I Belong To My Three Forbidden Masters

Chapter 87: Chapter 87

Darius’s pov

I froze, my hand raised in a fist.

Gideon and I both whipped our heads toward the doorway. Elena stood there, her face a stark, bloodless white, her hands trembling so violently she had to clutch the carved oak doorframe to keep her knees from buckling.

Her eyes were wide and glassy with disbelief, darted from my face still streaked with dried blood to Gideon’s sneering, arrogant mouth.

”What the hell did you just say?” she whispered brokenly. Like the energy zapped out of her.

She looked between us once more and realization dawned on her, her face went paler than it was before.

An answer wasn’t good enough for her anymore as she lunged at me, the last thing I saw was a blur of her clothes.

I felt her fingernails rake across my face before I could even raise my good arm to block her. She rammed her fist repeatedly against my chest, screaming out her frustrations as sobs tore through her chest.

”No, no, no! Not my baby! Not my boy!” She swung at me again, her nails digging into my neck, her eyes wild and a little unhinged. ”What the hell is wrong with the both of you?”

”Why? Why would you do that to a child? He was just a boy! How could you do this to him?”

”Elena, stop it!” I roared, catching her wrists in a crushing grip. I held her at arm’s length, my ruined right shoulder screaming in agony as she thrashed violently against my hold. ”Calm down! You’re being hysterical, get a hold of yourself”

She stopped suddenly, and as she gazed at me, the tears filled her eyes as she looked at me as though I betrayed her.

”I should get a hold of myself? How could you say that to me, Darius?”

”Yes,” I snapped, ”You are being dramatic right now. Calm the fuck down.

She didn’t even hear me. She tore herself from my grip, her chest heaving, and wheeled around to face Gideon.

The idiot didn’t look remorseful even as we were overheard. He just casually poured two fingers of whisker into his glass with a mocking, insolent smirk plastered across his face.

He swirled the amber liquid, taking a sip as if he were watching a poorly produced soap opera.

”Look at you,” he sneered at her, tossing his head back. ”Crying over the lab rat. You always were so dramatic about him, Elena.”

A look of pure loathing contorted Elena’s expression. She stepped toward him, her fingernails curling into her palms so tightly her knuckles turned paper-white.

”You disgusting pig,” she spat, her voice thick with venom. She raised a shaking hand, pointing her index finger straight at his face. ”How could you do that to your brother? How could you look at him every day, eat at the same table, live under the same roof and do something so monstrous?”

Gideon set the crystal glass down on the desk with force. He rolled his eyes and rested his hands on his hips. He looked like a bored teenager getting lectured by his headmistress.

”Oh, spare me the moral crusade,” Gideon barked, his voice dripping with condescension. ”You love to sit up here in your high tower, playing the grieving mother, acting like you were some saint to him! You barely looked at him, you only parented him when it was convenient for you! You barely knew what your son was up to and even sent him to school to go live in the dorms.”

”I wanted to protect him from you!” Elena screamed. ”I was trying to do good for my boy and now I see that I tried to keep him safe from this family’s sickness!”

”You didn’t protect shit!” Gideon fired back, stepping around the desk, his tall frame looming over hers. ”You knew what was happening in this house, Elena! You just kept your mouth shut so you could keep buying your designer clothes and sitting on charity boards!”

”He is a child!” she shrieked, striking out and slapping the glass of whiskey straight out of his hand. ”I didn’t know anything!”

The crystal shattered against the floorboards, amber liquid splashing across the toe of Gideon’s leather boots.

His eyes flashed with anger, he stepped into her space and swung his palm across her face with a sickening thwack.

Elena staggered back, her head snapping to the side, her skin instantly blooming a deep, angry purple along her jawline.

”Don’t touch me, you crazy bitch,” he hissed, his voice cold enough to freeze the air in the room. ”He is not my brother. And you? You aren’t my mother.”

Elena steadied herself against the edge of the heavy desk, her breathing coming in harsh, ragged hitches. She raised her head slowly, wiping a smudge of blood from her lip, her dark eyes glinting with a lethal, icy contempt as she looked at him.

”Of course I’m not your mother,” she rasped, ”I could never, in a thousand lifetimes, give birth to a disappointment like you.”

Gideon let out a harsh, mocking bark of laughter, though the muscle jumping in his cheek betrayed his anger. ”Disappointment? That whore? Lysander is just a product, Mom. A whore for hire. Everyone saw the live stream, he didn’t fight back because he liked it. He liked every second of the camera lens on his skin.”

The color drained from Elena’s face until she looked like a corpse standing in the dim light of the study.

She staggered, her hands flying to her mouth, a low, heartbroken wail escaping her throat. Her legs gave out entirely, and she collapsed into the high-backed leather chair, burying her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking violently with agonizing, soul-crushing sobs.

”The... the stream...” she whimpered, her voice muffled by her trembling fingers. ”My little boy... my sweet, brilliant boy... why didn’t you come to me? Why didn’t you tell these monsters were hurting you?”

She looked up at me, her face ruined by tears, her eyes pleading for a sanity that didn’t exist in this house.

”Is this why they blackmailed him? Did he think... did he think I wouldn’t love him? Did he think I would cast him out because of what you monsters did to him?”

I turned my back on her, pacing over to the floor-to-ceiling windows, staring out at the dark, desolate expanse of the estate grounds, refusing to meet her gaze. The sight of her crying over a lost asset made my head pound with pure exhaustion.

”Stop being such a drama queen, Elena,” I snapped, my voice heavy with irritation. ”It’s done. Stop living in the past and move on.”

The room went deathly still. The sound of her sobbing cut off as if a switch had been flipped.

Elena stood up slowly, her movements jerky and stiff, her eyes fixed entirely on the back of my head.

”Move on?” she echoed, ”It’s so incredibly easy for you to say that, isn’t it, Darius?”

I turned around, resting my uninjured hand on the back of the desk chair. ”I’m tired of this, Elena. Go to your room.”

She took one step toward me, her hands balled into tight, white-knuckled fists at her sides.

”It’s so much easier for you to just ’move on,’” she repeated, her voice dripping with a lifetime of buried, rotting hatred. ”But then again, you always were an expert at that. It was always so easy for you to just dispose of things you decided were inconvenient, wasn’t it? Just like you did when you killed your wife.”

I felt the blood drain entirely from my face.