by Bea Paige
I guess finding out the woman you’ve known most of your life, that you trust, is a psychotic bitch is just as difficult for him to digest as it is for me.
“Ms Hadley?” I ask.
“In the police van,” Ivan responds quickly.
“Fuck!” I mutter, as shock sets in. I feel like I’m being flogged in the town square. Every lie battering me, splitting me open, drawing blood. She knew who my mother was. Isabelle had been her best friend. She would’ve had years of memories to share with me. If she’d been the kind of selfless person Rose is, Ms Hadley could’ve shared every detail about her and yet she made me believe my mother abandoned me. She made me believe I wasn’t loved.
“You okay, Erik?” Anton asks, placing his hand on my back. He’s shaking just as much as I am. We’re all going to crash soon. The adrenaline is going to wear off and we’re going to fucking crumble.
“Not really, but Rose is worse off and she’s all I give a shit about right now,” I respond, wincing at how shitty that sounds. “Sorry, that came out wrong…”
Anton pulls me into his side. “No need to apologise to me, brother. I fucking get it,” he responds.
We both look over at Ivan whilst the paramedics work on making Rose comfortable before they move her. He looks like shit. I catch his gaze, and he shakes his head minutely as though telling me he’s got this in hand, under control. Honestly, I don’t give a shit about how he explains it away, I just want Rose fixed and Ms Hadley behind bars. I imagine he’s trying to explain away the glass room… Prison. For fuck’s sake, I really need to refer to it as what it really is.
A fucking prison. Rose was right all along. She saw it for what it was when I was blinded by the truth.
“We need to get you to hospital. Get you sorted out, okay, Rose?” the nameless paramedic says. He looks over at Anton and I, already making a judgement about us, about what’s happened. Pretty sure he thinks this is a crime of passion… I suppose it is in a way. My mother’s ‘passion’ for me has finally revealed itself. I shake off how fucked up that is. Not now. There’s time to unravel all of that later.
“Where are you taking Rose?” Ivan asks, shrugging off the policeman’s questions.
“Mainland. The air ambulance is already on the way. The hospital here isn’t equipped to deal with this type of injury,” the female paramedic explains.
“We’re coming,” I step forward, not willing to let Rose out of my sight.
“Not possible, I’m afraid…” the male paramedic, Richard, I think his name is, says.
He gives me an apologetic look at the scowl I give him.
“We’ll follow behind,” Ivan says quickly, tapping on his mobile and retreating to the hallway no doubt to arrange transportation. Being rich has its perks, I suppose. The policeman follows Ivan out into the hall.
Anton steps towards Rose and places a hand on her leg. “We’ll be right behind you, okay?”
She murmurs a response, the painkillers they’ve just injected already taking effect. Her gaze is unfocused, but at least the pain isn’t so bad now.
“We’re going to take her to the airfield where the air ambulance is waiting for her.”
“Thank you,” I manage to say.
“Are you okay, sir?” the female paramedic asks, noticing the shake of my hand and the sweat trickling down my forehead.
“Shock,” I bite out. That and the physical symptoms of PTSD still lingering, reminding me that whilst Rose has shown me I can live beyond those glass walls, I still have a long way to go. Healing isn’t quick or simple. I know that and so does she.
This is just the first step, a big one, but the first step nonetheless.
“Understandable, given the circumstances,” she agrees, smiling kindly as they help Rose onto a stretcher.
I nod tightly. You’ve no fucking idea, I think.
We all follow Rose out of the house and watch as they slide her onto the waiting gurney and into the back of the ambulance. Ivan steps into the ambulance and takes her hand, brushing a gentle kiss across her knuckles. He leans over and whispers something in her ear. I can’t hear him, but I know him well enough to know he’s telling her just how much she means to him, to us all. She accepts his affection, his love, for what it is and that’s more than I could ever have hoped for. He glances at Anton and me with pain in his eyes, and I know he doesn’t want to leave her, but he understands that both us have something we’d like to say, so he steps down, squeezing my shoulder as he passes by.
“Brother?” Anton asks, wanting to know if it’s okay he speaks with her next. He’s covered in Rose’s blood, hands caked in it like paint. For the first time I’m glad he isn’t able to see colour, isn’t able to see the violence and destruction splattered over his skin.
“Please,” I respond. I need to gather my thoughts before I say what I must.
Anton steps up into the ambulance and presses his lips against her damp forehead. He pulls out a folded drawing from his back pocket and hands it to her. She looks at it briefly, a small sound escaping her lips.
“Thank you,” I hear her murmur as she clutches it tightly.
The paramedic moves towards them both and I panic not wanting them to leave before I say what I must.
“Can I have a moment?” I say quickly, before the paramedic shuts the door.
“Be quick,” he responds with a nod of his head.
He steps aside, allowing me to climb up next to Rose. There’s so much I want to say, so much I need to share with Rose, but all that comes out are the words of a long dead poet.
“There is a candle in your heart, ready to be kindled. There is a void in your soul, ready to be filled. You feel it, don’t you?”
Despite the pain, Rose smiles. “I feel it,” she responds, the wreckage of her heart finally beginning to heal as hope starts to bloom right there in the depths of her eyes.
Epilogue
Rose – One Month Later
The truth has a funny way of ripping you open, and more often than not, that one truth can uncover a multitude of lies. Lies that have the power to destroy like nothing else can. None of us have come out unscathed. We’ve all been affected by Ms Hadley’s secrets, and the lies decaying beneath them. Like weeds they’ve wrapped around the fresh green shoots of our connection, stunting the growth, trying to suffocate us all.
You see, Erik wasn’t the only one whose life has been damaged by Ms Hadley’s lies, her deceit. Both Ivan and Anton are victims too. Victims of her jealousy and hate for anything they loved which wasn’t her. She has so much to answer for.
It makes me sick to the stomach knowing what she did to them.
If I’d known then, what I know now, I would’ve picked up the gun and killed her myself. I would’ve ignored the pain. Ignored the blood pouring from my gunshot wound and shot her. I wouldn’t have hesitated. Perhaps then her lies would have died with her and I could’ve prevented this final last conflict where love is both the reason for the battle and the solution to it. The woman in the restaurant, had been right. Sometimes things are best left in the past. Sometimes history does have a way of upsetting the present and destroying the future. It seems ironic now that she was the speaker of truths, this woman we only knew as Love. Now I know her real name, we all do, and like the oncoming tide, once one truth was spilled, the rest came in a wave that none of us had the power to stop.
Ms Hadley is evil, and we are not the only victims.
Evil like that has no right to remain living in this world.
As it is, she’s not even in prison and we are struggling to cultivate what we’d only just begun to grow. Ivan has thrown himself into work. Erik has withdrawn to his rooms at Browlace, his healing stunted, and Anton can’t pick up a pencil let alone a paintbrush. We’re all trying to digest the jumble of lies in our own way. I’m living here with them now, taking up Ivan’s offer the second I was well enough to move into Browlace, and even though I’m healed physically from the gunshot wound, there’s still so much more to
be done.
They’re in pain. Which means so am I. Opening up my heart has meant that I feel what they feel. But I won’t run from it. Not anymore.
Over the past month my hate for Ms Hadley has grown like poison ivy. It wraps around me, choking me. I want to let it go, forget about her. But I can’t. Every day I’m reminded of the damage she has caused, and my hate grows, consuming the air inside my lungs.
If it wasn’t for Viktor’s help, Ms Hadley would’ve been locked away and we might’ve had the strength to sever her chokehold, but of course things never work out the way they should. For reasons best known only to him, Viktor hired the finest lawyer money could buy and her sentence was reduced to an undefined stay in a hospital for the mentally impaired. Ms Hadley is getting the best possible care somewhere in London and is a living breathing reminder of everything she did to us.
Every day they’re forced to live knowing what she’s done and whilst on the surface, they appear unaffected, I know the truth. I can see beneath the muddy surface of their grief.
They hurt. They’re in pain. They’re suffocating.
All because of her.
The thing is, whilst I hate her with a passion, whilst I want to destroy her and make her pay for what she did, I want to fight for us even more.
I’m strong enough now to do that. Just like my men, I’m more than the broken shards of my past. I’m a culmination of everything that has come to pass and what is still yet to come. I’m the little girl trapped in the hold of Cerulean Blue, I’m the demon who fought to survive, I’m the woman who battles pain every day of her life, I’m Domina. I’m their muse, but above all else I’m Rose and I have fucking thorns that will slash through every last chokehold Ms Hadley has twined around us.
She won’t win.
She won’t get between us.
Her jealousy and spite won’t ruin what we have. We’ll survive this just like we’ve survived everything else, even if they don’t know that yet.
If it’s the last thing I ever do, I will make this right. I will show them all the strength of our connection. I will prove to them what they’ve known all along. They’ve each taught me something vital.
Ivan has taught me that there is strength in submission, in love.
Anton has taught me that there is a beauty in darkness that doesn’t have to be painful.
And Erik has taught me that no matter how fucked up this world can be there is always hope if you’re brave enough to look for it.
Now it’s my turn to teach them something in return. I’m the one, but I’m not the only one.
You see, a symphony is made up of four parts and we are a sum of those parts; Ivan, Anton, Erik, me.
This isn’t the end, but the beginning.
Our Symphony has only just begun.
To be continued in the final book of Finding Their Muse series…
Authors Note
Well, here we are readers, I hope you survived Strings. Erik’s story was one of the most difficult I’ve had to write, especially the torture scenes, but I hope that I’ve given both him and Rose some hope for the future. Honestly, it was never going to be an immediate fix for them, for any of them really, and there is still so much more healing to go. Though, I’ve always known Erik would be the person to break down Rose’s walls once and for all. But of course, he would never had been able to manage it if Ivan and Anton hadn’t done their part. They’re just as key to Rose’s healing as Erik, and of course, her future.
Together they make the perfect symphony, which leads me nicely onto book four, the final book of the series….
In this book, aptly titled Symphony, all the questions you might have about Ms Hadley and the harm she’s caused with her lies and deceit, will be revealed. I don’t want to give too much away but there’s even more darkness coming. Get ready for it.
Don’t worry though, my books always have a HEA even if it takes a lot of heartache to get there. I promise you it will be worth it.
As always, thank you so very much for your love and support, without you all, none of this would be possible. I’ve been blown away by the response to these books and am extremely proud of them all. Very soon these will be made available on audiobook too. I’ll keep you posted about that as and when news is available.
Some of you may or may not know that I write to music, always. This time I’ve put together a playlist. I will keep adding to this as I continue to write, the link can be found on my website here:
https://www.beapaige.co.uk/finding-their-muse-playlist.html
If you want to keep up to date with all my releases you might want to sign up to my newsletter here. I have some incredible new series in the works. A dark romance trilogy, a gritty, contemporary romance four book series, and a second chance romance duet (ménage).
https://www.beapaige.co.uk/get-in-touch.html
Much love, Bea xxx