I’m so dazed by what she says, I can barely even stand straight.
Eve … pregnant?
I hit a table while backtracking and almost fall but manage to catch myself on the wood, clutching the table like my life depends on it. “No, that can’t be it.”
“She was what?” Felix growls at her.
The dead-serious look in her eyes gives me chills. “She. Was. Pregnant.” She stares at me. “With your baby.”
My heart has never beaten this fast.
Not even when killing people.
“A baby?” Alistair mutters. “Wait, how do you know? And whose baby? Dylan’s?”
“No …” I whisper in shock.
“Don’t act like you didn’t know,” she says, her face stone-cold, despite the fact that she’s the one hanging on the cross as our plaything.
“We didn’t,” Alistair says.
She frowns. “Why else would you take his fucking side?”
“Whose side?” Alistair asks.
“His father’s!” she shrieks.
Everyone’s looking at me now, and all the blood drains from my skin.
A baby? But how?
Fuck, I gotta sit down.
My body instantly gravitates toward the nearest chair.
“Eve contacted your father and asked him for help,” Penelope tells me.
But my ears are ringing. All I hear is pregnant … Is it mine?
“Fuck no, you’re lying,” Felix says, and he turns to look at me. “Don’t let her poison your mind.”
“It’s the fucking truth!” she shrieks. “Swear on her fucking grave.”
Felix grasps her throat. “Don’t you fucking dare.”
“Don’t believe me?” she says with a squeaky voice as his fingers dig into her skin. “Look at her phone.”
Alistair and I immediately home in on her stuff that we brought back with us when we captured her on the road down the mountain. And we both jump at it like sharks going for blood.
“Fuck, let me have it,” I growl at him.
“I want to see too,” Alistair says.
We fight over it like crazed animals until Felix marches over to jab us both in the waist and steals the phone from our hands. “Give it to me.”
He immediately opens it up while we look over his shoulder along with him.
“The photos. Three months ago,” Penelope says.
He scrolls and scrolls until we find the one picture that says a million words.
A stick with two pink lines.
Fuck.
So it’s true.
She was pregnant.
Felix clamps the phone so harshly the screen fractures.
“Are you sure this is hers?” he asks without even looking at Penelope.
“She had no way out. Dylan’s father didn’t want her pregnant. So he gave her a choice. Leave or he’d destroy her and our family.”
“How do you know my father is involved?” I ask, my voice cracking.
“There’s an email. He deleted it on his side. I checked his office. But she kept the email,” Penelope replies, swallowing.
Felix vigorously scrolls through the phone until he finds what he’s looking for.
Eve’s email with my father, where he literally threatens her with complete ruin along with her entire family if she doesn’t abort it or disappear entirely.
Fuck.
I feel sick.
“That’s why he made her jump,” Penelope adds. “To erase the evidence.”
“But the phone survived,” Alistair mutters.
“And you’re sure that baby was Dylan’s?” Felix asks through gritted teeth, still bent over the phone like he’s memorizing every inch of the email and photo.
“It could be … all of us,” Alistair mutters, and our eyes connect in a moment of shared misery.
God.
The one girl who got away … was pregnant.
And one of us lost their baby.
“Yes,” Penelope replies.
Alistair sinks into a chair, hands between his legs, head dropping between his shoulders like he always does when he feels defeated.
Felix places the phone on the table and closes his eyes, rubbing his forehead. The silence in the room is overwhelming. “Let her down.”
“What?” I gasp.
“Release her,” he rasps, his fingers digging into his skin so deeply I’m almost starting to worry he might break his own skull.
“But what about the punishment?” I ask. “The fire?”
“I only set that goddamn fire because your father made her fucking jump to her death!” Penelope screams.
I gaze into her eyes, and my face contorts.
If that’s true … my father is the one person we’ve been looking for all this time.
Her eyes fill with tears. “She didn’t want to break up. He made her.”
My father … responsible for Eve’s death?
“Oh God,” I mutter, my heart aching.
“And you did nothing,” Penelope says, tears rolling down her cheeks. “She pleaded with you with her eyes. Begged you to save her.”
“Why didn’t she tell us?” I mutter.
“You think your father would allow her to create that kind of rift?” Felix interjects, still in his own thoughts.
“She was terrified of him. She didn’t see any other way out,” Penelope says through gritted teeth. “And when she died, your father tried to cover up his involvement by erasing everything … and everyone. Including me.”
“Wait but the note—” Alistair begins.
But Penelope interrupts him. “Nathan worked for Dylan’s father. He burned down Eve’s old room to burn any evidence left.”
Felix’s eyes almost glow with violence. “Nathan was there in the fucking Alpha Psi house?”
Penelope nods. “So was Kai. That’s how I got the torn page.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?” His hand forms a fist, and his eyes almost bulge out of his skull with rage. “I would’ve stabbed them both and cut out their fucking hearts.”
“Because I don’t fucking trust you anymore,” she says, tears forming in her eyes. “Eve is dead because of all of you.”
“She jumped because she didn’t want a life without us,” Alistair ruminates. “And we abandoned her. Because he demanded we did.”
The look in Penelope’s eyes kills me.
I immediately march over to her, take my knife from my pocket, and slice through the restraints, releasing her from the cross. She falls down, and I catch her in my arms.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” I mutter, clutching her. “We should’ve listened.”
She cries into my shoulder, wailing like never before, and the sound breaks my heart into a million pieces.
“I said I wouldn’t hurt you again,” Alistair says. “I lied. And I’m sorry.” He sinks off the chair and onto the floor, kneeling in front of her on all fours like he’s begging her for forgiveness.
She pulls away from my embrace and just looks at him, her lips slowly parting as if she doesn’t know how to respond.
Guilt floods my body as I drop to my knees in front of her just as Alistair.
Humiliated.
All by our own doing.
“Get up,” Felix growls.
But I don’t even fucking care to look at him, let alone listen.
All I care about is the girl whose heart we broke by not telling her the truth about Eve and us, by letting things escalate so far she felt she had to burn the entire school down for vengeance.
The kind of revenge I can only dream of.
God, she’s magnificent.
A fiery fucking goddess I want to worship.
“What are you doing?” she murmurs as I grab her foot and kiss it.
“Apologizing.”
“But there’s no use. It won’t undo what happened. It won’t bring Eve back.”
“I know. And no amount of groveling will ever fix that.” I gaze up into her eyes. “But I don’t want to lose you too.”
Her pupils dilate, almost as if she’s shocked I’d admit that.
But I’m not scared to admit she owns my very fucking soul.
“Get. Up.” Felix’s dark, commanding voice makes my skin crawl, but I ignore him.
“No,” Alistair replies. “We made a fucking mistake bringing her here and tying her to that cross.”
Some rummaging goes on in the back, but I pay no attention to it. Felix is always busy, always trying to rid himself of his feelings, but I refuse to run from them.
“Did you forget who told us to punish her?” Felix says.
I know it was my fucking father. But we made the conscious choice to obey.
“Can you forgive me?” I mutter as I look up at Penelope, who’s gawking at us like she’s confused about what to do.
“Don’t beg her for forgiveness,” Felix growls, stepping forward.
And I’m almost offended he’d even suggest we shouldn’t, until he opens his mouth again.
“You don’t deserve it.”
We both look at him over our shoulders, and he’s even gotten Penelope’s attention.
His fist balls. “Earn it.”
He marches at us and literally lifts us both from the ground with ease, setting us on our feet. He grabs my hand and shoves a bunch of smaller knives into my hand, and a gun and a giant knife into Alistair’s, then straps himself in with a bunch of weapons I’ve only ever seen once; when there was a giant turf war between the Phantoms and the Skull & Serpent Society.
He steps between us, focusing solely on Penelope as he grabs her face with one hand, caressing her cheek with his thumb. “Tell me what you need. Be specific.”
Her pupils dilate, and her lips part, almost as if she recognizes those words.
But I don’t remember him ever saying that.
Did they have a personal conversation I’m not aware of?
She swallows as they exchange looks. “Hurt him. Scar him where it hurts the most.”
His face darkens in a way that only happens when he’s on a murder spree, and he grabs her hand and slowly brings it to his lips, pressing a kiss on top as though he’s sealing a deal.
“I’ll bring him fucking hell for you.”
