Devious Vow: Chapter 34

My father used to talk a lot about “perspective”. He’d walk in on Gabriel and I fighting over a stupid video game or something, pull us apart, then sit us down and tell us we needed to see things from the other’s perspective.

“If you only view the world through your own eyes, you’ll miss out on some great views,” he’d tell us.

That’s what I find myself thinking about when I come to, lying flat on my back on a cold, hard floor.

Perspective.

Granted, my first “view” when my eyelids open is looking up at a grimy metal and concrete ceiling with two bare bulbs on wires hanging down, with no windows. So my initial “perspective” is that I’ve died and gone to Hell, which, for whatever reason, looks just like the set from one of the Saw movies.

Then, as I try to focus, a face lurches into my field of vision, staring down with big blue eyes, her long blonde hair hanging down over me.

“Alistair!” Eloise chokes. Her eyes fill with tears, and she puts a hand over her mouth as she starts to cry.

“Hey…” I croak.

I try to sit up, but I’m abruptly knocked back by excruciating pain exploding through my side. Pure fire claws at my ribs as I glance down.

My shirt is ripped open, stained red. A blood-soaked hoodie is wrapped around my torso, over the pain in my ribs.

“What the fuck…”

“Don’t move,” Eloise says quietly. Her hands take one of mine, squeezing as her eyes pierce into mine. “You’ve been shot.”

Shit.

I glance down at the hoodie again and grimace.

“I… You were bleeding badly,” she says softly. “So I took my hoodie⁠—”

“Thank you,” I murmur, wincing. “How bad?”

Her face is bleak. “I don’t know. It looks like the bullet sort of…” She makes a face. “Carved a channel through your side, like a knife slash?”

Okay, not great. But it could be worse. I don’t have a hole clear through me, or a bullet lodged in my body. My brow furrows as I replay opening that hotel room door and finding myself face-to-face with Massimo, holding a gun.

I remember the muzzle flashing, and the white-hot knife stabbing into me.

I start to snort, but then groan as I keel over, the pain slicing into me again.

“Whoa, hang on,” Eloise hisses, grabbing me and helping me lie back down. She fixes me with a look. “Were you just trying to laugh?”

“That…” I grunt, biting back the pain. “That fuckstick shot me from two feet away and almost missed,” I chuckle, wheezing again as my torso burns.

I exhale as I lie back down. My eyes slide up to hers, and I slip my hand into hers.

“I’m sorry,” I growl quietly.

Eloise starts to cry, shaking her head.

“I hated doing it,” she chokes. “But…he…he threatened Camille, and with my father in a coma⁠—”

“Eloise.”

I grit my teeth, ignoring the pain as I wrench myself to an upright position.

Perspective.

I have it now. I’ve actually had it ever since this woman walked into my firm and back into my life. And I don’t have to “forgive” her for anything she did spying on my firm for Massimo.

Eloise is not the enemy. She never was.

She’s the woman I’ve loved since the day she walked around the corner of the stables back at Knightsblood and asked me why I kept getting into fights. The day I told her if she had a brain, she’d stay away from me.

Thank fuck she didn’t.

“I love you.”

Her eyes are filling with tears as her lip quivers.

“I—the things I did⁠—”

“You did because you had to. Like we all do,” I growl, leaning my forehead against hers.

“Alistair…”

“I love you, Eloise,” I say quietly, again.

The tears begin to flow hotly down her cheeks as she wraps her arms around me.

“I love you too.”

I hold her like that, letting her cry against me as we hold each other in the dark, dank, coldness of the windowless concrete room. Her sobs begin to hitch harder and louder, getting more frantic as she clings to me, choking and gasping.

Shit, she’s having a panic attack.

“Eloise—”

“We’re going to die in here!” she screams, clutching at me and shaking. “Oh God, Alistair, he’s⁠—”

“Breathe,” I hiss, pulling back and holding her face in my hands, maintaining eye contact. “I need you…” I grunt, swallowing back the pain and nausea from the wound in my side. “I need you to breathe, princess.”

Her lips twist. Her eyes latch onto mine.

“I used to hate it so much when you called me that.”

“I know.”

She grins wryly at me. “Dick.” She swallows, her hands coming up to grip my wrists as I cup her face. “I… I don’t hate it anymore.”

A tremor ripples through her, and I can see the color drain from her face again as the reality of our situation creeps in.

“Tell me something no one knows about you.”

She chokes out a half-sob, half-smile as her eyes lift to mine again.

“I know what you’re trying to do.”

“And?”

“And it’s not going to⁠—”

“Or you could just stop being a pain in the ass and go with it.”

Her teeth rake over her lower lip as she smiles a watery smile. “You already know everything about me, Alistair.”

“Apparently not,” I growl quietly, my eyes dragging over our surroundings.

She looks at me sadly. I just smile and lean my forehead on hers again.

“He—Massimo, I mean,” she says quietly. “He was going to hurt Camille. And, I know, I know, she’s…” Eloise shakes her head slowly.

“Family is family,” I grunt quietly. “I get it.”

“I’m sorry,” she whispers.

“I know.” I kiss her forehead. “Now, tell me something anyway. Something no one knows.”

“Alistair…”

“I’m sure there’s something, Eloise. I don’t know everything about you—not yet, at least.”

Her throat bobs as her eyes lift to the ceiling. “He might be listening.”

I shrug. “Fuck him.” I glance up at the darkness of the concrete and metal framed ceiling. “Fuck you, Massimo!” I yell before glancing back at Eloise. “Tell me.”

Her face reddens before she looks away.

“That night…” she murmurs. “The party at Worthington Tower, and the elevator…” Her face turns pink as she chews on her perfect, plump lip. “I was sad to leave you,” she says softly. “I didn’t want to, but it felt like I should.”

Her mouth twists again as her beautiful baby blues raise to mine.

“And when I was leaving and you were still sleeping—” She stops and rolls her eyes. “Ugh, this is stupid.”

“Tell me,” I growl, taking her hands in mine, my eyes burning into hers. “Just tell me, Eloise.”

She swallows. “I…” she rolls her eyes again. “I whispered part of you is mine forever into your ear.”

The room is quiet as she takes a slow, measured breath. She’s still blushing as she visibly cringes in front of me. “Jesus, I can’t believe I just told you⁠—”

“I didn’t want you to leave, either,” I murmur quietly. “The next morning, when I woke up alone…” I shake my head, my eyes never leaving hers. “I was so fucking mad when you weren’t there.”

Eloise’s lips curl slightly in the corners.

“And when you were asleep in my arms earlier that night, right before I crashed myself, I said something to you, too, you know.”

I lean close, my lips almost on hers as her breath catches.

“What did you say?” she whispers.

“You’ll always be mine.”

My lips press to hers. It’s no ordinary kiss. It’s a kiss over ten years in the making, picking up where we left off in the daybreak gray of an elevator car. It’s every curse I sent her way, every speck of my anger, every black scorch mark of rage being purged from my system.

A cleansing fire.

A rain to wash away the bloodied battlefield between us.

I don’t kiss her because I want her.

I kiss her because she’s already mine.

Always was.

Always will be.

My hand slips up her face to tangle in her hair, pulling her close and kissing her as my pain and the past melt away around us.

Until the single door across the room wrenches open with an ear-splitting shriek. We both whirl, but I don’t make any effort to pull away from Eloise.

Let that fuck see with his own eyes that she’s mine.

Massimo comes in, dressed in black. His eyes land on where Eloise’s hand and mine are entwined, and smugness surges inside of me at his dark look. But the feeling shatters when two of his men stride into the room behind him, carrying a limp body with a bag over its head.

Wearing a Tom Ford suit I know too well.

“No—!”

A barely conscious, badly beaten Gabriel groans as the bag is yanked off his head. Massimo’s goons carry him over to Eloise and me, letting him drop to the ground in front of us.

“You son of a bitch,” I hiss, choking and feeling pain explode through my torso as I try but fail to lurch to my feet.

Massimo chuckles quietly as one of his men leaves the room, the other remaining, standing right behind his boss.

Massimo shakes his head as he grins, his gaze dragging from Gabriel to me and back again.

“I almost didn’t take him,” he sighs. “But, where would the fun be in that? Besides,” Massimo shrugs. “He walked into Roberto Chinellato’s hospital room to check in on that piece of trash just as one of my men was putting an air bubble into his IV drip.” He grins widely. “Roberto’s dead, by the way. I suppose there goes your case.”

I don’t honestly give a shit. Especially when I’m writhing in pain, staring at Gabriel lying almost motionless on the ground.

“It’s touching to see you care so much about a man who is not even your blood,” Massimo murmurs.

Rage bubbles up in my chest.

“Fuck you.”

He shrugs. “But he isn’t, Alistair. As much as you’ve trained yourself to think differently, this man, and his biological parents, and his dear sisters, are not your flesh and blood. They never were, and no amount of good thoughts will change⁠—”

“I don’t give a fuck what you think about family, Massimo,” I hurl at him. “Considering yours is pure toxicity.”

He smiles coldly. “Isn’t it, though…”

His eyes turn to Eloise, who’s gone white.

“I know you know, dear wife,” he snarls before his lips curl dangerously again. “But does he?” He nods his chin at me. “Does your little boyfriend here know the truth?”

Eloise is silent, looking stricken as I squeeze her hand.

“What truth,” I growl.

His gaze slides back to me, and his lips curl into a leer.

“It would seem we have a lot to catch you up on, brother.”