Draft version - Russian Roulette - Family secrets

Ch. 79: Eh, it's not really something to ask a guy...

The pain in her eyes and her sadness shone through.

Mackenzie looked at Phoenix, she was not ashamed. She had survived, she was proud of that. Still, she remembered the rage King had been in when he saw she had gotten the scar removed.

That she had survived too.

She had lived a double life her entire adulthood. A professional, hardworking woman who seemed independent and together to everybody around her. But a haunted, broken person with major trust issues and self-hate on the inside.

Friends and coworkers, she had had over the years in the different places she had lived. She had never stayed in one place too long out of fear of them coming too close or herself growing too attached.

Her father had understood it had been her way of distancing herself from him and his line of business, also why he had accepted that she had refused to take money from him and make it on her own. If he had known why she had distanced herself, maybe Vittorio would not have been so easy with accepting it.

Her mother had just thought her restless and adventurous and never really questioned Mackenzie's choices. Patricia had stopped acting like a mother long before Mackenzie had been able to make her own choices in life.

It had been 20 very lonely years and Gareth had been her first true friend. Mackenzie had told Gareth everything about herself except that one little detail, and of course the details associated with that. She had hoped that if he had felt the same as her, that she could have trusted him with the information and asked for his help. Gareth had ghosted her before they had reached that point of trust.

Trust was not easy for her.

And there Phoenix was looking at her with sympathy hoping she would trust him. Determined to help her. To her it did not look like it was a question of 'if' he could help her, he would.

"You've gone through that 36 times in the last 20 years?" Phoenix choked out. He was glad he had not had breakfast yet, because that would have ended in a mess.
"Yes. The first times were the worst. I did what I had to survive."
"I don't doubt that," Phoenix reassured her with a gentle caress of her head. "Why didn't you tell your father, he could have protected you. Given you bodyguards to make sure you weren't kidnapped again."

Mackenzie choked out a little laugh. "You don't understand. I had a bodyguard. He was with me at all times. At school, home, when I went to friends. Even when I visited my mother. It was his job to be my shadow or wait outside every room I entered where he couldn't enter. My father and I trusted him explicitly."

With shaking hands Mackenzie grabbed Phoenix's free hand and held it. Hers was cold as ice around his warm one.

"Gregorio was in love with me, I think. He protected me and had done so for years." Mackenzie paused. "He was also one of the first who raped me under King's command."

Phoenix felt physically ill at that information. He had no idea if it were him or Mackenzie who held on to the other's hand the tightest.

"He was one of that King guy's men?"
"I don't think he was at first, he was not one of my father's men, he had been hired specifically for me. I'm not sure. Iri, that's what I called him when I was young, had probably been promised a lot of things by King. I don't know, really. But he was the reason why King could kidnap me from my home, why King always could get to me."
"Why didn't you tell your father about him?"
"King had convinced me that he had plenty more inside my father's circle, I could never be sure. If I told on Iri, and got him killed, another would just replace him. And he threatened my father in many ways. Physically, socially and economically."