PROLOGUE #2
Taron was curious, more curious than he should have been. His sister wasn't the most open person, so he'd instantly gotten suspicious when she had started easing a somewhat nameless face into their spaces.
He'd do anything to protect his sister, no matter what it entailed, so naturally he had vetted this Monica Blanchard. He had come up with nothing. The girl was spotless, clean, and not a single soul had anything ill to say of her.
So, he had slowly allowed himself to relax around her. To be charmed by her, even.
"Monica," Tao said, stepping into the lounge, tapping away on her tablet, not paying much attention to what the two were conversing about.
As soon as she heard her name, Monica got up and flashed Taron a small smile as she followed Tao into one of the house's studies.
"You seem to be quite popular," Tao began, walking over to the desk placed adjacent to the floor-to-ceiling window of the study.
"A Roman Cavalier contacted me earlier. Requested you specifically for a spring line he wants to release."
Monica's breath hitched. Roman Cavalier was only the largest designer in all of the Eastern Hemisphere and was extremely picky about who modelled his designs.
"Are you interested?" Tao asked.
Monica wanted nothing more than to jump and scream yes, but knowing how much Tao hated large and boisterous outbursts, she stuck to a simple yes before being motioned to leave.
As her hand touched the handle to pull the door open, Tao's voice stopped her.
"And Monica," Tao began, her eyes still focused on whatever was on her tablet. "Don't fuck my brother."
That had startled Monica a bit. Tao never used profanity, and quite frankly this was the very first time she had ever heard the German national curse.
It told Monica just how serious she was.
The sentence landed like a door being bolted.
Monica stood at the threshold for a moment longer than she needed to, feeling the weight of those four words settle over her, and then she left without saying anything at all.
The silence was its own kind of answer, though not the one Tao had asked for.
?
It was now Tao's senior year at Lancaster and Fell, and she could have honestly cared less about whatever was going on there. Hence, she was in downtown Washington D.C. meeting with an old friend of hers: Priya Masahati, one of her most elusive but loyal friends.
"So, I have something to show you, and you are not going to believe this," Priya started, shuffling in her handbag for a device Tao assumed was her phone.
Tao didn't like gossip. Not only because she always tended to be the common topic, but because it was often misleading and she preferred pure facts.
But this once, she'd actually listened to Priya.
Not because she cared, but because she was bored, and because there was something in Priya's voice today that was slightly different from her usual breathless excitement.
Something tighter. Something with edges.
Priya had taken the latest Samsung phone out of her bag and quickly found what she had to show Tao, which was a video.
Handing the phone over, Priya watched every sliver of emotion that dared pass her friend's face in an effort to find some sort of weakness. There was close to none, as she'd expected.
Tao wasn't emotional.
She'd been told by one of her aunts as a child that emotion made her weak, and since then, she hadn't dared shown a sliver of genuine feeling to anyone except her immediate family.
The quality of the video was low as it seemed to be taken in a club setting, the lights continuously flashing back and forth.
But in that video was her brother. She could recognise the male version of herself anywhere.
That didn't surprise her much. What did was the female on his lap, locking lips with him, her fingers in his hair, so comfortable as if she’d been there many times before.
"They've been hooking up for a while now," Priya added, watching carefully.
Tao was angry.
So angry that she slammed the phone down on the wooden table of the restaurant they were currently in. Her little burst not only shocked Priya but also the people sitting at neighboring tables.
Priya didn't care about the phone. She could buy another. But she was genuinely concerned, because she had never, in all the years she had known Tao, seen her act out in quite this way.
Priya reached out to hold her friend's hands. A mischievous smile spread across her face. "Tell me what you need me to do," Priya said, ready to do her bidding.
The female in that video was none other than Monica Blanchard, and unbeknownst to her, this was the beginning of the end for her.
Everything came in three waves. The first wave was rumors, all of them ruthless. Whispers had begun going up in the air around Monica and she could do little to nothing about it. The second was the loss of deals. No one would work with her.
All the shows and runways she had been set to grace had either quietly backed out or had blatantly and publicly pulled her. The third and final wave was humiliation.
She had been relentlessly humiliated by many of the big names in her circle, some she knew and others she hadn't even crossed paths with. It was surgical. It was total. It had Tao's fingerprints all over it, even if no one could prove it.
All Monica could deduce was who exactly was behind this, and only one name could cross her mind.
?
"You slept with her?!" Tao angrily shouted at her brother as both their parents stared in shock at her outburst.
"I—" Taron had no words.
"You really didn't think I'd find out? I had one rule, ONE RULE TARON," Tao said, not caring how harsh she sounded or how disrespectful she was being in her parents' presence.
She was just trying to protect him and their family, and the betrayal of it, the specific shape of it, was something she hadn't prepared herself for.
"You're saying that as if I went to her," Taron expressed, feeling his sister's anger roll off of her in waves. "She came to me. She told me that you said it was alright."
"She what—" Tao's phone dinged, catching her attention.
Meet me in Hyattsville, the text read. No greeting. No context.
"We'll resume this later," Tao said harshly as she left the house. For the first time ever, she left without her security detail and drove herself to Monica's Hyattsville home.
Tao stared at the modern suburban home before entering. "What is it, I'm here," she said, pulling off her coat and hanging it on one of the racks as it was nearing Christmas and the weather in Maryland around this time was insufferable.
"I-I'm so sorry," Monica stuttered, forcing tears out of her eyes.
Tao couldn't help but internally chuckle at the show Monica was putting on.
The girl was faker than the designer bags she'd carry around.
Performing grief like she performed everything else, with just enough texture to be believed if you weren't paying close attention. Tao had always paid close attention.
"I don't want to hear it," Tao said, checking her watch.
"Now, why am I here? Because if it's only that then I'm leaving.
" With that, she turned and pulled her coat off of the rack, going for the door.
But before she could pull it open, she felt a sharp object pierce her skin just above her abdomen.
Tao held the spot, looking down at where she had just been stabbed, before falling to her knees.
The floor rushed up to meet her as she fell.
She had never been on her knees in front of anyone.
The sensation was almost abstract to her, as though it were happening to someone else and she was merely watching.
"You know," Monica came closer, cupping Tao's face in her cold hands, "in some sick way, I love you. I wanted nothing more than to be just like you. But you know, that can't happen because I have one little problem, and that's you."
"Uh…" Tao heaved, trying to speak.
Monica placed a bloody finger over the dying girl's lips. "Shh. Don't. You'll only make this more painful than it has to be."
Before Tao could even anticipate it, Monica's hand came down again and again and again and again.
So many times, that even Monica herself had lost count.
The sound of it filled the small entryway.
The smell of iron filled the air. And Monica kept going, long past the point where it was necessary, because it had stopped being about necessity some moments ago.
She stood watching her former friend bleed out as a small smile washed across her beautiful features. It was done. Tao-Lee Montgomery was dead.