Chapter 2
1749 Words
Chapter 2
“That would be all, Ms. Voss. We’ll keep in touch. Thank you.”
I nodded stiffly as the detective closed his notebook. Two officers hauled a wounded Captain out of my house, hands cuffed behind his back, head bowed, blood crusting around the ruin I’d made of his left eye. He still managed to throw me one last dirty look with the remaining one, like a silent promise that he’d come for me one day.
Let him try. After tonight, I was making damn sure he rotted in prison for as long as he breathed. Assault. Attempted murder. Breaking and entering. Emotional torment for nine years. They could staple the charges to his forehead and I would clap.
Still… the thought of what could have happened if I hadn't stabbed him, if that scissors had slipped, if fear had won, curled a sickening heat through my chest. The kind that felt like a fist squeezing from the inside. A wildfire starting where my ribs met.
Old wounds. Old ghosts. Old nightmares.
They tore open inside me without mercy.
I bent forward, gripping the doorknob so hard my fingers went white. My breath stuttered.
What would’ve happened if I hadn’t fought?
What if he’d succeeded?
What if I became another statistic? Another girl marked by violence for the third time?
The weight of it hit all at once.
I pressed a hand to my chest and the tears, those traitorous, uncontrollable ones that only came when my body physically couldn’t hold it anymore—poured down my face. Silent. Violent. Inescapable.
I slid down the door and collapsed onto the floor, sobbing so quietly my ribs shook. The ache spread like poison, crawling from my heart to my limbs. Ann hovered around me, brushing against my side, her tiny whines soft and heartbreakingly loyal.
But even her comfort wasn’t enough to drown the memories clawing up my throat.
I must have cried myself to sleep right there, because the next time consciousness dragged me back, I wasn’t on the floor anymore, I was on the couch, tucked under a light blanket.
Someone had moved me.
I sat up with a pounding headache, disoriented for one choking second… until I heard the jingle of bracelets, the soft huff of a laugh, the rustle of curls.
My stepsister was here.
My best friend.
My anchor.
My chaos twin.
“Lie back down, b***h,” Isabel snapped without even turning fully toward me.
Heat bloomed embarrassingly in my cheeks. There she was—my favorite person on earth.
“Nice to see you too,” I croaked.
She spun toward me with her hands on her hips, looking like a furious fairy goddess. Isabel was two years younger than me but somehow managed to channel the energy of an exasperated mother of five. Light, spark, sunshine and trouble, everything I wasn’t.
“What the hell have you been up to during my absence, Phina?” she demanded. “First, you stop picking my calls. Then I come back to find police cars parked on your lawn, your glass broken, and you curled on the floor like a sobbing shrimp. What the hell happened?!”
I opened my mouth to lie. To sugarcoat. To protect her the way I always tried to.
But Isabel was a one-woman truth detector. She’d smell a lie three countries away.
So I told her everything.
All my job losses.
Captain.
The break–in.
The attack.
The scissors.
All of it.
Guilt punched her first; anger came next.
“I swear on my perky tit,” she fumed, pacing like a rabid chihuahua with vengeance issues, “that Captain will not make it out of that prison alive. Mark my words. How f*****g dare he?!”
“Bee—”
“No, don’t you dare ‘Bee’ me! I knew he was bad news the moment I saw him. He tried hitting on me last month at the store! Can you imagine? That crusty, balding, one-eyed waste of oxygen asked me to talk to you for him. When I cursed him into early menopause, he said I was ‘too feisty to handle.’ DISGUSTING. If I had been here? That stab in his eye?” She clicked her tongue. “Would’ve been straight to his dick.”
It took ten full minutes, two cups of tea, and a promise on my grandmother’s ashes to keep her from storming the police station. Isabel was spark and rage and tenderness wrapped in one beautiful, chaotic package.
“So,” I finally asked, desperate for a lighter topic, “tell me about Paris, b***h. What happened?”
Instant transformation.
She squealed, set her mug down, and flopped beside me like a teenager revealing a forbidden crush. Ann—traitor that she was—abandoned me instantly and curled onto Isabel’s lap.
“Well,” Isabel said, grinning, “I think I may have gotten a new boyfriend.”
“Already?” My jaw dropped.
She shrugged, cheeks turning pink.
“I mean… he’s a mechanical engineer. Slightly older than me but—”
“How old?”
Her voice dipped to a mumble. “Likefifteenyearsdiff.”
“What?” I leaned forward. “Speak up.”
“Like fifteen years, Phina.”
I gasped. “No way.”
“Yes. I swear, before you judge me, you need to see this man. Hot as hell. Built like a dream. Looks like he can carry a whole car and not break a sweat.”
I burst out laughing. That was Isabel.
Drama queen.
Hopeless romantic.
Walking chaos.
“You know I’ll never judge you, Bee,” I said softly. “Just be careful. Most men carry skeletons. And not the cute Halloween kind, the kind that jumps out and stabs you when you’re asleep.”
I would know. Obviously.
“I know,” she sighed. “Besides, he has a wife—well, divorced—but I’m not about that life. I’m not trying to be the side chick that ruins a home. That’s like trying to peel a sticker off glass with your teeth. Pointless, painful, and you end up looking stupid.”
I smiled, even though her eyes had shadowed for a second. She changed the topic immediately.
“Anyway,” she said casually, “I think my father wants to remarry.”
My eyebrows shot up. “That’s good news… right?”
She stared at me like I’d committed blasphemy.
“No. Of course not.”
Oh.
“I do not want him anywhere near any woman ever again, Phina. All they ever do is use him until there’s nothing left. They take and take and take… and when he finally needs something back, they vanish. Not one person has ever stayed with him through it all. Not one.”
And that included our mother.
My chest ached. Our mother had been a conniving, charming wildfire, burning everything she touched. Isabel’s father wasn’t mine, and mine wasn’t hers, but my mother never cared about loyalty. She cared about comfort, about security, about whatever wealthy man could give her the softest landing. She traded partners the way people traded shoes—quickly, quietly and without remorse.
I felt my heart tightening for Isabel and for her father; a man I had never even met but somehow knew. Isabel spoke about him with a tenderness she didn’t offer many people. I knew he was kind. I also knew he was wealthy; extremely wealthy. He owned Draegor Obsidian, the biggest and most iconic jewelry empire across Italy, Europe, and even parts of Asia. Of course, rumors floated around, that the company was built through blood, betrayal, sweat, and secrets—but nothing had ever been proven. And Isabel swore her father was incapable of anything monstrous.
“If he trusts this woman, Bee… can’t you allow it?” I asked softly. Matters concerning her father were delicate landmines; one wrong step and she’d explode.
Isabel shook her head, tears already gathering. She wiped them away with the back of her hand, angry at herself for crying.
“You don’t understand, Phina. He’s not the same man anymore. He’s… broken. Beyond repair. After what our mother did to him, after everything he went through, he swore off women completely. He swore he’d never remarry, never try again. And now suddenly he wants to settle down. Suddenly he wants a wife.” She shook her head harder. “I googled her, you know. The woman he’s seeing. She’s been divorced six times.” She held out six fingers like it was a crime. “Six, Phina. She has six children from three different men.”
Oh.
Oh God.
Now I understood.
“Shit.”
“Exactly.”
“Well… just talk to him, Bee. I’m sure he’ll listen to you.” I said gently.
“He might.” Her voice cracked. “But what if I’m wrong? What if they actually love each other and I’m just being a jealous daughter trying to hold on to him? I don’t ever want to be the reason he loses happiness. He’s been… he’s been good to me, Phina. Better than most people deserve.”
She was crying fully now. I pulled her into my arms, hugging her tightly as her shoulders trembled against me. I murmured reassurances, soft and useless, but hoping they’d at least sit warm on her heart.
She sniffed, pulled back, and looked at me. Her eyes were still wet, but the expression, God, was so serious it made my skin prickle.
“Promise me, Phina.”
My brows pinched. “Promise you what?”
“Promise me that you won’t have anything to do with my father.”
I blinked. “What?”
“That you won’t see him… and fall in love with him. That I won’t wake up someday and find myself crying over you too. That I won’t have to choose or ask you to choose between the both of us.”
What the actual hell?
“What are you even saying, Isabel? I don’t understand.”
She wiped her cheeks again, exhaled shakily, and looked at me like she was bracing for something huge.
“I need you to promise me this because… because…”
I waited, my heart thudding painfully, the air stiff between us.
“…because I want you to move in with us.”
I stared at her.
“…Excuse me?”
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