Page 134 of Untamed

And now I know the truth. That monster is the man who held me like I was made of something holy, as if I were a beacon in his shadowed world.

Aresdid that. He committed this heinous act forme.

Forthem.

Just like he took out five men, left them bleeding out on the ground and burned down Eden with Rocco still inside.

Oh God.

My knees nearly buckle, but I stay standing. Barely. My hand clamps over my mouth because I think if I let go, I’ll scream, a raw, piercing sound that would shatter the silence. I’ll sob until my chest aches. I’ll lose what little grip I have on the ground beneath me, the earth threatening to swallow me whole.

He nods again, with a calmness that chills me to the bone, like it’s nothing. Like he’s not confessing to something that should make me run for the hills. A confession that should have me fleeing in terror. But I don’t move. I’m rooted in place, paralysed by the gravity of his words.

I just… look at him. At the man who has saved me countless times, who let me sleep in his bed, his arms a sanctuary I once sought. At the man whose fingers grazed my skin like I was the only good he’s ever touched. The man who murdered two people and made a statement out of their deaths.

My stomach churns violently, a storm of nausea rising within me. My heart aches, fissures spreading like spiderwebs through my chest. And yet, the part that terrifies me most, the part that makes me want to scream at myself in horror, is that some twisted, aching piece of me understands it.

Because he did it for me. But that doesn’t make it okay. That doesn’t bring my parents back.

My voice is barely a whisper, a fragile thread of sound trembling in the air. “How… how could you do that?” I don’t know if I’m asking how he did it so viciously, with such merciless intent. Or how he could care about me enough to spill that much blood, to cross lines that should never be crossed.

Maybe it’s a bit of both. But either way, I’m not sure I’m ready for the answer.

Ares doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t look away; he keeps his dark eyes on mine and watches me like the weight of everything he’s ever been is finally pressing down on him.

“I did it,” he says, voice low and uneven, “because they took something from you. And I needed them to feel it.” His jaw ticks. “Allof it.”

I stay silent. I’m not sure I could speak even if I wanted to.

“I didn’t want clean,” Ares continues. “Didn’t want some court sentence, some silent bullet in the dark. I wanted them to know it was me. I wanted them to suffer. Because your parents didn’t get a choice. They were stolen. And I, I needed the ones responsible to understand what it means to lose somethingyou can’t ever get back.”

Ares steps closer, and my brain screams at me to step away, but I don’t.

“I didn’t do it because I had to,” he murmurs. “I did it because Ichoseto. And I’d do it again without a second thought.”

There’s a beat of silence. Then another. And then, his voice drops even lower, stripped of everything but truth. “This is whoI am, Jordyn. Who I wasraisedto be. Luciano didn’t teach me how to heal. He taught me how to break. How to survive. I was trained to be the weapon that keeps this family standing.”

His hands curl into tight fists at his sides, like he’s holding himself back from touching me. “I tried to keep you away. Because I knew… once you stepped into my world, you wouldn’t walk out the same. No one does.”

He breathes out like it’s hurting him to keep speaking.

“I wanted to be something better for you. But I don’t know how to be anything other than what I was made to be. This is who I am, who I will always be.”

And suddenly, I see it.

Not the blood. Not the vengeance. Not the monster everyone warns me about. I see the boy beneath it all. The boy no one ever protected. The one who only learned how to survive by becoming the thing everyone feared.

And now I don’t know if I want to run from him or reach for him.

Because maybe the scariest part isn’t that he did those things.

It’s that he did themfor me. And I still can’t scrape together enough reason to let go.

I’m not sure how long I stand there. It could be seconds or minutes, but it feels like a lifetime.

His words still echo in my head, his voice, low and broken, telling me what he did. Who he is, why he tried to keep me away, but all I can see is him.

Ares Russo.

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