ALANA

35

ARES

All I can feel is pure rage. I am not aware of where I am and what I am doing.

"Ares." I hear a whisper.

Elena?

I feel the world stop as I snap back into reality, and suddenly the feeling of my hand squeezing something becomes all too real making me release it and pull back immediately.

I see Alana crash onto the floor as my ears start ringing and all I can hear is numbed sounds of her crying. I gulp trying to clear up my head, watching her small body shake as she gasps for air holding her neck.

"Alana-" I say quickly trying to help her off the floor but she let's out a gut wrenching scream that makes me halt and just stare. She scrambles up and runs away to the stairs as fast as she can.

My body feels like it's crashing after a long high. I was choking her. I was choking a woman. No I was choking the life out of the woman I married. I brought her here and now I am fucking abusing her. My gut twists with disgust in myself as I look down at my hand.

The sound of Elena whispering my name echoes in my head, merging with how Alana whispered it in a choked voice just mere minutes ago.

I groan, walking to the couch crashing on it. What the fuck happened to me. Why did I black out like that. Fuck.

~

Waking up I find myself on a couch in the living room. The sun is streaming through the curtains as I stand up, memories of the previous night flashing im my head.

I groan, walking to the stairs to go to my bathroom. Cautious of Alana being in there and scaring her more, I try to be quiet and just walk in. But she's not in there. The couch isn't slept in neither is the bed. I look around in confusion.

I do my business and change as fast as I can and walk back downstairs. I see Maybel ordering some people around so I walk over to her.

"Buon Giorno, have you seen Alana?" I ask her. She looks at me in surprise.

"No young master, why had she not been in her room?" She asks. I shake my head.

"Have someone look for her in the house and report back to me." I order before walking back up the stairs.

I walk to my study, calling Damon.

"Buon Giorno, I dealt with the shipment this morning already and-"

"I fucked up" I say cutting him off.

"What? What do you mean?"

"I fucked up, I was blinded with rage, I do not know why I was so angry and I couldn't stop, hell I did not know what I was doing-"

"Xander, stop talking, I haven't heard you ramble like this since we were kids, what the fuck happened?"

"I was choking her." I admit. Saying it out loud makes it so much fucking worse, I feel sick.

"Who? What? I don't understand are you at work?"

"I was angry about the whole situation with the theif we have and Enriqué called me and told me it was him who had been doing it and I was really furious about that and then Alana-"

"Ares." he says seriously. I gulp. "Tell me youre fucking joking" he says, voice wavering. I remain quiet making him hit something. "Goddamnit Xander! What the fuck? We do not hit women in this Mafia! What the fuck were you thinking?"

"I wasn't fucking thinking! I don't know what happened. I don't black out like that I was under alot of fucking pressure I was angry-"

"Well I hope squeezing the air out of your much smaller wife made you feel better." He grunts making me sigh. "Is she okay? Did you kill-"

"No! No shut the fuck up she is not dead." I say, clenching my fist at the thought. "I don't know where she is, she was terrified out of her wits and ran off last night, I haven't seen her since she wasn't in our room." I tell him.

"Fuck okay, just look for her, make sure she's okay and fix it at home before coming to work, I will handle everything here." he says in a tired voice. "And I will have Enriquès incriminating ass ready to be beat to pulp for you, I can't promise I won't have a go. Ciao"

I slam the phone down, running a hand through my hair. Fuck. Fuck.

I recall one day a couple weeks ago. I had been angry and screaming at someone on the phone. She kept looking at me out of the corner of her eye. She was scared I could tell. But it was like her body wasn't responding or like she was stuck sitting there on the couch. She looked desperate to get out of there.

After she had fallen asleep, I was still trying to finalize a deal and I had noticed her body shaking and whimpering in her sleep. She was having a nightmare. That was the first I witnessed. Turns out she has nightmares almost everynight. I found that touching her hair or holding her hand usually makes her stop shaking. So when she starts to whimper and cry, I just touch her hair for a while or I hold her hand.

It's so fucked up that she is already always scared of everything and just gave her more to be scared off. It makes me the shitiest fucker. I sigh running a hand down my face tiredly.