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Knocking on the office door, she stepped inside a second later and knew the day wasn’t quite over. As much as she wished she could block out the world, she would first have to deal with Margot.
“You asked to see me when I returned?” Stepping to her father’s desk, she stood before him, determined to get through whatever awaited her now.
Silence greeted her. For some reason her parents’ faces lost their expressions of fury. They simply stared back at her now as though uncertain what to say to her.
Margot sighed heavily. “Oh, Alyssa, what have you let them do to you?”
Alyssa didn’t think she’d ever heard such a tone of pain and regret in her mother’s voice, but that observation was quickly overshadowed by the implication of what she’d said.
Her gaze locked with her mother’s pale one, and in it Alyssa saw a bitter anger that would have terrified her before she left for Spain.
“How did you find out?” She stood before them, unashamed. She wasn’t ashamed, just so very, very tired and broken inside.
Margot moved stiffly. Lifting the envelope from the desk as Alyssa watched her father jerk from his chair and pace to the other side of the office. Accepting it, she opened the envelope and pulled the contents free.
She’d already been ravaged. Everything inside her was already broken, her heart and soul devastated by Shane and Sebastian’s betrayal. Only to face yet another blow.
She did so stoically. She looked at each picture, wanting to see, to know the brutal truth of the lengths they were willing to go to in distancing themselves from her. When she read the note that accompanied the pictures, she sat down abruptly in the chair behind her.
The strength in her knees abandoned her. The tears she swore she would hold back for the baby’s sake she lost temporary control of. Her breath hitched as they spilled from her eyes. Silent tears—the sobs had been silenced in Spain—several hitting the letter before she finished it.
“Well then,” she whispered, and tucked the letter back into the envelope with the pictures. “I guess I didn’t see that coming.”
She carefully folded the flap before rising to her feet and facing her parents.
“They had no reason to worry,” she assured her parents. “Neither do you. There will be no attempt to contact them.”
It was all she could do to stand before them. Why had Shane and Sebastian done this to her? What point was there in sending her parents such horrible photos or such threats?
“Alyssa, what possessed you?” Margot’s voice was rough, the barely banked fury resonating in it. “Where was your common sense?”
Where was her common sense?
She shook her head wearily. “I’m so sorry, Mother,” she whispered painfully. “Sorrier than you could ever know. But I have no excuses—”
“I didn’t ask for a fucking excuse, girl!” Margot snapped, her voice rising as she leaned forward, her hands braced on the desk. “I asked what happened to your common sense?”
What had happened to it? What had happened to her heart and soul?
“I don’t know,” she admitted softly. “I just don’t know.…”
Turning from her parents, she moved slowly to the office door once again and left her parents standing, watching her, as she left the room. It took everything she had to walk through the house and climb the stairs to her bedroom. Every ounce of strength she possessed just to get to that last sanctuary she had to hide.
Closing the door behind her, she made it to the bed, crawled in fully clothed, and pulled the comforter around her.
Margot, being Margot, of course had to follow her. God, her mother was like a bulldog with a bone.
Entering the bedroom, she stood at Alyssa’s bed for long moments before pulling the chair that sat next to the nightstand closer and sitting down heavily.
“Alyssa…”
“I won’t discuss it.” She couldn’t discuss it. She couldn’t let herself speak of it; she couldn’t let herself remove the shield she’d placed around the memories long enough to make sense of anything right now.
“What did they do to you?” The faint horror in her mother’s tone did nothing to cover the rage. “What did you let them do to you, Alyssa?”
She had let them cut her heart and soul from her body. She’d left both in Spain, searching endlessly, sobbing out in agony at the destruction the cousins had left in their wake.
“I’ll be okay,” she promised, her hand lying on her stomach beneath the comforter, the child resting there her only certainty that she hadn’t imagined the months she’d spent in their arms. “I’m just so tired. I just need to sleep. Please, just let me sleep.” And she hoped when she awoke she’d learn it was all just a very, very bad dream.
