Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 91847 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 459(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 306(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91847 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 459(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 306(@300wpm)
I stop. Close my eyes. My chest feels tight. My gut, too. And I can’t look at my brother.
“I’m his son. Alistair Avery’s blood runs in my veins. Look at me,” he says when I shake my head. “Fucking look at me.”
I do.
“You see it? The resemblance?”
“No, I don’t. Don’t be a fucking idiot.”
“It’s in the eyes. In the abyss in the eyes.” He points to his eyes. I don’t know if he’s aware that his hand is in the shape of a gun pointed to the brain.
“There’s no fucking abyss in your eyes. Shut the fuck up. You’re drunk. Let’s go.”
“I know she told you. And she also told you I was unaware of the fact.”
Again, I stop.
“Always protecting her baby boy. Oh, I mean me. Not you. She’ll do anything for me, huh? Any-fucking-thing. It’s fucked up.”
“How long have you known?”
He shakes his head, looks up into the sky like he’s doing math. “What am I, thirty-two? Let’s say a while.”
“Did you know when everything happened? When he took me?”
He nods a heavy nod.
“It doesn’t matter, Caius. You’re still my brother.”
He laughs, pats my arm, shakes his head. “Santos. You don’t know the half of it.” His words send a chill through me.
“Then tell me.”
He studies me for a long, long time, then laughs again. “You remember when you told me what Camilla said? That little bitch, I fucking share blood with her. Can you believe it? And she tried to make you think she and I… Jesus. Fucking freak of nature, that one.”
“Do they know? Camilla and Liam? Thiago?”
“Thiago has always known.”
This comes as a surprise to me, one that wounds because Thiago and I were close—like brothers ourselves. But I look at my other brother and think maybe this is the way of things. Brothers keep secrets too, as do mothers and fathers.
“Camilla and Liam, I don’t know. Don’t care,” he says. He takes a deep breath in. “I’m going in. I’m fucking tired and ready for this night to be over.” He moves away, but stops, comes back to me and puts his hands on my shoulders. “I’m going to tell you something, Brother. For you and her. For history. Because it goes on a loop, doesn’t it?”
“What?”
“You don’t want what happened to Alexia to repeat.”
“What the fuck, Caius?” I shove him.
“And favors never come for free. They, too, are on a loop. The world goes around and around. And love is a mother fucker. It becomes hate when you’re not paying attention.”
“Caius, what the fuck is going on?”
“Get her out of here. Get your wife out of here. Take her somewhere none of us can find her and hide her away. It’s the only way to save her.”
Then, without waiting for me, he marches back toward the building. I follow him, keeping a few steps back and we don’t say goodbye when he gets on the elevator to go upstairs. I watch him get on, see the look in his eyes like that of a condemned man as the doors slide closed.
He has known all these years that he was the Commander’s son. He’s known. What that must have done to him… And what the hell was that warning? Because it felt like exactly that: a warning.
I feel it in the very depths of myself.
I walk out of that building, my steps hurried as I move toward the SUV, soldiers on my heels. I need to get to her. I need to get her out of Avarice. He’s right. I should never have brought Madelena back here.
32
MADELENA
I’m just getting ready for bed when Santos comes into the bedroom. His hair is windblown and his hands when he comes to take mine are ice-cold. He searches my face, eyes wild.
“What is it?” I ask. “Has something happened?”
“You’re okay?”
“I’m fine. I just wanted to go and Val—”
“I know.” He keeps nodding like his mind is on something else.
“Santos?” It takes him a minute to focus his eyes on me. I put one of his hands over my stomach. “I want to keep the baby. Okay?” He swallows a lump and only half-smiles. I expected more. “Don’t you want to? I thought—”
“I want to. I want to, believe me, I want to. But there’s something… I need to get you out of here now.”
“What?”
“I’ll pack a few things and send more later. But I need to get you out of Avarice.”
He walks away from me into the closet and returns with the same duffel bag we’d taken to Hells Bells. He starts to pack things, underwear, nighties, random things that don’t make sense. I follow him around the room.
“Santos, what’s going on?”
“I’ll come as soon as I can.” He walks into the bathroom and returns a moment later with a bag of toiletries. He picks up the bottle of vitamins Dr. Moore gave me. He looks at it, nods. “I’ll get this refilled.”