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She’s never been one to cry her heart out, and I definitely never would have thought she’d harm herself. Cia prefers to dig for anger to motivate her rather than allow sadness to take a hold. Even at my dad’s funeral, where I know she was as sad as me, she held it together. Why? I bet she focused on the anger she feels against my cunt of a mom.
If it wasn’t for everything else going on, then the day Cia killed my mom in such a spectacular fashion would have been the best fucking day of my life. As I think about that day, my hand automatically goes to my shoulder. Well, it wasn’t actually my shoulder, but more like a few inches from my armpit.
I shudder as I remember the pain, the blood, and Cia’s cries of anguish. That was the worst part, struggling to answer her while knowing she needed me to. Luckily, the Kronos hospital in Athens was able to stitch me up in no time and… ha! It would be nice if it had been that easy. It took a few surgeries to get the bullet out, then there was the joys of healing, not to mention the rehab. It’s still not completely fine, and it might not ever be. But I’ll take the occasional pain and discomfort over leaving this world.
“H-he lied to me,” Cia hiccups.
I frown, confused as to who she’s talking about.
When another bout of sobs tears through her, she hides her face against my chest. Rubbing her chest against the soaked shirt I’m still wearing.
“Shh,” I practically croon. “Everything will be okay. You just have to let it all out.”
“But it’s not okay,” she wails. “I was supposed to be able to trust Nikolaos and Abel. But they did this to me… to us. Why didn’t they tell me? And what was Nikolaos’ plan? Why did they allow a life to be lost?”
I get her pain, her frustration, and most of all, the startling realization of being a pawn without a fucking say in a situation someone else set in motion. We already have all the answers we are going to get, though. Since everyone is now dead, there’s never going to be another answer to get.
That’s what the real issue is, I think. Everything happened so quickly, domino blocks falling once the first had been pushed over. There was no time to really sit back and digest the events, or even ask questions of the people responsible. It just is.
“I don’t know why they didn’t tell you,” I answer honestly.
Sobs wreck her body again, rendering her unable to speak as they tear through her. It’s fucking heartbreaking to see her so fragile—so broken. I almost believed it to be impossible to break Cia, and right now I wish it was fucking true.
When her cries die down and she’s breathing normally, I finally ask, “Why are you still distancing yourself, baby? After your chat with Kai I—we thought you’d…” Trailing off, I wave my hand through the air like that’s any fucking explanation of what we thought.
Of course, we never expected her to act like nothing had happened. It did, and it’s something we should never forget. But she needs to start living again, and the longer it takes her to do it on her own, the more I fear never getting her back.
Cia takes a deep, shuddering breath. “If I tell you something, will you promise not to think badly about me?”
I have to swallow back the laugh sitting in my throat. “That’s the easiest promise I’ll ever make,” I say. “I could never think badly about you, Cia.”
She murmurs something under her breath that sounds like she’s about to put me to the test. I want to ask her to repeat the words, but I don’t. I sit patiently while she untangles herself and leans back so she can look at me.
“Nadia was pregnant when she died.” Cia looks expectantly at me like that statement alone makes all the sense in the world. “Kai was going to be a dad.”
Nodding, I softly say, “I figured.”
She huffs with frustration. “He wanted to be a dad. Kai was looking forward to it. He… he wants a big family.”
I feel like a fucking fool as I just nod again.
“I feel guilty,” she almost screams. “It could have been his kid I lost.”
Fuck, I’m caught between a rock and a hard place right now.
Thanks to Cia basically checking out, Kai, Liam, and myself have found ourselves with a lot of extra time on our hands. Okay, that’s not the reason I know Kai isn’t—wasn’t—the dad. Abel is said reason.
When I went to Dad’s house to find Cia’s toy dragon, I found more than childhood keepsakes. I couldn’t resist walking through the house I grew up in, so I visited every room, including the basement where I found a folder with my name on it inside the glass cage.
That fucking folder has been weighing heavy on my mind. At first I didn’t tell anyone, I wanted to tell Cia first. But when she kept being caught in a mental hell, I didn’t have the heart to keep it from Liam and Kai either.
“Kai wasn’t the dad,” I say. My voice is barely above a whisper as I finally tell her. “I was.”
Cia gasps. “You can’t possibly know that.
Closing my eyes, I run a hand down my face as I force my thoughts to quieten enough for me to think clearly. “Yes, I can. And I do.”
I don’t look away as I tell her about the folder that I found, and that I wanted her to be the first to know. All that is easy enough, it’s the content of the fucking folder that’s hard.
