Page 96 of Call You Mine

I splash some water on my face, rinse my mouth out and quickly change into clean clothes before heading back out into the room where I find Scarlett waiting for me on the bed, a warm cup of tea in one hand and an ice pack in the other.

“Thank you,” I tell her, taking the tea and ice from her as I sit down beside her.

“When you become a mom, it’s kind of hard not to mother everyone. You learn things the hard way and once you do, you become afraid of unlearning it. Especially since I didn’t have a role model to look up to, either.” Her words hit me deep, especially because she’s voicing my exact fears. We both were raised by terrible mothers, yet she’s raised Caeli wonderfully and is about to do the same with her second baby.

Words fail me, the emotional toll today’s taken on me overpowering all of my logic. “Ace is right outside the door,” she says and my eyes flick to his shadow lurking outside the open door of the guest room. “I told him I’d ask you, but if you want me to kick him downstairs and lock the door, I will. This is your choice, Wynter. If you want me to leave and maybe talk tomorrow…”

“No, if I don’t get it out now, I’m afraid I never will.” Scarlett nods, though Ace remains in his spot outside the room. “You can come in, Ace,” I tell him, and he immediately enters, slowly making his way toward the bed. “But you won’t interrupt me until I finish.” He nods, his demeanor changed, somewhat calmer and I know that’s Scarlett’s doing. “And you won’t look me in the eye. I don’t think I’ll be able to speak if you do.”

Fear flashes in his eyes, eyes that look just like mine, at the gravity of what I’m about to say. Neither one of them knows what to expect. “Where do I start?” I ask, not really expecting an answer, but just killing time.

“From the beginning, Wynter, what happened to you?”

With a quick sip of tea and a deep breath to muster up the courage to speak, I talk.

“Senior year at the academy was truly horrible for me. You would have never guessed it. By then I became fantastic at suppressing all emotions and faking I was fine. I was a total bitch, had the worst of friends I thought at that moment were genuine. Ace, you and I hardly talked. Willa was Willa, Warren was never around and Wesley, well, every day he kept getting more paranoid and psychotic. I tried my best to avoid everyone, barely spending any time at the Manor. I only had one person I could confide in, an unlikely friendship I’d come into after a drunken night that ended with the two of us in bed together. Hate sex, revenge sex, drunk sex—call it what it was—it was one of the best nights I’d ever had. Of course, the two of us knew nothing could come of it, we were completely different, from different worlds, yet we somehow kept running into each other in the most awkward of places. From then on we kept in contact, simple texts to one another when we had nothing else to do. We hung out when we felt truly alone, but it never led to anything else. We were playful, sure, but for some odd reason, we swore to each other we’d never go there again. We couldn’t.”

I swallow the lump in my throat as I continue fiddling with my fingers on my lap. “Three years ago, the day after graduation, to be exact, a man showed up at my door. I was staying at the apartment Willa kept downtown, the one she thought none of us knew about. Wesley had already died, the house already blown up. Our parents had fled and the two of you, well, you were dealing with the aftermath of it all.” I look up at Scarlett. “The death of your bio dad, your mom, your near death. I was alone and at that moment, I was perfectly fine, having escaped all the chaos. But when the man showed up, a man claiming to come collect what was owed to him for Wesley’s hand in his uncle’sdeath, my world fell apart. I had no one to turn to for help. No one who’d care to listen. The only person I thought could help me was powerless against someone like Enzo Marchesi.”

Scarlett gasps in horror as I say his name, the recollection of the man who tried to kill her and Ace, the man who killed her mother, father, and mine—Franco Marchesi. “Enzo was Franco Marchesi’s nephew, though he was much higher in the hierarchy of their organization. He came for me, the daughter of the man who humiliated his family, therefore humiliating him. I had no choice but to leave with him.” Tears stream down my face as every memory comes back to me.

“I had no one, Ace, not one person who I could go to. I left for almost three years and no one batted an eyelash.” I shut my eyes tight. “I was forced by Enzo, given an ultimatum I couldn't fight. When we arrived in New York, he forced me to marry him.”

“Son of a bitch,” Ace shouts, his anger at what he thinks I’m about to confess blazing within him, but I can't stop.

“I married him and became the wife of El Capo of the Marchesi Famiglia. I became his trophy, a prize to be won, and an example to be made to all those who thought twice about going up against him. I became his prisoner, locked up in his gilded tower, a penthouse in the upper east side of Manhattan I might add, only taken out to parade around town when he saw fit. He never touched me. In all honesty, I think it's the only thing that stopped me from ending my suffering. The hope that he’d soon tire of me and release me once it was obvious he wasn’t interested in me in that way. But he didn’t. It was six months before he let me make a phone call. Damon was the first person I called, and he felt betrayed that I’d just left without saying goodbye. After my first visit, we made up. I spent a few days with him under the ruse of visiting with you in order for no one to suspect. Why would I want to come back after the scandal thatour family had fallen victim to? Everyone found it typical of me to have bolted now that we were branded a joke.”

“The next few years were horrible. I watched him beat and kill so many men all for simply looking at me. Cutting off the fingers of those who dared touch me.” I blink away the tears and watch as Scarlett’s eyes flood with tears of her own. “The next and final time I came back to see Damon, I was picked up by Enzo at the airport when I arrived back in New York. He showed me a video of three of his men attacking Damon, the man he feared I was having an affair with. I’m not sure if she kept him alive on purpose, something to hold over me whenever he felt I’d fallen out of line, or if his men simply left Damon to die and he was rescued in time.”

“I felt horrible, so guilty for what had happened to him because of me. I got in contact with Stella to check if he’d survived. When I found out he was fine, I swore I’d never come back, never reach out to him or any of you again. Until one night, the night before I came home,” I pause, taking a sip of the tea. “Enzo came into my room, drunk and completely out of character. He'd been accused by a few of his men of keeping me by his side just for show, to hide the fact that he wasn’t arealman. He came to me to prove he was.” My eyes burn like acid, filling them to the brim. I choke back my sobs and push through. “It was the only time he ever tried to force himself on me. He knocked me to the ground, tried his hardest to rip my clothes off, but to my luck he was too fucking drunk. I laughed at him, at how even then he still couldn’t find the courage to do it. He pulled a knife out of his jacket and cut me along my chest.” My hand falls against my chest where my wounds luckily healed without scarring, though the ones inside remain, aching as I recall that night.

“I couldn’t scream. I could barely feel the burn when my entire body ached. I kept laughing. Surely by now I was in shock.So he wrapped his fingers around my neck and squeezed until almost all the color left my face. Until I was an inch from my death. I don't know where I got the strength to pull through, but I did, and I reached for the knife he’d set down beside me. I stabbed him in the neck with it, his blood splattering along my chest as I gasped for air. I got up and ran, leaving his lifeless body behind. The staff was all gone. I think he must have sent them home, so there’d be no witnesses to whatever he was planning to do with me. I ran up to the roof of the building, covered in his blood, shaking from what had almost happened to me. From what I’d done. I stood at the edge of the roof and contemplated jumping. Oh, it would have been so easy. I could have followed my fears and demons all the way down, ending my suffering once and for all. But just before I let go, Luke Prescott showed up to my rescue.”

Both their expressions go awry, not expecting Luke’s name to be part of this tale. “Apparently, Luke had been in New York the whole time, hired by Enzo to keep tabs on me. Enzo, the smart man that he was, somehow found out about my close relationship with Luke and when he killed the last of Wesley’s men, he’d spared him, thinking he could be useful. Luke had seen what I’d done and offered to help me escape. I foolishly trusted him, but I had no other choice.” I take a deep breath and turn to my brother, meeting his gaze for the first time since I started talking. “I didn’t want to die, Ace, not really.”

Unable to hold off any longer, my brother rushes over to me, throwing his arms around me and pulling me tightly against his chest. “Fuck Wynnie, I’m so sorry,” he whispers against my head, kissing me. I lose my shit and sob uncontrollably against his chest, and I feel him do the same. But I quickly recover when I realize I’m not even halfway done with my sordid tale.

Straightening up, I wipe away the tears with the back of my hand, though it does nothing to dry up the floodgates I justopened. “Luke helped me come home, but I knew I still couldn’t trust him. When I got off the private plane he’d got me on, I was a mess, having had no time to change or clean myself up. Panicked, I went to the one person I knew would not ask questions. I showed up at Damon’s doorstep, covered in dried blood, bruises, and open wounds. I wasn’t sure how he’d react to seeing me again after not hearing from me. We had a pretty nasty argument the night before his attack. Damon refused to help me at first when I refused to tell him what happened to me. But eventually he caved when he saw I had no other choice. He took me to his house, told me what had happened to him since the last time I saw him. The night of the attack, it was his Uncle Nico who saved him.” Scarlett gasps, shocked and in disbelief. It had been a miracle that Nico, who’d ended up Damon’s savior after leaving him his fortune, was the guardian angel who’d saved him from death.

“Stella’s wedding was coming up. I wanted to go, but I was a mess. So I asked Damon to take me so you would all be too distracted to ask questions and notice the flaws in my intricately woven disguise. It worked, though what I wasn’t expecting was Willa’s return. She’d run out of money, come to me for my inheritance and when I refuse she threatened to groom me and sell me off to the highest bidder in some fucked up arrangement. Afraid of falling to the same fate I’d just escaped, I told her I couldn’t because I was in a relationship with Damon.”

I feel Ace’s arms tighten around me, so I look up at him to assure him I won’t go there. “We don’t have to get into the details of all of that, but the truth is I hired Damon to be my fake boyfriend to fool Willa into leaving me alone. She accepted it, begrudgingly, since Damon was now wealthy and she figured she’d get her payday, regardless. He agreed, though he made me sign a contract that stated we’d be strictly platonic, only a couple to the outside world. He was still weary of me, especially since Irefused to tell him anything about what happened, why I left for New York, who was after me.”

“After you?” Scarlett asks, and I realize I left out the best part.

I turn to her, her bright blue eyes swollen and red. She’s aching for me, for the pain I feel for the hell I went through, when just a few years ago she’d gone through so much worse. God, my brother really got lucky in finding someone like her. My heart breaks once more at the thought that I’d believed to have found someone like that in Damon, but I was so awfully mistaken.

“Shortly after my return, I started getting threats. Text messages, packages, all claiming to be from Enzo. They came from his same number. At first I thought maybe one of his men had found out what I’d done and was trying to blackmail me, though no money request ever came. Then I figured maybe they were just fucking with me. Until recently, I feared Enzo might not really be dead. Damon caught on to that, to the fact I was still hiding something, and he refused to let me in unless I confessed. I knew I couldn't do that. When I quickly realized I wanted this thing between us to be real, I tricked him, seduced him until he caved. Things between us were great these last few months. It felt real, an actual relationship, until tonight.”

I look over at Scarlett. “When you texted me earlier, you reminded me it had been over a month since I’d gotten my last period.” I bite back the tears. I’m so close. “I took four tests in the bathroom before my shift tonight after I’d puked in the toilet before I left the house, just to confirm what I already knew. I’m pregnant. I didn’t know what to feel. I was scared, scared shitless about the whole thing, about telling Damon. But when I was alone at the bar during closing, I got another threat from Enzo. A picture of Luke, tied up to a chair along with a message that said he was close to coming for me for what I’d done with Luke as my accomplice. I’d called Damon when I was scaredsomeone was trying to break in. It turned out to be Carrington, who somehow found out about Luke and me in New York. She showed up looking for me threatening me then Damon showed up and kicked her out, but when we were alone, as we were um talking,” I say, leaving out the whole thing about what we’d done on the bar top. “I got the urge to throw up again, and I rushed to the bathroom, with him following close behind me. That only means one thing.”

Scarlett nods in understanding, but Ace’s face just turns cold. “Damon became furious, blaming me for planning this all along. Reminded me we were supposed to be fake, nothing but a contract we’d both signed. It broke me to hear him say that. That what we had wasn't real. It felt so real.”

Ace pulls me in tighter. “I’m going to fucking kill him.”

I shake my head, desperate to make my brother see reason. He can’t go after Damon and do something we both will regret. Despite everything Damon said to me, the way his words cut me like daggers and instilled pain I have never felt before, I still love him. Every part of my soul still aches for him, and hurting him will only damage me further.

Blinking away my tears that don’t seem to cease falling down my cheeks at my brother’s desperate attempt to defend me, I look up at Ace. “But how could I have thought it to be real, when Damon doesn’t know any of this?” My body aches, my entire being deflated by the pain I currently feel over my entire being. I see no end to my suffering, no instance where any of this sorrow I feel vanishes.

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