The Finisher (Dark Verse, #4)

by RuNyx

Zephyr jumped down from the bed, her side hurting a bit, and wobbled over to the older woman, extending her pinkie out. “I can be there for him. I promise. What’s his name?” The woman laughed again, a tear trailing down her face, and hooked her rough pinkie with Zephyr’s. “You’re a sweet child.”

Zephyr nodded. She liked being sweet. “His name?” she asked, stuck on the boy who didn't have a family. “Alessandro. Alessandro Villanova. Alpha.”

She wanted to feel adequate. She wanted to feel beautiful. She wanted to feel desirable. The last man who’d made her feel all those things— Don’t think about him.

Watching the spectacle in front of her, she tried to see for herself if it was her Alpha before she had to deal with real life.

"Please," she whispered in the space between their mouths, knowing it was that girl inside her who had kissed a wild boy speaking. She needed to believe for herself that this was him, feel it in her bones, feel it in their kiss.

But it also told her something—he didn’t recognize her. Nothing.

He was her love at first meeting. And she didn’t know who he was now, but he was hers. He’d always been hers.

Her first love, the one she never recovered from. Love, the kind she could give everything and replenish yet again to give more, the kind that snuck in under the radar, and one day, it was there, mixed into the cement of her foundations. Love that went so deep into the bones it changed the course of being. He had been that love. He was back. And he remembered nothing. She was screwed.

and Zephyr, heartbroken for a boy she’d not known, had promised her that she would be there for him. The older woman, Adriana, had smiled lovingly and made her pinkie promise. She had died in her sleep that night. The next morning, Zephyr had seen a tall, lean thirteen-year-old boy in a torn shirt throw a chair through the ward window, his golden eyes red from crying, the pain in his body something she’d felt in hers in that moment. Alessandro Villanova had loved his mother to the point the nurses had to sedate him to ease his pained howls.

And Zephyr, even after leaving the hospital that day, never forgot about him. That had only been the beginning of them, one he didn’t know about.

"I will scar you." "I might want it," she replied, puzzling him even more, passing whatever tests he kept throwing her way.

“If this was a fairytale, you’d have been the beast in the tower all alone, with your staff and your dogs, biting anyone who came close. I’ve seen the worst of people, and I didn’t know men like you existed until you saved me. You deserve something good, not to be alone in that house of yours.”

Her father sat reading the finance section in the newspaper, his gold-rimmed glasses on the end of his nose.

She’d wanted the romantic tale that she could tell her kids and make them believe in love, the story of two lovers who loved so deep they couldn’t be without another, flaws and all. Perhaps that was why as a little girl, she’d subconsciously seen that capacity of love in the pained, violent outburst of a boy, and claimed him for herself from that day forward.

When a ten-year-old Zephyr had asked a then thirty-five-year-old dying Adriana why her son, who had such a pretty name like Alessandro, was called Alpha, Adriana had laughed. She’d told her it was because Alphas led the pack and she wanted him to be a good leader, that she wanted him to be a good man.

Then, she’d conspiratorially called little Zephyr closer and told her that the real reason was a secret, one she could never tell. Zephyr had promised with her whole heart, and Adriana had spilled. Her son had a sweet tooth, and Adriana used to make alfajores for him when he was a child, with coconut shavings and jam, but as a kid, he’d never been able to pronounce the word. So every time he had craved something sweet, he’d said ‘alfa’, and it had become a secret joke between mother and son as he grew older and started going by Alpha.

He leaned closer, speaking quietly, “I’m going to Tenebrae to attend my half-brother’s wedding on Wednesday.” Zephyr frowned, puzzled. “Okayyy.” He had a half-brother? “You’re coming as my wife,” he stated.

“I don’t know how, rainbow,” he murmured softly, “and I don’t know what secrets of mine you have, but I want them all. You’ve sealed your fate now. Welcome to my hell.”

He was a lot. Moreover, Zephyr knew she was stepping into a world she knew nothing about, a world she'd only seen from the fringes from her time spent volunteering. The more she'd dug, the more she'd realized he was lethal. But he was also the boy who'd walked her five miles to her home in the middle of winter just so she'd get there safely.

How long he'd been there, no one knew. The attending doctor had told him his memory around the incident might never return, that it was possibly his brain’s way of protecting him from further trauma. Some days, he was grateful for it. Some days, the need to know the truth was a hunger gnawing inside his scarred flesh.

But he didn’t like this tightness. She hadn’t been married to him one day and she was causing him heart problems already.

Alpha appreciated the man’s straight question. But Zephyr had told him her parents couldn’t know she was marrying him for that. He shook his head once. “No. Your daughter… she’s like a ray of sunshine in my very dark life.” What the fuck just came out of his mouth?

"Then what tells the truth?" She tilted her head to the side, curious about his thought process. "Heart," he stated, no affliction in his voice. "And what does yours say?" The unscarred side of his lips lifted. "Nothing. Fucker hasn't spoken in years. It's a dead, scarred piece of useless muscle." God, it hurt her. It hurt her that he'd built himself a tower with walls so high it had become impenetrable.

'You are hope, sunshine. Hope for a better life.'

She raised her glass of water to him. “To chemistries that lie.” He raised his. "And hearts that die."

Zephyr looked at the man. She was surprised by the openness of his affection for his wife-to-be. The men she’d encountered rarely wore their love with the kind of pride he did and still managed to pull off the self-assured, cocky vibe that was kinda hot. Damn, the girl was lucky. He had an interesting personality.

‘One day, when I have money, I’m going to buy you the prettiest ring, sunshine.’

Zephyr felt her nose burn and looked out, remembering the whispered promise on the last night she’d seen him before he’d disappeared from her life. The ring was more precious to her than he’d ever realize. She hadn’t expected him to get her one, had been fully prepared to buy one for herself, but he had and it was perfect, and Zephyr tucked that moment he slid it on her finger in a corner of her heart, cupping it like a flame in the fluttering wind, keeping it alive, warm and loved, to revisit if she failed in making him love again.

She extended her hand and touched his, her skin loving the sensation of his, and gave his fingers a squeeze. “You’re a good man.” Alpha pulled his hand away. “Don’t look at me with those stars in your eyes, Zephyr. You’re fooling yourself if you think I’m anything but a beast under this skin.” Zephyr raised her wine glass to him. “Then the world needs more beasts like you.”

A decade ago, their relationship hadn’t been as sexual, though not for the lack of trying on her part. She’d been eighteen and he almost twenty-two, and he’d been adamant about not sleeping with her until he could do better for himself, like she’d even cared about that. But she’d seen him before that, seen him fuck a girl once against a wall, and god, her teenage self had burned up with jealousy.

And he’d fallen for her. Only to not remember a thing about it.

But I’m

not a good, moral man. I can kill you as easily as I can make you orgasm. Blood or cum, my hands wear them both well.”

“Where were you?” he grit out, and Zephyr stared at his chest. His fingers gripped her chin, and after such a long time, she’d almost forgotten what his touch had felt like. How fucking sad was that? He tilted her face up, his golden eye taking her in. She let him. She stayed silent, which was unlike her, and let him see whatever he wanted to see.

“Were you waiting?” she asked, hating the way her voice didn’t hide the hope in it. He didn’t reply, and she sighed. What had she expected? That he would hold her and tell her he’d been waiting for her, that he’d been worried, that he’d come home early to see what was wrong? He might have done all those things, but he’d never admit to them, not when he was intent on denying anything serious between them. Swallowing, she pulled out of his hold. “Goodnight, Alpha.” She heard his sharp intake behind her. Yeah, she never called him Alpha, either. Guess there was a first time for everything.

She loved the man he had become, the way he was with his staff, the way he was with his dogs, the way he just was. She loved that he carried his scars without shame, that he had survived whatever he had and come through the other side stronger. The perseverance he wore on his skin, the respect he commanded from his people, the kindness he showed the vulnerable—he was a man worth falling down the hell for. And sometimes, when he let his guard down a bit and looked at her with softness, it kindled the hope in her heart.

She couldn't do that to him, and now she was trapped in a situation of her own making with a husband

she loved, one who didn't remember her, love her, or even trust her. And it made her mad. Her dying hope made her livid.

"My agenda," she hissed, "was to make you love me." His grip tightened on her arm. "It didn't work, because I don't believe you."

Everything had been going great. Until she didn’t show up at the tower.

Alpha remembered sitting in his office, watching the door, something twisting in his gut when she didn’t come. He’d called Victor, who’d told him she’d gone home. Thinking maybe she was unwell, he’d wrapped everything up and gotten home, only to find it empty, her dinner plate washed and drying. She’d eaten without him. And that… they did that together. She’d come back, and she’d been off. Not herself.

And then she’d called him Alpha. Not hubby, not handsome, not some absolutely ridiculous name...

And it didn’t go away, not when she’d started to have dinner with him in her pajamas, not when she simply went to sleep and didn't even try to engage with him, not when she didn't cuddle him anymore. She had slipped in behind his defenses, and he did not like that.

He wasn't a good man by any means, and the fact that Dante had grown up with resources Alpha had to bleed to earn and beg Lorenzo Maroni to save his mother, was still a thorn in his side. He tried to not let his previous experience color his relationship with Dante, especially since the other man had been persistent in wanting to have a good relationship with him, but sometimes it bled through. Alpha didn’t trust people easily, and while he’d been trying to keep an open mind, eventually, he hoped to be completely okay with the man, simply because the desire of having some family, any family, was acute in his heart.

Something was happening right there, in that pool of water, in the broad daylight. As his single eye stayed on her, as he gave a perceptible nod, something was happening, shifting, realigning. Heart pounding, she lifted the flap up, slowly, until it was on his head. And her heart broke.

Zephyr studied the scar he hid under the leather patch, and leaned forward, placing a soft kiss over it.

“You didn’t come back.” He hadn’t. Not for days. Not for weeks. Not for years. She’d waited. He’d left her alone, standing on the side of a road and never returned, and god, a part of her hated him so much for it.

“You left me.” She hated the way her jaw trembled as memories she’d been keeping at bay flooded her in her vulnerable state. “You forgot me,” she whispered, unable to keep it in any longer. The secret had become poison in her veins, corroding her from the inside as she tried to protect him. The unscarred side of his face frowned, his gaze sharpening on her. “I didn’t forget you.”

A part of her still wanted to return and fight for them, the part that had been fascinated by him at ten, fallen in love with him at eighteen, and found him again now. That part wanted to jump into his arms like she had that first night at the fight, and

that part wanted her to stay in the hope that she could maybe make him love her too.