Chapter 83 Kashton #2
Fuck, I missed this so much. I knew I loved him, but I never knew it could be like this. How attached I could get to another human being.
Adam adjusts his stance, crossing his arms over his chest. “You want answers. I’m going to give them to you.”
Kashton snorts. “Your version or the truth?”
Adam sighs but doesn’t respond. Instead, he looks at me, and I stiffen in my husband’s arms. My pulse begins to race wondering what he’s about to say. “You did bury Eve. Just a different version of her.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.” Kashton pulls away from me, and I feel cold all of a sudden. I wore one of Kashton’s hoodies, knowing it’s freezing down here. He moves to stand by my side instead.
Adam’s eyes remain on mine when he speaks again. “She’s a twin.”
“No.” I shake my head, and I feel everyone turn to look at me. “I’m not.” My eyes go to Kashton, who is frowning. “That’s not true.” I look back at Adam. “You’re lying.”
“Yes. You are,” Adam argues. “You had an identical twin, and I killed her. To save you.”
I refuse to believe it. He’s lying to save his own ass for what he did. “I would have known that.”
Haidyn turns to face me. “Do you remember seeing Charlotte at the cathedral?”
I frown. “What? When Bill had you meet him there? No. She wasn’t with you.” Why would he ask me that?
He tilts his head in thought. “No. When you were younger. Charlotte saw you at the cathedral. It was an offering. You were there with LeAnne.”
“No. I wasn’t.” I glance at Kashton, confused. What are they talking about? “I wasn’t allowed to leave Carnage when I was younger.” I was kept at Carnage until I was given to Dollhouse at nineteen. Then I spent a year in that hellhole.
“Let’s say you’re right…” Ryat speaks to Adam. “If Garrett had another daughter, why would she be with LeAnne?”
Kashton runs a hand through his hair. He looks unsure about whether to believe Adam or not.
“I’m right. It’s how the cops had your DNA on the dead girl,” Adam goes on.
“Your identical twin played a part in killing that woman and dumping her in the cemetery that she knew you visited. And the woman who was found but had survived. She was tortured by you…the other you. They wanted her to go to the cops and describe Eve. It was just another base they were covering to make sure you went down for the murders.”
“But Haidyn killed her,” Saint adds. “It put a kink in their plan.”
“What?” I gasp, looking at my brother. “You killed her?” When he doesn’t say anything, I look at my husband, but he’s also ignoring me.
“How long have you known about this?” Haidyn snaps at Adam.
He sighs. “Not long. I started to get suspicious one night after I met up with Kashton. He had just left Blackout and told me that he had seen and spoken to Eve while there. But he couldn’t have. I had just gotten off a call with her, and she was on the opposite side of town about to do a job.”
“What?” I turn to look at Kashton. “You spoke to her?”
“I…” He shrugs. “Uh…I don’t know.” Kashton stumbles over his words.
“But I…the three guys from the cathedral were the same three guys I beat up that night at Blackout after I spoke to Eve…uh, your sister. So if she set up the meeting at the cathedral, then it makes sense that she had those guys helping her.”
I run a hand through my hair nervously and take a step back from him.
“Think about it…Isabella is here. She ran Dollhouse. Their leader was taken away by Everett. If Evan hadn’t confirmed to Eve that Haidyn was at Dollhouse, then we wouldn’t have gone and pulled our brother out and brought Isabella here.
They knew they had one secret weapon left.
” Adam’s green eyes find mine, and I swallow nervously.
“You. So they set you up. Tried to get rid of you so she could move in on Kashton, pretending to be his wife, gain access to the inside of Carnage, and then set Isabella free. But when the woman was killed, causing their original plan to fail, they had to change it up. Decided to kill you instead.”
“No,” Kashton barks. “Christopher said that Eve was set up because Evan wanted her…”
“It’s possible,” Adam agrees. “If you were with her twin—Vivian—then he had Eve, and you didn’t know the difference.”
“I would have known the fucking difference,” my husband snaps.
“But—”
“Christ,” Saint hisses.
“And then when Eve came to me, denying we’d slept together, I knew something else was going on, and I had to figure it out,” Adam says.
“So we didn’t have sex?” I ask, hopeful.
He shakes his head. “No. It was your sister. The picture didn’t make sense.
How Isabella got it in the first place to give to Haidyn for blackmail.
I didn’t have any cameras set up in my hotel room.
Your sister had to set it up when I was making us a drink or undressing…
I’m not sure. The point is, she put that phone there to record and sent it to Isabella, who then took a picture from it to use against Haidyn.
Your sister was following you, and it led her to me.
I’m not sure if that was their plan, but it ended up working in Isabella’s favor. ”
“Wait.” Haidyn holds up his hand. “What picture?”
Adam faces Haidyn. “When I was in Las Vegas following Ashtyn, Isabella showed you a picture—”
“The girl tied to your bed?” He tilts his head to the side.
“Yes.”
Haidyn looks at me. “That…that was you?”
“No,” Kashton snaps. “Well, her twin.”
My brother rubs the back of his neck. “I didn’t know.”
“How…” I swallow. “How did she know so much about me, but I didn’t know she existed?”
“Your father separated you at a very young age.”
I turn to see someone new join our conversation.
Bill emerges from the hallway, dragging a woman with him.
He pushes her to her knees in the middle of the room, and I take a step back, not wanting to be anywhere near her.
“Vivian knew so much about you because she was raised by LeAnne.” He yanks on the woman’s hair, pulling her head back, and she bares her teeth.
“Tell them, Isabella. Tell them everything you know.”
She begins to laugh, and I see Charlotte move to stand in the far corner of the room. Haidyn follows to stand in front of his pregnant wife.
Isabella has her hands cuffed behind her back, but that doesn’t mean she won’t try to use her body to take one of us down. The woman is as evil as they come.
“Pathetic.” Bill shoves her to the concrete, face down, and kicks her onto her back. “LeAnne took you two in and raised you until you were two.”
I wrap my arms around myself, so confused. My first memories are of this hell. I was around five. Anything before that doesn’t exist.
Bill pushes his boot into her chest, and her shrill scream fills the room, making me flinch.
She kicks and bucks, but he just presses more weight onto her naked body to hold her down.
“Garrett didn’t want one girl, let alone two.
He wanted boys. When he got girls, he was going to sell you both.
But LeAnne convinced him that one of them would be good to use.
” His eyes meet mine, and I swallow nervously.
“She kept one, and he could have the other. A woman who’d come from a founder and a Spade brother… he could charge as much as he wanted.”
I wonder what he means by that, because that’s exactly what Ashtyn is, and I don’t see anyone trying to sell her. But she’s the last person I want to talk about, so I keep my mouth shut.
“Why not sell them both?” Haidyn asks.
“He did,” Bill answers. “But he didn’t sell Eve until she was older.”
I bow my head, not wanting all of my husband’s friends to know my past. I’m not sure how much he’s shared with them about me, and I honestly would rather not know.
“Garrett sold her to Isabella.”
I look up through my lashes at Charlotte, and she frowns, meeting my stare. “My mother bought you?” She steps forward, but Haidyn stops her with a hand on her shoulder.
“She was an investment,” Bill states, and my breathing picks up. “Evan knew of Eve and wanted her at Dollhouse. When Haidyn didn’t kill her, Garrett figured his best bet was to sell her.”
Kashton reaches out to take my hand, but I pull it away and cross my arms over my chest.
“I never knew,” Charlotte whispers, still looking at me, tears pooling in her blue eyes.
I want to tell her that it’s okay, that I know it wasn’t her fault, but it’s pointless. My words won’t change how she feels.
“What about the other woman? Where does she fit in?” Ryat asks.
“What other woman?” Bill counters.
“Let’s just ask her. We put her in a cell.” Sin walks off down the hallway, and we all wait silently for him to return.
He’s got a woman by the back of her neck. She’s naked, tripping over her own feet, and her hands are zip tied behind her back. Her head is down, and her dark hair covers her face.
She’s softly crying. He brings her into the room, kicks the back of her legs, forcing her to her knees, and yanks her head back by her hair. Her cries echo throughout the basement.
“Christ.” Adam rushes over to her. “Let go of her,” he orders Sin.
He raises his hands and takes a step back, looking at Kashton, who runs a hand down his face, knowing who she is. “Fuck,” my husband mutters.
“Someone give me a fucking knife,” Adam barks.
Sin hands his over since he’s still the closest. “Hey.” Adam takes her tear-streaked face in his hands. “You’re okay. It’s okay.”
I take off and ignore Kashton hollering at me. I rush up to the second floor, grab a bottle of water, and manage to find a blanket, then run back into the basement. “Here.” I hand them to Adam.
“You know her?” Saint asks, looking over her.
“Yes. I fucking know her. She works for me.” He grabs Missy’s hands and pulls her to stand. She covers herself with her arms. “Thanks,” he growls at me, yanking the blanket from my hands to wrap it around her shoulders before pulling it closed.
I step back with my hand pressed into my chest. I shouldn’t have run up the stairs. Now there’s a burning sensation and I can’t catch my breath.
Kashton steps into me, but I sidestep him, not wanting to be touched right now. He can yell at me later.
“We just did what we were told to do,” Sin says, hands still raised.
“Which was?” Adam demands, walking Missy over to a chair and placing her in it. He unscrews the bottle of water and practically waterboards the poor girl, holding it to her trembling lips.
“You gave me and Ryat the address to the motel Kashton was staying at. She was there.”
Adam crouches down in front of her in the chair and places his hands on her dirty, tear-streaked face, holding her hair back in the process. “Why were you in the motel?”
She sniffs. “To get his phone.”
“Whose phone?” Adam demands.
“This one?” Ryat pulls one from his pocket. “She had it on her when we entered the room.”
Missy rubs the tears from her face, taking a deep breath.
“I thought it was odd that Everett was at the bar that night. I wasn’t aware she had a job.
When she left, I texted you that she was there.
I watched her enter the motel room. A guy arrived not much later.
I called you when she left the motel to make sure it was cleaned up, and you confirmed that she didn’t have a job, but that you would get the room cleaned.
I didn’t hear from you until a few days later.
You said the room had been cleaned, the body disposed of, but the guy didn’t have his phone on him… ”
“I didn’t take it,” I tell her. I always leave the phones behind. You never know who might be tracking them. Adam has their bodies disposed of and their cells destroyed after they get what they need off them.
“He didn’t have a phone on him.” Adam shakes his head at her. “We checked. How and where did you find it?”
“Kashton took over the room shortly after. I had to wait for him to leave to get back into it. I had just found it under the bed when two guys showed up,” she whispers, staring at the floor, unable to make eye contact with anyone in the room.
I feel sorry for her. She doesn’t know this life. Not like we do. Sure, she works for Adam, but she runs the bar. She’s not that deep in the trafficking world. She serves people alcohol and listens to them bitch about their pathetic lives.
Adam stands, snatches the phone from Ryat’s hand, and starts to go through it. His eyes meet mine, and I swallow.
“What is it?” Kashton demands.
Adam walks over and hands it to him.
Kashton reads over it and then runs a hand down his unshaven face. “This is why you went to the cathedral?” He looks at me with narrowed eyes.
“Yes.” I lift my chin. I stand by what I did.
“It was a trap,” he barks. “How did you not know that?”
“I knew what I was going to find,” I snap defensively. “I’m not stupid.”
He snorts and I step into him, but Adam grabs my upper arm, pulling me back.
“Don’t touch my fucking wife,” Kashton shouts, bowing up to him.
“Kash.” I place my hands on his chest, pushing him back. “Take a breath. Okay?” My eyes search his and he turns, giving me his back, running his hand through his hair.
There’s a lot to take in. So much is going on, but Adam isn’t going to hurt me.
Not here. There are too many Lords to protect me.
And honestly, I’m not scared of Adam. In a one-on-one, I think I could take him.
He has a dick, and I don’t care what that means to a Lord; it’s their weakness. One hit and he’ll be on his knees.