Something to Cry About

"Which one of you was sleeping with me?" The words scraped out of me before I'd decided to ask them.

"Some nights it was him." Killian tipped his chin toward his brother, unbothered.

"Some nights it was me." Killian's voice carried no weight at all, like he was confirming an appointment.

"We took turns." They said it together, perfectly synced, and that synchronicity did something to my stomach that the betrayal itself hadn't managed yet.

"You let me think there was only one of you." My voice came out hollow.

Ingrid's eyes had drifted to my stomach and the ultrasound result i held close to my chest. She studied it without bothering to hide her interest.

"She's pregnant," Ingrid said flatly, like she was reading off a clipboard.

"So whose baby is it, Mira?" Killian's tone stayed light. That lightness made it worse.

My knees buckled before I'd given them permission. I hit the floor, and my hand found the fabric of Damon's trouser leg, fisting it like it could anchor me to a version of the world that still made sense.

"Please." The word tore loose, wet and broken. "I love you."

"Which one of us?" Damon didn't move to help me up. He just watched, waiting for an answer I didn't have.

"Why?" I forced myself to look up at him, searching his face for some thread of the man I'd fallen for. "Why would you do this to me?"

"Your father died holding our secrets." His voice never changed pitch or climbed, like he'd said this exact line before and found it boring by now. "So we kept you close. Marriage keeps you exactly where we want you." He let that settle before he finished it. "Tomorrow you walk down that aisle smiling."

A hand closed around my chin and forced my face up further. Killian's grip was not gentle.

"Look at him, sweetheart." His mouth was close enough that I felt the words more than heard them. "That's your future husband. Keep looking. He's watching. And he still doesn't care."

Laughter broke out behind me, ugly and immediate, from people I used to share dinner tables with. I tried to twist free. His fingers only tightened.

"Don't break her," Damon said, somewhere off to the side, bored. "Not before the wedding."

"She's your problem now." Killian let go and shoved.

The floor came up hard. My knees took the brunt of it, and for a second the pain blanked out everything else: the laughter, the room, even the man stepping toward me with his shoes catching the light.

"Get up," Damon's voice, flat. "Clean yourself up. I don't want this mess tomorrow."

His foot shifted back.

I curled around my stomach before my mind caught up with what my body already understood. Both arms locked tight. A wall built out of pure instinct.

"Don't!" My voice cracked clean through. "The babies are innocent."

He went still.

Nobody spoke. Somewhere behind me a glass clinked against a tray, obscenely casual against the silence.

"If you want them alive," Damon said finally, "you walk down that aisle tomorrow like none of this happened. And you keep your mouth shut."

I made myself look at him. Really look, searching his face for some thread of the man I thought I'd known. There was nothing left to find.

"It was all a lie." My voice barely held together.

"The love was there." He crouched, level with me now, and the calm in his eyes frightened me more than rage ever could. "I only needed your obedience."

"You're monsters."

"No." Still flat. Still even. "That's the price of your father's choices."

Killian crouched beside him and lifted something off the floor – my purse must have spilt when I fell – and pressed it into my open palm before I could pull away. The ultrasound photo. He hadn't thrown it out. He'd kept it, just to hand it back.

"Every girl needs something to cry about," he said, almost soft.

I forced myself upright. My legs shook through the whole motion, but they held, and I made myself meet every set of eyes still watching me from around that room. Ingrid by the desk, unmoved. Killian, already losing interest. Damon, glancing at his phone like the moment had already ended for him.

"I'll remember every face in this room," I said.

Nobody bothered answering.

I walked out before either of them could see what was actually happening underneath my skin, a fault line splitting open between the woman I'd been an hour ago and whatever I was about to become.

***************************************************************************************************************

Three blocks away, a man stood at a window high above the city with his phone pressed to his ear.

"Boss." A woman's voice, clipped.

"Speak," Lucian said.

"Background's done on Mira Castellan. Wedding's tomorrow at noon at Aldermere Estate. "A pause. "There's more. Word is Damon and Killian Wrexley made an arrangement between them. They're planning to humiliate her in front of every guest at that ceremony. Tear her apart publicly, then bury it quietly."

His jaw set. He'd watched that woman for ten seconds in a hospital corridor, watched her press a photo to her chest like it was the only good thing she'd ever held, and something about it hadn't let go of him since.

"Get the car ready," he said. "Prep my suit."

A beat passed before he added the rest.

"I'll be at that wedding tomorrow."

"Understood." Papers shifted on the other end. "I'll handle it."

He set the phone down and stared out at the skyline, at all those lit windows hiding their own quiet wars, and thought about a woman who had no idea two men wearing the same face were about to burn her life down in front of a room full of strangers holding champagne.