“I wanted to keep you,” I choked out, forcing the words past wobbling lips. They felt too small, too weak for something this big, this devastating. “I wanted you so much?—”
My hands flew to my mouth, trying to stifle the broken sounds spilling out of me, but it was useless.
“I’m so sorry.”
All the nights came crashing back: every empty hour, the loneliness, my soundless screams every time I felt that relentless pang of grief.
“Why do you keep saying you’re sorry?” Aria demanded.
“Aria, please listen to your mother,” Lykos reasoned. “I was mad too, but now I understand. She sacrificed it all for you.”
Aria’s delicate blonde eyebrows knitted in confusion. “How? By giving me away so I could be the daughter of a woman who tried to kill me?”
“Please believe me, Aria,” I begged. “I had to hide you. I had to. I knew Lykos could keep you safe, somewhere my father would never find you.” My breath hitched violently. “He would have killed you. He threatened to kill any child of mine… for Lily.”
The name broke something open inside of me all over again.
“Aria…” I whispered softly while tears streamed down my face relentlessly. “My baby…”
She flinched.
It was a small motion, but it cut like a knife. But then her face crumpled.
“I… I… I don’t know how to feel,” she whispered. The fact that I was the cause of her devastation made my heart break into a million pieces. “I thought… I thought you didn’t want me.” Her breath hitched. “Did you… Do you love me?”
“With all my heart.”
She hesitated for just one heartbeat, then she ran toward me and fell into my open arms. I pulled her into a fiercely protective hug, holding her close like I could make up for every lost second, every lost year, every lullaby I never got to sing.
“I’ve got you,” I cried, over and over, the words tumbling out like a promise—yet another one I intended to keep. “I’ve got you. I’ve got you, I’ve got you?—”
Her arms tightened around me.
“Mom,” she whispered.
It was a simple word, but something inside me—something that had been hollow from that day when I handed her to Lykos—finally filled.
I laughed through my tears, clutching her tighter as if the world might still try to take her from me.
My eyes found Lykos and Dimitros, and I rasped, “I love you all.”
I belonged with them. Now and forever.
FORTY-SIX
LYKOS
That night, the penthouse was filled with tense silence after a day full of violence. The sound of rain trickled against the windows, somehow making the silence in our home even louder.
A siren wailed three streets over, but inside our sanctuary, that sound felt muted, reflecting on what my youngest had witnessed today. WhatI’dlet her see.
She sat curled on the edge of her bed in oversized pajamas, knees tucked to her chest, and staring at nothing.
It didn’t matter that I’d faced torture, witnessed death and men begging for mercy. None of it compared to standing in the doorway, wondering if my daughter was afraid of me.
So I lingered, slightly terrified that she wouldn’t want me near.
Violet sat beside her carefully, wearing pajamas too. We’d all showered, and there was no evidence of blood on me. Yet, it was everywhere, lingering in the shadows because of who I was.
