Breathless & Bloodstained (The Chicago War #4) by Bethany-Kris Read Free Book Online Page A

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?”
    “It reminds me
that there was a time when it wasn’t different, when it was marked by him, and
not his … his body and his blood. But then it hurts again.”
    “No more tears,”
Peter murmured. “Please.”
    “Why don’t you
hate me?” Sara asked.
    “Because I love
you. And that was enough for me to overlook what you did to me, Sara. All your
lies, the affair, and our daughters.”
    “I don’t know who
the girls belong—”
    “I know, but
they’ve always been mine,” Peter interjected quickly.
    “Don’t you want to
know for sure if they are or aren’t yours?”
    “No.”
    Sara slumped back
against the wall. Abriella watched the man she knew as her father wipe more wetness
from her mother’s cheeks with a tenderness that spoke of familiarity and love.
Not for one second did Abriella doubt what she heard Peter tell his wife.
    Turning away from
her parents’ private moment, Abriella headed