When I walked after Morgan, no one stopped me this time. I found him standing in front of the elevator with his hands in his jeans.
“You said Marco and Trent’s deaths were justified.”
Morgan glanced at me and nodded as I walked towards him.
“They were. They did horrible things to the brothers.”
“Then why have you done all this?” I demanded. “Why would you want to hurt people who rid the world of two evils?”
“Because—” Morgan sighed “—those two evils were the only family I had, and I couldn’t just do nothing. I was raised to be loyal to my family, to protect as best as I could. If I did nothing, I wouldn’t have been able to leave my past in the past.”
“So this is really it?” I questioned. “You just wanted to get in their heads like you did mine?”
Morgan nodded. “I was never going to physically harm anyone. I’m not my brother and uncle. I thought I was once, but I’m not. This has all proved it to me, I just want to have a normal life, I don’t want to be evil like they were.”
“From where I’m standin’, I don’t see much of a difference.”
“I like you, you know?” Morgan smiled sadly. “I do feel regret for tangling you up in this, if it’s any consolation.”
“It’s not,” I quipped. “You’ve ruined everythin’.”
Morgan frowned.
“You’re a sweetheart, and you’re damn talented, but you’re wasting yourself by being involved with the Slaters. They’re broken … damaged goods who’ve been through hell and can’t be repaired. Cut your ties with them before they ruin you, too. No one will blame you for wanting to protect yourself, Alannah.”
“You’re wrong about them, about the men I know,” I said, standing with my head tall. “They’re good men, and I love them, all of them. They’ve made mistakes, and even though I’m hurt and angry at them, I won’t have anyone hurtin’ them. They’re my family, even if I’m not theirs. Morgan, Carter, whatever your fuckin’ name is, if you ever try to hurt them in any way again … I will kill you.”
Morgan smiled at me, and it was a depressing one at that.
“What do you know?” he said with a tilt of his head. “Maybe it’s too late for you after all … It looks like the angel I thought you were has fallen.”
“I was never an angel to begin with … you don’t know me as well as you thought you did.”
“Maybe you’re right.” He nodded in agreement. “Goodbye, angel. You’ll never see or hear from me again. I completed what I sought out to do. I’m going home and starting a new chapter of my life. I hope you find happiness in the next chapter of yours because you fucking deserve it.”
Morgan’s eyes trailed up and down my body, and when they landed on my face, he winked, his vibrant eyes glinting. He turned and stepped into the open elevator then, without a word, without a glance back in my direction, and only one thought ran through my mind as the doors closed.
Good riddance.
When I reentered my apartment, I went straight into the kitchen and turned the kettle on. I didn’t want any tea, but it was an instinctive thing to do when I was stressed. A cup of tea usually solved everything, but not this. Nothing could resolve my newfound knowledge.
“Alannah?”
I gripped the edge of the countertops and squeezed my eyes shut.
“You need to leave, Damien.”
“I won’t,” he said, firmly. “I won’t have him fill your head with—”
“With lies?” I finished, turning to face him. “Please tell me it was all lies.”
Damien kept eye contact with me, but I now saw the truth in them. Morgan hadn’t lied about the things he had told me, though I wished to God that he had.
“We can’t come back from this,” I said, shaking my head. “I can’t even be friends with the girls, not after this. Not after everythin’ you have all kept from me.”
“Alannah,” Damien said, his voice wavering. “Please. Don’t leave me.”
“What choice do I have?” I demanded. “You and your brothers have murdered people, Damien. Murdered!”
“It wasn’t like that, though.” He raised his voice. “You don’t understand our life, Alannah.”
“How could I when none of you told me anythin’ about it,” I exploded as tears fell from my eyes. “How can you expect me to even try to comprehend this when this mornin’ none of this was even a possibility in me mind! It wasn’t a possibility even in me nightmares!”
Damien said nothing; he only watched me, his pained expression cutting me in two.
“Christ, Damien,” I pressed my palm to my head. “How can this be real? How can you have all been involved in such … such horror? I hope I’m havin’ a nightmare because this is too much. I can’t take this … I can’t.”
“Alannah, I’m begging you—”
“I’m beggin’ you to leave,” I cut him off. “Damien, I’m goin’ to scream and cry, and I need to be on my own for it.”
“I can’t leave you,” he said, his voice helpless. “You’re my freckles. My world.”
“When I woke up this mornin’, me world started and ended with you too, but now? I feel like the man I knew is dead.”
Damien reared back as if I had slapped him, but before he could reply, I closed my eyes as voices and loud footsteps approached my apartment.
“Alannah?” Bronagh shouted. “Oh, God. Is she okay, Dominic?”
“She’s fine,” Nico answered. “No, actually, she’s not. She … she doesn’t want to see any of us.”
“What?” Keela asked. “Why?”
“She knows about everything.” Alec answered her. “Our past, what happened the night she was hurt in Darkness. Everything.”
“Oh, God,” Bronagh cried. “I need to see ’er.”
I pushed away from the counter, brushed by Damien, and stepped into the hall.
“What you need to do is leave, Bronagh.”
My once friend spun in my direction and when she tried to run for me, I stepped back and shook my head. Pain showcased itself on Bronagh’s face, but I refused to feel guilt for hurting her with my rejection. Her secrets hurt me way worse.
“Go home to your kids, all of you.”
Branna wasn’t with the girls, which didn’t surprise me since she had two newborns to look after.
“Aideen’s brothers are watchin' them, and Branna is with the twins,” Keela said as she gripped Alec’s arm. “We’re ’ere for you.”
No, they weren’t; they were here for themselves.
“Let us explain,” Bronagh begged. “Please, just let us explain.”
“It’s too late for that.”
“It’s not,” Ryder said, firmly. “You heard Morgan give you facts; now let us tell you the reasons behind it.”
“Is there a reason good enough for killin’ people?”
“Yes,” everyone answered in unison.
I lifted my hands to my face.
“I can’t hear any more,” I admitted. “Me head … I just can’t.”
“Alannah, please.”
This was Aideen.
“You have a lot of fuckin’ nerve, Aideen.”
No one spoke as I dropped my hands and glared at her.
“You made me feel like fuckin’ shite for not tellin’ you about Dante. You fed me that bullshit about how close we were, and that you were hurt I’d kept it from you when all the while you knew somethin’ about me life before I even knew you!”
Aideen had tears in her eyes.
“I’m so sorry, Alannah.”
I slapped her hands away when she reached for me. She gasped, pulled her hands to her chest, and stared at me with shocked eyes. I looked around the hallway at all the faces of people who I thought were my friends. My family.
“None of you are me friends.” I focused on Bronagh. “And you have broken me heart.”
Tears were sliding down her cheeks.
“Ye’dont understand,” she cried. “Ye’dont unde
rstand how what happened could mess with your head. What happened … I still have nightmares about it sometimes. Keela suffered a lot after what had happened to ’er, and Aideen and Branna nearly died, so I can only imagine what goes through their minds. We wanted to protect you from all of that.”
“That wasn’t your decision to make!” I bellowed. “It was none of your decision to keep what happened to me private.”
“Alannah—”
“Don’t!” I cut Damien off as he approached me from my right. “You’re worse than all of them.”
He blanched.
“I opened up to you and told you every secret I’d ever had, and you never told me the truth. Not once.”
“I wanted to protect you.”
My lower lip trembled.
“By lyin’ to me?”
He stepped forward, so I took a hefty step back.
“Stay away from me.”
“I can’t,” he answered, his eyes filled with hurt. “I love you, Alannah.”
I heard little gasps from the girls, and I could feel the intense stares of Damien’s brothers as he made his declaration, but I didn’t care. Not about any of it. Not about these people who lied to my face for years.
“If this is how you treat me when you love me,” I repeated, taking another step back. “I’d dread to see what you’d do if you hated me.”
“Alannah,” he said, softly. “Please don’t walk away from me.”
The pain in my chest hurt worse than anything I’d ever felt before.
“Please,” he begged. “Don’t leave me.”
“I can’t be near any of you right now,” I said. “I don't trust any of you, just like none of you trust me.”
“We do trust you, Alannah,” Nico pleaded. “We do.”
“But not enough to be honest with me?”
Silence.
“Exactly,” I said with a shake of my head. “You can all say it was to protect me, but it was only to protect yourselves and the monsters you are for not only committin’ such acts, lads, but you girls for standin’ by them and knowin’ what they’ve done, too.”
“Alannah—”
“I’m goin’ into me bedroom, and I’m lockin’ the door. I’m goin’ to force meself to go to sleep, and when I wake up, every one of you better be gone, and Damien, I mean that. I’ll call the guards otherwise, and you never know what I might say, ye’know, since I’m so untrustworthy.”
Damien grabbed me when I turned my back and began to walk away.
“You have to let us explain,” he begged. “You have to let me explain.”
“Right now, I can’t,” I said, fighting back tears. “I just need to be on me own. If I want you to explain, I will ask you all to explain, but for God’s sake, let me have time to process this.”
“If I let you go, you won’t come back to me. I know you won’t.”
“That’s a risk you’re goin’ to have to take because one way or the other, I’m puttin’ space between all of you and me. I don’t want to be near any of you. If you don’t respect me as a person to trust me with your secrets, then at least respect me decision to not want to be around you.”
“I’ll tell you everything,” Damien said, kissing the side of my face, drawing a small cry from me. “When you want an explanation, I’ll tell your everything. I swear.”
He hugged me so tight, I thought I felt my bones crunch.
“I love you, freckles.”
The sad thing about all of this wasn’t that he told me he loved me after I found out such horror about his family; it was sad because even though I knew what horrendous acts were committed and how he lied to my face, I loved Damien, too. Despite all of that, I loved him with every fibre of my being … and if that wasn’t a travesty, then I didn’t know what was.
Two weeks later…
“Alannah?”
I looked at my ma.
“Yeah?”
“Bear, I’ve called your name three times.”
I blinked. “Sorry, Ma, I just have a lot on me mind.”
A hell of a lot.
“What is goin’ on?” she asked me, gently. “Please don’t tell me nothin’ because I know it’s somethin’, baby.”
I bit the insides of my cheeks to keep from crying.
“I just had a big fallin’ out with Damien and the others.”
“Even Bronagh?”
I grunted. “Yeah, even Bronagh.”
“Oh, my God,” Da said from my right. “It must have been a hell of a fight for you and Bee to fall out.”
“You’re tellin’ me.”
“D’ye want to talk about it?” Ma asked, resting her hand on my shoulder. “We’ll listen.”
“Honestly, I just need time away from all of them,” I admitted. “I’m okay, I promise; it’s just somethin’ I have to work through meself, ye’know?”
“Yeah, love,” Da said from my left. “We know.”
I glanced at him and smiled when he winked. I looked from him to my ma, and though I was still scared for her future, of waiting for her to start radiation for her cancer, and then waiting to find out if worked, I was prepared for it. We would fight her illness together as a family, no matter what came our way, no matter what it took, we'd tackle it together.
Things between us had gotten so much better since that day in the hospital after my ma got her surgery. A few days ago, they got even better after my parents sat me down, and my ma admitted to knowing that da was cheating on her. He had planned to wait until she finished radiation to speak to her about it, but he felt so guilty that he told her one night when they were lying in bed, and she replied with three words, “I already know.”
I was blown away, and my instinct was to react with anger at her for sticking around when she knew my da was breaking their vows, their trust, but my ma explained to me that she knew that my da knew it was all a mistake before he even realised it himself. She told me that people make mistakes and hurt those we love, and that is what makes us human. The ability to be less than perfect.
My ma said she could have packed my da’s belongings and kicked him out, but what good would that have done either of them if they gave up on their marriage without a fight. I argued that the fight was lost the second my da strayed, but once I saw how much my da regretted his actions, I realised my ma was right, and that we were all lucky she was so caring and wise.
Some things were meant to be forgotten, and others were meant to be fought for.
My ma didn’t react to a situation at the drop of a hat like I did; she took a step back and considered everything, and especially the outcome. I didn’t. I acted on whatever emotion I was feeling at the moment, and when I thought about that, it made me think about what happened with my friends.
Instantly, I put up a wall and shut them all out without giving them the chance to explain what Morgan had told me. I was angry and hurt. I still was, but now that I had time to sit back and think about everything, I realised I only had one side of five different stories.
I knew I had to go see the group and hear them out, but doing that was a lot harder than I thought it would be. My heart was hurt. I felt so insufficient and kept wondering if something was so untrustworthy about me that it made everyone lie to me. I had always thought I was a nice person, someone anyone, especially my friends and partner, could confide in, but I wasn’t.
Bronagh and Damien’s betrayal hurt the worst. Bronagh was my best friend, someone who I thought shared everything with me, as I did with her, but knowing she willingly kept what happened from me cut me deep. Damien’s betrayal hurt in an entirely different way. I loved him. I loved him more than I should for the time we were together, but I couldn’t change that.
What I feared happening from the very start had taken place. Damien and I had ended, and I was in more pain than I was the first time around because this time, love was shared, a deep connection was shared. I couldn’t sleep, I barely ate, and when I tried to work, all I did was sketch and paint Damien’s face.
He was on my mind constantly … and so were the things he and my friends had done.
Murder.
They had murdered people. Took the lives of other human beings. No matter how long I sat and thought about it, no matter what way I looked at it, I could scarcely believe it to be the truth. The people I knew were loyal and fiercely protective, they were some of the best men I had ever known, and to learn of them committing such acts of horror completely blindsided me. If I hadn’t heard them admit to such deeds, I would have never truly believed Morgan.
Morgan, who had kept his word. He left my apartment and not returned. I received an email from him letting me know he was deleting his account but had transferred all my client emails to my inbox, as well as a detailed explanation on how to keep my system in order. I didn’t delete the message because I knew I would need it , so I didn’t fall back into my previous disorganised ways, but when I thought of Morgan, I felt so foolish. I couldn’t believe I’d let a stranger into my house, someone who could have truly hurt me, and was none the wiser. I told myself what came to be was never something I could have ever imagined but being tricked by him left a sour taste in my mouth.
The whole situation did.
“Alannah?”
I looked at my ma and blinked.
“I’m sorry.” I sighed. “I’m not with it at all today.”
She put her arms around me and gave me a hug.
“Isn’t it Jax’s birthday today?”
My shoulder’s slumped. “Yeah, he’s one.”
“Are you goin’ to drop by and see ’im?”
I shrugged. “I don’t want his day to be turned into a big argument, so I was goin’ to go up to Kane and Aideen’s apartment and leave his card and gift outside so they could give it to ’im for me.”
A lump formed in my throat knowing I was goin’ to miss his big day, but I kept myself in check. My parents said nothing, probably sensing my emotional mood on the subject. They quickly changed the subject back to something mundane, then two hours later, I found myself back in my apartment complex and walking up the stairs to Kane and Aideen’s apartment.