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“Sammy, you’re covered in blood. Is it yours?”
“No, Papa,” she said patiently, putting her arm around his back. “Mom’s waiting with Ryan. I promised to bring you straight to them.”
“Ryan?” he repeated, his brow furrowed. “Who is that?”
“Christian,” she amended. “I meant Christian. You want to see your son, don’t you, Papa?”
“Your brother is waiting?” He let her walk him to the door before glancing back at me where I stood, frozen in place. I’d gotten used to his eyes going unfocused and knew he was confused again. “Zariah, are you coming?”
“He thinks you’re my cousin Zariah,” Sammy explained quietly. “She has red hair and blue eyes, too. Otherwise, you two look nothing alike. But he’s tired.”
“Where’s Vaughn?” I asked her again, my eyes stinging. “Please, where is he?”
“My brother is waiting on us, Abi.”
Even with her saying that, I couldn’t move. Vaughn wouldn’t have let her come get me alone. If nothing had happened to him, then he would have been the first person through the door. I wouldn’t have a sick pit in my stomach. I wouldn’t feel like I was suffocating. He would have been there, damn it. So where the fuck was he?
She said her brother was waiting. But she had two brothers. “Vaughn or Ryan?”
Her face did that blank thing, beautiful and cold, just like Vaughn’s did when he shut off his emotions. “As soon as Elias is bandaged up, we will take you home.”
“Something happened,” I guessed, my heart thrashing wildly against my ribs. “Is he hurt? Oh God. He’s hurt. Where is he?”
Cristiano shifted restlessly at her side.
“We can’t talk here. Papa needs to rest. I’ll explain once he’s settled.”
“Explain now!” I commanded, my anger and fear burning through me, causing frustrated tears to spill down my cheeks. “Where the fuck is Vaughn?”
“He’s gone.”
The world shifted. “What? No. I don’t believe you. He wouldn’t—”
“I shot him.”
“No,” I rasped, barely getting the word past the tightness in my throat.
“Twice,” she told me, her blue eyes glittering. Anger I didn’t understand sparked in the air like water on a frayed power cord. “Victor Vaughn wasn’t the man you thought he was, Abi. Fuck, you probably still think he was your professor. Open your eyes, little girl. That was just his cover. Nothing he did or said was real. He. Doesn’t. Exist.”
Darkness swirled around me. Her anger. My grief and confusion. My friend shot my boyfriend. Her brother. I couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe.
He can’t be gone.
Something inside me broke. I could almost hear it shattering before the tiny pieces shriveled up. Pain like I’d never felt before detonated inside me, more powerful than the explosions that had shaken the house hours before.
Closing my eyes, I tried to lock down the emotions threatening to steal what little life-force I still possessed. Vaughn wouldn’t leave me. He loved me—but more than that, he was obsessed with me. The only thing powerful enough to keep him away was death.
“Anya?” Cristiano’s bewildered voice had my lashes lifting. It hurt to look at him now. This man who looked so much like his son. He frowned down at Sammy like he was just noticing her there. “Where did Sammy go? She was just here.”
“Are you hungry?” she asked, not correcting him about who she was. “It’s getting late. Let’s have the cook make everyone some pasta before you call it a night.”
They turned away from me, neither of them looking back as they left me standing there. Broken. Hemorrhaging on the inside from the lethal blow my friend had landed to my heart.
Vaughn was gone.
But Sammy said he wasn’t real to begin with. That he wasn’t even my professor. None of it made sense to me. It felt real. Each heated glance he’d sent me. Every time he’d slid into bed behind me. When he took me home with him. Made love to me. Fucked me in my dorm room. Commanded me to let him love me.
It was real.
