“You’re insane. Batshit, crazy insane.”
“I can assure you –”
In a blind instant, I swiped the cup out of the General’s hands, and it bounced off the counter, smashing on the floor. I jumped from the stool until I was on top of her, swinging my arms wildly. She went back a couple of paces before crashing to the ground with me thrashing my fists at her, screaming.
Before I knew it, Ryan had pulled me off.
“You fucking bitch!” I squealed. “You crazy fucking bitch!”
The General sat up, stunned, and pulled a tea towel off the rack above her. She nursed her bleeding wounds.
The General’s husband appeared through the hallway.
“What the hell is going on here?” he demanded.
“Don’t worry,” Ryan said. “I’ve got her.”
“Shut her up,” the husband replied. “I don’t care how, just shut her up.”
Ryan’s hands covered my mouth. I struggled with him but it was useless.
He was far too strong.
The General put the tea towel down and began to crawl towards me. Her wretched expression revealed the monster lurking within her.
She grabbed my ankles and held them in place.
“Should I call for help?” the husband asked.
She waved her hand at him. “No. Don’t do that.”
She began to pull herself off the ground using my body as support.
Soon we were face to face.
“If you can’t be calm about this, Bianca,” she said, “then I’m afraid I can no longer help you. What’s it going to be?”
Ryan released his hands from my mouth.
“I’ll be calm,” I whispered.
“Good,” the General said. “So will I.”
CHAPTER NINE
The three of us – Ryan, the General and myself – were now seated in the living room, each on separate pieces of furniture. The General’s husband had presumably gone back to bed.
“I don’t think it’s wise for us to argue anymore,” the General stated. “You obviously disagree with what’s happened to your family, even though you know nothing of our practices.”
“I thought you said you didn’t want to argue,” I said between my teeth.
“The truth is we’re running out of time,” the General continued. “We need to get you dressed and made up for the party so you can speak to Aiden.”
“And then you want me to lure him right into your hands?”
“In exchange for your family.”
“How will it work? How will I know you will set them free?”
“We’ll have them transported to a drop point,” the General answered. “You bring Aiden and we’ll bring the rest of your family.”
I shook my head. “Your men will just overpower us and take everyone.”
“What do you suggest then?” the General asked. “I assume you have a better idea?”
“I’m thinking,” I said. “I really am thinking.”
The General and Ryan looked at each other.
“I’ll do it,” he said.
“Do what?” she replied.
“I’ll bring her family down for the exchange. I’ll be by myself. No one else.”
“He’ll just take off,” the General argued. “You won’t be able to get a hold of him.”
“Of course I will,” Ryan replied. “I’m much faster than he is.”
“And then what happens? You can’t seriously think you could beat Aiden in a fight.”
“I’ll bring a tranq-gun,” Ryan said. “And that will be that.”
I played the scenario out in my mind. Ryan just might have something.
“It has to be in an open space,” I said. “You’ll need to get there first as well. I need to be sure there’s no one else that’s going to be there.”
“There’s an oval nearby the party’s location. Just down the road I think,” the General said. “So are you ready to get changed, Bianca?”
I shifted uncomfortably. “Let’s get this over with.”
CHAPTER TEN
Finally. Finally it will all be over.
Within the hour I am transformed. My hair is set back and my cheeks are powdered. I wear lipstick and eye shadow that both match my sparkling blue dress. The General puts nail polish to my fingers and Ryan attaches a necklace around me. They show me the mirror image, but I can only glance at it. Behind a now pleasing exterior, I am still very tired and afraid.
I’m so, so afraid.
It’s well after midnight when the limousine pulls up to the high-rise mansion. I stepped out of the car slowly and into the flashing light bearing down on me. A woman with a clipboard walked down the steps to approach me, with a guard on either side of her.
“Mrs. Swan?”
That’s me. “Yes?”
“Do you have your invitation with you?”
I handed it to her.
“Thank you very much, Mrs. Swan. Feel free to come inside, and mingle. The bar is still open of course. Would you like speak to anyone already here? The host perhaps?”
“I’d like to see Aiden Phillips, if he is here.”
“Certainly. I’ll see if he is available.”
I followed the woman up the steps and through the main entrance while she spoke to other staff members instructing them to locate Aiden. The carpet inside was almost the same shade of blue as my dress.
“Wait right here, Mrs. Swan.”
The attendant disappeared up another flight of stairs, whilst I stayed down below. There was a comfy looking leather chair situated nearby which I decided to sit on whilst I waited.
A waiter came over in less than a minute to offer me a glass of champagne.
I reluctantly accepted.
Sipping the champagne, I looked up in the direction of the staircase, anticipating Aiden’s decent. Any moment now. I felt so awkward. So off. What if he saw me and just turned around and walked away? It had been so long now. Perhaps we were never really close, but these last three years really had made strangers of us.
Stepbrother and stepsister.
Didn’t I once tell myself we were in love?
Oh no.
I could see he was coming now. Just his outline was visible from here, but I could see enough to know it was him.
The attendant trailed behind him.
I put the glass down and stood up from the chair. I took a deep breath. Didn’t look in his direction. And though I couldn’t be sure of the exact moment his eyes laid on me, I felt his gaze go through me with the rays of a thousand suns.
“Bianca.”
His voice.
His commanding, chastising, menacing voice.
“No – that’s Marsha Swan, wife of –”
“Leave us,” Aiden said silencing the attendant.
His footsteps were getting closer to me.
I had to turn.
“How on earth did you find me?” Aiden asked.
And while I wasn’t sure what I was going to say next, one thing was for sure.
I couldn’t tell him the truth.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Aiden had bulked up. Underneath his shiny black jacket and tie, I could see he had put on maybe twenty pounds of muscle. His face had roughened. He had a light beard I could tell was hiding the fading remnants of scars underneath.
The biggest difference though was in the eyes. They were so cold, so fierce.
It was as if he was a ghost of his former self.
“Shh,” he said as I began to speak. “It doesn’t matter. Follow me please.”
I watched him carefully as he moved past me and walked towards the double doors at the end of the front room.
Inside the doors we passed through various groups of distinguished individuals standing around talking. Aiden and I weaved our ways to the end of the room once again, this time leading us into the cold outside.
There were people out here too. Though not as many.
“How far do you think it goes?”
I followed Aiden’s gaze from the steps out into the darkness of the garden before us.
“I’m not sure,” I said. “They don’t have any lights on.”
As soon as I said that, a purple light several hundred meters away flashed, in accompaniment with five more lights of different color, location and sequence.
“Wow,” I murmured. “It was as if they heard me speak.”
Aiden turned to me. “You’d be surprised.”
“Would I?”
He smiled a moment and then turned away from me. He started descending the steps.
I followed him, at his side, wondering where he was going with this. Perhaps he was just trying to get out of ear range from anybody else.
“How have you been?” he asked.
“How – how have I been?” I spluttered.
He didn’t just ask me that.
“It’s not a complicated question is it?” he asked, turning slightly.
Our feet soon found the grass below.
“I’ve been fucked that’s how I’ve been,” I snapped.
“That’s not a very nice thing to say,” Aiden returned.
“What the hell happened to you?” I hissed. “You just left me there. I thought you were going to come back for me.”
“What we had was wrong,” Aiden said, getting right to it. “It was a mistake.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Us,” he said. “I knew where it was going – and I couldn’t do it. It was … just wrong of us.”
I almost choked on my own breath. “Excuse me!” I shouted. “You just left me with those bikers to do whatever they wanted with me. You – you left our family behind. Like they were nothing. Like I was nothing. What do you have to say for yourself?”
“Gosh you look beautiful in this light,” he said dreamily.
I hadn’t noticed the purple flash behind me.
“Prick,” I swore at him.
“Bitch,” he swore back.
“Moron.”
“Ugly.”
I could feel my face go red at that point. I lunged out at him wildly, slamming my palms into his chest.
But instead of falling over, Aiden grabbed my hands and then attempted to dance with me.
“What are you doing?” I shouted as he spun me around.
“Having fun?”
I let go of hands and forced myself a few paces away from him.
He stared back at me, a lifeless stare.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “You just don’t care about anything. But yourself.”
“I couldn’t help you,” Aiden said slyly. “Or them. If I’d come back for you that night, they would have blown my brains out. If I had showed up to where the General wanted me, she would have had them killed, and imprisoned me.”
“So you do nothing – is that it?”
“Who do you think I am?” he challenged. “You. The family. You guys are not my responsibility.”
I nodded, tears falling from my eyes.
It was as if I’d forgotten our plan to set Aiden up. I just wanted to strangle him to death right here.
“Bianca,” he said, moving towards me. “You should have moved on by now. You should have forgotten about me.”
“Like you forgot about me?”
“Let’s be honest. I never thought about you much to begin with.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
Words. Words can hurt. I’m not sure what I was expecting Aiden to say when I challenged him for abandoning us … but I wasn’t ready for this.
My feet began to feel weak. I looked away from him, and walked back to the steps. I sat down on the last one and stared out into empty space. For all I knew he was just going to walk away right now. And with it my chance to save the others.
“Sorry,” he said moving towards me. “That was probably a little harsh. I can see I’ve upset you.”
I shook my head. “You haven’t done anything to me.”
Words.
Words that had no meaning.
“Are you alright?” he asked.
I shook my head again.
“Tell me why you came here,” he said. “Have you really been trying to find me all this time?”
I looked at him sideways. “I don’t know how you can do it. How you can … feel nothing.”
“If it had been me that was imprisoned,” he replied, “me that was abducted. Which of them would have sacrificed themselves for me? Think about that for a moment.”
“You’re just an asshole.”
“Yes,” he said. “I am.”
I looked up at him. He wasn’t smiling, and yet it was there. Somewhere in his eyes. He was proud of it.
And I wanted to hurt him.
I wanted to make him pay.
“Shall we say goodbye now?” he asked. “Or is it best left unsaid?”
I swallowed. “What’s happening up there?”
“Where?”
“In the house.”
His eyes followed my lead up the side of the mansion, to the windows up high. Wild neon lights flashed within, and the sound of music stirred.
“I guess they’re having a dance,” Aiden remarked. “Perhaps we could … hmm … no...”
“What?”
“Would you care to dance with me? Put the past behind us, and just enjoy the now.”
As he asked me, I noticed he was doing everything he could to sound sincere. The way the skin around his cheeks shifted upward. The parting of lips and showing of teeth.
He may have even blinked a couple of times, but it was in vein. I’d already seen it.
The coldness was still there.
“Well, what do you say?”
He offered his hand.
“We can dance right here.”
And although I hated him, and knew his selfishness had caused so much suffering, I could still feel him break me. That charm. Those looks. My heart wanted me to reach up and take his hand because deep down I still had those feelings from the past, feelings I couldn’t run away from.
My head wanted me to take his hand for another reason.
I was going to have to manipulate him while he was manipulating me.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The time is now. Time to decide. As if there’s a decision to make. As if this can end any other way.
I have to give him up. I have to betray him in order to rescue the others.
Perhaps when I was coming here, I thought there might be another way. That I could tell Aiden what was really going on. That he would think of a way to save himself as well as the others. That had seemed, the right thing to do. The moral thing.
But he didn’t care about them. I know that now. He didn’t care about me either.
And yet here we were. Our fingers interlocked and hands around each other as we slow-danced to the sound of distant music from the mansion before us.
He looked right at me the whole time. His eyes trying to dissolve mine.
Sending me underneath his spell. Luring me into his trap.
“So do you want to get out of here?” he whispered.
I held his gaze a while before answering. “I thought you said it was wrong between us.”
“I say a lot of things I don’t mean.”
I continued to stare at him. I knew what he was waiting for. The signal from me. The waving of the flag. Me, lowering my eyes, consenting to his whims.
There was nothing there.
Nothing inside of him that was reaching out.
He literally saw me as worthless. Something to cherish and hold and love for one night, and then be forgotten about all over again.
“Well…?” he asked.
“Sure,” I whispered back. “But there’s somewhere in particular I have in mind for us.”
“Really?” he beamed. “And where is that exactly?”
“Oh, you know,” I murmured. “Not that far from here…”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“I want to know everyth
ing,” Aiden said swooping in over my shoulder, as we stood outside the mansion waiting for our car. “What you’ve been doing. How much you’ve been thinking about me.”
“Don’t be full of yourself.”
“But you have been thinking about me, right? I want to know how you came to find me here. You didn’t answer when I asked you before.”
“I can’t answer that now.”
“Why not?” he remarked. “Are you afraid of showing your true feelings to me?”
I stepped out of his clutches and he laughed.
“Bianca, look at me.”
I turned and looked at him. He seemed eager.
“Kiss me.”
I shook my head. “No.”
“You better kiss me.”
“This is so weird, Aiden,” I confessed awkwardly. “I don’t know what you’re doing.”
The car rolled up beside me. The valet got out and tossed Aiden the keys.
“What happened to your bike?” I asked.
“It wasn’t mine,” Aiden muttered.
He opened the door for me and I got inside the car. Aiden soon joined me seated behind the wheel. He put the keys in the ignition and started the car.
We drove out of the gates to the mansion and turned onto the road.
I knew where we were going. The General had pointed it out clearly on the map and the limo driver had taken me there briefly before we went to the mansion. I still didn’t know why we were going there though. What I was going to say.
Aiden slowed the car down as we approached the oval.
The General was right. There wasn’t anywhere for someone to hide out here. You could see everything, in all directions. Over the horizon we were given a perfect view of the city’s lights, burning in their faraway eternity.
I reached over to open the car door, but Aiden grabbed my hand.
“Where are they?” he asked.
“Huh?”
I turned back to him. His face was expressionless.
“Where are they?”
“Where are who?”
“You know who.”
So. He’d figured it out then. For how long … Did he just realize now? Or was he playing me the entire time?
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