him that Fred Laurent was behind all of this, and we wasted no more time to find our uncle after the helicopter dropped us back in Saint-Tropez.
Liam doesn’t hesitate to break the door down when we arrive at Fred’s house, and I admire the raw power my twin commands. We storm inside, Liam leading with murder in his eyes, Riviera right behind him, then Mateo and Damien flanking our sides like trained soldiers. Sara trails beside me, arms wrapped tightly around herself, her face pale with shock.
