After a dinner of pasta that I couldn’t properly appreciate, and a quick shower, I passed out again in my white, fluffy cloud of a bed.
But now I was wide awake and feeling incredibly uncomfortable in the living room.
“How did you sleep, tesoro?” Gabriel asked, setting down a cup of tea for me. He sat next to me on the couch. Andrew had stationed himself in an armchair as far from me as possible, which both thrilled and horrified me. After Gabriel’s revelation that my scent wasn’t as undetectable as I thought, I wondered if it was affecting Andrew now. Should I have asked for descenter? Would they take offense at that?
“Um, well, thanks,” I said, forcing myself to focus on Gabriel rather than staring at Andrew. “That bed is so comfortable.”
“Are you sure it’s okay? Because we can get you a new comforter or pillows or something,” Andrew said quickly.
I grimaced. They had to stop being so nice to me, or I was going to explode. “It’s perfect.”
“I have already heard from your Maggie. She is very… persistent.” Gabriel slid the flip phone Soren had given me across the table. “Please call her so she knows we are taking care of you before she comes to kill us.”
I laughed despite my embarrassment. “I can do that.”
I also wanted to call Nathan and tell him to not do whatever it is they were planning, but I didn’t have his number. My phone was still at Maggie’s place, and I could imagine her assumptions if I asked for Nathan’s contact info. Maybe I could email him instead.
“Did you know Anvi has a criminal record?” Gabriel asked. That had my full attention.
“No. What? Anvi?” Of all the people in the world to have a record, Anvi was the last on my list. “For what?”
“It was a juvenile offense. I am trying to get the records, but they are sealed,” Gabriel replied.
“There’s no way Anvi is involved. She’s too… sweet,” I said, wrapping my hands around the mug of tea.
Gabriel smiled, a little sadly. “You never know what someone is capable of, carrissima. But I will get answers.”
“You won’t find anything,” I said.
“What about your mom?” Andrew asked cautiously. “Could she have something to do with it?”
Of course they knew it was my mother who’d burst into the clinic; we looked pretty much identical. I had thought about that a lot over the last few days. Her showing up was too big a coincidence to ignore. And she’d shown, time and time again, that she was willing to betray me at every opportunity.
My mother spent her life trying to be the perfect Omega for my fathers at the expense of everything else, including me. After years of therapy, I accepted she was trying to protect herself from them, but I didn’t forgive her. I couldn’t.
I did have good memories of her. Mostly of her singing. On the rare occasions my fathers were both away, she would blast show tunes in the kitchen and spin me around until I felt like we could both fly away.
She sang to me at night, too. Beatles' songs mostly. Her voice was lovely, and sometimes I wished I could hear her sing “Blackbird” again.
Linda, my therapist, tried to soften my anger. “It’s not healthy to carry that around with you. Maybe she was doing the best she could.”
The rage that had boiled up inside me scared me. Ihatedmy mother as much as I loved her. “Then it wasn’t good enough, was it?”
I forced myself to focus back on the room, on the present. I could feel myself getting swept into the past. Tears pricked at my eyes, and suddenly Gabriel’s arms surrounded me.
“Ah, please do not cry,” he murmured into my hair. I swallowed hard, determined not to cry yet again.
“Fuck, I’m sorry,” Andrew said. His voice sounded raw with regret. I pulled back to look at him.
“It’s not your fault,” I said, rubbing my eyes. Andrew was leaning forward, his elbows on his knees and his hands clasped, with a look of such despair on his face that I wanted to reassure him. “My mother… She saved my life by getting me out of my fathers’ house. But that was basically the only time she ever protected me from them.”
Andrew’s eyes were intent on me.
“You do not have to share this, fiore mio,” Gabriel said. He still had his arm wrapped around my waist.
I kept my gaze on Andrew. “No, it’s okay. If sheisinvolved, then Domenic, her Alpha is too. She never did anything without my fathers’ permission. Now that one of them is dead—” An odd pang of something made me pause. “Domenic is definitely still in charge. And he’s a monster.”
No one spoke for a moment. “They were bad men. They… hurt us. And Domenic was always the one that scared me the most.”
