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“Savina, I need you to listen to me, okay?” I said, fighting for calm. “Ashton can’t have a video of me killing Jorge Bustamente because I didn’t kill Jorge Bustamente.”
She started shaking her head frantically, tears coating her lashes. “No…no, no…no, that’s not true,” she repeated. “I saw the video. It shows you stabbing him before you shot him in the head.” She looked like she was about to pass out, and I had to fist my hands to keep them from shaking with rage. “It’s you. I saw it…it’s you.” I was about to speak when her hands reached out, grabbing my arms. “Please...please, Aurelio…it’s you. Tell me that it’s you. Tell me that it was you…it has to be you…”
I was so furious that I could barely speak. “Baby, it’s not me,” I told her, my entire body radiating with a pain that I’d only felt one other time before in my life; the day that she’d left me. “I didn’t kill him.”
“The night that Jorge Bustamente was killed, Aurelio was in California,” Nero said. “He was meeting with Christos Benetti, and we can prove it.”
Savina paled as she looked at him. “No…” she whispered brokenly. “That’s not true.” She looked back at me as she let go of my arms. “You’re…you’re lying. I…I don’t know…know why you’re lying to me, but you are.”
My entire soul screamed for her as Nero said, “Savina, we’re not lying. The night that the news broke of Councilman Bustamante’s murder, it was announced that he’d been shot, never stabbed.”
Savina looked like she was going to throw up everywhere, and if she did, then that was okay. “Then…then that means that I…” Her blue eyes snapped to my face. “Oh, God…oh, God…the things that I let…the things that I let that man do to me…” She looked absolutely horrified, turning my stomach into knots. “I…for two years, I let him…the beatings, the names, his…his friends…”
“I’m going to kill that sonofabitch,” I hissed as I got to my feet. “I’m going to fucking kill him.”
“Aurelio-”
“You can’t stop me,” I bit out as I turned to my best friend. “Don’t you dare try to stop me.”
Nero put his hands up in a useless effort to calm me down, Savina’s quiet cries torturing me from the couch. “I’m not,” he said, his voice firm, reminding me of who he was. “I just think that guns blazing isn’t the way to go.” He gave a pointed look at Savina. “At the moment, there are more important priorities, don’t you think?”
“Nero-”
He was in my face before I could finish my sentence, something that no one else would ever be allowed to do. “Ashton Oliver abused her in every way possible,” he hissed as quietly as he could, though Savina was too lost in her own personal misery to even pay attention to either of us. “You need to make sure that she knows she’s safe now before you run off and ruin the rest of her life.”
“How the fuck is me killing Ashton Oliver going to ruin the rest of her life?” I hissed back.
Nero’s dark gaze fired up. “Because she endured two years of hell for you,” he snapped. “She let Ashton Oliver do unspeakable things to her because she loves you too much to see you go to prison. What in the fuck do you think will happen to her if you end up in prison anyway for killing him without thought? What in the fuck happens to her sacrifice then?” He stepped closer to me. “Get it the fuck together, Aurelio. For her sake, if nothing else.”
He was right.
Savina’s sacrifice deserved more than an angry reaction from me. Truth be told, it deserved me on my knees for the rest of my fucking life. All this time, I’d been hating her for walking away from me while she’d been enduring a life of hell to keep me safe. While I’d been living my life, doing my best to remove her from my heart and mind, she’d been treated like trash, enduring unlimited amounts of pain and humiliation because she fucking loved me.
I glanced back down at Savina, and I knew that I was going to do more than just kill Ashton Oliver. I was going to make him pay for every second that she’d had to live with him and subject herself to his demands. By the time that I was done with him, he was going to be begging me to kill him.
“Yeah…okay,” I said, letting out a deep breath. “You’re…you’re right.”
Whispering he said, “I’m going to give you two some time alone, but let me know if you need anything.”
The only thing that I needed was to kill Ashton Oliver.
Chapter 20
Savina~
“Baby, talk to me.”
I heard Aurelio’s voice in my ear, but it was the churning in my stomach that had my full attention. When Ashton had first shown me the footage of Aurelio killing Jorge Bustamente, I’d been absolutely horrified at the very idea of Aurelio possibly going to prison for life. In fact, I’d been so torn up about it that it hadn’t ever occurred to me that the video might be fake. I hadn’t even paid attention to the details on the news because I’d wanted to distance myself as much as possible from the possibility that Aurelio could get caught, his life over.
As my hands began to shake, I wondered how I’d ever be able to live with myself after this. I had endured the most hellish experiences because I’d been too stupid to question the validity of that goddamn recording. I hadn’t once questioned the quality or even how Ashton had gotten a hold of the damn thing. My love for Aurelio had made me blind to everything that I’d ever been taught by my parents and everything that I’d ever learned growing up around the Sartoris.
“I’m going to be sick,” I choked out, and Aurelio placed a small trash can in front of me just in time.
I paid no attention to him as I threw up the past two years, my stomach heaving mercilessly. I’d been played, and my entire body shook with shame and regret. Never mind that Aurelio had always been the best at what he did, how could I not have questioned that video. By then, Ashton had begun to show some signs of his true psychopathy, so how could I not have asked more questions? How could I have been so stupid as to take his word for anything at that point?
“Here.”
A couple of tissues appeared before my face, and after I grabbed them, a tumbler of amber liquid appeared next. I quickly wiped my mouth, then poured the entire contents in the glass down my throat, though there was a pretty good chance that the liquid was going to come back up, too.
