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Tino frowns at me. “Are you okay?”
“I—I?—”
“Did you think we would never find out, Duchess?” Dom continues. “We were always going to, eventually. I’m surprised you managed to keep it a secret for this long.”
“Keep what a secret?” Tino asks. “Would someone explain to me what the fuck is going on?”
Dom addresses his friend. “Our Duchess tried to kill a man. No, correction—she thought she had killed him. It’s the reason she and Lucia came to Verona Falls. They were running from the cops, or so Mackenzie thought. Only, it turns out this man isn’t dead, and he’s most likely after her now.”
Tino’s jaw drops as he regards me in a new light.
I can’t believe everyone knows now. This is so messed up.
Now they’ll have this to hold over me as well as everything else. I’m in a cage, and the bars have just been welded around me. No matter which way I turn, I’m trapped.
The blood drains from my face, and the room swims around me. I don’t think I’m going to have a seizure, but I may well suffer a panic attack. That everyone knows feels like a kind of claustrophobia. My deepest, darkest secret put on display for everyone to judge. There are other things they’ll know, too, things that don’t put me in the best light. That I was willing to have an affair with one of my professors for the best part of a year, for one, but also that I was assaulted. I shouldn’t feel ashamed about that. It wasn’t my fault, but I still do.
Worse, the fact Dom knows my prof is still alive means he has to have found out from Nataniele, and that means my mother knew all along he wasn’t dead. She lied to me, again.
“Let’s get you back to your room.”
Kirill takes my elbow like I’m his elderly aunt, but I shake him off.
“I’m fine. I can walk. I’m not some kind of invalid, and I don’t want to be treated like one either.”
He jerks back at me snapping at him. “I didn’t mean?—”
“Just leave me alone, okay? You’ve all got fucking problems, and so do I, but that doesn’t mean we need each other. A problem shared just means you’re forcing someone else to carry the weight of it for you, and right now I think we’ve all got enough to carry, don’t you?”
His blue eyes harden. “If that’s what you want, Duchess.”
Tino stares at me. “That isn’t what you wanted last night.”
“Things changed since last night.”
He shakes his head. “Bullshit. You’re ours. You know that. You can fight it all you like, but nothing will change that fact.”
My gaze shifts to Dom. “What about you? Are you still going to try to get rid of me?”
He holds my gaze. “No, but if you’re ours, I want everyone to know it. And there’s to be no more secrets between us, okay? I’m never going to accept your bitch of a mother into my family, but you, little sis, I could maybe get used to.”
I don’t want to accept my mother into my family either, or Nataniele, for that matter. But Dom, and Tino, and Kirill, could they become my new family? No, I immediately push the dangerous idea aside. I can’t let these men in because they will take over.
I’m on a precipice. If I step the wrong way, I could fall over the edge.
“I’m not sure…”
His finger touches beneath my chin, lifting my gaze to his. “You belonging to us means you do as we say, understand? You go where we want, you sleep where and when we say, you eat what we put in front of you.”
I swallow, hard. This is what I mean. Their words are too much, their intentions sick. Domineering. They don’t get to tell me what I can eat and when.
Although I’m so exhausted by life, that tiny part of me weirdly welcomes the idea.
“And in return,” he continues, “we will protect you with our lives.”
I smile, hoping it is enigmatic. No way am I giving myself to them unless they do the same in return. I’m not going to be their stupid toy, to play with and mistreat. If they want me, they have to earn me.
Chapter 13
