Chapter 23 - "Lucius, I can't be with you anymore."

"Over my dead body."

They had both forgotten that Dante and Nate were still standing there as Lucius approached her, his face lowering to get closer to hers as he growled, "You'll have to kill me to divorce me."

"I'm moving out," she said sternly, her bottom lip beginning to quiver.

Lucius noticed the way her eyes overflowed with tears, blinking really fast to attempt to hide them. The way her fingers trembled as she gripped onto her shirt, as though holding on for dear life so that she wouldn't fall, made Lucius want to envelop her into his arms and hold her until she stopped shaking so much.

Lucius' eyebrows curled. "You're not moving out."

"I can't do this anymore," she whispered through a shaky breath, wiping the tear that leaked beside her nose as she shook her head again. She tried her hardest not to cry but with no success, even though she continued to attempt to hide it by wiping them quickly. "I need a new life."

Lucius lips stayed sealed; he was holding his own tears in.

"You promised me Lu," she lamented through endless tears, now unable to hide them at all. Her blurred vision stared into his gaze as she screamed, "You promised you'd never put any of us in danger. You said that you'd always protect us and that you loved us!"

Lucius felt a lump form in his throat. "I do love you, Snuggles, and I always will—"

"SO WHY DID YOU KILL MY DAUGHTER?!"

Lucius thought his heart had been stabbed through by the longest and sharpest knife ever to exist. He thought his blood had been poisoned from how much it burned, and the way Sarah stared at him with a mixture of grief and disappointment, as though he had been a failure, made him choke.

Before he could respond, she turned around and stormed away towards the bedrooms, and Lucius didn't waste a second to call after her. "Snuggles, stop it, babe, please."

"Don't...!" She raised her palm, smacking down his hand that tried to grab her and pointed a finger in his face. "Don't fucking touch me."

Lucius stopped in his steps, pulling back his hands. It was strange, since he had been punched countless times to the point that to enemy attacks, he barely felt a thing. Hell, if Jake landed an unexpected hit on him, he probably wouldn't even realize it.

But Sarah's weak and useless smack was so painful that it caused his entire arm to feel as though it had been stung. Not only did it hurt physically to the point that his entire arm felt paralyzed, but it bruised his soul in its very core.

"I'm packing my stuff right now and I'm gone by sundown."

"You're insane if you think I'll let you do that," Lucius replied sharply, shaking his head. "I don't care how long we have to talk about this to figure it out, or what I have to do to fix this, but this," he vigorously pointed between the two of them, "this is for life."

"Then I'd rather kill myself than to be stuck around the man who had my daughter killed!" she screamed at the top of her lungs, which made Lucius flinch.

The lump in his throat grew bigger.

"Sarah," Lucius cleared his throat, "I didn't kill Natalia, I loved her just as much as you did."

"No you didn't," she chuckled incredulously, slamming her palm against her forehead. "I was such an idiot for believing that you ever could."

Lucius' fists tightened, attempting to hold himself together. "....Ex..." He cleared his throat, "...Excuse...me?"

"You heard exactly what I said. You were all raised like savages, so why was I still blindsided that you acted like one?"

He exhaled sharply through his nose, biting his bottom lip for a moment. "Sarah, I'm trying to keep my cool but you're being very harsh."

"I truly believed that after what you had gone through with Draco, that you would've been different. But instead," she waved her hand as she spat, "you became worst than him!" Lucius kept his lips sealed, but his eyes were getting blurrier by the second. "At least Draco admitted that he couldn't love anyone; you instead lied to everyone's faces."

"I do fucking love you," he snapped, furrowing his brows. "I learned to love you, and you can't—"

"You didn't learn to love anyone but yourself, Lucius." He could hear his heart beating in his throat. "Someone that loved would have never put that kind of burden on his daughter."

"Burden?" Lucius gasped, his eyebrows raised. "The only reason she fucking survived the attack at the club was because I trained her, you heard what Charles said! I was the one who protected her!"

"She wouldn't have been there in the first place if you hadn't introduced her to your lifestyle, Lucius! That's what you can't seem to fucking understand!" Sarah's shouts were as though her vocal cords were stretched beyond repair from how much she shrieked. "You gave her something she needed to be protected from! You ruined her in the process!"

Lucius paused for a moment, slowly shaking his head. He felt as though there was a knot being tied in his throat as he choked, "Just because I wasn't the perfect father, that doesn't mean I didn't love her."

"It has nothing to do with being perfect. I never asked you to be the perfect father, all I asked was for you to be one, and you weren't one at all." That instantly shut Lucius up, those words hitting him so hard that he could feel every jab. Sarah exhaled a long sigh, shaking her head as she felt herself grow a bit dizzy. "Lucius, I can't be with you anymore."

Lucius choked.

He was holding back a tears, blinking really fast as he exhaled through a coiled voice, "I can't live without you Sarah, you know that. You mean everything to me, you're my Snuggles...babe, please—"

"I can't," she cried, turning away from him and heading to her bedroom.

Before he could follow her, loud footsteps approached him and Jake stormed past him, to which Lucius noticed he was carrying an engulfed backpack.

Instantly, Lucius realized what was going on, especially when Jake continued through the kitchen and into the living room, when Nate and Dante stood quietly.

That was when he stated, "I'm coming with you guys."

"You're leaving too?" Lucius gasped, having followed behind him and heard it. "Jakey, babe, plea—"

"Can I?" Jake insisted, not even turning too look at Lucius who now stood behind him. "I just need a few nights to figure out a place where I can stay."

Dante, who was also livid with what he had found out, agreed with Jake and firmly nodded his head. "Of course you can stay with us, we have room." When he noticed Lucius' eyes widened, Dante exhaled a sigh as he stated through a tightened voice, "You messed up, really bad, Lucius."

"I trained her to be able to protect herself!" Lucius defended through a raised voice, narrowing his gaze at each of them, especially the back of Jake's head. "Those murders are the reason she didn't hesitate to kill those three guys—!"

"Can we leave now?" Jake ignored him, stepping closer to Dante and Nate.

But Lucius was not going to let this take away the two people he loved, not that easily. That was why he reached for Jake's shoulder and spun him around, forcing their gazes to meet as he spat, "You're not fucking going anywhere, Jakey."

"I need some time away from you, Lu—"

"Then have some time away from me, but take that fucking time here," he shrieked, shrugging his shoulders desperately. "I'll avoid you, I won't leave my room, I won't cross path with you, but take your time here."

The blank stare across Jake's face frightened Lucius; it was as though Jake couldn't even hear him.

"Jakey, I'm begging you," Lucius exhaled through a shaky breath, his voice cracking and his eyes growing with tears as he reached for Jake's shoulders and whispered, "Don't leave me, I can't breathe when I'm not with you, you know this."

Throughout the years, Lucius had gotten much more in tune with his emotions, realizing how much Jake and Sarah meant to him, and the abundance of love he felt towards them. They had grown together in so many different aspects of life that his brain couldn't even picture a world without them.

And it was frightening him that Jake was leaving him, without any confirmation that he'd return.

"I admit it, alright?" Lucius panicked, his quivering fingers gripping onto Jake's jaw, getting closer to him as he breathed, "I wasn't the best father and I shouldn't have exposed Natalia to that, and I'm sorry—"

"I have to go." Jake's tone had been lifeless, and all he did was pull himself from Lucius' palms and approached Dante and Nate. "I'm ready."

Lucius' fingers began to quiver even more, horror across his eyes as he averted his gaze to Dante, his last hope in resolving this. "Dante, please do something, you always know what to say in these situations, please make him st—"

"I don't think he should stay, Lucius."

Lucius' heart thumped with such force that his chest vibrated.

"I can't help you. For now," Dante shrugged his shoulders, the coldness in his narrowed gaze only worsening as he hissed, "you're on your own."