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“You missed some,” I tell her, leaning in to steal a kiss from her lips. “But he’s still alive.”
She knows who I mean. Marco was nothing to her, so she chose to let Ari deal with him. But Guido… It’s complicated. I can see the struggle in her face. Once she chooses a path, she can’t go back.
“Ari’s getting ready to wake him, and I need to know what you want from us, little goddess.”
Her eyes close, and she breathes, and for a moment, I think maybe she fell asleep, but I can see her pulse hammering in her neck. I lean in to kiss it, to try and give her some peace, but I know there’s nothing to help her.
“Do you think this baby will love me if I become a killer?”
“Do you think this baby will love us knowing we’re already killers? That we took their mom against her will and coerced her into loving us?”
“Shut up,” she says, then surges into a kiss. I take her into my arms and hold her as tight as I dare.
“That’s how it happened, little goddess. We might like the ending, but the journey wasn’t very kind.”
She sighs and shrugs. “It was kinder than I was given at the hands of my so-called father,” she says. She drops her head to my shoulder, and I push my fingers into her hair. “He stole our wedding.”
I ease her back and cup her chin. “No, beloved. That was not our wedding. That was a show of dominance. Our wedding will be the five of us, just us. It will be a moment to bind what we have and promise that this is our forever. And that’s something he cannot touch.”
Her eyes go a little glassy, and then she licks her lips. “Come get me before it’s over. I don’t think I can see him now.”
I nod, then kiss her a final time before laying her back down against Phoenix’s soft blankets. I don’t look back because if I do, I know I won’t be able to head back into that room. I do catch Phoenix as he’s coming out of James’ room, and I take the back of his neck and press our foreheads together.
“You and James need to hold her until she’s ready,” I say.
He nods against me, then steals a kiss before I let go.
Guido will never know peace again. If there really is a god—or if there’s justice in the universe—he will feel the pain beyond death. He will suffer until his soul is cleansed before he’s finally released to the nothing.
It’s all anyone can really hope for, if they ever want to be absolved.
Chapter 19
ALICE
I don’t listento what’s going on. I can’t. My imagination is enough, and my dreams are plagued with what happened mixed with what might have been. I feel restless but also like I could sleep for a hundred years, and James’ warm, heavy hand doesn’t bring me the state of calm it normally does.
He senses it and eases back, but he doesn’t leave me alone. He just traces absent patterns on my belly and hums softly to himself.
It’s all I can ask for until the moment hits me, and I realize that I’m ready.
I know Ari is just keeping Guido alive until it’s time for me to make my peace, and there’s no sense in dragging this out for days. I’ll only feel free when he’s no longer breathing, and while I know they’re owed his suffering as much as I am, I want us to be done with it.
The other two are finally dead, so it’s time.
I sit up, and James gives me a look. “I’m ready,” I tell him.
“Do you want company?” he asks.
I shake my head. Phoenix and James have already come and gone from the playroom, and I think Kane’s still in there withAri, but he must be finished too. The rest is up to me, and I need to do this myself.
I lean in for a kiss, then swing my legs over the bed and grab Phoenix’s hoodie from the chair in the corner. I don’t plan on getting blood on my hands. I don’t want to torture him. I just want him to know that nothing he ever did made a damn bit of difference.
He was never going to win. That’s what I want him to take to whatever hell he’s destined for.
I make the walk slower than normal, knowing that everything will change when I cross the threshold, but it doesn’t take long for the reality to set in that it already has. It changed the moment I looked up at these men and realized this was my forever.
I’m as shattered as them, as dark as them, stained as them.
