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“Bullshit. There’s no way you believed Elio was marrying her for love. I’m not blind, Jade. I know what these men are like. You do too, and you sit there with your holier than thou attitude and act as though you’re innocent in this. You fucking knew what Teagan suffered through. You knew what those animals did to her in that basement, and you allowed your brother-in-law to force her into a marriage.”
I get to my feet. The one thing I can’t stand is hypocrites.
“Portia,” Dario says as I step outside to take a deep breath. I turn and see he’s sitting on a swing, his gaze on me.
Teagan is currently speaking with the doctor, who arrived about twenty minutes ago. The woman seems nice, and I’m truly hopeful she can help my girl. I don’t give a fuck how much money it takes or if we have to go abroad, I’m willing to get her the help she needs. If that means taking her away from this family, then so be it.
“What do you want, Dario?” I’m unable to keep the anger out of my voice. I’m so close to reaching for my knife and slitting his throat.
“I want you to talk to me.”
I shake my head. “I’m so fucking close to killing you right now, I don’t want to speak with you. I can’t even look at you.”
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I fucked up. I should never have told Elio to go after her. Our father’s sins are our father’s, not ours.”
I glare at him. The hatred I feel is more than I can handle right now. I don’t know what to do with it. I want to lash out. I want to scream and cry. “You would know all about the sins of the father, Dario. Yours was a bastard, and you’ve just proven that you’re exactly who everyone thought you were.”
He gets to his feet and pushes toward me. “How do I make it right?”
I swallow hard and shake my head. “You can’t. Your actions have led to my best friend—my sister—drowning so hard in the darkness that she couldn’t see another way out. I don’t know if I can ever forgive you for that.”
He nods, his eyelashes thick with unshed tears. I hate that my heart aches for him. I’d love nothing more than to have his arms wrapped around me, promising me everything’s going to be okay. But I can’t have that. I can’t allow him to get close enough to destroy me and Teagan again.
“Take good care of her, Portia. She’s going to need you with her.”
“I don’t know if being here with you all is going to do that. I wouldn’t be able to do it. I’d rather she have inpatient care, someplace she can heal without the memories.”
“I’ll bring it up to them,” he says. “I’m sorry,” he whispers as he presses a kiss to my lips. “I truly am. If I could go back and change it, I would. I’d pretend I’d never heard of Teagan.”
“Then I’d have both my girls still with me,” I tell him. My anger is whipping through me like a tsunami. I can’t be around him. Listening to his apologies isn’t easing the pain, anger, or even the guilt that I feel.
He nods once again and moves away from me. “Take care of yourself, Portia.”
My throat clogs with tears, and I blink furiously, trying to stop them from falling. I hate that he’s gone and isn’t fighting, but at the same time, I’m glad that he isn’t. I don’t have the energy to deal with him. I don’t have the patience to listen to more excuses as to why he targeted my girl.
“I don’t think I’ve ever heard Dario be so sincere,” Elio says as he enters the backyard. “My brother really cares about you. I think he has from the moment he saw you.”
“Well, I should have listened to my gut that day. It told me you were both bad news.”
He sighs as he comes to stand in front of me. “You saved her from hell on the streets,” he says, and my brows furrow. How the hell would he know? “You’ve killed for her, for both her and Nell. So I get that you’re pissed. I get the anger, and hell, I get the guilt. I feel them all too. I fucked up, not Dario, Portia. It was all on me.”
I shake my head. “Wrong. He led you to her. He was the one who told you about her. If he hadn’t, she wouldn’t be in this position right now.”
“You’re right, she wouldn’t. She’d still be on the street. You all would. You’d all be living your lives as you had done. I know that. I have felt the guilt of forcing her to marry me. I can’t bear a life without her, Portia.”
I raise a brow. “Oh? And why is that?”
“Because I love her. I think I have for a while. It’s why I’ve kept her at arm’s length. I was too focused on the anger I felt to even contemplate any other feelings I had. But when I saw her lying in the bathtub, the anger disappeared, and the stark fear of losing her hit me. She’s my wife, Portia, and I do love her. I’m going to do everything it takes to ensure she never feels alone again.”
“Why did you do this? What did you sense to gain from it?” I ask, needing to know why he thought destroying my girl’s life was worth it.
He starts to unbutton his shirt, and I swallow back the bile as I see the red and puffy scars on his chest. I know what I’m seeing. The burns on his chest aren’t ordinary ones. They don’t appear to be anywhere else on his body, just his chest. This was deliberate.
“Her father did this to me. He burnt me with cigarettes, then when I passed out from the pain, he torched my chest. I needed surgeries to fix it. I was angry, Portia. So fucking angry at the world. I wanted revenge. Dario wanted revenge. My brother has seen violence so much in his life. He’s felt it firsthand from a young age. Seeing me in pain affected him. He needed vengeance for me. But it was taken from us by the Gallagher’s, and there was nothing I could do. I was helpless. The man who did this was dead, and I was stuck in limbo. I was angry at the world. I was dead inside, until my brother gave me hope.”
“Teagan,” I whisper, my hands shaking as I watch him carefully.
He nods. “I thought I could turn that deadness inside and use it against her, to keep her at arm’s length. Dario knew the moment I saw Teagan that revenge wasn’t the reason for me marrying her. I also knew it deep down. He’s told me more times than I can count that it’s more than that, but I wouldn’t listen.”
