Page 89 of Betrayal (Corrupt Empire 1)

Chapter Seventeen

Avery

Pain. Every inch of me burnt with it. Indignation. Rage. Sorrow. Pain.

They’d stolen something from me. Something so deep. It ruptured the moment he told me. Fragments dug into my skin.

Pain.

No one told me when you had such an intense connection with another person, you’d take on their hurt. Their sorrow. Their pain. I felt it. I carried it. I burnt.

Aiden.

How could they do that? How could they have stolen a seven-year-old boy’s mother? It didn’t surprise me he wouldn’t talk about it. Had she been one of their girls? If so, it was so much worse than I ever imagined. I could hardly blame him for wanting to end them.

My family were more than monsters. They were evil. Evil and corrupt. Was I the same? Did the same evil run in my veins? Aiden said I was different. I couldn’t see it. How could I be anything else other than theirs?

Because you see how wrong it is. You want to end it. Destroy it all.

The words didn’t soothe me. Didn’t quiet my warring mind.

“You’re what’s good in the world.”

Was I? Was I really? I inherited their legacy. And it was shameful. Disgusting. Inhuman.

Hadn’t I been optimistic before? Determined to destroy it all?

Pain.

I sobbed.

I cried.

And then I wailed.

The injustice of it. The horrific injustice clawed at my soul. It didn’t matter who’d done it or how. My family were responsible. Which meant I took on that responsibility too.

You weren’t even alive. How are you to blame?

The rational side of me knew that, but I was too far gone to pay attention to it.

I knew he could hear me. He hadn’t shut the door. He’d not gone very far. Did he care about me? Care I was hurting? Was that why he stayed close?

Pain.

I wept for the boy he’d been. The one who’d lost his mother so young. I wept for the man he was now. The one who’d suffered so much. And he had no one.

He has you now.

What good was I when I couldn’t even deal with the truth of my family’s actions? He was right. I couldn’t handle it all at once. He knew me better than I knew myself. Knew what I needed. What I wanted. How to take care of me.

I was no fucking good for him. I’d interrupted his life. Completely inconvenient. A stupid girl. Too young. Too inexperienced. Too naïve. What good was I to a man like Aiden?

“I’m nothing. Nothing and no one,” I whispered.

What would James say if he saw me now? He’d tell me to get off my arse and stop being a miserable bitch. I wasn’t a defeatist. I had to be stronger than this. Fuck, I missed him. So terribly much. He always knew how to make me feel better. Blue eyes twinkled in my vision. Then they morphed into grey. Grey eyes which looked at me with such passion when he’d pressed me down on the kitchen table. Grey eyes I sought out every waking moment of my day and every night, they soothed me in my dreams.

I whimpered and lay on my side, curled up in a ball. I wanted Aiden but I couldn’t have him. I wanted to talk to James. I needed to hear his voice. I just needed one normal thing in my life.

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