Chapter 42

Killian:

“How?” She asked, frowning in confusion. I looked at my mate for a second too long before processing what she was referring to. “I just rejected…”

“Your real name is not Eleanor, malyshka.” I said, picking the gun up for a second. She frowned in confusion before I handed it to her. “And the gun has no bullets.”

“What?” She asked, trying to process what I was telling her.

“You called his name last night,” I said, straightening as I sat beside her. “I knew that I needed something to shake you up into talking to me. Yes, I know that the approach wasn’t the most ideal, but I knew that nothing would have made you open up.” 

“You decided to threaten me, using a gun, to get me to open up?” She asked, and I pinched the bridge of my nose. When she put it that way, it made it sound like I did something that was wrong. Well, it was wrong, but I was done being patient, especially when I knew that my men have been searching for her for months and the number of problems that were caused by her family were countless. 

The fuckers were hiding underground, but they have done nothing but sabotage or send those to do so. It was something that was getting on my nerves and I wanted nothing more than to get rid of them.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked, dismissing her question. “You claimed to find your safety in me, and yet, you chose to hide something that you knew would be a lot easier for you. To say the least, I wouldn’t be having you as a maid when you were seeking refugee.” 

She looked down at her dress before shaking her head. 

“Don’t turn this around on me, Alpha Killian. I didn’t open up for a good reason, and the main one was me not wanting to find myself going back to the hell that I was living in.” She said, and I shook my head at her. “And my apologies if I chose not to trust that the man that I knew was my father’s enemy, could possibly be using me for his own benefit. My feelings toward you, and the safety that I felt didn’t mean that…”

“If I chose to betray you like that, then there was no fucking reason for you to be calling me mate.” I said, stopping her. “I doubt that I would be having that title to begin with…”

“If my own father could send me to my own hell with his own feet, then I believe that a man who I met two months ago can do the same thing.” She said, stopping me. I froze as I processed her words, my chest aching for a second before I shook my head in question. She looked down at her lap before shaking her head and running her fingers through her hair.

“Eleanor, what do you mean that your father sent you to your hell with his own feet?” I asked, gently putting a finger under her chin. I raised her face gently and saw pain that I never thought that I would before. She closed her eyes before shaking her head. “Did you tell him about what Elton was doing to you?”

“He said that I must have deserved it. I would come to him, beaten up, and he would hit me for annoying my fiancé to the point where he would reach this point.” Eleanor said, looking down at her lap as she avoided my eyes. I could see and hear her defeat in her tone, and I couldn’t help but feel my chest aching at the fact that she went through all that on her own. “The first time he took me, he entered my room in secret and just had his way without bothering to care whether or not I wanted it. He never did care anyway. When I told my father, he said that it was my fiancé and he had every right to please himself the way that he saw fit. He went ahead and told Elton that I complained, and Elton came back night after night for an entire week to ensure he would break whatever courage that I thought I had.”

I stayed quiet as I listened to her before she shook her head as her tears fell from her eyes. Her heart raced against her chest, and I took her hand in mine, frowning when I saw how much it was shaking. “I tried again, to find a way out of the pack. I wanted nothing more than to leave Elton, but my father wouldn’t have it. I was never even allowed outside the house; therefore, you can imagine the struggles that I had when trying to have him send me back to Florence. We were in Rome at the time, and moving back to my mother’s house was more like a dream to me. At least, I wanted to die there and be buried where her body was burned.”

“Elton beat me up to the point where even my wolf broke and shied back. My ribs were broken, my wrist too, and the worst part was, I couldn’t say a word about it. My father would have beaten me if I did.” She said, and I took a deep breath as I tried to control my own pain and anger. “I came to the conclusion that I was on my own, Alpha Killian; therefore, please do tell me, why in the fucking world would you have expected me to think that you would have been different?”

I opened my mouth to speak only to close it again as I tried forming the right sentence to answer. However, her next sentence took me off guard as she tore my heart from its place, dropping her walls down completely.

“If my own father, the one person who a girl should know that she is safe with, sent me to the devil to suffer, under the excuse that he was my ‘fiancé’.” She said, looking me dead in the eye. “And if I saw him killing my own mother before burning the building down to ensure hiding the evidence. Why would I trust you? Why would I trust anyone to begin with? Just give me one good reason, and I am more than willing to hold onto the hope that someone out there, regardless of who they are, would not go on ahead tearing me apart the second that they had the chance to.”

I stayed quiet as I looked her in the eye before bringing her hand to my lips, gently kissing her knuckle as I kept my eyes on hers. Her heart raced, and she frowned in confusion, but I had nothing to tell her that was going to make this any better. Not for her, nor for me. All I could do was help her mend her scars.

“I give you my fucking word, Eleanor Bernardi, that I am going to make every last one sink in their own blood.” I said, and she looked down at her feet. “I wanted to dry the Bernardi blood for what Luca Bernardi did to my sister.”

She closed her eyes at the mention of her ‘father’s’ name. However, that man was no father. If he thought that this was being a father, then he was fucking wrong. 

“But for you, malyshka,” I said, cupping her cheeks to make her look at me. “I am going to make each and every one of them choke and drown in their blood before they took their last breath. All I want from you is to trust me…”