"Broccoli?"
I'd expected her to ask for chocolate and wine. Wasn't that what women wanted for comfort?
"Yeah. Meat, carbs and vegetables."
"An unexpectedly healthy choice." I stood up and held my hands out to her. "Come on. Let me get you in bed. I'll have to call for help with your feet."
"Why?"
I shrugged, ashamed. "I don't know how to fix them."
Trixie placed her hands in mine, but I shook my head, gliding my hands along her wet arms to the top. I hooked my arms under hers and took all her weight as I lifted her into me. She couldn't stand on those feet; I wouldn't allow it.
Grabbing a towel off the rack, I tossed her onto my shoulder. She squealed, and it filled me with warmth once the panic had rose. She wasn't in pain; if she was, she wasn't showing it. She laughed, a sound I'd seldom heard from anyone in my life, ever, and certainly not as paralysing as hers. I smiled as I wriggled out of my wet trousers and boxers, wrapped one towel around my hips and threw the other over Trixie.
I carried her to the bedroom and stared at the bed. How was I supposed to dry someone who couldn't stand?
It was almost amusing being held over Elias' shoulder as he stood frozen and pondering. He had no idea how to do this—the caring and tender thing.
"Put the towel on the bed and sit me on it."
I didn't even want to ask to stand. My feet still sang with pain, my ankles burned and every muscle in my body begged for relief.
Elias sighed, accepting my idea, and crossed the room to sit me down. My feet dangled to the floor out of sight and I couldn't force myself to look. Instead I watched my husband as he tightened his towel and returned to the bathroom for another. When he came back, his eyes were blazing.
"There's a lot of blood," he said, paling.
Elias was used to blood—shedding it—but he regretted making me bleed. It still hurt, the fact that he'd whipped me and, at the time, showed no mercy. But now it was over, and I would let him lick my wounds. It was the only way. To suffer what history had planned for us, and heal us both in the aftermath.
“It’s okay.” I wiggled my toes, ignoring the sharp stabs of pain in each one that shot up my feet to my ankles. “They’ll heal.”
Elias slipped away from me, losing the light in his eyes for a second before he stood up and pulled his hand through his hair.
“I’ll go and arrange dinner. Ruby will be here soon.”
“Ruby?”
I didn’t want to see her. The last time I had—yesterday, at my wedding, she’d given me to her grandson, her noblest and most devoted descendant. She’d also ordered me to kill a man, to stay in a cell like a criminal until I did as she’d asked…because she could demand these things of me. I’d done what she wanted and I didn’t want her here spouting bullshit about how I’d done the right thing and she was proud of me.
I didn’t want her pride.
Part of me wanted her blood. A strange thirst for crimson waves gushing from an artery suddenly slammed into me and I swallowed hard.
“It’ll happen.” Elias took a step back. “You’ll want to kill us all. It’s important you remember we’re family, and why Elizabeth began this all those years ago. Think of the boys, and you’ll return to us.”
“How do you know that’s what I want?”
He shrugged and took another step, reaching behind him for the door. He was going to leave me, wet, naked and bleeding, because he couldn’t face the reality he was asking me to cling onto.
“We’ve all been where you are. I’m not agreeing that it’s right, but it’s the way it is. The sooner you accept that, the better our life will be.”
“But you said-”
“This shouldn’t be your life. Just know that I believe that with everything I have.”
I nodded, giving him a tight smile to show I didn’t hate him for deserting me…again.
I did hate him, but it made me love him more. I couldn’t understand why, but my anger towards him made me adore him until I didn’t think I could breathe without him here.
Elias left and I sat in silence waiting for Ruby. I couldn’t move; I couldn’t risk standing until our medicine woman grandmother had looked at my feet, probably asked a thousand questions about why I had been tortured, and then she’d patch me up and do whatever she’d do next.
So I just sat waiting, looking at the door and around at Elias’ bedroom.
I knew I wouldn’t hear her coming before she arrived.
She didn’t knock on the door. She opened it like she owned it…because she did. She owned our privacy as well as our future.
“Trixie,” she whispered in sympathy, and smiled in pride as she stepped in. “What happened?”
“I'm sure your prince has already told you.”
I tried not to let her know I was angry, seething, but it was hard. I wanted to tear at her wrinkly throat. Elias had been right that night in Black Ash. We weren’t far from psychosis at any given time. How could I envision killing my grandmother when twenty-four hours ago I couldn’t imagine killing a complete stranger?
“He hasn’t told me anything. He said he took you to the Sector and you need care.”
“Basti-something,” I said, rolling my eyes. “I can't remember what it’s called.”
“Bastinado.” Of course she would know. She probably explained it to my husband. “It’s an old method of punishment…why? Why did he whip your feet?”
“Because he thought I was trying to run.”
There was no point in lying. She’d find out one way or another, and I knew Elias’ allegiance to her was far more cemented than mine. If he told her everything after I’d told her nothing, I’d be punished again…and I had a feeling Ruby would be less merciful.
“Were you?”
She got to her knees. For a woman who claimed arthritis and osteoporosis, she got to the floor quickly, with the grace of a gazelle and wrapped two little hands around one of my ankles to bring my foot up in front of her. I felt her thumb press against the arch and I squealed.
“No, I wasn’t. I woke up early-” She shot me her twitchy polygraph eye. “I did. I had a restless night so I went out for fresh air. I stumbled upon the village and stayed for a while. He thought I’d tried to run away.”
“Always so quick to assume the worst,” Ruby mused, looking at me to drive the message home. She knew what I thought of GRIT. “He should have listened to you. Bastinado is an extreme method of punishment.”
“I know.”
I remembered pain. I remembered the white-hot agony that could have been alleviated had my torture master had a little mercy.
“It’ll take a few days, perhaps a week to heal. No more exploring villages, Trixie. If you want to go on an expedition, call for staff to accompany you. It’s easy to get lost here.”
“What do you mean, assume the worst?” I asked, returning to what she’d said earlier. “And villages? There’s more than one?”
“Employee settlements are common on estates such as ours, dear. We don’t own all this land to waste it and leave people on the outside rotting.”
“I know. You keep the villagers safe from the underground. I like that, Grandma.”
“It wasn’t your place to know it exists.”
“Because you’d rather I believe the evil of GRIT instead of the beauty behind the curtain? Why?” I hissed when she scraped the pad of her fingers up my foot. “Why not give me something in the beginning that would have made this easier?”
She didn’t answer me. She cleaned my wounds, making me hiss or cry or curse every time antiseptic singed my broken skin.
“Elias suffered by not having a mother around.” Ruby didn’t look at me as she spoke, her eyes fixed on my feet as she patched me up. “He missed a lot of the maternal love and care he should have had from Laura.”
“Laura?”
“His mother. She…”
“I know she died in childbirth. Please,” I reached forward and took her hand. �
��Let him tell me.”
“Very well.” She nodded and smiled. It eased the resentment I’d felt for her since the night in the Sector when she told me I would take over. “But just know that I don’t condone the way he’s behaving with you. I don’t accept there was a reason for this torture…but I do accept responsibility for the way Ambrose raised him.”
“What do you mean?”
Tears sprung from my eyes as Ruby began bandaging my feet. The pressure, the heat from the antiseptic and the fibres of the bandage made me grit my teeth and lay back on the bed with my arm over my eyes.
“It’s almost over,” she whispered, patting my knee. “I loved Ralph…so very much. He was my husband and the father to my boys. He was everything my father had promised me when he introduced us. It was an arranged marriage, of sorts. Our future was planned before we were born, similar to yours. GRIT relies on women to rule the empire, so the men are chosen based on what they can do for the family and organisation.”
“What did Ralph bring?”
“Ruthlessness. I met him in 1942, when I was sixteen. He came over with the American troops in January.”
“He was an American?”
“He was.” She stopped and placed my foot on the floor as she travelled back to World War II. “He was such a sweet boy. A few years older than me, but that didn’t matter. My father loved him and my father loved GRIT. He loved my mother, he loved me, and I loved everything Daddy believed in. I trusted him when he said Ralph was the one I would lead the empire with.”
“What happened?”
I was looking at her now, sucked in by the story of sweethearts during a time when death was more common than love. When love led to heartbreak, tragedy and disaster.
“He wasn’t who he appeared to be, but by the time the war ended and he returned to live with us on the estate, I was enamoured. My father was unwell, my mother had passed some years earlier, and it was down to Ralph and I to take control while my father deteriorated.”
Her eyes filled with shame. She took one deep breath after another, each one shakier than the last.
“I didn’t know. I swear to God, I didn’t know.”
“Didn’t know what?”
“He hated the Germans. We all did, we were in the thick of a war against an evil dictator, murderer…”
“I get it. What happened?”
“He used our power to make money. We had money, we had all the fortune we could ever hope for.”
“What did he do?”
“GRIT were working with the Army, air, ground and sea. We were involved in observation, interrogation and we were on the frontlines. For a while, controlling everyday crime fell by the wayside in lieu of protecting the country. Ralph became a…double agent, if you will.”
“Double agent?”
“He accepted money from Nazi soldiers, ignorant Germans who thought they were fighting for something greater than the world they lived in.”
“What did Ralph do?”
“He killed them…after accepting money for their protection. We were paid by Her Majesty to find them, and Ralph was paid to keep them safe. I mean, on the surface, it made sense. Take their money, use the promise of protection to draw them out, and then take them down. But…”
“It didn’t stop after the war ended, did it?”
She shook her head. “No. Ralph continued to take money from people to keep them safe. It’s how Blackwood International became what it is today. It makes sense to profit from death, but it doesn’t make sense to encourage death in order to profit.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but Ruby cut me off by grabbing my other foot and quickly working to wrap it up. She’d had enough talking. She’d divulged as much as she intended to today, but I had so many questions. Questions I couldn’t even think about as images of jets and blasts filled my mind, with the tension of double-crossing and treason emerging from the rubble.
“Anyway, the boys were born and Ambrose, our first-born, became Ralph’s project. My eldest son is the replica of his father and, unfortunately, Elias has some of the same traits. The same flaws. They are easily controlled but-” She tipped my leg up to show me my foot, with a cocked silver eyebrow. “-not always. Sometimes he slips and…I apologise for that. Everything I do, I do to bring GRIT back to its former glory, the way my father intended it to stay.”
“Why…?” I asked, pausing to swallow down the emotion. “Why is Ambrose a Blackwood, and everyone else is Ashford?”
“He isn’t. Every member of our family carries both names. We are all Ashford-Blackwood. We are given our name, or we choose which name we use, depending on our individual influences, the wider picture, or the path we choose to take on our journey.”
How could I hate her now? Why was everything about this place, this organisation, this life, a complete and utter mind fuck? How could it be so evil it was black and spitting thorns, yet so righteous it was trying as hard as it could to reform itself into the golden figure of hope it had been once upon a time?
“So you see, dear, it’s not always a good idea to assume the worst. Both you and Elias do it, and, I’m afraid, it has led you here.” She fastened the bandage and let go of my foot. I manoeuvred myself to sit, and then dragged my body to the headboard and climbed—oh so carefully—under the bed sheets. “You will find out everything, I promise you that, but you have to understand our reasons for the bad things we do, before you can see the good. It’s the evil you need to embrace before the pure can become a release. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
I needed her to leave me alone. I needed to process. I needed to think, just for a minute, about everything she’d said, and try and piece more of the puzzle together. I needed to think about how I felt about her, why I wasn’t as angry as I had been before she’d come to care for me, and what this meant for me moving forward.
“Good. I’m always here, okay?” She perched on the edge of the bed and stroked my hair away. “I know this is hard, and I know you hate me. I don’t blame you. But I hope when you understand, you’ll come back to me. You’ve always been my little girl, Trixie. The daughter I always wanted but couldn’t have. You were gifted to me, and I intend to treasure you until my last breath.”
“Grandma….”
“No, no words, dear.” She leaned down and kissed my forehead, as a hot tear leaked from my eye. “Just rest. I will have words with Elias.”
She smiled softly at me, giving me a glimpse of the grandmother I’d known before this craziness began, and then she left and closed the door behind her.
How could I live a life that involved me swinging like a pendulum, between life-altering love and understanding, and uncontrollable rage and the desire to punish? How could I feel both, at once, without tearing myself in two?
I felt it blossoming over the next few days and coming weeks.
Ruby had gotten through to me, whether it was a premeditated intention, or she had just managed to reach in and connect with me on a woman-to-woman level, when I was vulnerable and crying out for my family.
I would always be dubious of GRIT’s intentions, but I had to do something.
Ruby had decided months ago that I would become the leader of Sector 1 beside my husband and, eventually, the Queen of GRIT…and yet, I’d sat around the house not doing much, while my family continued with life like they had before they let me in.
My feet felt better today. They’d felt better yesterday and the day before, but I wanted to be sure. I wanted to get out of bed and show Elias I was better before he could inspect me and find another reason to throw me back in bed.
Not that I would complain too much.
When suffering with a guilty-conscious, Elias was sweet.
When being careful not to hurt me, Elias was calm.
When taking care not to hurt my fragile mind, Elias was soft and gentle and loving.
We’d made love. For the first time since we’d met, there was no kink, no demands, no domination and control…just us.
Just Elias and I connecting on a meaningful level, with something different and calm and sensual.
It was just us.
But today, I would ask to join the others.
I would begin the next leg of my journey, and pray Elias would stand with me instead of trying to push me back down the ladder of involvement.
I sat up and eased out of bed, testing my feet like I had done yesterday. Pain…but it was bearable. Heat…but it was tolerable. Weakness…but it was fixable.
I flexed my toes on the thick charcoal carpet before I crossed the room, leaving the king-sized bed behind, reached for the black marble dresser to support me on the final push towards the bathroom…to the equally dark and cold bathroom, complete with chrome accents, dark grey walls and a black tiled shower.
I washed quickly, not wanting to take too much time. I didn’t want Elias to find me before I was ready to stand in front of him.
Is this what it felt like centuries ago? Women had to prepare, both mentally and physically, before facing the men who owned their basest of needs and saw them in their least civilised of states?
I shook my head as I looked in the mirror.
I looked better. I no longer looked washed out and lost. I no longer looked dull and afraid.
I looked like me again, and I didn’t want to let myself go.
I dressed in the clothes I'd asked Lola to bring. Black. It hadn't gone unnoticed that every member of GRIT wore black, like a uniform that gave them a sense of authority in the daylight and a stamp of belonging when night fell. I pulled on the black silk blouse and tucked it into the black pencil skirt. I pulled on gossamer stockings and slipped into black patent stilettos. They hurt. My feet begged for forgiveness and rest after just a short time supporting my weight, but I would ignore the pain in lieu of claiming my place on what felt like the knight’s table.
"Trixie?"
Elias' astonishment didn't surprise me when I heard him enter the room and say my name. I was applying a layer of lip gloss and caught his eye in the mirror.
The Uprising (GRIT Sector 1 Book 2) Page 7