36. O

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"Did you know?!"

Aiden stared at me from the other side of our bedroom with nothing but total despair in his expression. But it didn't soothe me. It didn't stop the trembling that caused my entire frame to shake.

"Ari—"

"Did you?!"

He swallowed and then nodded.

I almost collapsed. It was too much. It was all too much. I felt nauseous. I continued shoving clothes into the over night duffle that I'd used when we went on vacation. Tops, shorts, skirts. I didn't give it a lot of attention. I just knew that I needed to get it all into a bag because I had to leave. I couldn't be under this roof for another minute.

"Please don't leave, Arian," his voice was broken. It was torture to hear the raw emotion in his words. But I shook my head and refused to turn around.

"Please Aiden," I sobbed, almost unable to see the zip as I reached for it. "You have to let me leave."

"I didn't realise until this afternoon," he said and I heard the door close. My heart picked up speed in fear. But I took a deep breath. He wouldn't hurt me. He wouldn't. "I didn't realise until you told me your last name. At the pet store when we were choosing the tag for Evin's collar. I swear."

"And the last name?" The sales girl glanced up with a polite smile while she tapped her pen on the countertop. Aiden glanced down at me with what seemed to be mild embarrassment.

"I don't even know your maiden name," he shook his head with disbelief. "We can use whatever name you choose beautiful."

"Oh, it's Peters," I shrugged a shoulder. "But I prefer Evin Emerson. It's so much cuter."

"I knew that I'd heard that name before," his voice was getting closer. "I checked when we got home. In a file that Kyle had put together a while ago. I'd never looked at it because I didn't want to have that secret between us. That I'd checked your background. But when I did look in it this afternoon. That's when I realised the truth. We'd never talked about how your parents died. I just never put two and two together. Arian, of course I knew that I had to tell you. I just needed to figure out how."

I turned around, tears spilled over and rolled down my cheeks and it felt as though I'd been impaled with a giant knife when I met his grief stricken expression. He stopped a meter or two in front of me and slipped his hands into his pockets. He'd done that before, to make sure that I felt safe. It just made me sob even harder.

"I've been living under the same roof as the man who murdered my paren—" a choked sob cut me off and I had to inhale a deep breath to continue. "My p-p-parents. The people that meant more to me than anything. I h-h-have been so alone without them."

His head dropped and he pinched the bridge of his nose as his shoulders shook. I couldn't bare to see him hurt. I was mad but he was still the man that I loved. I stared out at the rain that pelted the window. The drops glistened from the bedroom lights and total darkness was all that could be seen. The storm outside was nothing compared to the one that I was feeling within me.

"You're whole purpose is to serve justice Aiden," I cried even harder as I gripped the duffel and let it hang beside me. "You're supposed to bring justice to the people that couldn't get it themselves. You hid a murderer! You gave him a new life and put him up in this g-gorgeous house. He never had to suffer the consequences of his actions. He— he took two innocent people and got away with it."

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