Chapter 92: I’M YOUR FAMILY!
Chapter 93
Ren
Neve took a step back, her spine slamming hard against the door.
The brief flash of anger in her eyes instantly dissolved into wild, wide-eyed terror.
"Wait... Ren, hold on," she stammered, raising her hands between us, her voice climbing into a sharp, desperate pitch.
"Do you... do you actually think I had something to do with what happened to her? Do you seriously believe I would ever do something like this to Lumi?"
I didn’t answer. I just stood over her, letting the heavy, suffocating silence in the room build until the air felt too thick to breathe.
"Ren, look at me!" she pleaded, tears brimming in her eyes before spilling over her eyelashes and dragging mascara down her cheeks.
"Yes, I was angry with her! I’ve been pissed off at her for days, okay? I hated that she came back into our life and turned everything upside down.
I hated how you looked at her, how you defended her, how you completely stopped listening to me! I hated her for taking you away from me, and I’ve said that a hundred times!"
She gripped the strap of her bag so tightly her fingers turned white, taking another fast, shallow breath as she stared up at me.
"But I would never do something like this," she sobbed, shaking her head violently.
"I would never hurt her, Ren! I’m not a monster! I don’t care how mad I was at her, I would never lay a hand on her. How could you even stand there and accuse me of that? I’m your sister!"
I stared down at her face, searching every line, every tear, every twitch of her mouth.
"You’re lying," I said, my voice dropping so low it was almost a whisper, colder than the wind outside.
"You didn’t just walk into this room by accident tonight, Neve. You knew she was in trouble before you even got here."
"I was trying to fix it!" She screamed softly, her voice cracking as she pressed her back further into the corner. "I was just trying to fix everything for you! For both of us!"
"Fix what?" I stepped directly into her space, my height completely blotting out the dull green lights of the room behind her. "Fix what, Neve? Tell me what you did."
"Callum came to me!" she blurted out, her hands flying up to cover her mouth as fresh tears streamed down her face.
"Callum talked to me weeks ago, Ren! He told me... he told me he realized he made a massive mistake. He said Sienna was only ever after his money and his status. He said he saw through Sienna’s lies and that he was so, so sorry for how he treated Lumi." My teeth ground together so hard my jaw locked.
"And you believed him?"
"He sounded so genuine, Ren!" Neve cried, clutching her arms around her stomach as her shoulders shook.
"He told me he wanted her back. He told me he still loved her and that he knew she still loved him deep down, but that you were standing in the middle of them!" I felt a sickening, dark twist in my gut.
So that was why she returned back, she already knew about I and Lumi’s relationship. But she acted like she just found out.
She and Callum had been in contact for weeks now.
"What did you do?"
"I thought... I thought I was doing the right thing!" she sobbed, her voice rising in a frantic, desperate defense.
"I thought if I helped him, everyone would finally get what they wanted! I thought if Lumi saw that Callum was ready to take her back, she’d go!
So I sold my apartment! I pushed the sale through as fast as possible so she wouldn’t have any reason to stay in the city! I thought... I thought if she had nowhere else to go, if she didn’t have a roof over her head here, she’d finally go back to Callum!"
I stared at my sister, absolute horror washing over me as the full, twisted scope of her actions laid itself bare.
"You pushed her out of your apartment because you didn’t want her to be with me." I rasped, the words burning hot on my tongue.
"I was saving you!" Neve shrieked, tears splashing onto her silk shirt.
"I was saving you from the heartbreak I knew was coming! She still loved Callum! I thought she was just using you to get back at him, and that eventually she was going to shatter your heart into a million pieces anyway! I wanted to spare you that pain! I wanted her gone before she could break you!"
"She was carrying my child!" I roared.
The word hit the room like a bomb.
Neve froze mid-sob. Her mouth stayed open, her breath catching clean in her throat. The color completely drained from her skin, leaving her looking hollow, ghostly, and small.
"What...?" she whispered, her eyes trembling as she stared at me. "What did you say?"
"She was pregnant, Neve," I said, my voice dropping into a tone so dark, so laced with pure poison, that even Darren took a cautious step back near the door.
"Our child. My baby. A life I didn’t even get to hold, wiped out in a single night because you decided to play god with my life."
Neve’s hands dropped to her sides. She shook her head in small, violent twitches.
"No... no, Ren, no... she couldn’t be... she didn’t tell anyone... she’d...she would have told me...I..was her best..."
"She didn’t get the chance," I spat, stepping right up to her face, my breath hot against her skin.
"Because while you were busy convincing yourself you were playing the protective sister, Callum was dragging her into her mother’s house.
While you were busy making sure she had nowhere else to go, he was forcing liquid sedatives down her throat. He forged a suicide note, Neve. He left her to choke on her own blood on the floor, and he killed my baby before it ever had a chance to breathe."
Neve sank to her knees right there on the floor, a harsh, retching gasp tearing from her chest. She grabbed the fabric of her jeans, looking up at me with horror.
"I didn’t know... Ren, I swear to God I didn’t know he was going to hurt her! He told me he just wanted to talk to her! He told me he just wanted to convince her to come home with him! He swore he loved her!"
"You handed her to a murderer on a silver platter," I said, looking down at her as if she were a complete stranger.
"You laid the trap, you opened the door, and you gave him the exact knife to stick in her back."
"Ren, please!" she wept, reaching up with trembling, useless hands to catch the hem of my jacket.
"I’m your sister! I’m your blood! I was stupid, I was bitter, but I thought I was helping you! Please, Ren!"
I reached down and tore her hands off my clothes, shoving her back.
"If anything happens to Lumi," I whispered, every single word etched in iron,
"if she doesn’t open her eyes, if her heart stops beating in that bed... I will never forgive you. I will wipe your name from this pack, and I will never look at your face again for as long as I live."
She let out a high, strangled cry, burying her face against the floor, her body shaking with violent, ugly sobs.
"Ren, please! No! Don’t say that!"
"Because of you, we lost something tonight," I said, my voice breaking slightly before turning to cold steel.
"Because of your jealousy, because of your arrogance, my child is dead. And my mate is lying in a coma fighting for her life."
I didn’t give her another second. I didn’t give her another look.
"Darren," I commanded.
"Alpha," Darren responded, his voice grave.
"Take her away," I said, turning my back on her completely. " Strip her of everything. No phone, no visitors, no light. She stays in the dark until I figure out what to do with her. Make sure she’s arrested and detained."
Neve gasped, her head snapping up from the floor, her face blotchy and soaked in tears.
"The cell?! Ren, no! That’s where you put traitors! You can’t lock me in there! I’m your family!"
"You’re the person who worked with someone who isn’t from this park and destroyed my family," I said, my voice utterly dead.
Darren stepped forward, hauling Neve up off the floor by her arms. She thrashing violently against his grip, kicking her heels against the ground, her screams ripping through the peaceful, sterile room.
"Ren! Please! Don’t do this to me! Ren! Look at me! I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! Ren!"
Darren dragged her out the door. Her shrieking cries echoed down the corridor outside before the heavy wooden door slammed shut, cutting off the noise and locking the sound out for good.
I stood there in the quiet, my hands clenched into tight fists at my sides, my whole body shaking with a rage so heavy it felt like it was tearing my muscles apart.
The scent of her perfume still lingered near the door, sour and suffocating.
I slowly turned back toward the bed.
Lumi hadn’t moved. She hadn’t heard the screaming, the crying, or the sound of my family completely destroying itself right beside her pillow.
She just lay there, pale and silent, her small chest rising and falling to the slow, mechanical hiss-click of the machine forcing air into her lungs.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
I walked over, my legs feeling heavy, and sank back down into the heavy wooden chair. I reached out, my hand shaking uncontrollably as I wrapped my fingers around her tiny, cold ones.
I pulled her hand up to my face, pressing her knuckles against my lips, closing my eyes tight as the tears I had been holding back finally burned down my cheeks.
"I’m sorry," I choked out into her skin, my voice raw and broken. "I’m so sorry, Lumi. I was supposed to keep you safe from everything, and the monster was sitting right next to me the whole time."
I squeezed her hand, begging her in silence to squeeze back, begging her for any sign that she was still in there, that she hadn’t given up on me. But her hand remained limp in mine.
"You have to stay," I whispered, resting my forehead against the edge of her mattress, feeling the tiny, weak pulse flickering under her skin.
"You have to fight, Lumi. Don’t leave me here alone with this. Please... just come back to me."
The sky outside the high window began to bleed from pitch black into a dull, icy morning gray.
Dawn was breaking over the city, but inside the room, everything remained frozen in time, waiting for a heartbeat that could change everything.