Chapter 8 - MIDNIGHT CONFESSIONS
|
Sleep had been my enemy for over a decade.
Every time I closed my eyes, the ghosts of past turf wars and the violent death of my father clawed at my mind.
At two o'clock in the morning, I walked down the dim corridors of the mansion wearing only black sweatpants, my bare torso mapped with scars and ink.
As I approached the grand library, a haunting melody drifted through the quiet air.
It was the same song she had been humming in the bathroom the night we met.
Soft.
Melancholic.
Sweet enough to bring a dead man back to life.
I slipped into the library through the shadow of the tall arched bookshelves.
Clary was sitting on the window bench, staring out into the rain-soaked gardens with her knees pulled up to her chest.
She wore an oversized black sweater that had belonged to me, the sleeves swallowed her wrists completely.
She stopped singing the moment my shadow fell across the parquet floor.
"I'm sorry," she whispered immediately, moving to stand up.
"Did I wake you?"
"Don't stop," I ordered gently, sitting down on the opposite end of the wide velvet bench.
"I haven't slept more than three hours a night since I was twenty-one."
She studied my face in the moonlight, her gaze lingering on the jagged scar tracing down my left shoulder.
"Does it hurt?" she asked, pointing timidly toward the faded mark.
"A rival family gave me that ten years ago during the Brooklyn dispute."
"It stopped hurting a long time ago."
She leaned her head against the cool window pane, looking out at the falling rain.
"My mother used to sing that song to Tommy and me before she died of pneumonia."
"We were fourteen."
"After she was gone, our father drank away our small house within six months."
"I promised Tommy I would make sure he got an education no matter what it cost me."
I watched her profile outlined by the silver moon.
"You gave up your youth for him."
"He's my brother," she said simply, as if enduring starvation and brutal beatings from loan sharks was the most natural thing in the world.
"Family is supposed to protect each other."
"Most families kill each other for power," I replied bitterly, thinking of the cousins I had buried to keep this syndicate intact.
Clary turned her face toward mine, her large brown eyes shimmering with a fierce warmth that pierced through my cynical armor.
"Then your family was wrong, Declan."
"True strength isn't about how many men you can terrify."
May you like
"It's about having someone you would die to keep safe."
For the first time in thirty-five years, I felt completely disarmed by a woman who possessed nothing more than her own fragile soul.
