Chapter 85 How do I stop?
RORY POV
I was in the sitting room staring into space.
I had a book open in my lap, trying to claw out everything that happened at the party by forcing my brain to focus on something else, anything else but nothing was helping. The words on the page kept blurring into nothing and my mind kept dragging me back to that table, to that room, and the humiliation of those laughing eyes wouldn't leave me.
The front door opened, and Vivianne strode in with two guards trailing behind her with luggage, her coat half off her shoulders, her energy filling the room the moment she crossed the threshold the way it always did.
"Vi..." I said, my voice cracking. I was shocked to see her; I thought she was still in D.C.
"If it ain't the most beautiful sister-in-law on the planet..." she said, dropping her bag and engulfing me in a hug.
I hugged her back, clinging to her. I hadn’t realized how much I needed it until my arms were already around her.
She pulled back, her smile fading as she took in my state. My eyes were bloodshot and swollen, I hadn't stopped crying since that night. I'd been spiraling, replaying Alexander's words over and over.
"Fuck... What did my brother do this time?" she asked, pity swimming in her eyes. I hated that look. "No wonder he wanted me to come here."
My brows furrowed. "He sent you here?"
She nodded. "Yes, Rory. He called me the moment I landed. But I didn't know something happened between you two."
I didn’t know what to do with that. I filed it away somewhere and didn’t look at it.
I sighed and sank back into the chair. Vivianne rushed to the seat beside me.
"What happened? You know you can trust me, Rory. You know that, right?" She held my hands in hers. The kindness in her voice was the final straw. The tears started again, hot and thick.
"We attended the Brotherhood party..." I started, my voice trembling. "And he... he..." I swallowed hard. I couldn't bring myself to say it.
"It's okay if you don't want to tell me," Vivianne soothed.
But I had to. It was rotting inside me. "He... he had sex with me at the party," I whispered, a fresh wave of sobbing hitting me. "In front of his enemies." I heaved, trying to breathe through it. He told them I'm just a warm pussy. He said he was going to pass me to Jarule when he's done grieving Anastasia..."
I buried my face in her shoulder and sobbed, really sobbed, the ugly kind, the kind that had been building since I was curled up on that small couch in the east wing alone in the dark.
Vivianne held me. Her hand moved over my back, slow and steady, and she let me cry without trying to rush me through it.
"I'm sorry, Rory. You don't deserve that," she said, her voice shaking with anger.
I pulled back sharply. "Don't touch my hair.
He... he came in my hair. I've washed it, but I don't want you to get your hands dirty."
Vivianne's mouth dropped open. A look of pure horror crossed her face. "I'm so sorry, Rory. There's nothing I can say that could lessen what my brother did."
She used her thumb to wipe away my tears, her expression grim.
"Can he just let me go? I'm tired, Vi." The words came out before I could stop them and once they started I couldn’t find a reason to stop them. “I'm tired of being constantly compared to Anastasia. I'm tired of him treating me like shit and making me miserable. I just want my normal life back. I didn’t ask for any of this.” My chest ached with all of it. “What did I do to deserve this? I just want to be Rory. Just Rory. In peace. That’s all I want.”
I was so mad. I was so deeply, bone-tired mad about everything that had happened to my life. Where exactly did it all go wrong? One moment I was standing outside my ex-boyfriend’s wedding venue crying on the pavement, the next I’m here — stuck, contracted, in love with a man who told a room full of criminals I was low quality while his hand was under my dress.
How does a person’s life make turns like that?
"Rory, please calm down," Vivianne said, gripping my shoulders. "I'm not supporting my brother right now, but I think there's more to why he did that at the party. He would never disrespect you like that."
He would never disrespect me like that. Oh please.
“You mean he would never disrespect Anastasia like that,” I corrected.
She opened her mouth.
“Anastasia is his delicate princess,” I cut her off, and I heard myself saying it and I couldn’t stop because it was the truest thing I’d said in weeks. “She’s the one he would never hurt or walk all over. She’s the one who owns his heart. She’s perfect and graceful and everything he’s ever wanted and I’m just the other woman, the one who’s fighting a ghost who doesn’t even know I exist. Him and Anastasia were the perfect couple. I’m just the placeholder who had the misfortune of having her face.”
Vivianne shook her head slowly, something shifting behind her eyes. Something that looked almost like guilt. “No, Rory. Anastasia and Alexander were far from perfect. There’s more to what you know. There’s so much more. Please just —” She sighed, looking defeated. A flicker of guilt crossed her face, and I felt bad for taking my rage out on her. It wasn't her fault her brother was a monster.
The silence stretched between us.
Then she breathed out and looked at me more seriously. Really looked at me.
“Rory. Do you love Alexander?”
The question hit me somewhere soft and I went quiet.
She knew. She already knew the answer — anyone who had spent more than an hour in a room with me and Alexander knew the answer. I’d confessed to him twice. Twice I’d laid it out in front of him and he’d left it on the floor both times like it was something he didn’t know what to do with. I was a foolish, lovesick girl who kept handing her heart to a man who kept handing it back.
“I don’t want you to love him,” Vivianne said into my silence, her voice dropping lower.
"I don't want you to love him," she continued when I didn't respond. "I don't want you to love him, Rory. If you do, there will be no going back. I can't promise you it will get better. A lot of things come with loving my brother, and trust me, there is no good in it."
She paused, letting the weight of her words sink in.
“Look where it landed Ana.” Her eyes went glassy. The words came out quiet, almost to herself, carrying the weight of something old and unhealed. “It’s because she loved my brother. That’s where it started. Don’t love him, Rory. Please.” Her voice cracked on the last word, just barely. “I don’t want to lose you too.”
The room went very still.
I sat with what she’d just said, not just the words but the space underneath them, the thing she wasn’t saying but was saying anyway. She knew how this ended. She’d watched it end before and she was sitting here looking at me like she was watching it begin again and couldn’t figure out how to stop it.
I fear I can’t stop loving Alexander.
That’s the truth I couldn’t say out loud to her. Because no matter what he does, no matter how many times he humiliates me or pushes me away or looks straight through me to the ghost behind my face — he finds his way back in. Every time. Like he has a key to somewhere inside me that I didn’t even know existed before him and I have no idea how to change the lock.
How do I stop?
I’m already in too deep.