Page 2 of Unleashed (Dark Sovereign #11)

EVERLY

“You can’t be serious.”

“I am,” I say, even though my voice barely holds.

Anthony shakes his head, getting on his feet, his movements stiff. That limp...God, it’s not just a limp. It’s a wound. A reminder. A debt he never asked to pay. I hate that it’s because of me.

“Absolutely not,” he snaps. “The man kidnaps you, holds you against your will—”

“Against my will?” I stand, even though my legs still tremble under the weight of everything. “He didn’t hold me against my will, Anthony.”

He stares like I’ve just betrayed him all over again. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying Isaia wasn’t keeping me hostage.”

There’s this silence that stretches so tight between us, it might snap. His mouth opens, then closes, his brows pinched like he’s trying to compute the impossible. “See, I don’t even know what you’re saying right now.”

“I need to see him.”

“For what?” His tone sharpens. “To thank him for dragging you out of a church at gunpoint? For lying to you? For putting you through whatever the hell happened on that island?”

I swallow hard, my chest aching. “I just need to understand why. That’s all. I need answers.”

He lets out a breath, quiet and disbelieving. “So, what? All this time, I thought he was keeping you locked away, hurting you, and now you’re telling me you were… what? In his bed?”

The words hit me like a fucking freight train.

Because while Anthony was bleeding, recovering, tearing the world apart to find me—thinking I was trapped, broken, lost—I was on that island letting Isaia ruin me in the most beautiful, destructive ways.

Letting him take pieces of me no one else ever touched.

I was in his bed, under his hands, letting him fuck me in ways that still make my knees weak when I close my eyes.

While my best friend was clawing his way through hell, I was giving Isaia not just my body, but everything. My love. My trust. My goddamn heart.

And then I said vows. I stood in front of him, in front of God, and said “I do.” It wasn’t fake.

It wasn’t forced. It felt holy. Like something ancient and eternal settled into my bones that day.

Because I love him. So fucking much it feels unreal.

It’s not rational. It’s not safe. It’s all-consuming.

Like, no version of me exists without him burned into my bloodstream.

Yes. Isaia lied. But I don’t believe he did it to hurt me. I can’t. Not when I know what we had. What we still have. There has to be a reason. There has to be.

“Are you in love with him, Everly?” Anthony’s question takes me by surprise, like I never expected him to ask, yet it’s the most obvious thing in the world he should want to know.

I look at him, my heart pounding in my chest, desperate to spill everything and simultaneously terrified of the consequences. But there's no escaping the truth now. Enough lies have been told.

“I am,” I admit, voice barely audible. “I'm in love with Isaia.”

Anthony doesn’t flinch. Not at first.

He just stares at me, his jaw tight, his eyes unreadable. Like he's trying to absorb it without letting it crack him open. But I see it. The flicker. A flash of something behind his gaze that he can’t hide fast enough. Pain. Disappointment. Something deeper. Something sharp.

“Right,” he finally says, nodding like he’s trying to convince himself this was inevitable. Like he already knew but still hoped he was wrong.

I open my mouth, but he lifts a hand.

“Don’t,” he says quietly. “Don’t apologize for it.”

“Anthony…”

“I’m not stupid, Everly. I knew the second you stepped off that helicopter.

The way you looked around like you’d left something behind.

” He takes a step back, leaning against the wall like he needs it to stay upright.

“You shot one of my men, for God’s sake.

” He lets out a half-hearted laugh, and the memory of that gunshot going off pushes a bout of nausea up my throat.

“I just…fuck.” He throws his head back, craning his neck. “I knew he had his clutches in you, but I didn’t know how deep.” His eyes find mine. “But now I do.”

For a second, I glance at my finger, thumbing it. The ring’s gone. It must have slipped off. Being hauled out of the safe room, fighting them on the helicopter, there are a hundred different places I could have lost it. But it’s still tightly bound around my heart.

“I married him, Anthony.” I’m so done with lies. Done trying to fight and deny what seems to be written in stone somewhere. I bravely look at him, the pain in his irises ripping through my lungs. “I married Isaia.”

“God, Everly,” comes out of him in a broken whisper, his shoulders sagging under the weight of this revelation. His eyes close as he takes it in—a slow, painful process I watch play out with a heavy heart.

The silence that follows is brutal, hollowed out by so many revelations, I’m surprised we’re both still breathing.

He stands across from me, his fists curled at his side like he doesn’t trust what it’ll do if it moves. His chest rises and falls, slow and uneven, like he’s trying to calm a storm that's already gutted half the coastline.

And me? I’m a statue. Still. Quiet. Stripped bare.

Because what the fuck do you say to the boy who saved you when you were broken, who stood between you and a world that wanted to chew you up, a man who took a bullet for you, who will carry that scar forever, only for you to turn around and give your heart to the one man he hates most?

My eyes sting, but I don’t cry. I can’t. Not when I’m the one holding the blade.

The air between us grows thick. Not with tension, not anymore. This is something heavier. Like something sacred between us just shattered, and we’re both watching the pieces fall without trying to catch them.

He finally opens his eyes, but they don’t meet mine. He stares at the spot just past my shoulder, like maybe if he doesn’t look at me, he won’t break. Like maybe if he keeps pretending this is just a dream, he won’t have to face the fact that I married Isaia Del Rossa. Said vows to him.

Vows I meant. That I still do.

There’s a fracture between us. A broken piece you can’t see, but you feel it. You feel it in the deepest parts of yourself. Neither of us says a word. Because what could possibly be said that hasn’t already been carved into the space between us?

I can’t take it anymore. It’s too sharp, too heavy, so I sit on the edge of the bed, brushing my palms down the soft cashmere blanket. It’s soothing, like my mind focuses on the texture of it rather than the cracks in the air—just for a second.

Mirroring my movements, Anthony sinks into a nearby chair, his hands buried in his hair, his face pale and strained.

“There’s a part of me,” he says, voice strained, “that wants to hate you for it. That wants to scream at you for loving the one man I warned you against. The man who almost killed me. But I can’t.

” He looks at me, and this time his eyes aren’t unreadable—they’re raw.

“Because I know what it feels like to love someone so fucking much you’d do anything just to breathe the same air as them. ”

I feel my throat close, the air sucked from my body.

“Yeah,” he says, like he can see the disbelief on my face.

“I’ve always loved you, Everly Beaumont.

I just never allowed myself to admit it.

But while I searched for you, night and fucking day, going out of my mind, not knowing if I’d ever see you again, I promised myself that when I do, I’d stop hiding exactly what I feel for you. ”

My heart constricts, and I’m not sure whether my insides are breaking or if there’s even anything left to break at all.

“I don’t expect you to say it back.” He scoffs. “Fuck, I know you don’t feel the same about me.”

“You should hate me,” I blurt.

“But I don’t.” His gaze cuts through me. “Not even close. But I’d be lying if I said this,” he gestures between us, “doesn’t fucking wreck me.”

I don’t know what to say. There’s nothing that’ll make this easier. Nothing that’ll take away the heartbreak I never meant to give him.

He drags his hand over his mouth like he’s trying to wipe the truth off his face, but it’s too late. It's out there now—his love, his pain, his everything. There are so many emotions swirling in his green irises as he leans forward, elbows braced on his knees.

“I wanted to marry you, Everly. I realized it the day you got on that plane to California. After years of fighting Michele, my dad, to keep exactly that from happening, I realized I wanted you as my wife when you turned and walked away from me that day. But I made you a promise, and there was nothing more important to me than keeping that promise—not even if it meant denying my own feelings. And when you…” He sucks in a breath like it’s hard for him to breathe, “…when you asked me to marry you to protect you,” he wipes his lips, looking everywhere except at me, “I was so fucking happy.”

I bite my bottom lip.

“I didn’t care that it wasn’t for love. I didn’t care that you were only doing it out of fear or desperation.

To me, it was the closest I’d ever get to having you as mine.

To just—” A tear breaks free, and he swipes at it, and I swear I almost die, “—just…God.” He bows his head, fists clenched in front of him, shoulders caving like the weight of it all finally got too much.

“Just to be yours in whatever way you’d let me. ”

Every word. Every breath. Every fucking inch of pain in his voice claws through my chest like it’s trying to tear me open from the inside, like it’s an embodiment of his hurt, physically manifested within me, to ensure I bear witness.

I stare at him, shoulders hunched, hands curled into fists like he’s barely holding himself together, and all I want to do is cross the space between us and fix it.

Undo it. Go back and rewrite every choice I made.

But I can’t. I can’t erase Isaia from my veins.

I can’t pretend my heart didn’t already choose.

So I just sit there, watching the one person who has always protected me finally crack… because of me.

“I’m so sorry,” I whisper. My voice is shaky, useless. It doesn’t even scratch the surface of what I want to say.

He laughs, soft and broken, his eyes still cast down. “Don’t be. You can’t help who you love.”

“But I wish I could.”

He lifts his head, his gaze pinning mine.

“Because if I could choose, I’d choose you.

” It’s the truth. If love were something I could shape with my hands, something I could force, I’d give it to Anthony.

I’d give it to the man who had always been there for me, always putting my needs above his own.

Never pushing. Never forcing. Never taking.

Just…giving. “But I can’t,” I whisper, clutching the cashmere tighter, like it can anchor me before all this pain and guilt rip me from this world.

“Because you love him,” he murmurs. It’s not a question. It’s a declaration of defeat wrapped in four little words.

“I’m sorry.”

He stands. “You’re saying that a lot.”

“It’s all I can think of saying.”

“Well, stop.” He takes his cane—a deep cut through my soul—and goes to stand by the door. “Don’t ever apologize for not loving me. Okay?”

I nod even though guilt is twisting my insides.

“I’m going to give you some time to…freshen up. And please,” he tries to smile, but it doesn’t reach his eyes, “come eat something when you’re done.”

I’m barely holding it together, the weight of everything pressing so hard against my chest it feels like my ribs might snap. The second the door clicks shut behind him, the dam breaks. I fall apart.

Sobs rip through me like they’ve been waiting all this time, buried under shock and guilt and denial, and now there’s nothing holding them back. I cry like I did the day I was told he was dead—loud, ugly, shattering cries that leave me gasping for air.

It’s the same pain. The same soul-crushing grief.

Because when I thought he was gone, it felt like something inside me died with him. A piece of me I couldn’t name, couldn’t touch—just gone. And then an hour ago, I saw him. Alive. That missing piece clicking back into place like it never left. Like I could finally breathe again.

And now?

Now it’s ripped from me all over again. Not by death. But by the truth. By the pain I put in his eyes.

He loves me.

Not with obsession or possession or the violent chaos that lives in Isaia’s touch. But with something quieter. Something clean and pure. Something that should be safe—but only hurts more because I’ll never be able to give it back.

Because love doesn’t work like that.

And mine? Mine belongs to a man who carved his name into my soul with blood and vows.

Ripped into my heart and branded himself so deep I’ll never claw him out, no matter how hard I try.

A man who drives me fucking insane. Hurts me.

Heals me. Haunts me. He’s the poison I drink like water—and the only cure that’s ever soothed the emptiness I’ve carried before he stormed into my life.

He’s the violence and the calm. The reason I scream and the only one who can silence the noise.

He destroys me with his mouth, stitches me back together with his hands. He shatters me with one look and then holds every broken piece like it’s precious. He kisses me like a man drowning in me. Married me like he was claiming a kingdom. Fucked me like he needed to tear the truth out of my bones.

And I let him. God, I let him. Again and again. Because I love him in a way that defies logic. A way that bends reality.

A way that doesn’t stop even when it hurts.