Page 83 of All Your Lies

She glares at me as she prepares to attack. I dodge her jab, then wrestle her down to the ground.

“I knew this was your plan all along,” she says as she gazes up at me.

“It was part of it.” I laugh.

“And the other part?” she asks with a quirk of her eyebrow.

“When I found out about what happened to you, I felt so guilty I wasn’t there to protect you. We could’ve lost you,” I say as I rub my finger against the raised scar near her ear. I know she’s ashamed of the scar and what it represents, but she shouldn’t be. It shows her strength and resilience.

She flips me onto my side. “It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t have a choice—”

“I always had a choice. I was just too weak to go against it.”

“You were never—”

“I was.” I feel the scar running long and raised across my palm.

The reminder of the day I finally showed myself is seared into my flesh.

16 YEARS OLD

My father cuts my palm and I wince at the initial sting as he looks into my eyes. “Pathetic,” he spits with disgust.

His new objective has been to inflict pain until Marco and I no longer wince or flinch or move. He intends for us to turn into nonfeeling robots just like him.

It’s an exhausting mind game, and I’m sick of it.

The blackness seeps into my soul as it always does, but this time, I don’t push it back down.

My fingers clench around the knife, still deeply embedded in my flesh, and I pull it closer. Ignoring the searing pain that rips through me, which passes as the black haze fades it into nothingness.

“Let the blade go, Gage,” my father says through clenched teeth as he tries to pry it from my hand.

I squeeze the blade in my palm harder until my crimson blood creates more of a stream and less of a trickle on his desk.

“You wanted blood. Let there be blood,” I say in a voice that seems foreign.

Marco comes into my line of sight behind our father and shakes his head for me to stop while holding his bleeding palm.

I’m sick of seeing him get hurt. I’m sick of getting hurt. This has to stop.

A smile reaches my lips as I flick my eyes back to my father while taking in his reaction. The fear in his eyes is something I’ve never witnessed in him.

I let his words and his beliefs of my unworthiness turn me into the monster he tried to craft me to be. What he didn’t know is that this side of me was there all along, fighting to come out, fighting to dance with the light I shrouded myself in.

He learned the mistake he made today, and fuck, it feels good.

She grabs my hand, bringing me back to the present.

“Jesus, Gage, what is that?” Alexa says as she runs her finger along the scar.

“A reminder of who I am. Come on, we’ll go get you some new clothes, and then we have to get ready for the meeting.”

Manuel, Tony, and Rocco file into the room later that day, but what confuses me is Gia trailing the three of them.

“This was to be a closed conversation,” I say as I glare at Gia. She will never be in a position of power, so I don’t understand her attendance today when we’re speaking of important matters.

“We’ve already got one woman in here. What’s the difference?” Manuel mutters.