by Ivy Fox
“You don’t know if she’ll say anything to you either, babe,” he counters softly, not wanting to hurt my feelings with his faulty logic.
The thing is, I know my mother. If she’s behind Rome’s arrest, then she is itching to throw it in my face at the first opportunity she can grab. Vivienne will never be able to do it at the courthouse or in a room full of witnesses, but given the chance of an intimate setting with just the two of us, and my mother will be all too happy to flaunt her ruthless power over me and the people I care about.
“It has to be me, Ash. I can do this,” I tell him forcefully, straightening my spine.
His eyes light up, and before I can remind him where we are, he bends down and steals another kiss from me, thankfully tamer than the one he robbed back at the manor an hour ago.
“I know you can. I never doubted it for a minute,” he cajoles, leaving me a little bit flustered with his pride and affection.
There is a little somersault that happens inside my chest from the endearing look of love laced in his hazel eyes, but I quickly shove the sentiment away, knowing that now is not the time to get emotional. What I need to have at my beck and call is war paint and every available weapon, not Ash’s tender stare. As much as it warms my brittle heart, right now I need to turn it to stone, make it as impenetrable as possible if I’m to come out victorious in the fight ahead.
Without wanting to lose any more precious time by just standing out here in an empty hallway debating on my feelings, I ring the doorbell twice, announcing our presence to the Manning household. Instead of a maid or butler answering it as expected, Lace Manning is the one to greet us, her bright smile instantly wiped off her pretty face the minute she realizes who is at her doorstep.
“What do you two want?” she asks bitterly, making no attempts to hide her distaste at having us at her door.
“Now, now, Lace. A good southern girl like you has better manners than that. Invite us in, will you?” Ash goads, already pushing us both through the door’s threshold, not caring if we were properly invited or not.
“You’re the last one that should be doling out lessons on manners, Asher. Kim told me about your little rendezvous a few months back. No one likes a tease, and it definitely doesn’t look good for any Grayson to treat a girl of his league so poorly. To have your way and then discard her like that, sets a bad precedent for the bottom feeders who are okay with that sort of treatment if you ask me,” she scornfully sings in that high-pitched, southern accent of hers that has my ears ringing.
Unavoidably, I turn my head toward Ash, and he at least has the decency to look bashful and ashamed. I’m not sure exactly what happened between him and Kim Carothers, nor will I ask Lace to be more insightful, but whatever happened, I know I won’t be happy about it one bit.
“I’ll tell you all about how I fucked up, Snow. But trust me, it isn’t as bad as you think, okay? Right now, you have bigger fish to fry. Remember?” he reminds, running his hand back and forth on the nape of his neck worriedly.
I stiffen my back and square my shoulders but make a mental note of asking what the hell happened with him and Kim, the minute we get home. If I don’t like what he says, we are definitely going to have some words. And none of them will be pretty.
“Again, what do I owe the pleasure of this unexpected visit, asshole?” Lace asks, forgoing manners altogether.
“Holland wants to see her mom, Lace. Stop giving me shit and go fetch her, will ya?”
“Do I look like a dog to you, asshole?” she asks, her clenched fists on either side of her hips.
“Basic bitch, maybe,” he huffs under his breath, making me elbow his gut before he says anything else that will keep us from getting further inside this house. Insulting Lace Manning won’t help me get to my mother. It’s just a roadblock we need to plummet through, even if it means playing nice.
“Lace, is my mother here? I really would like to talk to her,” I state, overly sweet, using her own default mannerisms against her.
Lace’s scrutinizing glower, blatantly running up and down my slender frame, irks me to no end. My fists ball behind my back, preventing me from slapping the scowl off her face. I’ve never been one for violence—especially when confronted with something as silly as a mean girl marking her territory—but I guess it’s natural I feel this way when, lately, all I’ve been consumed with is either anger or sadness.
“A call would have been sufficient, don’t you think?” she quips, giving me the stink eye.
“Some things can’t be discussed over the phone, Lace,” Ash deadpans seriously, throwing his own intimidating scowl into the mix.
“Fine. Whatever. Not that I care, one way or the other, if you get your mommy time in,” Lace concedes sarcastically, throwing her arms in the air for dramatic effect. “Your mother is in the living room. I’ll take you to her,” she adds, looking bored and sashaying her hips as she leads us down the long hallway.
When we approach the lavish living room, I remember it looked mildly different the night I came here for Lace and her brother’s end-of-summer party. The furniture obviously had been moved, not only to accommodate so many people but also to make an ample dance floor for Trevor to grope his dance partners. But now that everything has been put back to its respective place, the decadence of the furniture, paintings, and rugs in their rightful setting tells me exactly why my mother took the Manning’s offer to be a guest at their home, above anyone else’s.
Proving my initial suspicion, Vivienne West Grayson sits leisurely on a large chaise lounge—as if she owned the place—rummaging away on her iPad, probably looking for any recently published stories that mention her, preferably one with a photo from her good angle, too.
“Vivienne, you have a guest,” Lace announces a little too sickeningly sweet for my liking.
My mother’s eyes move upward from the screen on her hand, and when they fall on me, her smile never falters. I hate to say it, but it even gains momentum.
“I see. Thank you, Lace, darling,” she says before Lace begins to retreat her steps. “Oh, Lace, be a dear and take my stepson with you. Get someone in the kitchen to fix him a snack while he waits. I’d like a few minutes alone with my daughter. We have so much to discuss.”
“Of course,” Lace replies, throwing Ash an indiscreetly angry look, ordering him to follow her. But Ash stays in place next to me and doesn’t move an inch, even when Lace loudly huffs out in annoyance behind him.
“You sure you don’t need backup?” he asks concerned, uncomfortable with how in her element my mother is.
“I’ve dealt with her all my life, Ash. Trust me. I know what I’m doing. She doesn’t scare me.”
“I know she doesn’t,” he hushes beside me. “I just wanted you to hear yourself say it.” He winks, and then finally proceeds to follow Lace outside the room.
“Well, well, well. I wish I could say this is a pleasant, unexpected surprise, but I knew sooner or later you’d end up crawling your way back, begging me for leniency,” my mother announces triumphantly.
I take two steps toward her, and instead of sitting on the vacant spot at her side, I keep my ground, standing in front of her, so she has no option but to look up at me from below. The move is tactical—one that she’s used on me plenty of times to make me feel small. But if my mother feels intimidated, she doesn’t show.
“I’m not here to grovel, Mother. I have nothing to grovel for.”
“Oh, no? How about the fact that, because of you and your wanton ways, I was thrown out of my own home like trash? Do you think that doesn’t entitle me to a bit of groveling on your part? A few fake tears as an apology, maybe?” she croons mockingly.
“The only apology you’ll hear out of me is that I’m just sorry Rome put up with you as long as he did. You got exactly what you deserved. The manor was never your home, to begin with, Mother. It belongs to Rome, Ash, Ollie, and Elle. Not you,” I defend passionately, two seconds from adding my own name
to the list. But the shriek of laughter my mother lets out crawls down my skin in such a way that it stuns me from saying another word.
“Oh, you stupid, stupid child. Do you honestly believe Grayson manor belongs to you, too?”
“Yes, I do,” I proudly state, not quivering under her fabricated amusement.
“I see you still live in a world of your own imagination. Always making up silly little songs and fairy tales in your head, which have no true value in the real world. You’ve always been a stupid, little girl, delusional to the point of thinking that everything revolves around her. Even going to childish extremes to get what she wants.”
I scrunch my nose at that ludicrous remark, instead of yelling how insane she sounds.
“When has anything ever gone the way I wanted?” I ask, aghast.
“Oh, please. That victim act might have worked on your father, but you don’t fool me. You’ll use anything at your disposal to get what you want. Either by playing the sick card with that damn illness of yours, or opening your legs for whoever crosses your path,” she insinuates, and the image of Malcolm Grayson instantaneously comes to the forefront of my mind.
“You’re wrong!” I shout, my stomach in knots over how a mother could ever loathe her child, enough to serve her on a silver platter to such a monster. “You might think that I’m capable of sleeping with whomever, and you believe that to be an asset, but I’m not like you!”
“Aren’t you, darling?” She bats her eyes at me, crossing her legs, and placing both of her hands on her bare knee. “You sure didn’t hesitate to bed Roman Grayson when the chance presented itself, now did you? The man who had a hand in murdering your stepfather, no less. You should feel ashamed. I’m disgusted by you,” she relents, but there isn’t a sliver of sorrow to her rant. In fact, her sinister smile is so broad that I feel my mother may have truly gone insane.
She can’t be this evil, can she?
I swallow dryly, my tongue heavy in my mouth, but unwilling to back down now. Not when I haven’t gotten anything I can use to help Rome.
“Malcolm Grayson was nothing to me, Mother. Nothing! And what Rome and I have, you would never understand.”
“Oh, child, but I do. He has money, and you’re dirt poor.”
‘No, I’m not,’ is what I want to tell her, and shove it in her smug face how my father left me everything he could, while he left her penniless. But that is blood money, and it only reminds me that all I’m going through right now might be my own family’s bad karma at play.
With everything going on, I haven’t even reminded my grandmother to start paying back all the people my father stole from. It was selfish and inconsiderate of me. I’ve been so overwhelmed with my own hardships that I forgot everyone else’s. It shames me to admit that it didn’t even occur to me until this very second, until the instance I could sling back at her face my father’s genuine love, no matter how ill-given.
My mother observes my forlorn frown and comes to the only conclusion her warped mind can conceive.
“You bet on the wrong horse, child, and now you’ll pay dearly for it,” she threatens.
“Haven’t you done enough to punish me?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she huffs, swapping the crossed leg and bobbing it repeatedly up and down.
“Yes, you do, Mother. I know what you did,” I confess, not mentally prepared to have this conversation, but unable to keep my rage in any longer.
“Frankly, Holland, if you came here to talk in riddles, then I see no need to continue this visit. What do you want? Out with it already,” she shouts, losing her cool composure.
“What do I want? What do I want?! I want a mother, Vivienne! One that could love me and always protect me, not throw me to the wolves so cruelly and heartlessly as you’ve done!”
She looks deep into my eyes with her ice-cold, blue diamonds, not one bit unnerved at my outburst. In fact, boredom is what takes hold of her. The knot in my belly only tightens further when I realize the woman who gave birth to me never loved me a day in my life.
“Grow up, Holland. If you came here searching for atonement on my part, then you came a long way for nothing. I have nothing to be regretful for,” she summarizes, making it painfully clear that she will never admit to her wrongdoings. Yet the masochist in me needs her to say the words. Needs to hear how she gave me away so unapologetically to be ravished and ruined by her husband.
“Nothing? Not even giving your daughter to a monster?” I ask point-blank.
The gleam in her eyes turns to such a sinister glow that my knees almost buckle beneath me. If I thought Malcolm was lying that night, this one gleam is proof of how dead wrong I was.
She did it. My mother really did promise me to that perverted fiend, without batting an eye or caring that he would steal my innocence and alter my life forever in the cruelest of ways.
“Why? For money? Security? Status? Why?!” I yell, wanting to place my hands around her neck and choke her or slap her until she displays an ounce of compassion.
“Because I could,” she explains evenly, without one smidge of remorse.
I back away from her, worried that I will either drop to my knees in sorrow or strangle the life out of her. There has never been a heart beating inside her chest, so why keep up pretenses in making others think she’s human? She’s not. She’s just like the man she hand-delivered me to.
“You’re just like him. You’re a monster,” I choke out, taking another step away from her.
“Am I?” she questions, cocking her well-manicured, blonde brow. “Or am I just a woman making do with the assets God gave her?”
“Don’t bring faith into this. God has nothing to do with your evil ways. The only thing I’m sure of is that you’ll burn for this,” I snarl, looking at the woman who is, henceforth, a complete stranger to me.
“Will I? Right now, the soul you should be worried about isn’t mine, but your boyfriend’s. If he had just played along, then nothing would have happened to him. But he didn’t, because of you. You only have yourself to blame, Holland. He’s the only one in the hot seat as far as I can tell. Just be happy New York no longer has the death penalty. Otherwise, your little incestuous love affair would have cost him his life. It still might. As far as I’m concerned, a man like Roman Grayson won’t do well behind bars for long,” she singsongs, looking at her nails as if she’s in some salon trying to decide which color to use, instead of discussing with me Rome’s dire life in prison.
“You’re the one that deserves to be there, not Rome.” I seethe, grinding my teeth to keep from cursing her out so loud that the whole house would hear. “Come to think of it, maybe you’re the one who killed your husband. You had just as much to gain from his death as anyone else. I’m sure if I go to the DA with my suspicions, he’ll be interested enough in hearing me out,” I bluff, wanting to see her tremble.
“Oh, please. Roman is the one suspected of murder, not me. Can you honestly believe anyone would think of me being capable of such a thing?” She laughs in my face.
“I wouldn’t put it past you,” I murmur, and to this, her sinister, wide grin returns, leaving me even more rattled.
“Smart girl. Maybe you’re not as dumb as I thought,” she states cryptically as I hear footsteps behind me. “But as it stands, I’m particularly inclined to see justice be done. My husband was killed by his own flesh and blood. How can you stand there, looking so accusingly at me, when the man you have been screwing around with ended his own father’s life? I’m glad I never considered you as mine because it sickens me to the core of how you can defend such a criminal and accuse me of any wrongdoing,” she wails, far too devastated, an emotion she’s never used for my benefit.
When I turn around to see who’s stepped inside the room, I understand who her crocodile tears are for.
“Vivienne? Everything alright here?” Trevor questions, looking concerned, and walks into the room, bypassing me alto
gether, but still making sure I see him eyeing me with disdain.
He makes his way behind the expensive couch, and once he’s close enough to my mother, he places his hands over her shoulders. The intimate and familiar way he does this makes my stomach want to hurl.
Dear God, my mother is screwing Trevor Manning. I don’t think I can take much more of this.
“I’m fine, darling,” she consoles him as he leans down and kisses her cheek, closer to the corner of her lips than what I would have liked to witness.
If Elle were here, she would have said something about gagging, I’m sure of it. But there’s no need since I’m just seconds away from actually barfing and making my feelings—on their friendliness toward each other—clear to the whole room. My mother picks up on my disgust, and without care of consequence, grabs Trevor’s chin closer to her, her eyes never leaving his as she continues with my torture.
“Some children never learn what’s truly valuable in this world, no matter how hard a parent tries to input certain values in them. Others, though, are just born knowing exactly what is important for them to make it in this cold world. Take Trevor here. He knows what loyalty is, don’t you, sweetheart?”
He gives her a lustful grin, and once again, I feel my gag reflex revolt.
“Of course you do. And because he’s followed his parents’ pristine counsel to a fault, he will be unstoppable in a few years. He’ll inherit and take over his father’s pharmaceutical empire, and everyone in the world will know his name, isn’t that right, Trevor?”
Another long look into his eyes, and this time she doesn’t hesitate and kisses him right in front of me. This takes Trevor by surprise for a split second, but when he sees my mother isn’t shy in rubbing their union in my face, he grabs her full breast over her camisole and deepens the kiss as if he’s ready and willing to screw my mother in front of my very eyes. But the fucked-up cherry on top of this screwed-up scenario is when he blatantly lifts his head to wink at me, her tongue still in his mouth. It’s as if my discomfort gets him off even harder.