Page 9 of Beautiful Sinners

“It’s who you bloody are!” Hendrix yells.

I shake my head obstinately. No. I refuse to be her. She’s the reason I was taken from them. She is why Papa hid me away in Ireland. She is the reason why we were tortured for hours, my mother raped, my parents killed, my body mutilated. She is the cause of every bad thing in my life, and I made sure she died that night along with them.

Don’t remember. Don’t remember.

My hands fly up to my eyes in an attempt to block everything out, but I can’t control all the memories that flood back. I desperately try to hold on to the last remaining shreds of the new reality I created, but it’s no use. Every detail of the massacre comes back to me.

My legs buckle beneath me as my mind spirals into the oblivion of the girl I used to be, and I fall to the floor in agony as anguish settles over me like a blanket of death.

CHAPTER 3

I watch Aoife collapse in on herself, and seeing how much she’s hurting breaks my goddamn heart. I don’t know what to do, and I feel fucking helpless. More helpless than I felt when Aleksei had his gun on me, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to save her.

Butshesavedme.

I’m still trying to wrap my head around what I saw, what she did. There will be repercussions. She has no idea what’s coming for her. The things she unknowingly set into motion today. The power balance in the Society has shifted, and civil war is imminent. However, our first priority is her. But whichherwill she be? Syn or Aoife. She repressed that part of her life for a reason, and who the hell knows what kind of psychological damage she’s dealing with now that she remembers.

“What do we do?” Tristan’s hands clench and unclench at his sides as he hovers over her, wanting to touch her but unsure if he should.

I bend down to scoop up her crumpled body where she lies broken on the floor. “I’ve got her.”

“The fuck you do,” Hendrix replies, but the cold stare I send him as I gather Aoife into my arms has him pausing in his attempt to take her from me.

Not fucking happening.

Tristan grasps his shoulder in a futile attempt at calming a fuming Hendrix.

“I’m not leaving her.”

She burrows into me, wetting my shirt with her tears.

“I’m not asking you to. But it’s not about you or what you want right now,” I reply sternly and carry her into the bathroom, quietly pushing the door closed with my foot.

The en suite only has a walk-in shower, but it’s big enough to easily accommodate four people.

When I catch our reflection in the mirror and see how small and vulnerable she looks in my arms, I have a moment of uncertainty if I’m doing the right thing.

Turning the handle on the shower, I step inside.

She yelps when the spray of cold water hits her, but it seems to do the job of bringing her back, and I almost smile at the sour scowl she gives me, one I remember very well because it’s something Aoife would do. How could I not know when I first saw her at the Bierkeller who she really was? The guilt that I didn’t will stay with me for a long time.

But that one small scowl eases the tightness in my chest and tells me everything I need to know. My beautiful, fierce girl is a force to be reckoned with. She’s a survivor. So unbelievably fucking strong.

“That wasn’t very nice,” she mumbles through chattering teeth when I flip the shower handle up to get the water warm. The stall instantly fills with a foggy cloud of billowing steam.

“Better?”

“Much,” she says, but she hasn’t stopped trembling, so I just hold her under the spray, neither one of us caring that we’re fully clothed and drenched to the bone.

“Aleksei’s dead.”

Not a question but a statement of fact. I nuzzle the top of her wet head and hum a non-answer.

Aleksei never saw her coming. It was sudden and over with before any of them knew what was happening. I will never tell her how magnificent she was or how absolutely resplendent she looked covered in that motherfucker’s blood.

“Aleksander? Did I… the explosion… I don’t remember what happened after—” She takes a deep breath and shakes her head as she struggles to recall exactly what transpired.

Cillian McCarthy saved our asses for reasons still unknown, but Aleksander escaped before Cillian’s men could get to him.

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