Page 148 of A Vicious Love

“I miss her asking,” I said. “I miss Jamjam, and I hated that fucking name. I miss her talking too much. I miss her standing beside me and telling me details no one else would notice. I miss her voice, and I’m the one who made her silence feel safer.”

No one spoke. I needed the silence to survive the humiliation of honesty.

“That means your heart works.” Emmie said, after a moment.

“My heart can fuck off.”

He shifted Emmie closer, then gave me the kind of look he only used when he was about to give advice that felt like an order.

“Get the review over. Stop letting Damius make Sienna a question. If she is yours, then take responsibility for what that means. Take ownership of your submissive and your wife if that is the direction you intend to go.”

The words moved through me too hot. My submissive… wife.

Fuck.

Emmie wiped beneath one eye with the sleeve of Marcel’s shirt. “She tried so hard to find a version of you she could love without being hurt.”

My chest went tight enough to hurt. Because I hurt her anyway. I leaned forward. “What do I do?”

That question cost a fucking lot. Marcel knew it.

My brother knew all sides of me, and not one had ever been unsure.

He had stood beside me when we were younger, less sure we would survive becoming the men Damius wanted. I had called from alleys, hotels, fight rings, disaster meetings. He had never needed me good to come when I needed him.

“You apologize,” She leaned forward. “Properly, Jamison. Not a Crow apology where you buy a building and expect her to understand the emotion hiding inside it.”

Marcel’s mouth twitched.

I glared at him. “Don’t enjoy this.”

“I am enjoying Emmie disciplining you.”

“She is not disciplining me.”

Emmie’s brows lifted.

I shut my mouth.

Marcel looked far too pleased.

“Fine,” I said. “I apologize.”

“And you don’t make it about your feelings,” Emmie said. “You make it about what you did to her.”

I nodded once. The word sorry felt like glass in my mouth already.

“Then you prove change through consistency.” Marcel traced Emmie shoulder, “She has learned your cruelty is reliable. Make care more reliable.”

Sienna beside me like a beautiful ghost I had made. I deeply fucking regretted that ball. Ever since it her personality vanished. I gulped. Because a larger part of me knew… that was the night I fully broke her.

“How did you do it? You and Emmie.” I gestured between them.

“You were there,” he Marcel’s gaze dropped to his wife. “Our merger was fucking worse. Christ, I was engaged first to her sister.”

Emmie shifted away from him, enough to make a point. Marcel looked down at her with that dangerous patience he kept only for his wife.

“Baby.”