All He'll Ever Be

by W Winters

  His finger taps on the glass of the picture frame, the one of Carter’s house that was destroyed. “I should have made sure they’d all died that night. When I hung this, I thought they’d be the ones to kill me. They still may be. Maybe tonight even.”

  A part of me wishes to console my father, to assure him that it’s going to be all right. But it would only be lies, and he knows better than that.

  “Are they the ones who are here?” I manage to ask him, hiding my desperation to know and why I want to know. Anxiety whispers along every inch of my skin.

  My father’s smirk makes his eyes wrinkle and the rough chuckle is accompanied with the telltale cough that comes from a smoker’s lungs. While I was away, praying he’d come save me, I forgot how old my father’s become in the past few years.

  “Yes, of course they are.” His answer is what I’d hoped, although I know I shouldn’t. My heart hammers and my pulse quickens, but I don’t show my father anything. I give him no indication of how that knowledge makes me feel.

  At my lack of shock, my lack of emotion, not knowing how to react as thoughts race through my mind, my father offers me a small smile and then points to the photo of my mother, tapping his finger once again, but this time on the very edge of it. Almost like he’s afraid to touch it.

  “You know that I love you,” my father says and it’s then that his voice cracks and his expression crumples. “I was never a good father, but I chose you and I thought it counted for something.”

  “You are a good father,” I say, pushing out the words in a shallow breath, trying to contain the guilt and fear of what’s to come. I could drown in my emotions as I take a shaky step closer to him, needing to hold him as he’s held me before. “I know you were hard on me, but this life is hard and I needed it.” I get it now, why he always made me stand on my own. Maybe he knew this day would come sooner than I did. The day someone would take it all away from him.

  “No, no, Aria,” my father says as he shakes his head. His eyes search mine, not giving away any secrets but hiding every one of them.

  Another yell is heard, this time farther away and it takes my attention but only for a split second until I hear my father say, “Your mother didn’t belong to me. She was supposed to marry my brother.”

  One beat of my heart, ragged and jagged.

  “She loved him and his money… his power. He was supposed to inherit everything. He was the one meant to rule.”

  Another beat of my heart and my father takes down the photo, the frame making an awful cracking noise as he does, the frame splintering, from being so old perhaps. I know my uncle was supposed to be the don, the head of the family. He was older than my father, but he was killed before he could take charge.

  What I didn’t know, is that my mother was involved with my uncle. I’ve never been told such a thing.

  “She fell in love with you after he died?” I assume out loud.

  “She was pregnant and afraid,” my father says, not looking at me at all, or the slow realization that comes to form on my face. “She needed someone to protect her after her quick affair with him, and I loved her. I wanted her.”

  I can’t breathe, I swear to it. An unseen hand seems to strangle me as my father slowly raises his gaze to mine.

  “What?” The disbelief cloaks the whisper.

  “They were only together for a short time and most people had no idea. But when he was murdered, she was pregnant, alone, and with a price on her head.”

  “Mom?” I don’t know how her name escapes me, my breath strangling me as it refuses to leave.

  “I told her no one would ever know, and she accepted.” The thumb of his left hand runs along the place a wedding ring would hug his ring finger. “I always wanted you. I always loved you as my own.”

  My head shakes on its own and my eyes go wide. Wide with shock, wide with fear in the way my father’s speaking.

  “I tried to love you and show you how much you were loved. Yes, I was hard on you. I was hard on you because this life is hard, but also … you look just like your mother.”

  I reach behind me for something to steady me, but there’s nothing.

  “She never loved me.” As he speaks, the soft reminiscence is instantly replaced by hate. “Until she decided she wanted more. She wanted someone else and would do anything to get away from me. She was a rat. I’m not sure how many mistakes I truly made because of your mother. Taking her in, not killing her sooner, or having her murdered.”

  Everything in my body is cold, the numbing kind that makes me feel like I can’t be here. Like this can’t be real. He didn’t. He didn’t have Mom killed.

  “No.” The word comes unbidden as fear settles deep into my bones.

  “You were never a mistake, Aria. Even when I’m gone, I want you to know that. I know I was hard and cold, but it wasn’t because of you. I loved you.”

  I can see it in his eyes, he’s telling me the truth. Every bit of it. Dark and callous.

  “You couldn’t have,” I say, but my words are weak and desperate.

  The sad smile carved into his expression is riddled with agony. “She was going to have me killed, Ria. It was either her or me.”

  “No.” My memory is warped and twisted. My reality even more so.

  “I do know she was a mistake, your mother was. One that’s stayed with me and still lingers in this house.”

  I almost call him Dad; I almost beg him to stop. To tell me everything he just said was a lie. But I can’t speak a damn word. I can’t even move.

  “I always had to see you, though. You were a constant reminder.”

  Chapter 95

  Carter

  “One more hall,” I hear Declan tell me softly from my earpiece. “Two men on the right at the corner.”

  The eerie calmness that comes at times like these surrounds me. With four large steps I make it to the end of the hall, stop right at the corner and wait. Listening to every sound.

  Sebastian and Jase are quiet behind me, but they’re there, both armed and ready with the silencers. Only Jase is marked with a splatter of blood, but each of us has killed since we slipped in through a window, shattering it during an explosion and sneaking into the dark halls of this forbidden castle.

  We’re moving too slow. The thought keeps my pace fast. Every second away from her is another moment something could happen to her. A moment someone could take her away from me.

  It doesn’t escape my attention that I almost died here nearly a decade ago. Every quiet step reminds me of what may have been had my life been cut short.

  Turning back to my brother, I nod and all at once, the three of us step out into the hall. Holding my breath and then letting it out, my grip on the gun tightens, the metal kicks back, and the bullet whips through the air, hitting the back of some fucker’s skull. There’s a sharp crack, a mist of blood sprayed against the pristine wall to my right. The bang of another bullet and then another are followed by the thumps of limp, heavy bodies falling to the ground.

  “Four men coming, from behind you and another to your left. They know something’s wrong,” Declan says in the earpiece as the adrenaline spikes and Jase and I share a glance.

  “Get her, we’ll take care of them,” Jase tells me, reaching up and squeezing my shoulder with his left hand. Sebastian nods, holding his gun with both hands and keeping his back against the wall as the sound of footsteps and a yell for someone to answer echoes up the long corridor.

  “I’ll have her soon,” I tell them both, “and then I’ll come back here.” I don’t know why, but it feels like a lie. Like I’m not coming back.

  Jase gives me a smirk and quickly turns around, the faint sounds of him reloading his weapon carrying over to me.

  Sebastian looks over his shoulder one last time to look at me before he follows Jase back down the way we came.

  Without them it feels different. It’s not about revenge or murder. It’s not about a war or a power play for territory. It’s only about her. Abo
ut Aria.

  I won’t fail her. I won’t let her die.

  Fueled by the memory of my nightmare, I move forward. Each step feels heavier, louder than before, even though I’m still silently moving through.

  I’m vaguely aware of Declan telling me something, but I ignore him. He doesn’t need to say a damn thing as I come up to the corner and hear voices.

  Two voices.

  Light filters under the closed door in the dark hall. And with it are the sounds of Aria pleading with her father. Begging him for something.

  My heart twists into a wretched knot. That sound shouldn’t exist. The pain in her cadence. It shouldn’t be allowed.

  My vision tricks me, giving me flashes of weeks ago. Of Aria on her knees and at my mercy. I wish I could take it back. As my hand settles on the cold steel knob of the door that mutes her cries, I wish I could take everything back.

  Every piece of it. Even the moment I clung to life at the sound of her voice carrying through a closed door.

  It only takes a half second for me to push the door open, the gun raised and ready to fire, but it’s useless. The barrel of one already stares back at me.

  “Did you really think I wouldn’t be ready for you?” Talvery hisses as Aria sucks in a breath, wide eyed and backed in a corner. Tears stream down her face and I could kill the fucker now.

  “Dad, please,” she begs him and I can’t stop looking at her, even as the sweat in my hand makes me hold the gun tighter.

  “Drop your gun,” he demands and the gun slips slightly in my grasp as I hear Aria whisper my name. Not in fear, not in anger. I can hear how she needs me. It won’t be denied from her voice.

  In my periphery, she takes a step toward me and her father cocks his gun in response. The click is resounding and foreboding. Aria stills instantly.

  It’s only now, in the face of actually having to make the decision, that I question if I can kill him in front of her. If I could steal her father from her.

  “Don’t,” she begs him in a breathless whisper. She still loves me. I can feel it in the way she speaks. A piece of her still cares for me.

  I tighten my grip on the gun, not knowing if she’ll still love me after.

  If she weren’t here, he’d be dead. I could do it if she weren’t here. But with her watching, still begging and hoping for the inevitable fate to change before her eyes… I’m hesitating. I’ve spent a decade waiting to kill this man. Waiting to make him suffer for what he did to me.

  But if she hates me after… then I may as well be the one that died.

  In any other situation, I wouldn’t have hesitated. Talvery would be dead simply because he took time to speak. I need Aria to love me though. A life without love is no life at all.

  I don’t want to die, either. I don’t want her to see me die.

  For the first time in years, I don’t want to die. I need to protect her. I need to make it right.

  “Aria.” I say her name simply because I need to see her one more time. I need to know she loves me still. I need her to know it’s okay. But as she looks at me, her father speaks.

  “Did you think I couldn’t see you?” Talvery sneers, but I don’t listen to him.

  “Please, Dad,” Aria begs, her chest rising higher and falling deeper.

  “That I didn’t have backup cameras?”

  All I can think, is that I need to save her. In the back of my mind, although I’m looking between Aria and Talvery, all I can see is her on the floor of my office. On her knees between my legs, cold and not breathing.

  I won’t let it happen.

  “I’m tired and growing old. But I’m not done fighting yet. And I’m not that fucking stupid,” he says lowly and I know he’s going to pull the trigger. “I won’t lie down and die.”

  “No!” Aria’s scream rings through the air at the same time that he speaks his last word.

  Talvery’s statement again means nothing, but Aria hurling herself forward, reaching for the gun tempting her on the corner of the desk, is everything.

  Her lunge distracts both of us. But when he turns to her, I can’t do anything but throw myself between the gun he points at her and the woman I need to protect. The only reason I’ve ever had to live.

  My gun fires at him the same time his goes off, barely skimming the arm he holds the gun with as he cusses.

  I don’t feel the first shot. I don’t even feel the second, but I see it. I see the barrel of the gun and even as the bullet flies toward me, I swear I see it. The sound of the shot is like white noise and it means nothing compared to the sound of Aria screaming. Her voice fills the room and it seems to drag across time as my heart beats slowly. Only a single beat to her long scream as she wraps her arms around me.

  Her voice turns to a song, a lowly sung hum of words; I can’t make out what she’s saying as I stare at my chest, the bright red soaking through the crisp white shirt as I fall to the floor.

  My arm doesn’t brace me, it merely hits the ground hard, followed by my back and it’s then that I feel the sharp twinges of pain.

  I try to swallow, but blood comes up instead. A mouth full of it that spills from me as I try to say her name.

  Somewhere in the back of my mind I think that I should have shot him when I first came in. I shouldn’t have concerned myself with Aria. I should have killed him without thinking twice.

  A dizzy sensation comes over me as my head drops back but I force my neck up, I force myself to look at Aria, to command her to get behind me, but she’s not looking at me and I can’t speak. Every time I try, hot blood fills my mouth. It’s all I can taste; it’s all I can smell. I struggle to breathe, to move even and it’s not the pain. The pain is nothing. Something else is holding me down.

  “No!” I hear Aria scream, but it sounds so far away.

  “I’m sorry,” I try to tell her, but the words are muffled as I choke on my own blood. Hate fuels me to keep my eyes open as Aria yells something I can’t hear to her father. She’s right here, so close to me, but I can’t move my arms to hold her anymore. My body’s so numb, so heavy.

  I’m sorry I put her in the middle of this. I’m sorry I put her in danger. I’m sorry I made her want to run again. I’m sorry I can’t protect her. That’s my worst sin.

  As I see the darkness settle in, the sounds fade to nothing, and her touch wanes, I’m most sorry that I can’t protect her.

  Fuck, no. I need to protect her still.

  I don’t want to leave her. I don’t want to die.

  “Aria,” I try to say her name, but I can’t.

  I try to fight the heavy weight that’s holding me down. “I love you,” I say, but the words fail to be heard. Did I say them?

  She must know them. She must.

  “You can’t die, Carter,” I hear Aria whisper and she sounds so close but I can’t see her, I can’t feel her.

  For the first time in so long, I’m scared. I’m terrified.

  I couldn’t care less about life and death. But I don’t want to be without her. I need Aria. I need to protect her. And as the darkness takes over, I’m truly terrified that I’ll never see her again.

  The last thought I have, is that if I die, she can’t die for me. Suddenly, the cold feels peaceful.

  She didn’t die for me. If the price to change the course of fate was that I must die for her… so be it.

  Chapter 96

  Aria

  The blood is everywhere. My hands are stained with it as I apply pressure to the bullet wound and scream at Carter to answer me.

  “Look at you.” My father hasn’t stopped talking, hasn’t stopped shaming me for staying at Carter’s side. Hasn’t stopped shaming me for reaching for the gun.

  I had to try. With a man on either side of me, both wanting to kill the other, I couldn’t stand by helplessly, doing nothing.

  The blood isn’t nearly as hot as the tears that won’t stop. He’s not answering me; he isn’t responding to me no matter how loud I scream. His name tears up my throat as I
scream his name. As I do, the pressure lifts just slightly on the wound nearly in the center of his chest and more blood pools around him.

  Hold him tight, or else he’ll die.

  Words from a man I’ve never met come back to me, and I shove my body down, clutching Carter and putting all of my weight on both of my hands, still compressing the wounds. “Don’t leave me,” I cry as my hair sticks to my wet face and the hot tears mix with his blood as I lay my cheek in the crook of his neck.

  I can feel his heart.

  It beats as the door to the office creaks open and my father yells at me to get up. To be a Talvery and to prove he made the right choice all those years ago. That I’m truly his daughter. His words mean nothing to me. They hang in the air. All I listen to is the faint beat of Carter’s heart and how slow it is. It’s slowing.

  I only turn my head to look at my father when I hear him cock the gun again.

  My throat is tight with emotion as I look from the barrel of the gun up to him. The pressure I have on Carter’s gunshot wounds doesn’t waver though.

  “I love him,” I plead with my father and as I do, I belatedly notice a gun laying only a foot from where I am, so close I could reach it. What a useless thing to come to me now. If I let go, Carter will die. I know it deep in my soul.

  If I were to reach it, to manage to grab it and kill my father to end all of this, what point would there be in living?

  I’d rather die like this, doing everything I can to save the one I love, than live knowing I let him die.

  My eyes move from the gun to the portrait of his family home and I close my eyes, pressing my cheek to Carter’s chest as I hold him tighter. I can’t feel his chest moving anymore though. I don’t hear him breathing either.

  “Choose your family, Aria. Step aside and let me finish him. I forgive you,” my father stresses the last sentence. Slowly, I look to him. His eyes glass over as he grips the gun tighter. “It doesn’t matter what happened before, but now you need to listen to me. You need to act like the woman you were raised to be,” my father tells me and instead of hearing him I only hear Tyler’s words.