Chapter 4Scarlet Tears at Eighteen

"You want to talk to me about children?"

"Look at those papers. The first one is from when I was twenty. The second is from when I was twenty-two."

"Two children. Both of them were yours."

"The first time... you told me the Monroe family civil war wasn't over. You said you couldn't afford to have a weakness. I laid on a freezing operating table entirely alone, passing out from the agony, while you were busy fighting for control of your syndicate."

"The second time... the Nortons and the Monroes were in an all-out street war. You said bringing a child into that crossfire was a death sentence. I got on my hands and knees and begged you. I told you I would take the baby and disappear, that we would go somewhere no one knew our names. And you told me absolutely not. You said Peter Monroe's child would not be raised like a rat in the gutter."

"And now, you want to scream at me about your child?"

"Peter, you have no right!"

My voice was dead calm, but every single syllable was laced with a decade of suppressed, venomous hatred.

The hands crushing my windpipe instantly lost their strength.

He looked down at the faded ultrasound papers scattered on the bloody floor. His body violently swayed as if he had been shot.

He took a stumbling step backward, crashing heavily into a surgical tray. Metal instruments clattered to the floor in a deafening crash.

"Aria..."

It had been three months since he had called me by that name.

I pushed him aside and smoothed the wrinkles out of my jacket.

All the emotion, all the hatred, all the rage slowly drained out of my eyes, leaving behind nothing but a stagnant, dead pool of water.

"Peter. Everything between us rotted away a long time ago."

I didn't look at him again. I didn't look at Chloe whimpering on the operating table. I turned around and walked out the door.

Three days later, Peter trapped me in my private safehouse in the old district.

He allied himself with the traitors within the Norton family. In a single night, he violently took over every single one of my territories and severed all my supply chains.

My men were either slaughtered or bought off.

By the end of the night, I was entirely alone in the safehouse.

He had his men weld thick steel bars over all the doors and windows. The only way in or out was the heavy steel front door.

The digital keypad code was still set to my birthday. But I couldn't leave.

That night, a massive thunderstorm rolled in. The rain came down in absolute sheets, and lightning violently illuminated the sky.

It felt exactly like the night we turned eighteen. The first night we ever spent together in this house.

The heavy steel door clicked open. Peter walked inside.

He brought the freezing chill of the storm with him. In his right hand, he was gripping a heavy, matte-black handgun.

It was the gun I had given him for his twentieth birthday.

He walked slowly across the living room and stopped directly in front of me. He slowly raised his arm, leveling the barrel directly at my chest.

I was sitting on the sofa. I looked up at him.

I didn't move a muscle. I didn't say a word.

"Chloe is dead."

"Aria, you destroyed my child. You destroyed Chloe. Tell me, do you think you should pay for that with your life?"

I stood up. I took a slow, deliberate step toward him.

His entire body instantly went rigid.

As I stepped forward, the gun barrel slowly began to shake, inching backward.

"Don't move! I told you not to move!"

I didn't stop. I kept walking until I was standing right in front of him.

I was so close I could smell the stale tobacco and the cold rain soaking into his coat.

I reached up and firmly grabbed his wrist, the hand holding the gun.

I pulled it forward, pressing the cold steel muzzle violently against my own chest, right over my heart.

The heart that had beaten for him for eight years.

Those eyes, the eyes I had loved for eight years, were bloodshot and completely feral.

"If you want revenge, pull the trigger."

His hand was shaking violently.

He desperately tried to yank the gun away, but I gripped his wrist with terrifying strength, refusing to let him move an inch.

Tears spilled over his eyelashes, dropping heavily onto the back of my hand. They were shockingly hot.

"Aria. Let go of my hand."

"I don't blame you anymore. We can stop fighting now, okay?"

I smiled. The tears finally spilled from my own eyes.

"Peter. Eight years. All the blood spilled between the Nortons and the Monroes. The two hundred times you struck my face. The three children I bled out on a table. How exactly are we supposed to settle that?"

"We've fought for so long. We've hated each other for so long. And we've loved each other for so long. I'm so tired."

I looked into his eyes. My fingertips reached up and gently traced the line of his jaw, as tenderly as I had done a thousand times before.

"Peter. Since we can't afford to love each other anymore, and we don't have the strength left to hate each other... let's just end it."

The sheer, absolute terror in his eyes reached its breaking point. He fought like a madman to rip the gun out of my grip.

"Aria! Stop! Put the gun down!"

"I forbid you from dying! Do you hear me?!"

I ignored him entirely. I brought my other hand up, wrapping my fingers over his index finger, which was still resting on the trigger.

I took one final look at his face, permanently burning the image of his complete, utter breakdown into my memory.

When we were eighteen, I took a knife to the gut for him.

He held me in his arms, his eyes just as red as they were now, sobbing uncontrollably like a little boy.

And then, I squeezed his finger. I pulled the trigger.

Bang—

The deafening gunshot was entirely swallowed by a massive crack of thunder.