Codename: Aconite Chapter Forty-Eight

Codename: Aconite Chapter Forty-Eight
A few days have passed since Castor’s excommunication. Silas continues to give me my space, which is for the best. The few times we have spoken, my responses have been curt and laced with hostility. I can’t help it. I’m not upset that Silas wanted to harm someone he viewed as a threat to me – even if I didn’t know it myself – it’s just the way he went about it that I can’t get over.

Castor violated my trust and my home, but Silas violated my confidence and my privacy. He told my fucking father about a guy I’d been fucking for two years. How would he like it if I dropped by his parents’ house to talk about his sexual past? Based on what he’s told me about his mother, she sounds like a lovely woman, so I imagine it’s not something she’d enjoy hearing. Can’t be sure about his father.

What really grinds my gears is that I’m left processing a lot of information, and if the circumstances were different, I’d want to turn to Silas. I don’t want to turn to my parents because I can’t handle their sad faces and their feelings of guilt and shame. They haven’t done anything wrong, but it’s still too much for me. Silas would be a good shoulder to lean on, just as he was before this mess, but he went and fucked it up with that big mouth of his. Had he just killed Castor and left it at that, I could have lived with that, but he’s left me with a bigger mess to deal with and Castor still has a pulse. Sure, excommunication is a fate worse than death to a man like that, but that’s not good enough for me.

I’ve realised everything I thought about our relationship and how it began was all an elaborate work of fiction I had concocted in my head, and I don’t know how to deal with that. I don’t think I want to. They say the brain doesn’t fully develop until age twenty-five, and I understand the science of that so much better now. I thought I was mature because I was an adult in the eyes of the law. I thought being top of my classes and skilled in my academic and extracurricular fields meant I was intelligent. I thought my experiences meant I understood myself and the world around me. I’m a terrific scientist and one hell of an assassin, so that should mean I’m smart enough to see through such manipulation and deception, right? Wrong.

Clearly, I have a couple more years of cooking to do because my perception of my own life is all topsy-turvy. My mother and grandmother always taught me to be strong and how to see through deception. They taught me to be the smartest person in the room. Even my father passed on this wisdom. Yet all these years I was being manipulated by someone close to me. I guess what they say is true; it can happen to anyone. Honestly, it’s all too exhausting to think about. I’d rather just focus on tracking down Sathariel and taking my anger out on him. The frustrating part is that we were getting so close until Castor interrupted things. I should have shot the bastard myself.

As I eat my lunch at the dining room table, I flip through a furniture catalogue trying to find the perfect pieces that will scream ‘buy me!’. Since my apartment was violated, it’s left me feeling uneasy being here. My parents have offered to let me stay with them, but that earned a vehement ‘no’ from me. I will not be flushed out of my own home because of some asshole with impulse control. So, the next best option is to redecorate. Most of the furniture was trashed, so I need to replace it anyway. But no one said I can’t have fun while I’m doing it.

“Are you sure these are all the papers you gathered?” Silas asks from the living room, pulling me from my shopping spree.

I glance back to see him sticking our hard work back to the board I’d set up.

“I picked up everything that got tossed and put it in that pile. Why?”

“I can’t find that printout of possible syndicate members. Are you sure this is everything?” he asks, flipping through the stack of papers.

“No, actually, it’s not everything. I secretly took that list, summoned Hermes, and then had him deliver it to Mount Olympus for safekeeping. I guess I forgot to tell you,” I say, shrugging nonchalantly.

Silas looks over at me in exasperation. “Dasha, I get it, okay? You’re pissed off at me.”

“Aww and I thought I was being so subtle,” I say in faux disappointment, turning back to my lunch.

“How many times do you want me to apologise? I’m sorry. The home of the woman I care about was broken into, everything she owns vandalised, and all of my shit destroyed. You knew who it was as well as I did unless the knife in your picture was too subtle for you. How was I supposed to react? Just sit back and let him do it again? My only regret is that I didn’t put a bullet through his fucking skull,” he spits with disdain. Well, that makes two of us.

I stand up, pushing my chair back as it scrapes across the floor. “You still don’t fucking get it, do you?” I turn to face him. “What you did was as much a violation to me as what he did. I am a private person, yet I let you into my life and I have been very open and honest with you, which is not easy for me to do, and what did you do with that information? You ran off and screamed it at my father, his guards, and the man who apparently groomed me, and you want a fucking pat on the back,” I say incredulously.

Silas stares at me, his face reminiscent of the night I stabbed him. “You feel like a violated you?” he quietly asks.

“You did! It might not have been a physical violation, but it was of my trust and my privacy, two very important things to me and you had no fucking right. You say I’m yours, you say you care for me, and you tease and taunt me with romantic words, but when it gets down to it when you had a chance to prove those words with actions, you failed. How can I ever trust you?”

Silas looks visibly shaken by my words. He starts to walk towards me but changes his mind and stays standing in place, letting out a defeated sigh.

“I’m sorry, Dasha. I mean that,” he says, his emerald eyes burning with sincerity. “You were right the other day. I am the kind of person who never goes into a situation half-cocked. I pride myself on that fact. But when I saw your face I knew I had crossed the line. I just didn’t realise how badly I fucked up until right now.”

He takes in a breath, combing his fingers through his hair as he leans against the arm of the sofa, contemplating his next words carefully. I fold my arms and wait patiently for him to continue.

“You opened up that you’ve never done the relationship thing, and the truth is, neither have I. I’ve tried, don’t get me wrong, but…I never felt for any woman even a fraction of what I feel for you. When I’m with you, thought and reason fly out the window. Sometimes I don’t even recognize myself when I’m with you, or maybe the truth is that I’m more myself with you than I’ve ever been with anyone else. When I’m with you I can’t hide behind a façade; it’s all or nothing. I love what you bring out in me, the good and the bad. The things I would do for you would scare a normal man, but they don’t scare me. When I saw the state of your room and I saw the photo…I lost control. I couldn’t think about anything except hurting him. I didn’t know what I wanted to happen, or what I’d say, I just knew I had to make him bleed,” he says in agitation, his hands forming claws as if choking an invisible victim.

I slowly walk over to him, his words echoing thoughts I have had over and over again since I met him. It’s almost like we have one mind. Everything he feels for me, the things I bring out in him; he does that all to me and I don’t think he even realises it.

“I know you wanted to hurt him. I wanted to hurt him too. I just wish you hadn’t hurt me in the process,” I say, my voice sounding pained.

Silas looks up, devastation filling his eyes. “Dasha, I’m so, so sorry.” He gets up, steps towards me, and drops to his knees, surrendering himself to me. “I don’t deserve forgiveness. I’ve never claimed to be a good man, but I swear to you I will do everything in my power to prove that I can be a good man to you.”

I gulp down the saliva in my mouth as I stare down into his eyes. “What if I don’t want a good man?”

“Just makes my job even easier,” he says with a playful smile.

“I wish I could hate you,” I sigh.

“Hate me. Love me. I don’t care. Just being in your heart in any capacity is enough for me,” he says reverently, his words soft; spoken like a prayer.

I reach out, my fingers gently caressing his cheek as his eyes flutter closed. He leans into my touch, the contentment clear on his face.

“What am I going to do with you?” I whisper.

Feeling brave, Silas wraps his arms around my waist and nuzzles my stomach, “Whatever you want to do.”

I smile despite myself and soothingly run my fingers through his hair as I hold him close. It doesn’t matter how many times I push him away; he never budges. He’s become this indelible force in my life, and despite how tumultuous things are when we’re together, I feel stronger with him around. I feel like the force I truly am, one not to be reckoned with, and Silas is the only one who can withstand me. He doesn’t temper me, he fuels me, igniting my fire time and time again yet is never burned by it. Maybe being together is a dangerous combination; a catastrophic force to any who come near us, but I just don’t seem to care. He drives me fucking crazy, that’s a given, but I don’t think I could quit him even if I wanted to. He's still an asshole though.