Page 46

W e lay in the darkness of our bedroom, the silence between us broken only by the steady rhythm of V's breathing. His body was tense beside me as he sat in black jeans and a long-sleeved shirt while I was still naked from a few hours ago.

The jagged mirror across the room caught fragments of our reflection, my head resting cautiously on his shoulder, his arm stretched protectively across my waist. Almost touching but not quite connecting. I traced the path of our bodies in the webbed glass, finding strange comfort in how the cracks transformed us, not hiding our flaws but making them into something almost beautiful.

A sudden knock at our front door shattered the quiet. V's head tilted, his attention shifting instantly toward the sound echoing from the living room.

"W-Who is it?" I called from the bedroom, scrambling off the bed, frantically searching for my clothes scattered across the floor.

"It's us, Oak." Dad's voice filtered through the apartment door from the hallway outside. What was he doing here?

I yanked on my jeans, confused. They hadn't shown up unannounced since the morning after my panic attack with V. I pulled my shirt over my head, trying to smooth my tousled hair as I hurried toward the front door.

V was already there, fully clothed since he'd worn them when we... did what we did. His movements were slow as he waited for me to be decent. When he opened the door, they stood in the building's hallway. Mom's fingers laced through Dad's, eyes rimmed with tears.

"Is everything okay?" I've only seen Mom cry a handful of times in my life.

Dad stepped across the threshold into our living room, his shoulders tense as he moved past V toward the center of the space. Mom followed close behind, her eyes fixed on the floor as she entered. V remained standing by the open door, watching them both.

I crossed to him, my fingers whispering against his sleeve. "Please sit down," I reminded him softly, closing the door behind my parents. "You need to rest."

He placed his massive hand in mine, allowing me to guide him across the living room to the couch. Not from any concern, but because I had asked. V obeyed no one except me.

Mom settled into the armchair across from us while Dad remained standing near the window. She tried to smile at V from her seat, but it cracked at the edges as she spoke. "Are you feeling okay, dear?"

V gave a single nod from beside me on the couch, his gaze never wavering from me. His hand extended toward me, fingers splayed wide. Wedding bands brushed together as I laced my fingers through his. His eyes tracked my every movement.

"I'm right here," I rubbed my thumb across his knuckles.

Dad paced between the window and coffee table, hands fidgeting in a way that seemed foreign on him. He kept glancing at Mom in her chair, whose tears had begun to fall freely. Her breathing stuttered audibly, small gasps that she couldn't quite control as she rocked slightly in the cushioned seat. "M-Mom?"

"We need to tell you something," Dad finally said, stopping his pacing to face us on the couch. "Something we should have told you years ago." Dad's eyes were on me—specifically, my hand resting in V's. "That ring on your finger." His voice had gone hollow, echoing as if from the bottom of a well. "You got it from Divine Diligence, didn't you?" A pause. "Were you born there?"

V's body became iron beneath my touch, every muscle rigid. "Mother was sent there," V answered, his voice flat, but his fingers dug into my hip with bruising force. "I was born there."

"You escaped?" V nodded. "How old were you?"

"Three."

"What's Divine Diligence?" The words came out sharper than I intended, cutting through the heavy atmosphere.

I reached for Mom instinctively, as I'd done thousands of times when scared or confused, but she flinched away—a tiny movement that gutted me. Security collapsed inward, a vacuum taking its place. My throat sealed shut, oxygen trapped painfully as if my body recognized the betrayal before my mind could process it. She'd never, not once in my life, pulled away from my touch.

"It's where I grew up," Dad ran his fingers through his hair before pointedly looking at me. "It's where you were born."

No one answered. Mom raised her eyes to mine, and what I saw there made my heart stutter.

Dad opened his mouth to speak, but Mom made a noise that stopped my heart—half-sob, half-scream, the sound of something splitting inside her chest. Her fist pressed against her mouth, knuckles whitening as she bit down hard enough to leave marks, trying to contain what couldn't be held back.

Anything would hurt less than the way she looked at me—as if she was already mourning something I hadn't even lost yet, memorizing my face for the last time, like each second cost her something vital she'd never get back.

"Claudia," Dad whispered, his hand covering hers.

"No." She jerked away, spine straightening. Tears marked paths down her face, washing away the careful mask she'd worn all my life. "I need to say it myself." Her voice splintered, steel bending until it cracked. "I'm not—" The words choked off abruptly, as if speaking them aloud would end her completely.

Mom's eyes finally met mine across the coffee table. Her features crumpled as she tried to find words for a truth too painful to speak.

"W-What's happening?" My eyes shifted from Mom to Dad, heart jerking uncontrollably.

"Oakley," Dad said, grief cracking his careful control. "Claudia isn't your biological mother."

A high-pitched ringing split through my skull, drowning everything but my thundering pulse. My body went numb, ice spreading from my fingertips through my veins.

Nausea crashed into me. The world lurched sideways as twenty years of memories reshuffled themselves, countless moments suddenly transformed into lies. Every birthday cake. Every bedtime story. Every time she'd brushed my hair or kissed a scraped knee. Every single time she'd called me her daughter.

All lies.

My vision blurred. The room tilted.

Mom wasn't Mom.

Then who was I?

Colors blurred at the edges, reality dissolving into a smear of confusion. Every truth I'd built myself on was erased by five words.

Her face offered nothing—no echo of mine, no borrowed smile. All those times people had said I had her smile, her laugh—were they just being polite? Perpetuating a fiction everyone knew but me?

A chasm opened inside me, consuming everything I thought I knew. If she wasn't my mother, what parts of me were real? What else had they hidden? The foundation of my existence cracked, hairline fractures spreading until nothing solid remained.

"I always knew I'd have to tell you... but how do you tell your child she was never yours to begin with?" She pressed her fist against her mouth, biting down on her knuckles again until the flesh whitened. Her shoulders shook as tears dropped onto her lap, dark stains blooming on denim. "I raised you. I loved you. I am your mother in every way that matters."

I didn't remember standing. I didn't remember the door slamming open. Only the blind panic—lungs burning, heartbeat thrashing against my ribs, every step a scream for escape. My ears rang with deafening intensity, vision narrowing to pinpricks of light in an expanding void. Each footfall thundered louder than my own heartbeat, the rhythm of flight drowning out thought. My entire life had been a performance I didn't know I was giving.

I didn't know if I was running from them or from myself. I just knew if I stayed another second, I would disintegrate into pieces too small to ever find again.

My body moved. I didn't remember descending. Keys appeared in my hand as I wrenched open my car door, sliding into the passenger's seat before realizing my hands shook too violently to turn the ignition. I stared through the windshield, seeing only the ruins of my identity, panic crawling under my flesh like insects.

V appeared at the driver's door. He opened it and slid in beside me, taking the keys from my trembling fingers without a word. He reached across me, buckling my seatbelt before pressing his mouth to my temple through his mask.

I stared blankly at the dashboard, willing my heartbeat to slow, but it only hammered harder, as if my heart had just realized I was still alive and was trying to escape my chest. The only piece of me that felt real was where his covered lips had touched my temple.

Just hours ago, V had made me feel seen—had worshipped every curve, every mark, every part of me I'd been taught to hate. He'd found beauty in my fractured reflection. Now that reflection seemed like another lie. If I wasn't Oakley Anson, daughter of Trevor and Claudia Anson, then who was I?

He started the engine, and we fled from the apartment that no longer felt like home.

T he bakery stood quiet, V walking to the corner with the least amount of damage. Leaning his back against the wall, he slid down, pulling me into his lap. His hand stroked my hair as I settled against him, trying to process that my mom was not my mom. His rough hands felt gentler than they should be. Tears had dried on my face, leaving salt trails I no longer felt. My eyes burned dry, staring blankly as if feeling itself had drained away, leaving only emptiness with each shallow breath.

Is this what V felt all the time? The vacuum inside me mirrored his eyes—an endless abyss screaming silently, like a siren underwater.

"You okay?" His whisper vibrated through his chest, beneath my ear.

"No." The single syllable contained multitudes. It was the most honest word I'd spoken all day.

His arms tightened around me, chin resting on my crown. Safe. Despite everything—the lies unraveling my life, the man whose violence had claimed countless lives—I felt safe. Not because he was good, but because his single-minded obsession with me ensured nothing else would ever hurt me.

We weren't two damaged people anymore. We were just damaged. Two sets of shards so sharp we cut each other every time we tried to fit. We weren't fixing each other—we were sinking together, clinging tighter the deeper we fell.

Everything was a lie. Even the truths they told me were just prettier lies wrapped in brighter paper. How many lies had I swallowed without tasting the poison? What else had they hidden from me? How many other lies wore the faces of my childhood memories?

I thought of the photos on our mantle—family camping trips, birthdays, Christmases—all preserved behind pristine glass. All fiction. Had she looked at those pictures each day knowing they contained a central falsehood? That the daughter in those frames was not truly her daughter?

How could I hold his pain when mine already drowned me? What right did I have to his darkest secrets when my own reality lay in pieces? My chest constricted, everything thinning—terrified I'd drop the one piece of his soul he'd ever given anyone. If I let go, I'd be the last hand to fail him. The final person to teach him trust was a mistake. The thought of failing him—of not being enough to carry the weight of what he'd endured.

"Talk to me," he murmured into my hair, his lips brushing against my scalp with each word. His arms tightened around me, not from empathy but possession—I was the only thing in his existence that mattered. The only thing he would ever protect. The single point in his universe that had value.

I said nothing for a long time. Just breathing. Listening to the rhythm of his heart beneath my ear. Minutes passed, or maybe hours. The quiet stretched between us, not empty but filled with all the words neither of us knew how to say.

The brothers were brought together for a sin so unforgivable, God wouldn't forgive them for it. Knowing everything that V had done, his list would be black at the golden gates. But that was after joining... what about before he joined?

Maybe I didn't want to know. Maybe some things were better left buried.

But I found myself shifting in his arms, turning to face him.

"What's your sin?" The question escaped like a dying breath, barely audible even in the perfect quiet of the abandoned bakery.

His hand rose to cup my cheek, callused fingers leaving trails of heat against my skin. His thumb traced my bottom lip. V's fingers brushed the edge of my jaw. Slowly, painfully, he surrendered. "Mother was jealous."

A cold dread seeping into my veins. "Of what?"

"Me."

His eyes held mine, vacant depths revealing nothing yet somehow everything—an abyss containing universes of emptiness carefully cultivated and maintained. Those depths held no warmth, nothing suggesting empathy or normal emotion.

My hands found his face, framing the sharp angles that could cut glass. "Why would she be jealous of you?"

His gaze shifted away from me.

The world stopped.

V never looked away from me. Not once. Not ever.

His hand withdrew from my face, each finger retracting in sequence.

Then it happened.

I thought I knew pain. But I didn't. I knew bruises. I knew scrapes. Not this. Not wounds that don't bleed until someone finally sees them.

"Her boyfriends liked to use my mouth more than hers."

My lungs seized. The world didn't deserve oxygen after that.

There was no coming back from this. No world that could stitch itself whole after hearing something like that. He wasn't a monster. He was a crime scene that never stopped bleeding.

I shattered for him.

For the child who never stood a chance.

For the boy who was torn apart before he could speak.

For the man who looked alive but was already gone.

"V." My voice cracked over his name. "V, look at me. Please."

He didn't. His jaw set in a rigid line, not a single muscle twitching beneath his skin. He wasn't just trapped in the memory—he was drowning in it, in the shame that was never his to carry. He'd carried it alone for decades, this secret that had shaped him, molded him into the weapon he'd become. And now he'd trusted me with it—me, the woman he'd terrorized, claimed, protected, and somehow, impossibly, loved in the only way he knew how.

I pressed my palm against his cheek, trying to guide his face back to mine, but he resisted—this man who always yielded to my touch now refused it. His skin was cold beneath my fingers, clammy with sweat despite the chill in the atmosphere.

"Please," I begged, tears streaming unchecked down my face, burning trails that I couldn't feel through the numbing horror. "Please look at me."

His head pivoted slowly, gaze locking on mine.

What I saw shredded my soul to ribbons.

His eyes—those lethal, watchful eyes that had always held the cold calculation of a predator—remained unchanged. The obsidian pools that had never revealed emotion continued their endless blackness. No shame. No humiliation. Nothing human reflected in that endless dark.

The wall remained, the barrier intact, the carefully constructed nothingness absolute. There was no pain visible, just an absence so complete it consumed light.

Behind that emptiness lurked something unfathomable—not resignation, but utter detachment. The complete separation of a consciousness that had learned his body wasn't his own. That he was not a person but a weapon to be used. His pupils remained perfectly sized, not dilated, not contracted, revealing nothing of the memories buried beneath layers of impenetrable ice.

V didn't cry. V would never cry. His eyes remained dry as bone, yet somehow they conveyed a desolation so absolute it was worse than tears could ever express. It wasn't emotion that undid me but the complete absence of it—the way his entire body seemed to vibrate with the effort of containing any human reaction at all.

This wasn't V.

This was a little boy waiting for someone to save him and never did.

My nails bit crescents into my palms as he stared past me, trapped behind eyes that saw nothing but memories of being quieted. A ghost haunting the shell of the monster who'd become my sanctuary.

The most terrifying man I'd ever known had given me his darkest truth, and in doing so, had trusted me with his soul. The man who had threatened to end worlds for me had allowed himself to be vulnerable. The predator had willingly become prey to give me the gift of his trust.

"How could anyone look at you and hurt you?" The words escaped as an agonized whisper, barely audible above the shattering of my heart. My fingers trembled against his face, unable to offer comfort for something so incomprehensible.

The world tilted on its axis. The floor beneath me seemed to liquefy, reality warping around this confession that changed everything and nothing at once. V—my monster, my nightmare turned sanctuary—had just ripped himself open and laid his most guarded wound at my feet. A trust so profound it left me breathless.

My chest constricted so hard, each breath stabbed like shards in my lungs. A sound tore from my throat—part scream, part sob—ripped from somewhere primal and wounded. I crumbled against him, my forehead finding his shoulder as my body convulsed uncontrollably. Tears soaked his shirt as I shattered against him, unable to hold myself upright under the weight of his confession. Bile rose, scorching my esophagus as visions flooded my mind: a little boy with midnight eyes, men's hands holding him down, his mother watching with cold resentment.

My fists clenched fabric like a lifeline. I could feel my nails breaking skin, but the pain was distant, unimportant compared to the hemorrhaging wound he'd just exposed. He remained motionless, this man who never looked away, as if by confessing this one awful truth, he'd exposed a weakness he didn't understand and couldn't name.

My hands rose to his face, fingertips hovering millimeters from his skin, not quite touching. The space between us charged with something beyond fear, beyond grief—sacred and terrible. His nostrils flared as he inhaled sharply, muscles tensing beneath me like a cornered animal preparing for pain. How many times had he relived this exact fear? How many nightmares had begun with hands reaching for his face?

I waited, suspended in this moment that felt like standing on the edge of a precipice—one movement would send us plummeting into a depth we couldn't return from. My fingers visibly trembled, suddenly clumsy with the weight of what I was asking. His eyes fluttered shut, impossibly long lashes casting spider-leg shadows on hollow cheeks. A single, barely perceptible nod.

My fingers found the straps of his mask first, the elastic worn thin from constant use. My breath hitched audibly, fingers shaking violently as they trembled against his hair. These hands that had always been steady now betraying the earthquake inside me. This felt sacred and excruciating all at once—like stripping armor from a wounded warrior, reverent yet raw. My knuckles brushed against his temples, against skin too cold, too damp. The surgical mask had become such a part of him that removing it felt like an act of violence, a desecration.

The mask caught briefly on the shell of his ear, and his entire frame remained motionless beneath me, a living tombstone. His breathing never faltered—controlled, even, unaffected. Each breath measured, as if counting seconds between inhalations. His eyes remained open, unflinching, watching me with that same hollow intensity. The black fabric slipped away, revealing the face I'd only glimpsed in fragments before.

For the first time, I saw him—truly saw him.

His face was sculpted brutality—all sharp angles and unforgiving planes. High cheekbones cut like blades beneath skin stretched taut over bone. His jawline was carved granite, masculine and unyielding, dusted with dark stubble that couldn't quite hide the scars. A crooked, aristocratic nose that had been shattered many times. His lips were fuller than I'd imagined, the bottom one slightly more pronounced, oddly sensual against the harshness of his other features—a single touch of softness in a landscape built for war.

Those eyes—those terrible, beautiful eyes—were framed by lashes so thick and dark they looked like ink smudges, an artist's afterthought. His brows arched, one bisected by a thin white scar I'd never seen before. Everything about his face was a contradiction—beauty carved from cruelty, symmetry forged through suffering.

I memorized each line and hollow, cataloging the face I'd dreamed of but never truly known. This was V—my monster, my protector, my executioner, my salvation—exposed at last. My breath caught at the strange intimacy of it, more naked than if he'd shed every piece of clothing. More vulnerable than any physical exposure could ever be.

But there, where the crisp edges of his beard should have continued their path, lay the truth he'd hidden.

The dim lights were merciless, exposing what he'd concealed for so long.

What if I hadn't asked? What if I never saw this? Would he have carried it to the grave, one stitch at a time, while I lived beside a ghost I never truly knew? Small, puckered divots carved into the corners of his mouth—starburst scars where beard couldn't grow. Not random. Deliberate. Symmetrical. Needle puncture wounds, healed years ago but etched into his lips. Ten little grave markers carved into skin no one had ever mourned properly. Ten tiny funerals stitched into his mouth. The kind of marks that could only come from being held open. Used. The physical evidence of the horror he'd just confessed.

My vision blurred as bile rose violently in my throat. My breathing stuttered painfully, lungs refusing to fill. I wanted to erase each scar, to rewind time, to scream until my throat tore—but I could only stare helplessly at the evidence of his stolen voice. Each divot marked not just physical damage but a monument to stolen innocence, childhood ripped away by hands that should have protected.

The scars said everything he'd never spoken. Screamed where he'd been forced to be quiet. Ten punctures. Ten times someone decided his voice didn't matter. How many screams had he buried behind this mask?

My stomach convulsed. My throat locked. I wanted to kiss every scar. To burn the world that put them there. The room tilted, oxygen suddenly scarce. My vision tunneled down to those ten small scars, each one a chapter in a horror story written on the face of the man I loved.

His jaw set in a rigid line, not a single muscle twitching beneath his skin. He remained perfectly motionless, allowing me to witness this most guarded secret with unnatural control. His skin remained dry despite the chill in the atmosphere, his complexion unchanging—no color, no reaction, nothing that might suggest humanity beneath that exterior.

The mask dangled from my fingers, this simple piece of fabric that had been armor, sanctuary, prison. With terrible clarity, I understood everything—the quiet that had defined him, the rage that lived beneath his skin, the way he sometimes flinched when I reached for his face too quickly. Not quirks. Not personality. Survival mechanisms forged in agony.

A tear slipped down my cheek, then another, and another, a quiet flood I couldn't control. They dripped onto his shirt, spreading dark circles on the fabric.

My arms came around him with desperate strength as if I could shield him from the past, as if my body could absorb the horror that had shaped him. I pressed my face into the crook of his neck, tears soaking his skin, my voice catching and cracking as I tried to whisper reassurances I had no right to give.

"Tell me you survived it," I whispered against his throat. "Tell me there's something left of you."

He said nothing.

He was the only piece of truth I had left. I couldn't let him disappear back into the shadows—not when I'd finally seen what they did to him. The movement drew my gaze to the scars again, to the physical proof of betrayal so profound it had shaped his entire existence.

My hand rose of its own accord, hovering near his face, not quite touching, waiting for permission I wasn't sure would come.

His eyes remained fixed on mine, obsidian pools revealing nothing but infinite emptiness.

He didn't look damaged. That was what broke me most. There was no shaking. No tears. No human reaction at all. Just a man who had already mourned himself out of existence.

Another microscopic nod, perfectly controlled—the greatest act of trust he was capable of.

My fingertips brushed the corner of his mouth, the lightest whisper of skin against skin. The scars felt different under my touch—smooth divots in the otherwise rough texture of his stubbled jaw.

His exhale remained steady against my palm, warm but measured. His pulse continued its rhythmic cadence at his throat, unnaturally regulated. His skin remained dry beneath my fingers, temperature unchanged, his face a mask of composed indifference.

This close, his eyes were bone-dry, devoid of any moisture—eyes that had forgotten how to weep long ago, if they ever knew at all. His gaze held mine with an intensity that transcended emotion, asking me not to look away, not to flinch from the ugliness of his truth.

I traced the matching indentations on the other side, completing the circuit of his suffering. Ten points of deliberate damage. Ten monuments to cruelty. Every instinct screamed to pull away, to shield myself from this pain too vast to comprehend. Instead, I cradled his face between my palms, holding him as if he might shatter—this man who had seemed carved from immovable stone.

The truth crashed over me in waves, each realization more devastating than the last. The mask wasn't to hide deformity. It was to hide evidence. It wasn't vanity. It was protection. It wasn't a quirk. It was the only way he knew to keep breathing in a world that had used him and discarded him like garbage.

His entire body turned to carved stone, impossibly motionless. Muscles coiled beneath his skin, not in fear but in absolute control. Nothing about him revealed weakness or vulnerability. Every cell in his massive frame locked in place, refusing to betray even the slightest discomfort at being exposed, at being seen.

But he stayed. For me. With me. Trusting me with the most wounded parts of himself.

"What did they do to you?" My question emerged, cracked and barely audible through the thickness in my throat.

His uneven lips twitched at the corners, a movement so subtle I wouldn't have seen it if I hadn't been memorizing every detail of his exposed face. Not a smile—V didn't smile—but something terrible and intimate, a crack in the foundation that had kept him standing for decades.

"Everything she was supposed to protect," he whispered, and my heart shattered, the pieces piercing my lungs, stealing breath, killing any lingering illusion that love alone could heal wounds this deep.