Chapter 38
Chapter Thirty-Eight
KIT
“ O kay, so all I have to say is that having two men to dote on and protect a woman is really the way to go. I get it now,” Alana says.
“I take it things are working out with Jax and Scott?”
“Oh my god, you have no idea. I don’t know how I’m supposed to give them back after all of this is over.”
“Alana, they’re people, not accessories.”
“I’m just saying. They keep staring at me with those soulful eyes and making sure that I’ve had enough water or keep doing those nighttime security checks. I’m going to hire them myself.”
I’m driving us back to the new house but I’m taking the scenic route. A route that I’ve mapped out all on my own to bring Alana from Elysium Sol to the ouse. I let Jax and Scott know beforehand. If I didn’t, they’d raise the alarms. They must have bought it, seeing as I haven’t gotten any texts or calls from Grant or Rafe. I take in a deep breath and readjust my grip on the wheel.
“So, where is this house again?” Alana asks.
“Um, it’s not far. Just another, you know, hour and a half or so.”
“Oh man, it really is out in the middle of nowhere, huh?”
“It’s really beautiful. You’ll like it,” I say and because I know it’ll cheer her up, I add, “and it has a wine cellar. Fully-stocked.” I don’t know who to thank, but the house has everything I could ever want. Including a stocked pantry and a fridge full of food. The wine cellar is the same and Rita had said everything was fair game.
Alana puts on her sunglasses and lays her seat back with a happy sigh. “Say less. I’m ready for a little getaway with Jax and Scott. I’m going to take a nap for a while, okay?”
“Sure. I’ll wake you up when we stop for gas.”
I drive for another few minutes before I see Alana fully relax. Her breathing evens out and she ends up turning onto her side. Perfect. I let out another deep breath and switch on the radio. I keep it low so I don’t wake Alana. I’d rather not have it on at all but I need something for my nerves. The scenic route that I informed Jax and Scott about does go to our new home but there’s a very important detour.
I’m going to see Dottie Bee.
My hands tighten on the wheel and my nervousness vanishes in a wash of anger. I know Grant and Rafe don’t want me near her but I have to see her. Especially when I saw the alert I have for her name go off this morning.
She’s waking up.
The fucking bitch is waking up. I’m not letting her walk out of the Shady Pines Assisted Living Center, though. It feels like the universe is unleashing everything on me at once, so it makes sense that Dottie Bee has woken up. She’s been in a coma for the past six years but last night of all nights she woke up.
She’s been showing activity over the past month but today is the day they’ve announced it. It was one thing for her to be the dirty and dark stain on my men’s past when she couldn’t leave her bed or speak but she’s starting to do both now.
I can’t have that.
I can still hear the way Grant and Rafe’s voices sounded last night. That shaking waver, the way my fearless men sounded off-center with the mention of Dottie Bee. I am not going to allow her to walk out of that room. Not now, not ever. Today, I’m going to end her and end the hold she has on Rafe and Grant.
I’m worried I’ll get lost but I don’t. The directions that I memorized that morning lead me right where I want to go and I arrive without incident. When I pull into the parking lot of the assisted living center, I’m a basket of nerves. Jax and Scott’s dark SUV pulls in right behind me and I hesitate. What’s going to happen when she turns up dead and they know I was the last one to visit her?
I bite my lip and look over at Alana. She doesn’t know what I’m doing here or even that I’m here. Am I bringing her into something I shouldn’t? Oh god. The knives Grant and Rafe gifted me are on me. Both are tucked into the black boots I’m wearing. I can’t use the knives on Dottie Bee but it makes me feel like my men are here with me for what happens next. I touch my bracelet before I open my door and step out.
Alana stirs and sits up. “What’s going on? Where are we?”
“I’m visiting an old friend,” I tell her softly.
She raises an eyebrow at me and looks at the building in front of her. “Do I want to know?”
I pause and then choose the easiest way to be honest with my best friend. “It’s better if you don’t.”
“Should I stay here?”
I nod. “Can you keep Jax and Scott occupied? I won’t be long, I promise.”
“I can do that. Just hurry back.”
Gratitude for my best friend fills my heart. “I love you. Thank you.”
Alana gives me a wink. “Love you too. Don’t get caught.”
I close the door and start walking across the parking lot to the assisted living center’s front door. “Ms. Salazar where are you-” I hear Jax start to call to me but then I hear the echoing sound of Alana’s door slamming before she beckons them towards her.
“Hello, boys! Kit’s got an errand but you can keep me company.”
I look over my shoulder to raise my hand in a wave to the bodyguards and see Alana intercepting Jax and Scott in the parking lot. I speed up my steps and walk into the assisted living center. The plan that I came up with suddenly seems flimsy. What am I doing here? When I thought about it last night, it seemed easy to look up another resident and request to visit them just to get entry into the building. Now that I’m here, the plan seems half-baked at best.
Once I’m in the building, what am I going to do?
What the fuck am I doing? Adrenaline hits my body and makes my hands shake. I shove them in my pockets and walk up to the front desk with a smile on my face. It's too late to turn back now. The assisted living center is chic and luxurious. There’s a sparkling chandelier overhead and soft classical music plays while a waterfall cascades down the wall of the building. It looks more like a luxurious hotel lobby than what I imagined an assisted living center would look like. The woman behind the counter gives me a bright smile.
“Hello, dear. How are you today?”
I return her smile and aim to look harmless. “Good afternoon. I’m fine, thank you.”
“What can I do for you?” she asks, her voice warm and her eyes kind. If I have to, I’ll use that to my advantage.
“I’m here to see a resident but I’m not sure if she’s taking visitors yet. Could you tell me if she is?”
“Certainly, dear. What’s the resident’s name?”
“Aurora Smith.” When I looked up the assisted living center they had a senior spotlight on their website. Aurora’s was last week’s spotlight.
“Let me check,” the woman taps on her keyboard and then hums. “Oh, are you here for the reunion? I just think it’s so sweet that Aurora has her grandkids all visiting this week. She’s been loving it so much on account of her not getting many visitors the rest of the year.”
A reunion. Perfect. Thank you universe for this gift in the middle of a shit sandwich week.
“Yeah, that’s exactly what I’m here for.”
“Wonderful dear. Just sign in here,” she taps the clipboard with a manicured tip of her nail and beams at me while I make up a name.
“Here you go, thank you.”
“Aurora will be so delighted to see you,” she tells me while she pulls out a visitor’s badge and hands it to me. “Now, you’ll want to go through those doors and straight down to the elevator. Then it’s floor 2 and she’s the first door on the right. Room 205.”
I nod and commit the directions and room number to memory. If I get caught trying to find Dottie I’ll repeat the directions word for word.
I slip the visitor’s badge over my head and smile gratefully. “Thank you so much. I appreciate your help. You don’t know what this means to me.”
“Happy to help. Let me know if you need anything else, dear.”
I set off towards the doors and remind myself to look nonchalant. There’s nothing out of the ordinary. No one knows fuck all about who I am or why I want to see a random resident. I could always tell them that I thought we were related but got my research wrong if I’m questioned. I push past the doors and scan the hallway. It’s quiet here. Soft music is piped in, more jazzy than the reception area but still nice. It isn’t tile underfoot but carpet and every door is open and helps fill the hallway with light.
I peek in the first door on my way past and see a woman sleeping. Her room isn’t as nice as the outside or the hallway so I guess maybe it is exactly like I imagined. She’s in a hospital bed and the room is sparse and sterile with white tile and drab beige walls. Sadness pricks my heart at seeing the sleeping woman in a room so empty but I push it away. There’s an empty receptionist desk to my left and for some reason my eye catches on a pair of scissors. They’re heavy, more like shears than scissors. I snag them and tuck them into my back pocket. I don’t know what I’m going to do when I see Dottie but taking those scissors feels right.
A room like this is exactly what Dottie Bee deserves. She shouldn’t be comfortable. She should be trapped in a shitty, cold, empty room. I keep going down the hallway, careful to scan the names of the doors as I pass so I don’t miss Dottie’s room. I get to the end of the hallway with the elevator but Dottie’s name never shows on any of the name placards on the doors.
There’s a map on the wall beside the elevator showing me where I am and that floors two and three are also for residents. “Floor two is as good a place as any to start.” I hit the button for the elevator and when the doors slide open, I let out a sigh of relief. A minute later, I’m walking down the hallway of the second floor and right away I see Aurora Smith’s room. At the end of the hall there’s a receptionist desk and a few nurses laughing over a magazine. I make my way to Aurora’s door and when I do, I see she’s sleeping. Her room is nicer than the other woman’s with plenty of flowers and pictures all around. I smile, glad that Aurora is having a wonderful reunion week. When I turn away from the door, I see a name that I didn’t think I would so soon.
Dottie Bee.
There’s a stupid silver bee sticker pasted onto the door next to her name. I cross the hallway before I realize it and when I look in, I see she’s sitting up in bed. She’s not asleep like Aurora and when I appear in the doorway, she motions for me to come in. I glance down the hallway but the nurses are still turned around so I do what she asks and enter the room.
“Hello.” What the fuck else do you say to the woman that marked the men you love?
She coughs and points to the cup in front of her. “Can you get me some water?”
I don’t move. I don’t want to leave my fingerprints on a single thing. When I don’t move, she coughs again and gives me a confused look but a second later realization colors her face.
“I know you.”
“And I know you.”
Me knowing who Dottie is isn’t that noteworthy. She was the highest paid leading lady on television before she ended up here. She was one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen when I was dreaming of a better tomorrow and she is still pretty. The remnants of that glamor I remember so well cling to her. She’s not old like the other white-haired women sleeping in their rooms I’ve seen today. She’s in her late fifties with only a few strands of silver in her red hair. She’s wearing a pair of red silk pajamas and makeup that looks out of place in her room. It’s not barren like the first room and everything in it feels carefully selected to cater to her image as a legendary television starlet.
And that legendary television starlet knows me.
“You’re with them,” she says quietly, her voice a rasp, barely more than a whisper.
“I am.”
‘What are you doing here with those men waiting for you?”
“I wanted to look at the bitch who raped them.”
Her eyes narrow and then she huffs out a laugh. “You know they don’t do anything they don’t want to. They wanted me.”
“Fuck you.”
“They did, yes.”
My hands curl into fists and I want to kill her. The knives tucked into my boots burn against my skin. I want to slam them right into this woman's skull. I take a step towards her, fully intending on smothering her with her own pillow when there’s a knock at the door. “I’m here for your pills, Dottie!” We turn to see a nurse with a rolling cart of pill cups organized by room. The nurse falters and looks at me in surprise.
“I didn’t know you had company.” She looks from me to Dottie and back again.
“She was a surprise,” Dottie murmurs and the woman nods and puts the pills on the bedside table beside Dottie. When she tries to hold them out to the other woman, Dottie pushes her hand away.
“I’m fine. I’ll take them after my company leaves.”
“Dottie…” the nurse’s voice trails off and she looks like she wants to push the issue but she doesn’t. Dottie waves her off.
“I just woke up. I think I can decide when I want to take my pills, Elise.”
Elise the nurse looks over at me again and then nods. “Sure thing, Dottie. I’ll be back to check on you in fifteen.”
“Thanks, Elise.”
The nurse leaves the room with her rolling cart and we’re alone again. I move forward again like I wanted to before. “You’re a fucking bitch . You should have never woken up.”
“And do you really think you know Grant? Do you know what kind of man he is? He’ll kill you, you know,” she says.
My blood turns cold at her words. “What are you talking about?”
She makes a slashing motion with her finger across her throat. “He tried to kill me,” Dottie whispers. The gleam in her eye challenges me to say it isn’t true, but I don’t. I won’t even bother, because I’m upset Grant didn’t succeed. What kind of fucking joke is this that she wakes up from a goddamn coma? “I’ll tell everyone what he did. Do you think you’re special and he isn’t going to try and kill you? If he got away with doing it to me, no one is going to think twice when it’s you. You’re lucky I woke up when I did.”
My gut twists. If Dottie leaves this place there’s no doubt in my mind that she’s going to point the finger at Grant. There’s no way I can let her leave.
“The world is better without you,” I tell her softly and clasp my hands behind me. “You know that, don’t you? Six years ago you went into a coma and you had some of you left but now what are you? A fucking corpse. You’re the living dead, Dottie.”
It’s when I’m close enough to Dottie to actually do something that the knives stop feeling like fire against my skin and I remember the scissors I took. The ordinary scissors that no one would think twice about seeing. I pull my sleeve down and take them out quickly, putting them behind my back because Dottie is so focused on my face.
“You don’t know shit. You’re young. You think you’re hot shit because you're beautiful and you have those men. You’re nobody. They’re going to kill you. ”
“Young or not, I know more than enough to know you’re a monster,” I tell her as I swipe my sleeves along the scissors and pray it’s enough to muddle my fingerprints. “But you? You made a career out of taking advantage of people that couldn’t tell you no. Isn’t that right, Dottie?”
She shakes her head and sneers at me. The silk pajamas she’s in suddenly don’t look expensive. They’re cheap and tawdry. The kind of thing that’s more fit to be found in a spare rag drawer to wipe down counters than on a famous starlet.
“You’re going to die here, alone and forgotten. You think because you woke up everything is going to go back to normal? No, you’re going to be forgotten and you know what else? Rafe and Grant are going to tell. They’re going to tell everyone what you did to them. And when they do, so many others are going to tell the truth, too.”
Her eyes go wide and she looks frail. So small and dumb that I want to crush her under my heel and never look at this bitch again. Grant and Rafe were right. She’s trash. I haven’t talked to Rafe and Grant about this and I’m not going to. There won’t be a day in court. I just want her to think there will be. I want her scared and powerless.
When she is, she’ll do what I want her to.
“How does it feel to be forgotten? At least before, when you were in a coma, no one knew what you did. Once Grant and Rafe go public, you’re fucking dead.” We stare at each other for a long minute and I finally pull the scissors out from behind my back and set them on the side table next to her. I lean close to her and smile as I look her in the eyes. “You might as well make it final, right? If you don’t, I’m going to be there to see you fucking go up in flames. You never had them. They’re mine. You make them sick.”
Her eyes glisten with tears. It’s unexpected but I watch it. I take it in and commit it to memory. “That’s not true. They loved me. They wanted me.”
I see Grant’s face in my mind. The way he looked broken and the way Rafe’s eyes ice over and his voice sounds wrong when she comes up. She’s lying to herself. I hope she chokes on those lies, that they never get uttered to another person ever again.
“No, you’re filth. You don’t know what love is. They didn’t even want me here. You don’t deserve to take up my air but I came here, Dottie. I came here as a kindness to you. Your legacy means nothing, not once Grant and Rafe rip it apart. They own Hollywood right now. And who are you?” I pause and step closer until I’m standing over her. “You’re no one. A fucking washed up has-been the media is going to love ripping apart. You raped Rafe and you raped Grant. And I know you did it to more than just them. You’re going to die in court and I want you to know that I’m going to watch every second of it.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I do. Seeing as my men are going to back up what I say, you’re fucked, Dottie. Do the world a favor and finally die .” I don’t miss the way her breath catches. I pause in the doorway and look back at her. “You know what to do, you worthless piece of shit. That is, unless you’re ready to watch what’s left of your legacy get ruined.”
Her eyes drop to the scissors on the bedside table and she takes them.“You can’t take my name from me. It's all I have. I won’t lose it.”
I don’t answer her. I leave the room before I see what she does with the scissors. I know as sure as anything that Dottie is going to do what I know she should. What we both know she should. I stride across the hallway and take care to stop by Aurora Smith’s room. I’m talking to her when the nurse assigned to Dottie Bee starts screaming for help.
“Dottie! No ! Someone help me! ” The nurse screams and there’s a clatter but I know she’s too late. “Dottie!”
I smile at Aurora, happy that Dottie did the right thing for once.