Until We Fly (The Beautifully Broken) (25 page)

My reality slams into me, hard and fast and ugly. 

I’m tainted. 

I’m used.

But it all ends today.

One more time.  

One.

More.

Time. 

I unclench my teeth and lay back on the bed, spreading my legs the way they like. 

“A Greene does what it takes,” I tell my father coldly.  “You taught me that.”

My father nods, his gaze fixed on my crotch.  He snaps a picture, then two, then three. 

“Starting without me?”

William steps in.  He’s already shed his clothes, probably in the living room, and he’s only wearing his underwear.  He’s pale, wrinkled, sagging.  My stomach turns, but I ignore it. 

I’m fucking brave. 

“Take off your bra for your uncle, Nora,” my father tells me, with eyes like a predator.  “You know what he likes.”

The camera snaps.  Again. Then again. 

Just like last time, my father stands in the corner, behind the camera, stroking himself while his brother gets off.   Like last time, he’ll be careful to stay out of the photos. He only takes them so that William can get off on them later. 

William crawls onto the bed, on all fours, his white gut sagging to the sheets.  I pull my legs up, away from his skin, not wanting to touch him. 

I squeeze my eyes shut, preparing. 

I can do this. 

I’m fucking brave. 

“Open your eyes, Nora,” William breathes into my ear, his rank breath hot on my face. “I want to see you as I fuck you.”

He moves over me, hovering, positioning, and I reach to the side, beneath the edge of the mattress.  My fingers close around the cold steel. 

That’s when I open my eyes. 

And that’s when the breath freezes on my lips. 

Bursting through the doorway, with all the fury of hell in his eyes, is my avenging angel. 

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Brand

Rage settles down on me, like a cloud, like a shield, as I bellow my way into the room.

With one fist, I punch Maxwell Greene in the face, slamming him into the wall.  In one deft motion, I ram my boot into his dick, crushing it.  I leave him whimpering in a heap on the floor. 

With one bound, I grab William by the neck and drag him from the bed, ramming his face into the wall, again, then again, then again. 

I don’t see, I don’t hear, I don’t feel. 

I just
am
. 

I just am enraged. 

I’m a machine, intent on revenge, on protecting what is mine.  I punch William until his face is a wet pulp.  The anger pumps through my veins, pushing the rage through my heart, fueling me. 

“Brand!”

Nora’s voice breaks through the cloud and I pause, mid-punch, my fist frozen in the air.  I turn and she’s poised on the bed, a delicate waif, beautiful and haunting, and with a 9 mm pointed at William’s chest. 

“Stand back,” she tells me calmly, her voice cold and soft. 

I drop William and step back, my eyes frozen on her face. 

William is unconscious on the floor, blood spurting from his mouth, and gurgling in his nose.  Maxwell moans from behind him, his hands clasped to his broken cock. 

“Nora,” I speak softly, my eyes trained only on her.  I see in her eyes that she means it.  She’s not aiming to maim. 

She’s aiming to kill. 

“Nora, I know you’re hurt.  What they’ve done is unthinkable, but I don’t want their blood on your hands.  You don’t know what that’s like.  You don’t
deserve
to know what that’s like.  They can’t hurt you now, Nora.  We’ll call the police.  It will be over.”

Nora keeps the gun on William’s chest, but she looks at me, her eyes big and blue. 

And cold.

“Brand, you don’t understand,” she says simply. “I can’t get away from them.  William will ruin you. He knows about your past… about assaulting your father and how the judge made you join the Army. He’s going to use that to bankrupt your company—because he knows people in Washington.  And my father…”

I speak up, trying as best I can to stay calm, to dissuade her.  “Nora, they can’t ruin me.  I was always going to be a Ranger.  It was my dream from the time I was a kid. I wanted to protect people from evil like my father.  The judge knew that.  The judge saw the situation for what it was and gave me a break.  Nora, they can’t hurt me.”

But she’s unmoved and her voice is filled with contempt. 

“Don’t you see?  It doesn’t matter what the truth is.  William has connections in the pentagon who will believe whatever he tells them to.  If he wants to ruin you, he’ll ruin you.  And that’s not all. I signed a contract that ties me to my father for twenty years.  I can’t do that.  I just can’t.  I’ve got to end it today, Brand.  It ends today.”

Her voice is so resigned that it sends my heart pounding into my throat, especially when I see her hand shaking.  She means to do it. 

She means it.  I want to lunge and grab the gun from her, but I’m too afraid she’ll hurt herself with it in the struggle.  I can’t risk it.

I eye her carefully, thinking through my options, but then Camille steps forward, her shocked and frozen face finally moving to speak. 

“My baby,” she croons, edging toward the bed.  “There’s so much that you need to know.  Please… put down the gun. They can’t hurt you now.  They can’t.”

Nora shakes her head.  “Step back, maman.”

But Camille refuses. “Nora, you need to know something… something I’ve never been strong enough to tell you.  Look at me.”

Nora pauses, but doesn’t look at her mother.  She keeps the gun trained on William.  “Just tell me.”

Camille’s tone is blunt.  “Nora, you’re not Maxwell’s daughter. Your contract will be void, not that it ever mattered anyway.”

This stops Nora cold, something that finally breaks through her concentration.  She stares at her mother in confusion. 

“Not his?”  She looks at the two bloody men. “What do you mean?”

There’s the smallest tone of hope hidden among her confusion. 

Camille stares at her, with love and fear and apprehension.

 “You aren’t a Greene.  Maxwell Greene is not your father. That means that the contract you signed, which named you as his daughter, isn’t valid.  He can’t keep you with him.  He can’t force you to do anything ever again.”

Nora’s eyes fill and her lips shakes.   “That’s impossible.  How…”

Camille shakes her head.  “We’ll talk about it more after you put the gun down, my love.  Please.  Just give Brand the gun.  Everything is going to be ok.  I promise.  It will be okay. “

Each second seems to last a year as I watch Nora’s hand shake while she clenches the gun, as she finally turns her gaze toward her mother. The cold, blank expression is gone, and instead, her eyes are filled with hope.

“If you’re telling the truth… then…they aren’t… William isn’t…my uncle and….”

A tear breaks rank and slides down her cheek. 

“I’m not…”

I speak up.  “You’re not
used
, Nora,” I tell her quietly.  “You never have been.  What they did to you was sick and wrong. And we’ll send them to prison because that’s where they deserve to rot.”

The gun shakes and drops to her side, and it’s finally safe for me to step forward, closing my hand around the barrel, and easing it out of her hand. 

She rests against me, sinking into my arms, her head against my chest.  

“I hear your heart,” she says slowly, and I know what she’s doing.  I’ve done it a thousand times in combat. She’s removing herself from the situation.  It’s something a person does to survive, to block out the ugliness, to keep it from overwhelming them.

“It’s beating for you,” I answer, holding her close. “Only for you.”

I turn to Camille to tell her to call the police, but she’s already on the phone, speaking fast, pacing back and forth as she talks to a dispatcher.  I look down and find her shoes bloody.

Nora looks up at me, her eyes cloudy, distant, removed. 

“You stand on a wall to protect what is yours.”   Her words are simple. 

I nod.   “You’re mine.” 

She closes her eyes and rests in my arms. 

When the paramedics arrive, I refuse to let her go and carry her out to the ambulance myself. 

Chapter Thirty

Nora

I’m afraid to wake up.  I’m afraid that when I do, it will all have been a dream, and that it won’t really be over.  I won’t be free. 

But I open my eyes, and find Brand by my hospital bed. 

He smiles, which is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. 

“Hey,” he says huskily, in a voice devoid of sleep.  “Welcome back.”

I look down to find my hand in his, and I look at the clock to find that I’ve been sleeping for almost twenty-four hours. 

I blink, confused. 

“The doctors gave you a sedative,” Brand explains, seeing the questions in my eyes. “You’ve been through a lot and you needed a chance to rest before you processed it.”

“You’ve been here the whole time,” I say it as a statement, not as a question. Because I already know. I’ve felt him here all along. 

He nods. “Yeah.”

I look at him.  “You saved me.”

It was real.

He narrows his eyes.  “You were all set to try and save yourself.  The gun… Jesus, Nora.”

He closes his eyes for a second, then re-opens them.  “Why didn’t you tell me?  Why didn’t you trust me?”

I shake my head, clutching his hand.  “It wasn’t about trusting you.  It was about… being humiliated and entrapped and helpless.  I can’t explain to you what it feels like to think that my own uncle and father… made me… I was too dirty for you, Brand.  Too tainted. You couldn’t be with someone like me.“ 

I can’t go on and Brand squeezes my hand, lifting my chin to make me look at him. 

“
You are not dirty.
  Or used.  You were forced. You didn’t have a choice. But now they won’t have a choice either.  They’re going to prison.  They can never hurt you again.  And that wasn’t your father. Or your uncle.”

It’s like he knows.  He knows that it makes such a difference.  Yes, I was still raped.  But at least I wasn’t raped by my own blood.  

“Who am I?” I ask him softly, staring into his blue, blue eyes.  “If I’m not a Greene, who am I?”

He shakes his head.  “I don’t know.  Your mom will be back up here shortly, she just left for some coffee. She has all the answers, Nora. But I can tell you this.  It doesn’t matter to me who you are.  Because I already know.  You’re beautiful and smart and brave.  And I love you.  I love all of you, no matter what your last name is.”

I suck in a breath and the tears start to fall, streaking hotly down my face, dripping onto my hospital gown. 

“I love you too,” I choke, pressing my face into him, squeezing my eyes closed.

This can’t be real. 

This can’t be.

But it is. 

Brand Killien loves me.

He strokes my back, his hands running over my shoulder blade. He pulls my face up into his hands and looks into my eyes. “You will not sink, Nora,” he tells me firmly.  “You’ve been tossed by the waves, but you will not sink.  No matter what.”

My tattoo.
Fluctuat nec Mergitur.
 He looked up the meaning.  I smile through my tears and nod.

I won’t sink.  I won’t.

“Ma belle fille,” my mother says softly from the doorway.  I look up, but Brand doesn’t let go.  I stay clutched to his chest because there’s no place I’d rather be. I won’t sink because Brand is my anchor.  He holds me steady. 

“Can you explain?” I ask simply.  My mother nods, setting down her coffee and easing herself into the chair by the edge of the bed. 

“It’s very simple, really,” she says sadly.   “Your father…Maxwell, I mean, has been twisted for a very long time. He and William… they’re an unnatural, hateful pair.  I realized it soon after we were married. But I was from France, you see. And after your brother was born, Maxwell knew that he had me no matter what.  I knew what he and William were doing together… but I couldn’t stop it and I couldn’t leave, because Maxwell threatened to divorce me, have me extradited and then he’d keep Nate from me.  It was… torturous.”

A tear slips down her delicate cheek and even though I should be furious at her for keeping all of this from me, I can’t bring myself to that. She’s suffered, too. 

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

My mother drops her eyes. “Because as long as you were a minor, you were trapped with your father.  If he had me extradited, you’d have been alone with him.  I couldn’t allow that. And if I told you, I was afraid that you’d play that hand in an effort to get away from him. And he’d never have allowed that without a fight.  Not after grooming you for so long to be a Greene. I was too afraid of what he would do.”

“Who is my father?”  I ask simply. 

She looks up, and she smiles a watery smile. 

“Can you not guess?  Did you really never suspect?”

I close my eyes and race through my childhood memories and one face comes up in them more often than any other.     

Strong hands lifting me onto my horse, strong arms carrying me through the gardens, sharing his lunch, twinkling blue eyes that greeted me every day… and always the warmth. He was always happy to see me, always happy to be near me. 

“Julian,” I breathe. 

Brand cocks his head, questioning. 

“Our gardener,” I remind him quickly.  “But he’s more than a gardener.  He took care of our house, our horses, me…”

I turn to my mother.  “But how… and… I just don’t understand.”

My mother smiles. 

“Julian is from home,” she tells me.  “You already knew he was French too.  I loved him when I was young, but then I was wild and carefree and came to America for adventure.  That’s when I met and married Maxwell… he needed a normal family to cover up his twisted side.  I didn’t know that, though, at first.  We weren’t long into our marriage when I discovered what he was.  But I was trapped.  And Julian came to save me.  I couldn’t leave… I couldn’t leave Nate.  So Julian stayed with me. Always with me.  And then of course, you were born, and he had even more to stay for.”