Breathless & Bloodstained (The Chicago War #4) (5 page)

“You look like
shit.”

Abriella hadn’t
even walked two feet into the kitchen, and already her day was starting out in
a terrible way. After being woken up by her sister’s phone call in the middle
of the night, Abriella hadn’t been able to fall back to sleep. Add in having to
sit through breakfast with her brother, and Abriella just wanted to go back
upstairs and hide.

“Is that the first
thing you want to say to your sister when you see her in the morning?” Abriella
asked.

“Seriously, you
look awful,” Joel said, tossing the newspaper on the table. “What did you do,
stay up all night?”

“No, but thanks,
Joel,” Abriella said, smiling as sardonically as she could manage. “I never
wonder why you can’t find a woman to put up with you anymore. You show me
exactly why every time you open your mouth.”

Joel’s smirk
melted into a scowl instantly. “I don’t have a wife because I haven’t found the
right woman who makes me want to marry her.”

“Sure, sure.”

Ignoring the glare
her brother was leveling on her, Abriella strolled across the kitchen to the
island. A plate of hot waffles smothered in syrup was waiting for her, cooked
by their chef and maid. Thanking the chef quietly, Abriella walked to her seat
at the opposite end of the table from Joel and sat down.

Figuring if her
brother was in an asshole-ish enough mood to poke at her like he had, then
maybe she should poke back.

“What about
Chloe?” Abriella asked, cutting a triangle slice out of her waffle.

Joel’s head
snapped up, his gaze cutting in her direction. “I beg your pardon?”

“Chloe Belli. Why
aren’t you making something official with her? Or are you not messing around
with her anymore? Was the fact she was playing whore to Riley Conti too
embarrassing for you?”

“That’s none of
your business.”

Abriella scoffed.
“You wouldn’t say the same thing if I was messing around with a guy.”

“Because it isn’t
the same thing, Ella.”

Right …

Double standards
and all.

Their life was
full of them.

“Actually, I know
why you won’t marry Chloe,” Abriella said.

Joel’s lips formed
a tight, angry line. “Is that so?”

“Sure, because
you’ve treated her like nothing more than a piece of ass for you to use when
you want to stick your dick in something. Now, that’s exactly how everyone else
sees her. She isn’t wife material because you’ve made her that way. Too bad, I
think the girl might have actually liked you, Joel.”

“Excuse—”

“And God knows
there aren’t very many people left who do like you,” Abriella finished with a
smile. “Not with the way you’ve treated and used all of us.”

Joel’s mouth
dropped open as his gaze flashed with unhidden rage. Abriella wasn’t frightened
in the least, and certainly not in the face of her brother’s anger. Over the
years, she had learned that Joel was like any bully. Once you stood up to him
and backed him into a corner, he would quit.

Cowards always
did.

“That’s quite
enough,” Joel said, his tone dark with a warning.

Abriella shrugged.
“Whatever you say. Frankly, I just think it’s sad. You could have your pick of
women, Joel. Anyone you wanted, you could have. If you loved her, even better.
What is so wrong with you that you’re more focused on making everyone else
miserable instead of making yourself happy?”

Joel’s palm hit
the table before he stood fast from his seat. “I said that’s enough, Ella.”

Despite his anger,
Abriella could see a hint of sadness in her brother’s eyes as well. Joel was an
asshole, a royal one, but he was still human. He hid his feelings well, sure,
but he still felt them like any person did.

She almost wished
that knowing what she did about Joel was enough to make her feel sorry for him,
but it didn’t. He’d done this to his family, to himself, and to anyone else he
touched.

The man was rotten
to his core.

Poison.

“Have you ever
considered that what would make me happy might just be something that makes
everyone else miserable?” Joel asked quietly.

Abriella continued
cutting her waffles into triangles. “Then all that makes you is a useless
excuse for breath, brother. You’ve never gave a damn about any of us, so it’s
not a big surprise. The last thing you would ever do is care, never mind put
someone else first.”

Joel flashed a
cruel smile. “Why should I, Ella?”

“Because we’re
your family. That’s what family does.”

“This family
lies.”

She would give him
that, but not much else.

“That doesn’t mean
you have to go out of your way to purposely hurt us, Joel,” Abriella said
calmly.

“Why shouldn’t I?”
he asked. “My whole life has been nothing but stains of shame from our parents
and being dismissed by the man who helped to bring me into this world. They
raised me this way—they created me. And you expect me to give a damn about any
of you? When you make a monster, Ella, you don’t complain about having to live
with him.”

Abriella swallowed
hard, taking in the hatred coating her brother’s every word as he spat them at
her. “I didn’t do any of that.”

“You didn’t have
to.” Joel’s coldness was back in a flash, replacing the anger he had previously
shown. “You, like Alessa, don’t have the first clue of what it feels like to be
the unwanted one, to be the mistake, and the shame everyone tried to cover up.”

Abriella held back
from shouting the truth of her own unknown paternity at her brother, but only
because she didn’t want to give him anymore ammo to hurt people with. He’d
already done enough of that.

She finally
understood him, though.

“You’re jealous,”
Abriella said. “That’s it, isn’t it?”

Joel’s jaw
clenched. “No.”

“Liar. You’re just
like the rest of us, Joel, a goddamn liar. And sad—a fucking
pity
. You
hate our mother for nothing more than the fact she birthed you instead of
aborting you. You hate me and Alessa simply for being alive. And you hate
everyone else because your behavior and attitude is so vile that they don’t
want to be anywhere near you. Deny it, Joel.”

Between the three
siblings, Abriella was the tough one. She knew it, and so did her brother and
sister. She wasn’t afraid to speak up, step out, or cause a problem if need be.
She also wouldn’t let Joel push her around if she could help it. Their whole
life was nothing but Joel’s attitude and anger. Years and years of his verbal
abuse ripped out chunks of their family and left them bleeding on the floor.

Abriella refused
to let Joel keep doing that to her. He had already practically taken her sister
from her given that she could only talk and spend time with Alessa when Joel
agreed. Her relationship with her parents was strained because of how awful
Joel treated them while refusing them any say in Abriella’s life. She had no
friends that she could turn to, no life of her own to control or live, and even
her choice to love was not her own to make.

“If you want to
talk about making monsters, Joel,” Abriella said, keeping her cold smile in
place, “… then look no further from the one you’ve created in your own house.”

Her brother stared
at her, and did nothing else.

Then, very
quietly, Joel said, “Get out of my face.”

He could dish it,
but he couldn’t take it.

Abriella wasn’t
surprised.

“I’m eating.”

“No, you’re
leaving
.
I want you gone.”

Abriella sneered.
“Be careful what you wish for, brother.”

Grabbing her
messenger bag with her laptop and textbooks from the upstairs library, Abriella
sent off a text to her enforcer. It was her way of letting the guy know that
she would be leaving the house soon. She knew better than to simply skip out
with no notice, because the fool would report back to Joel in a heartbeat.

Abriella wasn’t
interested in that nonsense.

Once a day was
enough.

Half-way down the
second floor corridor, voices from the upper level traveled down to Abriella’s
spot. Her mother and father, actually. Confused at why her parents weren’t in
their own wing of the Trentini mansion, she rounded the stairs instead of going
down like she had planned.

Midway up the
stairs, Abriella was able to see over the top few stairs. Down the hall, her parents
stood toe to toe, with Sara backed into the wall and Peter barricading her
there with his arms on either side of her body. Tears streaked down her
mother’s cheeks, but Peter was quick to wipe them away.

“I’m sorry,” Sara
whispered.

“Don’t,” Peter said,
softer than Abriella had ever heard her father speak. “I know it’s hard for
you, sweetheart. I’ve never assumed differently.”

Abriella knew,
somehow, that she was intruding on something that she shouldn’t be seeing. Her
parents had never been anything but respectful and kind to one another. She had
never witnessed the two publically fight as she grew up. Her childhood had been
a relatively happy one.

But this …
this
felt laced with something else entirely.

“You can talk to
me, Sara,” Peter said. “Just tell me anything.”

“I keep coming
back here. I shouldn’t and I do.”

“Punishing
yourself.”

“Maybe.”

Abriella’s gaze
flitted past her parents to the large oak doors they stood just beyond. It had
once been her grandfather’s office, and where he had ultimately been killed.
Sara had found Terrance that morning with a gunshot to his face, and his matter
coating the walls.

For the first time
since Terrance’s death, Abriella found herself questioning her mother’s reason
for going to the office that morning. Sara had not needed to go to the office
to see Terrance unless that was something she regularly did. Abriella hadn’t
known her mother to do that, but apparently there was a lot about her family
that she wasn’t aware of.

The affair between
Sara and Terrance had lasted for years. If both of the Trentini sisters’
paternity was in question, then it was possible the affair has lasted a lot
longer than anyone actually knew.

No wonder Alessa
was curious.

Sara sucked in a
ragged breath. “It’s no wonder Joel despises me. Look at what I’ve done, and
who I am.”

“Someone who
loves?” Peter asked quietly.

“Don’t, Peter.”

“Well, what else
do you want me to say? Do you want me to lie, to call you a whore like Joel has
done and like your father did? I’ve never done any of that and I won’t. I can’t
let you do it, either. Self-deprecation looks good on no one, sweetheart.”

“You know what
I’ve done. You have every right to call me those things if you wanted.”

“But I won’t.”
Peter sighed heavily. “I never understood, Sara, but I wasn’t in your mind. I
know you love me, and that you loved him. You didn’t want to choose, but I was
happy as we were. I made my own mistakes with other women because it was easy
and I didn’t have a reason not to. I pretended like I didn’t know what you were
doing. What was already there just grew and no one even noticed. That was my
fault.”

“I’m sorry,” Sara
said, barely above a breath.

“Me, too.”

“It hurts you,
though.”

“But I love you,”
Peter said like that was the only important thing.

“I know.” Sara
smiled sadly. “And I do love you. Sometimes, that’s what makes it worse. I was
so over my head, Peter.”

“You’re still
above water.”

“Barely.”

“Stop coming back
here,” Peter told her firmly. “You can’t keep doing this, because it does
nothing, Sara.”

“You’re wrong. It
does do something.”

“What then?”