by Penelope Sky
I suspected Magnus had already told her about that night—and it didn’t change anything.
He watched me for a while, his anger slowly fading into disappointment. “Does that change your answer?” His voice dropped a few decibels, growing quiet but deep. He immediately raised his guard, preparing for me to choose her over him, to leave him once again.
I shook my head. “I can’t live without you.” I didn’t play games. I didn’t pretend that he wasn’t the love of my life. I didn’t pretend that this relationship was okay, but I also didn’t pretend it wasn’t the best thing that ever happened to me.
The look he wore was indescribable, a mix of surprise and love so deep it actually pained him. His stare lingered for a long time, his dinner now forgotten because my devotion filled his empty stomach.
“Can you live without me…?”
After a long stare, he shook his head. “If I ever lost you, I’d put a knife to my throat and take my life.” Sincerity was in his eyes, that same look he’d given me since our first night together. His love had only deepened, had grown to epic proportions. “Because I’d rather die than live without you.”
I had a love no one else did. I could never throw that away. I could never walk away and hope to find a man who could hold a candle to this one. So that left me with one choice. “If that’s how you really feel, I want you to do something for me.”
“Anything.” He leaned forward, his arms resting on the table, his plate of cold food in front of him.
“Release the girls.”
Slowly, his eyes turned angry, walking right into the trap I’d laid.
“I need you to do this.”
“My answer will not change, chérie.” He kept his voice low, but his anger was audible.
“Yes, it will.”
He clenched his jaw and shook his head.
“You can still run that camp. Just do it differently—”
“Don’t tell me how to run my business.”
“It’s not a business. It’s slavery.” Even though he kept his voice low and calm, I didn’t. My words came out harsh and a little hysterical.
He clenched his jaw again. “I just got home. Really don’t want to do this right now.”
“I never want to do this. But I have to, Fender.”
He licked his bottom lip before he chewed on the inside of his cheek, his eyes dropping to his plate. It was a testament to our relationship that he didn’t scream and flip the table over. He was calm, as calm as he could possibly be.
“You said you want to have a family?”
His eyes immediately darted back to mine.
“Sons…daughters…?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
His eyes narrowed. “I must continue the family line.”
“You have Magnus.”
“He’s not a count. I am.”
“It’s still your family line. And that’s not the reason.”
His arms flexed on the table, as if I’d just entered dangerous territory.
“You want to have a family to replace what you lost. You love me, and you want to grow that love into little people. You want this big house to be filled with happiness and laughter.” I knew Fender’s heart. I knew his desire to have a family had nothing to do with his lineage.
He didn’t refute the assumption.
“You’re going to go to the camp every couple weeks and then come home like nothing happened? What will you do when your daughter finds out what you do to other women? Can you live with that?”
Dead silence.
“Fender—”
“Whether I stop tomorrow or never stop, the blood is still on my hands. I can’t be redeemed. I can’t be forgiven. So, it makes no difference. I did what I had to do to survive, and no, I have no regrets about that. I accept the consequences of my actions when I’m forced to face them, whether that’s in this life or the next.”
I shook my head. “I think you can be redeemed—”
“There’s no coming back after that. There is no justification I can possibly make to support my actions. I knew what I was doing when I did it. I wasn’t under duress. I wasn’t confused. I only cared about getting what I wanted to the exclusion of everything else. I don’t deserve to be forgiven. Not now. Not ever. So, there is literally no point in stopping my actions now. When I get to the pearly gates, I will go down below for eternity. Nothing I do will change that now.”
My eyes started to water, imagining his fate, even if he deserved it. “I can’t go to heaven without you.”
He dropped his gaze.
“So, you have to try.”
He kept his eyes on his plate.
“You can’t change the past. But you can change the future. You can save so many people…”
“This conversation is over.” He lifted his chin and looked at me, his eyes cold and lifeless.
“It’s not over. Do this for me—”
“No.”
“Fender—”
His voice grew louder. “The same blood that ran in my father’s veins runs in mine. I’m evil—down to the bone. There is no hope for me.”
Tears splashed down my cheeks. “That’s not true—”
“Don’t make me leave. Because despite how furious I am right now, I still want to stay with you. I never want to march out of here and leave you alone. I never want to abandon you again. So, drop it now—so I can stay.”
Twenty-Four
It’s Just Business
Fender
She was on my chest, her arm tucked around my waist, her leg on top of my thigh.
I held her against me, one arm around the deep curve in her back with my hand on her stomach. My fingertips grazed her shoulder lightly, feeling the skin that felt identical to the rose petals that had been on the bed the night I’d asked her to marry me.
Conversations were nonexistent. We spent time apart. But we came together every night and loved each other like there was nothing wedged between us. She still wore her ring. She was still mine.
I would always be hers.
Loving Chérie was like living with my heart outside my body.
It was always vulnerable. It always ached.
I kissed her before I slid out of bed.
She propped herself up and watched me go with disappointment in her eyes. She hated my actions. She hated my business. But she still loved me anyway. She still showed it in her eyes every time she looked at me.
That was how I knew this was real.
“Shower.” I leaned down and kissed her before I stepped into the bathroom. Warm water washed down my body, flashbacks entering my mind whenever I wasn’t actively doing something.
I remembered the way I’d killed my father.
Brutal. Cruel. Vengeful.
That was exactly how I would go someday.
My sins would catch up with me.
And then Chérie would have to live without me. Unprotected. Unhappy. Widowed.
I would never see her again—because I was going downstairs, and she was going upstairs.
When I stepped out of the bathroom, Gilbert greeted me. “Magnus is here to see you.”
I scanned the bedroom, no sight of Melanie.
He read my look. “She’s speaking with him downstairs.”
I pulled on my sweatpants then made my way downstairs into the parlor.
Melanie sat across from him, the two in deep conversation.
I approached and looked down at Melanie, silently telling her to dismiss herself.
She read that look and excused herself.
I watched her walk away before I took the vacated spot and sat across from my brother. “My fiancée tells me her sister isn’t too happy about the news.” The hostility was out in the open, because yet again, that bitch was sabotaging my life.
Magnus wore a stoic expression, in jeans and a gray shirt, his hands together between his thighs. “Can you blame her?”
My eyes narrowed at the insult. “I’m richer
than the devil, I’m good-looking, I granted her freedom. Yes. I can blame her.” I grabbed the glass of wine Gilbert had provided and took a drink.
My brother wasn’t as restrained as he usually was. He spoke his mind, like he had something important to say. “Raven isn’t impressed by money. And she doesn’t want her freedom.” Pride was noticeable not just in his eyes, but in the sound of his voice. “She wants to be with me wherever I go.”
I relaxed into the couch, my arm resting over the back with the wineglass still in my grasp. If he wanted to be proud of the loyalty he’d acquired from a woman no other man would want, that was his prerogative. Seconds of intense eye contact transpired before my eyes narrowed slightly. “Isn’t that romantic?” I brought the glass to my lips and took another drink. “If the bitch wants to work, let her.”
Magnus immediately turned angry. “Don’t do that.”
“What?” I knew what, but I asked anyway. Just needed to remind him that his woman was forever beneath mine.
“You know exactly what, Fender. I think Melanie is dumb as a dog, but you don’t hear me saying that.”
I didn’t appreciate the insult, but I didn’t respond to it because I was the one who’d made the first attack. It was pointless anyway, because he was wrong. They were both wrong about every assumption they made about Chérie. I returned the wineglass to the table. “Sounds like this is getting serious…”
He ignored my sarcasm and held my gaze.
I let the tension go. “I guess I’m gonna have to learn to tolerate her, aren’t I?”
“She’s more than tolerable.” That pride was back.
“I disagree. And I’ll always disagree.” We’d leave it at that.
After a tense silence, Magnus spoke. “When’s the wedding?”
“Whenever she gets a dress, I guess. We aren’t having a big ridiculous wedding. We’ll probably get married out on the lawn.”
“I expected you to throw a big party.”
Our wedding was just about us. No one else. I didn’t want to have to entertain guests with conversations I didn’t care about. I wanted all my attention on Chérie. “She doesn’t know any of those people. Prefers it just be us…and the two of you.”
He didn’t respond to the invitation.
“What do you want?” I grew impatient. “I assume you have something else in mind besides discussing my wedding?”
He leaned back into the couch with his knees apart, regarding me with a steely gaze. “It’s time to change things, Fender.” He didn’t specify, but he didn’t need to. It had always been a source of tension between us, and now with the girls in our lives, it came more frequently.
My gaze immediately turned cold. I’d just had to deal with this shit from Melanie a few nights ago, and now my brother came all the way to my residence just to mention it for the millionth time.
“Your fiancée used to be a prisoner there. Does that not change how you feel?”
I drank the wine. “I know I’ve made that up to her.”
“And what about the rest of the girls?” He was more aggressive than he used to be, like he wasn’t leaving that couch until he got what he wanted.
Never gonna happen. I released a low and drawn-out sigh, fighting to keep my patience with him. “We’ve discussed this before, Magnus. If there was another way, I would do it. There’s not.”
He’d been waiting for that answer because he already had a rebuttal. “There’s always another way. I will personally see to the project. I will personally vet every single person we hire. I will make sure they’re loyal.”
“There’s no way to be completely certain of hired help. The girls that we have are completely certain—because they’ll never leave.”
His fingers automatically tightened into a fist of pure frustration. “You’ve accomplished everything that you wanted. You have the money, you have the woman—now live your life. Stop living in the past. Stop trying to prove something to our decomposed corpse of a father. There is no reason to continue carrying on this way.”
The mention of that coward made me look away, because I still carried so much regret from that night. Magnus was the only one I’d managed to save. If I’d gotten there sooner, it could have been two instead of one. The money and the power did soothe my wounds, even now, because I would think about it often, think about everything I’d accomplished despite the odds stacked against me. I did what our father couldn’t. He pissed away our wealth and never bothered to try to earn it back. I did. Alone. “I’ve heard your concerns before. The only reason you are vocal once again is because that woman has a grip on your spine and she’s twisting it.”
“I’m glad she’s twisting it. Your fiancée wants the same. How do you expect to have a life with her when she doesn’t respect what you’re doing?”
I pictured a long life with her, with four kids, her beauty still prevalent even as she aged. Men in my circle always took mistresses when their wives became too old, but I never would. She was more than enough for me. But I imagined through the years, this conversation would rise again…and again. “It’s just business.”
“But it’s not just business. It’s lives, Fender.” His voice rose with his anger, trying to knock some sense into me. “I know you’re better than this.”
Every time he said that, it pissed me off. He claimed to see the good through the bad, but there was no shred of goodness anywhere inside me. My humanity died the moment I watched my father try to gun down his two remaining sons. “Sorry to disappoint you, but I’m not.” I suddenly sat forward with my arms resting on the insides of my thighs. I looked him dead in the eye and hoped he would finally understand. “Our father murdered our family without any hesitation. He was a coward and took their lives in their sleep. He didn’t kill himself instead of claiming the lives of innocent people. And you know what? I’m just like him. The evil that ran in his veins runs in mine.” I spoke the truth, and it somehow set me free but also pulled me deeper under. I wasn’t proud to say it, to be honest with myself and my brother, who still looked up to me to this day.
Magnus looked at me differently, a gentle softness coming into his eyes, a look that he gave Raven, not me. “That’s not true.” He spoke with confidence, like there was no doubt in his mind he was right, when he was actually dead wrong.
“Yes, it is. When you see shit like that, you never recover. I’m not human anymore. I don’t care about anyone or anything. And it’s much easier that way.”
He shook his head. “That’s not true. You asked a woman to marry you because you love her. You would take a knife in the chest for me because I’m your brother. It’s hard to carry the weight of the past on your shoulders, but don’t let it define you. You still have a soul. I know you do.”
As much as I wanted to believe that, I couldn’t. “I’ve already done what I’ve done. If there’s a heaven and hell, you know which one I’m going to. I’m damned, and nothing I do now will change that.” I had been raised in a religious family, but my connection to God died that night. If He existed, He wouldn’t have allowed my father to take the lives of the people I loved. He wouldn’t have let us starve on the street and sleep in the rain. He wouldn’t have driven us to this savage existence. It was the devil that did all of that. It was the devil that turned me evil.
Magnus’s breathing deepened as the silence passed, like my words actually pained him, just the way they pained Melanie. For whatever reason, I had two people who loved me, when I didn’t deserve either one. “I believe all people can be redeemed. All people can earn redemption. You just have to try.”
I considered his words but didn’t believe them. “You can be redeemed, Magnus. Your soul is still whole.” He didn’t have to witness what I did. If he had, he would be just like me, and I was grateful he wasn’t just like me. “You’re still innocent. Me…it’s too late for me, and we both know it. May as well make as much money as I can and enjoy spending it all while I’m still here.” I set down the wineglass in dismissal, because t
his conversation was over as far as I was concerned. I rose to my feet.
He did the same. “Fender.”
With a clenched jaw, I wished this conversation would just end. My brother’s optimistic belief only made my damnation worse. It was times like these when I wished I were dead, that someone would just pull the trigger and put me where I belonged—in the ground.
He shook his head as he looked at me. “We need to free those girls. Period.” His look was full of pity, like he actually felt bad for me.
He shouldn’t.
“We can’t do this anymore.”
I remained hostile. Conversation was over.
“You need to stop this. Now.” He kept prodding and prodding. Pushing and pushing. Believing when there was no reason to believe.
I stared him down, furious. “Or what?”
His eyes narrowed at my choice of words.
“You going to kill me?” I took a step closer to him, unleashing the silent challenge. He needed to stay the fuck out of my way and shut his goddamn mouth.
His gaze immediately smoldered in rage at the insinuation. For whatever reason, my brother loved me. Loved me despite what I did. Loved me despite the fact that I didn’t deserve it. “No. I’m not our father.”
My anger sheathed, touched by what he said.
“But this will happen whether you like it or not. I know there’s still humanity inside you. I know you still have a chance. I just hope you find the strength to join me…instead of resisting me.”
I kept to myself for the next few days.