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Fourteen
Cammie
I staredup at the ceiling of the guest bedroom, still unable to believe that he’d put me in here. Because I wasn’t sure whether that was a good sign or a bad one, and because I kept thinking about that glass ornament digging into my father’s skull, the wet splashes, the mushy sounds as the hard object collided with brain matter, I had yet to sleep.
Was it any wonder?
As such, I’d been staring into the void for what felt like forever, and what made it worse was the lack of a phone. There was no scrolling through Insta, no disappearing in vaguebooking. There was just me. And the hard facts of what I’d done.
I’d never hurt anyone before. Not really. When I’d joined the Sinners as a clubwhore, there’d been a few catfights, some behind the scenes, some in front of the brothers who got off on that stuff, but other than that, I’d never done anything worse than rake my nails down someone’s cheek.
Tonight was what nightmares were made of, and I still couldn’t believe I’d done it to be honest. But even as that disbelief filled me, I was aware that I’d do it again to stop Victoria from having to go through what I had.
It just disturbed me that, while I’d saved her from Abramovicz, I hadn’t spared her from Maxim. And then there was how I was at the other side of the hall, right at the opposite end from where Brennan slept.
He’d said he wanted kids, so he meant to visit me at some point... if this was to be my permanent bedroom, that is.
My parents, by the time Victoria had come around, had both slept in separate rooms—
Christ. Both of them were dead now.
Gone.
We were orphaned.
The agony was constant where thoughts of my mother’s death were concerned, and even though I was the direct reason behind my father’s, the pain wasn’t as acute. I didn’t feel like someone was standing on my chest, compressing my lungs... I just felt a surreal sense of bewilderment. Like I wasn’t sure how it happened. Like I didn’t know how I could have done that.
Because I didn’t.
I wasn’t that person.
I wasn’t.
Truly.
Tears burned my eyes, not for the first time, as my brain whirred in a cycle that seemed endless. I wanted to scream out my pain, my grief, but I didn’t want to disturb Brennan. If I did, well, he seemed more than serious about claiming me as his, something that had resonated and filled me with relief when we’d discussed it on the journey to his building, but I didn’t want to push my luck.
A lifetime of dancing on eggshells lay ahead of me, exactly like my mother. If I had a daughter, I wanted so much more than for her to be a pussy with a price tag. A womb for sale. A mother to future mobsters.
The tears fell at that, because I knew that was unlikely. Just because I wanted it, didn’t make it so. Brennan would want his daughter to marry some Irish Mob general, and that was that.
What say would I have in anything?
I’d just give birth to the baby. I’d just raise it with love. I’d just make it a decent human being. Nothing important in the grand scheme of things.
Flinging myself onto my back, I stared some more at that goddamn ceiling which, thanks to the endless reel of thoughts, was now blurry and I knew that if I carried on like this, I’d go insane. I’d literally lose my mind.
The walls were beginning to close in, and I just—God, I wished Victoria was here. Even though I never wanted her to know what I’d done, I wished she was here, just so I could hug her. Just so I could talk.
I had to, I realized.
Since Brennan had collected me like a lost wallet, he hadn’t pressured me to talk about what had happened tonight, and while I’d been grateful at the time, I knew I had to or I’d go mad.
He’d deposited me in here, told me to make myself comfortable, and then had departed. I’d thought it was for the night, but he’d returned with a pair of his boxers and a shirt for me to sleep in. They scented of him, and I only just realized how nice that scent was.
We were strangers.
And we were going to get married tomorrow.
