The Grand Duel (The Grand Men #4)

Chapter 41

FORTY-ONE

Lissie

“ I ’m sorry, Charlie.” I take the cup of tea he hands me and sit up on the mattress he unwrapped and placed in front of the fire. Luna is curled up at my side, having not left me alone since I broke down in Charlie’s arms.

“Stop apologising,” he tells me, sitting down beside me. He leans over and kisses my forehead. “You never have to apologise for feeling anything in front of me. In fact, you come to me.”

I sniffle, giving him a sad smile. “I’ve not cried like that in years, maybe ever.”

He smooths his hand over my face, the worry in his gaze tightening the knot in my throat again.

“I know I need to explain, but I don’t really know where to begin.”

“You don’t need to explain anything. Not if you don’t want to.”

“I know that. But you keep giving me pieces, and after tonight, I think it’s only right that you know.”

He nods, a frown pulled between his brows.

“I can’t promise you I won’t cry again. I’ve never told anyone but Jovie about what happened, and even then, I left the really bad parts out.”

He swallows and places his drink on the ground beside him.

I blow out a rush of air and start slap bang in the middle of the chaos. “Remember I told you my parents were arrested for child neglect when I was eleven years old?”

He nods.

“Well, it was because we’d been left on our own for four days.”

Charlie’s face turns to stone, and I drop my eyes to Luna, my hand trembling as I stroke over her back.

“It wasn’t the first time, and it wouldn’t have been a problem—I had done it for years and could look after us both, but then I went and fell down the stairs.” I bite down on my lip when a wave of emotion hits me square in the chest. “Sorry.”

“Lissie,” he pleads, but I can’t look at him.

“I was there for six hours before my parents came home and found me. Jovie was only seven, and I told her that she couldn’t call anyone for help. Back then I was terrified that if she called someone, they’d take us away, and I’d already looked up what could happen to us if my parents were ever found to be leaving us home alone. My parents weren’t even in the country, or they were on their way home at the time, so I knew there wasn’t any way they could help…” I swipe at my eyes. “I had some awful injuries, mostly internal, past the bruises on my body. I was placed in an induced coma whilst the swelling on my brain went down and then underwent multiple surgeries to mend tears on my spleen and…and a large tear on my womb.”

I stare at Luna’s back, not daring to look at the man sitting next to me.

“I didn’t blame them. Not really—not at that point,” I say, my eyes glazing over. “My mum was actually there for me, comforting me, after years of thinking I was old enough to fend for myself. My dad not so much. He was in full damage control. I remember thinking my mum had changed, but now, looking back, I can see that she was trying to fix her image by playing the doting mother just as much as he was by making it all go away quietly.”

I take a second, pulling in a deep breath, not knowing if I’ll even be able to say the next part out loud.

“I, um…” I stare at Luna, my thoughts lost to my mum. “The surgeries on my womb were successful—to an extent. My parents had private doctors that were willing to monitor me for months to ensure I’d get back on my feet. But then I started getting my monthly period, and it was awful. For years I’d have irregular, painful periods that would put me in bed for days. I was young, too—just twelve.” Tears drip down my face, and in the blur of them all, I see him, Charlie, on his knees beside me. “They took me to their doctor eventually under the promise that they’d make them stop. That they’d take the pain away. I was fourteen and terrified, and I didn’t know what it all meant. Not really, anyway.” I sniffle. “They…they had me sterilised.”

I look up with tears covering my cheeks to find Charlie frozen at my side, his face deathly pale and sad.

“It didn’t stop my periods, but it did help with them. To this day, I don’t know why or what they even truly did to me during that time. It wasn’t until I became sexually active at sixteen that I found out about the sterilisation. I was trying to be responsible and asked to be put on birth control, but it wasn’t necessary for me. I’ve tried to have it reversed.” I shake my head as my chin trembles, my words breaking apart. “I tried to have it reversed, but my tubes were a mess, and it wasn’t successful.”

I’m enveloped in strong arms, everything I kept at bay, a secret, for the past eight years unravelling at my feet.

“I know this will change things. I’m sorry I never told you sooner.” Tears run down over my lips. “I’ve never told anyone. I didn’t think you wanted?—”

He pulls back, gripping my face as he stares down at me.

It’s only now that I see the tears on his face.

“This changes nothing.”

I shake my head, frowning. “You can’t say?—”

He shakes his head, his voice a low, hard warning. “This. Changes. Nothing.” His thumbs swipe over my cheeks, my lips. “Not for us.”

I fall forward into his chest, my tears streaming down my face.

“Lissie baby, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Charlie

I stare up at the house through my windscreen, my eyes still gleaming.

Lissie fell asleep in my arms tonight, right after breaking her heart to me.

Breaking my heart.

I’ve felt rage, anger, pain like this only one other time in my life. The night I lost my little sister.

“Aldridge?” Mason’s groggy voice comes through the phone. “Fuck, what time is it? What’s going on?”

I swallow and continue to stare at the house before me, uncertain if I have it in me to even speak.

“Charles,” he snaps, as if waking up fully. “Talk to me. What’s wrong?”

“I get why you stopped me now,” I say, not recognising my own voice.

“Why I stopped you?” he repeats. “Where are you, mate? Where’s Lissie?”

I hear clothes rustling and open my car door, stepping out. “I don’t think I would have stopped that night. I would have killed Marcus if you’d let me leave campus. But you stopped me.” I open my boot and pull the baseball bat from inside, blinking away the blur in my eyes. “Are you busy tonight, Mase?”

“Tell me where you are.”

My heart hammers in my chest, the thought of my Lis?—

“Charles?”

I hang up and walk towards the house with nothing but a haze of Lissie crying on the living room floor clouding my vision. The sound of her cries and the words that left her mouth playing over and over in my mind like a broken, soulless record.

My foot goes through the back door of Elton House on my fifth attempt, the timeworn wood splintering up my shin.

Screams filter in through the memory of Lissie’s cries as I walk into the home, terror etched in raised voices I don’t care to make out.

“I always dreamed of having children when I was a little girl, but then I had to not want them. I had to just stop. To turn that off somehow.”

I swing the bat across the sideboard, smashing everything sitting atop it.

Chaos ensues.

“And when Jovie found out she was pregnant, I had to pretend that it was okay. That I was okay and that I didn’t want children, so it was fine. But then when they told her she had to get rid of the baby, of Will…I took her and I ran, and I’ve not stopped running ever since.”

I hit the drywall over and over, sending picture frames tumbling to the ground.

Glass flares into the air, covering me.

“Stop! Please, no. Stop!”

“It’s why she won’t come home. I know it. Jovie doesn’t want to hurt me with Willow — something I can’t have, but I never asked for that.”

I enter rooms, taking out anything and everything I can that will break apart or crumble.

“No one ever asked me what I wanted.”

“Of course Lissie sent him, Grace, look at him. It’s the man she was with that day.”

I turn on them, my chest heaving, eyes wild, ears ringing.

William Elton stands in his robe, fucking terrified. He holds up his shaking hand to me. “This stops now. You’ve made your point, now leave.”

I walk to him and grab him by the collar of his dressing gown, throwing him to the ground.

I could kill him.

I could kill him.

“They took away my ability to show them how to love a child, and so, I promised myself I’d ruin them with Jovie. That I’d put her first, like I would a child of my own. Like she deserved.”

I stare down at the man on the ground, knowing the woman I love loves him.

And then I ease back, turning to the woman behind me.

Despite it all…she loves them despite it all.

I wipe the end of my nose on my jacket and point the bat at her. “She’s more of a mother than you ever were or will be.” My eyes burn. “I hope she never forgives you for what you did to her.”

The woman gasps, her body trembling as she flattens her hand against her chest.

“She was fourteen,” I say, my voice eerily calm.

I watch as Grace Elton swallows, her eyes filled with tears.

And it’s as if that’s all she’s got.

“She was fucking fourteen!” I swing the bat through the glass cabinet on my left, and she screams, some kind of awards toppling to the ground.

My body ripples with rage, the need to tear their world apart inconceivable. “How could you,” I roar, swinging the bat. “How fucking dare you!” My voice cracks, the rawness of it making my throat burn.

I put the bat through the TV and then the pictures and ornaments on the mantel, my eyes catching on a picture of Lissie as it flies to the ground.

I step over the mess and pick up the frame, pulling the image free of the broken glass.

I don’t know how old she is in the picture, but she’s smiling.

My beautiful girl.

I slide it into my pocket and step over the mess, my eyes coming back to the man who’s now standing with his phone in his hand. “I’ll call the police. I don’t care who you are or what you think you know.”

“Call them. Tell them there’s a man in your house who would happily see you rotting in the ground.” I put the bat through one of the sash windows. “Tell them I’m the one who wants to put you there.” I make the most of the size of the house, smashing another window. “And while you’re at it, why don’t you tell them about the day you thought it would be acceptable to take your fourteen-year-old little girl to a surgeon—who I can promise you will never work a day in their life again—and have her sterilised.” My eyes flare, the bat swinging and swinging, glass hitting me in the face. “Tell them how you left her, you selfish pieces of shit! Tell them what you did to her! Tell them what you did to my Lissie girl!”

I see a figure in the doorway and pause, expecting the police. Only when I find focus, I see Mason standing there, his hands in his pockets and his face like stone as he watches me.

“Oh, thank god. Help! Please, help us,” Grace sobs.

My best friend’s eyes stay locked on mine, and although I can barely make him out, I know he knows I’m not done.

I turn to the partly smashed window and continue my destruction.

I go for the windows, the mirrors, the marble and crystal. There’s no plan or thought. Just her. Her and her pain and her life that’s been shaped by two people who don’t deserve to know her.

When the ache in my arms becomes impossible to ignore, my blows uncoordinated, my sweat and tears mingling into something unidentifiable, the bat is taken from my hands, and I’m walked from the house.

Mason stops midway across the drive, his car lights lit up and blinding.

He faces me, brushing off my clothes before he takes my face in his hands and forces me to look at him.

My eyes threaten to roll closed, pain in my hand and leg burning.

“I always wondered when you’d go,” he says, searching my eyes. “It’s alright.”

“Mase,” I rasp.

His thumbs smear across my cheeks. “I know.”

“They hurt her.”

“I know.” His nostrils flare, his eyes promising me that he knows. “You good, my friend?”

I sniff, blinking, and then I nod.

He nods and steps back, walking me to the car.