Lily took a few bites of her dinner but left most of it untouched. She was a pretty woman, but she looked sickly with the amount of weight she’d lost. She used to have beautiful, thick hair, but now it had thinned out from lack of nutrition. Her skin didn’t glow the way it used to. Now it looked just as pale as her eyes. “How are things with you?”
“Not good.” I hadn’t visited her in a while, which made me feel guilty. It made me feel even guiltier because I only came tonight because I needed someone to talk to. But then again, she forgot my birthday, so we were even.
“What’s wrong?”
I told her everything that had happened with Father.
Lily’s lifeless expression instantly changed. Horrified by every single aspect of the story, she was agitated. “What the hell is wrong with him? He’s even worse than I realized. How could Mom’s death make him so psychotic?”
I didn’t have an answer, and I was tired of guessing. “I’m divorcing her.”
Lily stared at me, her food abandoned and her eyebrow raised. “Why?”
“I can’t be married to someone I don’t trust.”
“You didn’t know her when you married her, so you obviously didn’t trust her then.”
But things had changed since our wedding day.
“What about the men who are after her? Won’t they get her?”
“Not my problem.”
“And you’re just okay with that?” she asked incredulously.
“If she wanted to stay married to me, she shouldn’t have betrayed me.”
“She didn’t betray you,” Lily argued. “She wanted to save those women, and I can’t fault her for that. How could Father possibly think that’s okay? You were okay turning the other cheek while those women were tortured?”
“No, but I didn’t have any other choice.”
“Well, Arwen obviously couldn’t live with that…and I don’t blame her. She obviously wasn’t aware of the repercussions at the time, but she did the right thing. Mom would be happy if she knew what Arwen did.”
Maybe. We would never know.
“Maverick, if you leave her, she’ll be raped and tortured too. You’re really okay with that?”
Arwen was a strong woman who didn’t take shit from anyone, but Kamikaze was a mutant. With his almost seven feet of height, she would have no chance against him—and he would probably be the first one to fuck her. She’d be subjected to a life she didn’t want, a life that made death preferable. And if Kamikaze didn’t get her first, then my father would…and he would execute her.
“I know you’re upset right now, but leaving her isn’t an option. You couldn’t live with yourself if something terrible happened to her. She didn’t betray you for her own gain. She did it to save those innocent people. Cut her some slack.”
“Now Father and I are enemies…and I should just forgive her?”
“You’re enemies because Father is batshit crazy. At some point in time, shit was going to hit the fan anyway. He’s so unstable that he can’t even think logically. Who kidnaps innocent women to rape them? And then who tries to murder their own son for saving them? He’s the problem—not her.”
I stared at the food, recognizing her clear logic.
“Honestly, I like this girl…and I think you do too.”
“I never said I liked her.”
“You said she broke your trust, which meant you trusted her in the first place. That’s impossible for someone like you.”
I hated the fact that my little sister was smarter than me.
“And if you trusted her at any point, she must mean something to you.”
I didn’t know what Arwen meant to me. I liked fucking her. I considered her to be a friend. When it came down to it, I’d picked her over my father and saved her life. It would have been easy for me to let him kill her. It would have fixed all my problems. But I’d protected her, not because of my promise, but because I wanted to.
Lily kept watching me. “Go home to your wife, Maverick. And hope that she’s still there.”
24
Arwen
I took the clothes Maverick paid for because he had no use for them. I may as well keep them, especially since my wardrobe was limited. All of my stuff fit in a single suitcase—reminding me how insignificant I was.
Once I was outside the gates, I had no idea what I would do.
I had nowhere to go.
Dante popped into my mind, but I had too much pride to ask him for help. He’d moved on to someone else. I wasn’t on his mind anymore. I could call up my recent lover and ask to spend the night, but that idea made me feel cheap.
It was the first time I was actually scared. Once I was on my own, men would be chasing me. Caspian would try to kill me. I was homeless, so I would be easy to find. I could probably get into the theater and sleep backstage, but that was an obvious place to track me to.