Page 34 of Unleashed
I’ve been passed from one cage to another, always calling it something else—love, loyalty, family. But what if I’ve neverreally known what love is? What if love—real love—isn’t supposed to feel like chains? Or duty? Or fire and fear?
Maybe love isn’t just one thing. Perhaps it’s different for everyone. Control for some, chaos for others. Or protection for those who never had it before, and freedom for the ones who’ve only ever known chains.
I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore. All I know is that every second I’m away from Isaia, another piece gets chipped off my heart, and I’m afraid sometime soon there’ll be nothing left of it. Of me.
“You’re a mess,” I say to myself with a sigh. I’m here thinking about freedom while aching for a man who would give me none. Isaia’s love doesn’t come with doors. It comes with locks. With heat and danger and a promise so fierce it can swallow everything whole.
And Anthony? He loves me too, but his love isn’t free either. It’s just another kind of rope. Quieter. Cleaner. But binding all the same. He says he wants what’s best for me, but maybe he wantsto bewhat’s best for me. And maybe I’ve let both of them write my story for too long.
So many fucking maybes.
The pressure in my chest starts as a dull ache but quickly sharpens, tightening until every breath feels like it’s catching on glass. My pulse kicks up, panic bleeding through the edges, feeding the squeeze in my lungs. I know what it means, what it is. I’ve felt it so many times before—the need for air.
I shove the drawer open, hands trembling as I fumble for the inhaler. The plastic is cool against my palm, and I press it tomy lips, inhaling deeply, then again, as the medicine rushes cold down my throat.
Slowly, the vise loosens, air trickling back in, and I clutch the edge of the bed as I lean forward, head down as I force myself to take even breaths. But even as my chest eases, the weight inside me doesn’t. Fear, love, guilt—they don’t burn off with medicine. They sit heavy, right where the air is supposed to be.
I can’t be alone. I don’twantto be alone. But I can’t face Anthony right now. And Isaia? That’s a storm I don’t know how to step into.
Which means there’s only one place left for me to go.
Chapter 11
ISAIA
The mausoleum is silent, but it isn’t empty. It never is. The dead linger here—not just the ones buried under marble, but the ones I carry in my chest.
I sit on the steps with my back to the stone, a half-dead bottle of bourbon sweating between my knees. The cold seeps up through the marble, threading into my veins until it feels like ice is settling where blood should be. No matter how much I drink, I can’t get warm. Maybe because she’s not here. Maybe because without her, I don’t know if I’ll ever be warm again.
Everly. Her name cuts me open every time. A blade against the inside of my ribs, twisting deeper with each beat of my heart. I thought killing Ryan would dull it, give me even a moment’s peace. It should’ve. But all it did was ruin a perfect pair of shoes and leave blood caked under my nails, dried and black, like filth I can’t scrub off.
Violence doesn’t work anymore. Not against the silence she left behind.
I close my eyes and all I can see is her—her mismatched eyes, her smile, her mouth forming the words I’ll never stop chasing. My wife. My goddamn soul. My curse.
Footsteps crunch over gravel behind me. Steady, cocky, a rhythm too alive for this graveyard.
“Jesus Christ, little brother.” Nicoli’s voice slides out of the dark like smoke. “Couldn’t pick a bar like a functional human? Had to drink with corpses?”
I don’t bother looking at him. “The company’s better here.”
He steps into view, hands shoved in his pockets, that perpetual swagger in his shoulders like he’s got music in his head no one else can hear. He glances at the bottle, then the stone door. “Bourbon with bones. You’ve really hit rock bottom, huh?”
I finally turn my head, glaring heavily. “What the fuck do you want?”
He shrugs, takes the bottle when I offer it, tips it back like he’s trying to prove something, then grimaces. “Tastes like penance.”
I don’t respond.
“Heard you showed Ryan a real good time tonight.”
I scoff. “Maximo tattling again?”
“You know the math. If Maximo knows, Alexius knows.” He lifts a shoulder. “And now I do.”
“What are you doing here?”
He takes another large gulp of bourbon, then wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, eyes roaming the mausoleum. Hisjaw tightens, the joke fading from his face. “This Micah copycat bullshit is crawling under my skin.”
