Soft || 18+ Reverse Harem ||

58 - Bloodied

. . .

Andros Kozlov

I woke up with bloodied knuckles and the partition of my cell smeared with blood.

What the fuck?

The last time this had happened was when someone touched Dahlia. Did someone touch Dahlia again?

That made me want to bash my aching fist into someone.

I walked to the partition, closely examining the smear of blood. I had punched it. I looked down when I saw movement. Vaness was scratching in the partition, looking up at me

"Hey." I crouched so that I could look at her. Just then Lucian came into view. He opened the cell wordlessly. Vaness scurried away.

"Was Dahlia here last night?" I asked.

"No," he answered quietly as I walked out.

"Why do you sound like that?"

He ran a tatted hand over his face. "She got another picture."

"And?"

"It's her mom, Andros."

Fuck.

. . .

I walked inside Dahlia's room. She was cuddled into Hedeon, crying into her hands. Alexandre was standing near a window, talking to someone over the phone furiously. Probably one of the guards who were supposed to keep Dahlia's family safe.

I focused on Dahlia. "Baby."

She looked up at me, her eyes filled with tears and that pretty face a mess. "Andros-" her bottom lip trembled. I grabbed her as I sat down, making her straddle me. She dug her face into my neck, her whole body trembling.

Her crying like this fucking wrecked me.

I dug my face into her hair, rubbing her back.

"He-He'll kill her." She whimpered. "Because of me-"

"He'll kill her because he is a killer, Dahlia. They don't need more reasons. Getting a reaction out of you is just a bonus." I kissed her forehead. "It's not your fault."

"If that fucking organization wasn't after me, she'd be safe. Evan would be safe. How can I mess up things by just existing?" She asked miserably. "Dad wouldn't survive without her, you know? He loves her."

I couldn't care less about her dad. But seeing him sad would make Dahlia sad, and I care about Dahlia a lot more than I cared about any fucking thing.

"We'll do everything we can to get her back, Dahlia," I told her. "Do you trust us?"

She nodded. "I do."

I pulled her away from my chest, making her look up at me. I wiped the tears off her face. "It will be okay."

Her body jerked with hiccups. "You think so?"

I nodded. "Yes, baby."

She cocooned herself against me again and I didn't have the heart to put her down. I took her to the kitchen and made her breakfast as Hedeon, Lucian, and Alexandre worked to get her mother back. Dahlia stared into the distance, barely looking at me. I had thought her disassociation had stopped for good, but it was apparent that it got triggered only when she felt too many emotions.

I fed her. She couldn't concentrate on eating much. She didn't speak either. It was weird. Dahlia always spoke. And she and I never really shut up when we were together. The comfortable silence thing existed between her, Hedeon, and Alexandre.

She finished up her breakfast and then noticed my knuckles.

That snapped her to reality. "Andros- what happened?" She asked, gently grabbing my hand and looking at the knuckles closely.

"I don't know," I said truthfully. "I think I punched the partition again, but I don't know what triggered it."

"Did you check the camera?" She asked.

"No, not yet." I had gone to her as soon as Lucian told me what happened with her mom.

"Can we check now?"

I nodded and we walked to my office. She held my hand and kept glancing at my knuckles. For a while, her worry was shifted.

We looked at the footage. I was sleeping, it was dark but not enough the the footage to be completely blank. I couldn't really sleep with much light, and I didn't even bother to have any light on when Dahlia wasn't down there.

I watched as a figure emerged. He sat on the recliner Dahlia usually sat it. His body was covered in a hoodie and jeans. Even his fucking hands had gloves on and he seemed to be wearing a mask that covered all of his face. I could still see the tattoos on his neck, but it was too dark for me to see them clearly.

In the footage, I sat up, definitely sleepwalking because I recognized the empty look in my eyes.

The man leaned forward, tapping the partition with the finger of his gloved hand and I snapped, slamming my fists into the partition violently. The man sat there, unfazed. He didn't move. And I didn't stop trying to break out. He moved only when I slowed down, and even then he took his sweet time. When he was away, I paced the door for hours and then went back to bed.

"Who was that?" Dahlia asked me, perched on my thigh. "Do you know?"

I shook my head. "No. But not many people have access to the cells so it has to be one of the few people who do."

After Dahlia bandaged my fists and said I should sleep with boxing gloves on, we spent hours interrogating people who had access to the cells. Dahlia was very assertive with her arms crossed against her chest and her ass on my thigh, sitting on it like it was her throne.

Which it definitely was. I didn't even have to speak, she questioned my staff thoroughly while I just watched and provided glares when needed.

I could tell they were confused about how to react to Dahlia, but they answered the best they could.

When we were done, it was obvious none of the people who had access to the cells had been the ones in the footage.

She decided to investigate further. She went down to the cells, accompanied by Hedeon as Alexandre and I prepared Lunch.

"She is distracting herself," he muttered in French.

"Can't blame her," I replied in English. I knew French, Russian, Italian, Spanish, and too much Latin and Greek. My mother knew many languages so she made sure her sons knew them too.

I didn't like to speak in anything but English. Everything else was a reminder of the punishments I got when I refused to go to classes. Hedeon loved languages and was a tad bit better at Spanish than I was, something he liked to remind me of often.

"Yes," he said. "Who do you think it was down there?" I had shown him the footage.

"I don't know," I said truthfully. "It could be anyone."

"No one unauthorized should be down there. Dahlia spends a lot of time here. Let's put another layer of security."

I nodded.

Dahlia walked into the kitchen. "Nothing. I found nothing. This is weird."

I kissed her forehead. "We'll figure it out. Let's eat first, yes?"

She looked at the food miserably but didn't protest.

. . .