“Try me, Hope,” I mutter, digging deep for the patience I need.
“You’ll kill me if I tell you,” she says flatly. My frown turns to a scowl directed solely at her, one that brings with it thoughts of betrayal and hatred. “See? It’s already there on your brow.” She chuckles softly and drinks again. “Not that it matters now anyway. I know there’s no coming back from last night.”
“Talk,” I snap, now pissed at the dismissive tone she’s carrying on with and suspicious of what it means. “And enough with the bullshit. Tell me.” She doesn’t. She just stares back out into the void in front of her, barely seeing me in her eyeline. “Hope?”
“Do you know I love you?” she suddenly asks. She does? The question takes me by surprise given my tone, not that she seems to be listening. “I do. After everything. I fell in love with a gangster, just like my mother. Shame, isn’t it?” What the fuck? “I didn’t mean to, Benjamin.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Do you love me?”
My mouth clamps closed, eyes staring at her in disbelief. I come here looking for an argument, a war even, and she brings this out? “You tell me the truth and then we’ll talk.”
“We won’t talk about anything after I’ve told you the truth, Benjamin,” she says quietly, getting up from her position on the deck couch and walking back into the house. “There’ll be nothing left to talk about as far as you’re concerned.”
I follow and grab her by the arm, knocking the light on and swinging her back to me. Now I really want to know. I shake her, trying to snap her out of whatever place she’s in. I don’t like it. It reeks of surrender and defeat, neither things I know from her. She hangs limply in my grip, though, like all the fight she had last night has evaporated into thin air. She just stares and lifts her hand slowly to run it through my hair, her eyes looking straight into a soul she’s found glimpses of in our time together. Such pretty eyes. I frown at them and watch as they bore into me some more, feeling them down in the pit of my guts again.
“They’re my brothers,” she says quietly, sighing. “Quinn and Nathan. My brothers.”
The sharp inhale I take, together with the shock, makes me shove her away from me. She careers backwards into the table, hardly bothering to stop herself before she hits the wood. I glare, pissed at her deceit. Not that I fucking understand it.
“The hell did you say?”
Her body slides down the table leg, collapsing onto the floor beneath it. “You weren’t supposed to mean something to me,” she says, a quiver in her voice now. She’s right to fucking have it if this shit is true. All this time, the things I asked her to do, and they’re family?
“I needed to get to them, Benjamin. Needed to…” Her hands go to her head, covering her eyes as she shakes it back and forth. “I wasn’t supposed to…”
I back away a step before I drag her up and show her all the truths I’ve got to give her for such treachery. What the fuck else is she hiding?
“How the fuck are they your brothers?”
“Their father,” she mutters, lifting her eyes back to me. “Him and my mother.” Fucking whores and their gangsters. I halt, all sorts of deceit flying through my head now.
“They both know?” Because I swear, I'll fucking kill—
“No,” she says, moving towards me. “They’ve never known.”
My gaze flicks around the room, searching for something to help me understand this. There’s nothing but the lying bitch in front of me. “They had everything, Benjamin. Everything. And I had nothing because of them,” she shrieks. I walk away another step, aiming back through to the lounge. A drink. A big one. I need to calm the tirade that’s brewing. She talks of love and then delivers this to me? “I couldn’t get to them without you. It's all been me. I'm your leak.”
Whatever the fuck that last sentence was has me storming back towards her, temper and ire shifting all my weight to my hands to grab at her.
“You fucking used me?” Tears spring in her eyes, body not even trying to get away from me. I snatch at her wrists, ensuring she can’t escape. My hands burn as I grip her.
“I. . . No. . . It wasn’t meant to be like this. I hate them. I can't. . . You don't understand, and. . .”
“All of it was for them? Some fucking game?” She buckles in my hands, knees giving way to my continued pressure.
“No, Benjamin, please. . . I—”
“Bitch,” I snap, slinging her away from me again. I’m done here. Finished.
My strides lead me to the door before I do kill her, but the anger and hatred and betrayal keep barreling into me with every footfall. My Hope. Mine. And now it’s all a lie?
My hands swipe the long hall table, sending whatever the fuck is on it crashing to the ground. “Fuck you!” I bellow as my fist smashes into the mirror above it. Shards split out of it, spreading out under me as I crunch over them and head for another surface. All of it goes, all of it, clashing and clattering as I send more of it to the floor, upturning anything else that dares get in my fucking way. Anger and hurt meld into each other, somehow becoming more fucking sinister as the two combine.
“I wanted to punish them,” she shouts. Them? I spin on her, throwing whatever is in my hand straight through the fucking window behind her head.
“You’ve fucking punishedme, Hope.” She quivers there, her fingers by her mouth as she looks at me and tears pour from her eyes. “I gave you everything and you’ve—” My mouth stops, breath heaving in and out. What has she done? She’s lied. Schemed. Used me like no one has ever dared before.
