Chapter 14 Aria
ARIA
My wrists sting from the ropes, the coarse fibers digging into my skin and cutting off circulation. I can’t settle my heart. Every inch of my body still feels flushed from a few moments ago.
I pull my lip between my teeth, a shiver coursing down my spine as I grapple with the awful truth of how much I wanted that kiss. How much I enjoyed it. The pit of my stomach hollows, and a quiet voice creeps into my head.
I’m defective.
Now I’m sure of it.
How else can I explain the absurdity of me being the one to reach out to him?
Of practically begging him to stay? Those shameful questions barely scratch the surface of turmoil plaguing my thoughts.
I’m muddled with uncertainty. Emotions clash in a vicious fight, each side pulling me in opposite directions like a messed-up game of tug-of-war, the pressure threatening to tear me apart.
Pushing past my discomfort, I steal a glance at the girl still hovering in the doorway. As expected, she’s staring back, her eyes like icicles, sharp and accusing, like I’m the reason for her brother’s downfall.
Her brother. His sister.
Not girlfriend and boyfriend.
I feel foolish for caring, for still clinging to that last shred of clarity. It shouldn’t matter, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t.
God, I’m pathetic.
Look at you, the voice in my head sneers. You foolish, pitiful girl.
He’s friends with a guy who’s drugged you. Brought you back to him. He discarded you at his feet like a pig for slaughter. You’re nothing to him but a problem to contain. Tied. Powerless. Under his control.
Don’t you get it already?
He doesn’t care about you. You’re just a task to check off. A nuisance.
Shame flushes hot in my cheeks, a flash of humiliation catching in my throat as I’m reminded of the way I flung myself at him, desperate to fix what can’t be repaired. Still refusing to face the brutal truth I know deep down.
Nothing can change who he is.
A murderer.
An abductor.
My abductor.
There are hard lines when it comes to something like this, and I can’t risk blurring them over a few manipulative kind acts. That man he killed in cold blood wasn’t for my sake. It was to cover his own back, to cover all of their backs.
I want to hate him. To believe they’re all just evil, but I can’t.
I’m brought out of my head as she moves from the corner, her gaze shifting elsewhere.
I follow them, landing on that dreaded spot on the floor where the unpleasant stench of decay emanates from, horribly masked by the equally nauseating sharpness of the bleach.
She wrinkles her nose, pausing on the edge of the crimson ring staining the hardwood. The tip of her Doc Martens swipes at it carefully.
Does she know why I’m here? Would she help me if she did?
A flicker of hope rises in my chest before I have the chance to squander it. I’ll never know unless I try. Nobody else is around. Just her and me.
My impulse nudges my mouth open, but the words lodge in my throat from fear of being shot down.
After all, she’s part of them. Part of him.
But she’s also a girl, which means we have something unique that can bind us together.
I can try to tug on those strings. And maybe, just maybe, I can unravel them enough to push us forward.
“It happened yesterday.” I break the silence.
Her gaze slides to me, wary but curious.
Swallowing my trepidation, I scramble to piece together how much I want to say. I may never get another chance to be alone with her again.
“When some guy forced his way in,” I say, pushing past the knot forming in my stomach. “If it wasn’t for your brother, it would’ve been too late for me.”
A tense silence settles over the room, thick as a glob of wet cement settling over my ears, sealing out everything but the thrum of panic in my chest. I fight not to smother it.
Not to shove it down and seal it behind the familiar wall of silence, but to let it break, even if it costs me. She has to understand.
For a moment, it feels like I’m back in that dark place again. My cheeks sting, my stomach coiling as dread settles over me.
The room tilts again. I can’t breathe.
Heavy grief burrows into my chest like the sharp end of a hook, reeling me from the depths of despair, like a fish flailing for air as it’s yanked through the ocean’s surface, away from safety. Away from the false sense of security I forged deep in those shadowy waves.
I thought I was stronger than this. That I could handle myself.
But the base of my throat constricts further as everything inside me splits apart, the angry waters crashing behind me in violent waves, exposing the memory I fought to drown again.
I lurch back, gasping. My vision’s warped with flashes of his weight over me as he pinned me down. Forceful. Violent. Determined.
There was nothing I could do. My throat locks, the scream trapped beneath the burn climbing up my chest.
She rushes over, hesitation gone. “Hey, hey—it’s okay. You’re okay. Focus on my voice,” she says, her voice almost as tight as mine. “Feel my hands. You’re not there; you’re here.”
Her fingers are just as cold as they wrap around the fist balled up in my lap. The tension breaks enough for me to draw in a proper breath and lean away from her.
There’s a sorrowful glint in her eyes at my reaction, but I don’t acknowledge it.
Not unless she does something to help me.
“Please,” I gasp. “Help me get out of here and I swear I’ll never breathe a word about any of this for as long as I live. I don’t want to hurt anyone. I just want to go h-home.”
Her eyes drop from mine, her hands slowly retracting. “I’m so sorry…but I can’t.”
My stomach sinks.
Of course. Did I really expect it to be any different?
I stare at her, already building up a wall as I prepare for whatever she has to say next.
“I wish I could help you, but it isn’t that simple.”
“It could be,” I quipped, refusing to let it drop. “We all want the same thing, don’t we? To keep all of this buried behind us?”
She doesn’t nod, but the lines on her forehead deepen.
“He killed a man to protect me,” I say with a drop in my voice. “I owe him to stay quiet.”
A silent plea spreads between us.
Please.
“It isn’t up to me,” she says, her eyes barely meeting mine.
The tightness between my brows shifts, no longer pleading but furious.
She’s just like the rest of them. Maybe even worse for doubling down after I’ve let her in on something so personal.
Her own throat bobs when she looks back to see me seething.
“You don’t get it. It’s not up to him, either. He’s trying to protect you,” she explains.
“Protect me from what?” My pulse spikes. “From that other guy?”
Her brows furrow, like she can’t follow along with what I’m saying.
“The one you came with,” I clarify.
“Oh,” she breathes. “No, no! He’s one of the good ones.”
The good ones.
A silent laugh jabs at my chest as I mull that over.
“Tell me, then,” I say, “do good people drug a girl they see out running for help?” Her eyes harden on me. “How about murdering a woman in her home in the dead of night when she was least expecting it? Does that sound good to you?”
She pulls to a stand, putting a good distance between us. My words are unrelenting and sharp. All my fury has nowhere else to go.
Screw it if she’s mad. I’d like to see how she has the stomach to validate those atrocious acts, how she lets herself be okay with any of it.
Or maybe the anger stems from a deeper place that I won’t admit. One that’s clinging onto some form of rationalization, just to make this all easier somehow.
Her eyes narrow at me in a critical squint. “You don’t know anything.”
I can’t help it; I scoff at her.
“You know none of the people they target are innocent?” she snaps.
“Just like me, right?” I say, my voice flat.
Concern knits her brows, and they freeze for a moment. “You don’t know.”
It wasn’t a question.
“Know what?”
Wordlessly, her arms spring up to pat her distressed jean jacket, then she pulls a cellphone out of the tiny pocket near her chest. Seconds trickle by as I anxiously watch her swipe at the screen.
“Here. Look,” she says, taking a step closer and swooping down to show me what she’s pulled up.
My nails dig into my tightly clenched fists as I scan the article.
“Depravity behind the fall of the Shaw empire” it reads in bold, evenly spaced-out letters stretching across the screen.
She scrolls down a little more, and I spot the family portrait before glancing up to read the tagline.
The words start to jumble together when I come across a description that has my head reeling with confusion and disgust.
Leaked videos.
Child sex rings.
A good American family’s tragic downfall.
My eyes trace back to Kelsey, standing between both parents. She’s shorter in the picture, her cheeks more rounded, but the same dusting of freckles covers them. My stomach clamps hard.
She pulls her phone back and pockets it. “They had it coming.”
I force the fog out of my head, snapping myself out of that mental image of Kelsey smiling next to her mom just before it makes my stomach reel even harder.
“I don’t get it.” My voice cracks. She watches me tentatively, giving me time to process. “It says in the article the death was self-inflicted.” I shake my head, my brows pulling together. “That’s not what happened. I-I was there.”
She nods carefully, her mouth opening, then closing again.
“I just don’t understand.” I shake my head harder. “How’d they get it so wrong? He was there. He had a knife. I saw it.”
What about me—What are they saying about me?
“It’s how they operate,” she says finally, as if that’s supposed to make it make sense.
“They?”
She exhales sharply, crossing an arm over her chest. “Yeah, The Ringer. They’re a secret underground group that seeks justice for the people the system failed to protect. I shouldn’t be telling you any of this, but you have to understand; you’re angry at the wrong people.”
“So that’s it, then?” I deadpan. “A system fails, so now any ole person can take vigilante justice into their own hands if they deem it appropriate? Sure, sometimes things slip through the cracks, I get that, but these things are left to the cops and courts to handle. Not you guys.”
She rocks on her feet, scoffing softly as her hands uncross only to cross again. “How are you so damn na?ve?”
My wrists push against my ropes again as her patronizing voice sinks into me. “I’m not the one acting out against the law.”
She spins around to pace the cabin. My words pummel the self-righteousness she’s hiding behind.
I grind my teeth together as she stands beside the dried bloodstains in the center of the room.
“You know,” she says softly, slowly twisting back to face me again, “I don’t expect you to understand.
Most people don’t, which is why you’re stuck where you are. ”
I stare at her with my chin held high, resisting the urge to give in to her comment. “You’re wrong. Not all cops are the enemy.”
“Na?ve,” she mutters like I’m helpless.
Her words spur heat in my veins, and I have to bite my tongue so I won’t lash out and burn the small bridge between us. As misguided as they are, they aren’t intent on hurting me, and I want to keep it that way.
She bites the inside of her cheek for a moment, her eyes glazing over like she’s being transported somewhere far away. “My father was a cop.”
I hold a breath inside my lung as she speaks.
“You aren’t the only one who’s been hurt.” She turns away, her head twisted down to look at the stained wood. My insides clench. “Except, unlike you, I did go to the police. They turned me away. Buried my case.”
I stay quiet, my mind racing. Why would they do that?
“My rapist was my father.”
Shock spreads through me as my mouth parts in a silent gasp. My eyes freeze on her as the weight of that reveal sinks in, echoing endlessly in my head.
Her own dad. A police officer. Rapist.
Suddenly, the anger I’ve harbored toward her dissipates and I reach a certain kind of understanding. This isn’t about me.
Nothing I can say now will change her mind. That resignation sealed her in place. And I get it now. She’s far too wounded to see it any differently.
The abrupt ring of her phone cleaves through the silence, and we both flinch. She fumbles for her phone, her cheeks still drained of color from what was said.
She answers, holding the speaker to her ear. “Ledger?”
Ledger.
My heart lurches at the name. If Tanner’s the blonde, then that means…he’s Ledger.
“Slow down, what happened?” Her brows knit as the pause stretches, only Frankie hearing the other side of the call.
A rush of anxiety scatters across my chest. I watch her eyes spin a story. The fear is masked, but it’s there. I catch it in every flicker of her lashes, every slight widening of her eyes.
Something’s gone wrong. The weight of what’s unspoken presses me down in a suffocating death grip as I wait.
She hangs up, her fingers trembling as she lifts her gaze to me.
“We need to leave.”