Page 132 of Untamed

Her fists slam against my chest again, but she doesn’t pull away.

She’s crying now. Silent tears cutting clean lines down her face, lips trembling as she looks up at me like I’m both the question and the answer to everything that’s killing her.

“Tell me the truth, damn it!”

The words echo and hang in the air between us like thick smoke that won’t clear.

I want to lie. God, I want to lie so desperately. But I can’t, I will not.

Not when she’s standing in front of me like this. Fragile, fierce and so fuckingreal.

So I breathe. Once...twice, and then I speak.

“Yes.”

She draws in a sharp breath, like I’ve just struck her straight in the chest.

I see it, the crack, the second her world caves in on itself. And I do nothing to stop it, because I can’t.

“They weren’t the target,” I rasp. “It was Matteo.” My voice feels like gravel scraping my throat. “Someone put out a hit on him.”

I pause, barely holding myself together. “When Matteo noticed the car and deflected… they missed.” She blinks at me, but her eyes don’t see me anymore.

“The car that was supposed to be hit was meant to be his, not the one with your parents in it.”

Jordyn stumbles back a step, blue eyes shining with tears she refuses to let fall.

I follow, helpless to do anything but give her the truth she came for, even if it wrecks her. “If they’d succeeded, you and Matteo would’ve been the ones dead that day.” Her palm flies to her mouth, but I’m not finished.

“You need to understand something,if I had known, if there had been any way to stop it?—”

“But there wasn’t,” she chokes out. “Because you were all too busy playing mafia while my parents were being blown off the road!”

The words tear through me like shrapnel. Her pain, the way her voice cracks, the way her body trembles just to hold it all in, is worse than anything I’ve felt.

Worse than the bullet that ripped through my shoulder. Worse than the knife I once pulled out of my side with my bare hands.

I stand there, bleeding in a way I’m not used to, while she breaks piece by piece in front of me.

And I know, with a cold, brutal certainty, I’ve lost her before I’ve ever truly had her.

“Who did it?” She asks, her voice jagged and frantic.

I open my mouth, and for a beat, nothing comes out. “Jordyn?—”

“Who, Ares?!” She screams now, her hands fisting at her sides. “I want to know the name of the person who killed my parents. Your family owes us that much.”

I take a breath, one that feels like swallowing razors.

Then I shake my head slowly, quietly. My voice is hoarse. “Bambina… it doesn’t matter who.” I pause. “The ones responsible are no longer breathing.”

Her lips part. Her eyes widen, and I watch the horror set in. Because now she knows that I didn’t just let it happen. Iavengedit.

Even though it won’t bring them back, and that’s what kills her.

That’s what killsme.

She doesn’t scream. She doesn’t move, she just stands there, chest rising and falling too fast, like her lungs can’t keep up with the weight of what I’ve said.

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