Chapter 65 Kane
KANE
The box muted her screams, but it didn’t diminish her loathing.
She hates me, wishes I was dead. “I told you,” Asher unhelpfully offers as we rock on the boat taking us back to the drop-off point.
I was pulled out of the mirrored room when my brain couldn’t focus on anything other than the disgust in her voice.
“She knows what you’ve done. Do you think they wouldn’t tell her? ”
I need him to shut the fuck up.
“They recorded everything in The Dollhouse, so she watched her precious Kane shove his pathetic cock inside a rotting pussy, or an ass leaking shit and stomach acid.”
I close my eyes beneath the hood covering my head, trying to block him out. But he gets louder, angry at being ignored.
“Why would she want you? Didn’t I tell you she’ll hate you, be repulsed at what she made you into? And didn’t I tell you, reflection, she’d hate you more than she hates me?”
“SHUT THE FUCK UP!” I stand, breathing ragged, sight obstructed, with my fists clenched like I can kill the voice in my head.
“Sit. Down,” someone barks.
The wind rocks the boat, plastering the hood to my mask as heavy booted steps storm towards me. I fucking smile as a gun clicks, because death will be better than my wife hating me.
I take my last breath, savoring the memories of how she’d watch the stars. It’s fitting I’m going to die in the dark without her; with the hood it’s like a starless sky. At least I kept my word—I’ll die as her husband.
I’ve imagined my death multiple times. Knife, drowning, pills, car crash.
I never thought of using a gun because a hopeful part of me always thought Delilah would claim my body.
She’d stand over my grave as I was lowered like she did with Asher, and I’d have someone who loved me as I was put to rest. I didn’t want the image of me with half of my face missing to scare her.
Now, as I stand in front of the barrel of a gun with the knowledge of her hate, I know I won’t have that.
I’ll die alone, be buried alone, and rot alone.
The other part of my soul won’t feel anything other than relief at my death.
There’s no reel playing my memories, only a voice repeating all of my mistakes.
“You hurt her. Chased her. Scared her. Then you left her after promising you wouldn’t. Now, three years later, she has scars on her leg, pain in her heart, and no love for you.”
I tip my head back towards the sky, whispering to the stars, “I love you, my pretty girl. Be happy. I’ll watch you like I always have.”
The wind whistles in sharp bursts around me, followed by something warm hitting my chest, soaking through my shirt. Six heavy thuds rock the boat, water splashing as I turn with my bound hands assessing the damage to my body. There’s no hole or pain, but warmth surrounds me, blocking the wind.
A feminine voice says, “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you, Mr. Kobalt.” I open my mouth to ask who the fuck she is as something sharp digs into my outer thigh. My head sways, stomach churning with the boat speeding up, and she adds, “Enjoy your journey.”
The force of us moving through the water combined with whatever drugs are working through my blood make me fall backwards. Arms, four of them, catch me. They don’t move their hands away from my biceps as they sit me on the cushioned seating.
I wake up with murky water dripping on my cheek in an abandoned factory I recognize as belonging to my dad.
All of his businesses have gone to ruin since I sold them for parts after taking my inheritance.
Between orchestrating Delilah’s torment, pretending to be Asher, and some unnamed, faceless stalker, I didn’t have the time to keep the factories going.
Guilt tears through me at how disappointed he’d be if he knew, for hating my parents when they protected me in their own way.
It may not have been the route I would have chosen, but they still tried.
Which I’ve repaid by destroying the only good legacy left for me because I wanted, what? A fuck you to the dead?
I groan at the ache in my muscles as I sit up on the hard floor, slowly looking down to check my belt hasn’t been undone. Thankfully it’s still buckled, and only my masks have been removed.
Heels click through the dusty floor as the woman who spoke while I was on the boat says, “You’re awake.”
I can’t see her face through the rusted machinery, her white woolen coat with the collars pulled up to obstruct the rest of her. But when she walks through the aisles of steelworks machines, I rear back at the features I never thought I’d see again.
“Mom?” I croak.
She looks exactly the same as she did when I was a child. Fuck, is she a twin too? No, Helene said she was defective. Defective means they were born without a shadow, without a twin.
The woman who looks like my mother laughs. Her hair is red and her lips are painted a deeper shade to match. My mom always wore pink to match her natural lip color.
This woman can’t be my mom, she’s too pretentious. As she steps forward, I notice the scales engraved into her thin gold heels. The pointed toe of her shoes are capped in the same gold, snakeskin debossed metal.
“A Ward,” I deduce as I stand, brushing the dust off me.
“Well done.” She nods.
“Why do you look like my mom?”
“Maybe your mother looked like me.” She slowly turns her head as though she’s raising her brows, but they don’t move. It takes a moment for my foggy brain to piece together that it’s a realistic mask made from a mold of my mother’s face. The seams of the latex are nearly invisible.
“You asked me what I’m willing to sacrifice.” I take another step forward. “What do I get in return?”
“I’m insulted. Did your father never speak of our arrangement?”
I remain still. My dad never spoke of his family, how he met my mom other than saying it was a mutual friend, and my mom wasn’t exactly honest with the information she provided.
“You see,” the woman says lightly, “your father was besotted with your mother after meeting his best friend’s older sister one day whilst she visited him at college. Lennox was in training to become the shadow. Such a mighty one he would’ve been.”
Lennox was best friends with my dad? The lying fuck.
She takes half a step forward, digging her heel into the tile.
“Their relationship started innocently, much like yours with the Leroux girl, but as all tales of love go, it’s never enough to conquer those more powerful than them.
As much as this world tries to convince you it will.
Your father was struggling with letting the woman who became his all go. That’s when we offered him a choice.”
“A choice?” I repeat dumbly.
“A choice,” she repeats, nodding once. “We facilitated your mother’s escape from the Kobalt clutches.
She was no longer a princess locked away in a tower after finishing her education, and she had her prince.
A fairytale ending, if the story ended there.
As we both know, that’s not the case. When you were born, your mother knew she had given birth to keys Helene would never allow out of her grasp.
” She takes another half step while I remain unmoving.
“So we provided our help once again. Do you know what your father sacrificed for your safety?”
My throat thickens, halting any speech, so I shake my head.
“To protect his new family, he shed the old,” she says lightly.
“He took his precious newborn twin boys to visit their grandparents. They held you, squeezed your chubby cheeks, sniffed the top of your heads. As you slept in the guest house with your mother waking every hour to feed you, your father slipped away and ended their lives.”
“My dad’s not a killer,” I snap.
“He was.” She hardens. “After all, I was there. I recorded his allegiance, kept the evidence should it ever waiver.”
“You didn’t protect us. They were in our lives and Asher’s dead.”
“Well done, again. I see you have your mother’s intelligence as well as your father’s heart. Do you remember what happened at your fifth birthday party?”
I have to think about it. So much shit has happened since then, a random birthday party is inconsequential. “I got a puppy, but I had to give it away.”
“Why did you have to give it away?” she asks, her smirking fucking audible. If I didn’t need this cunt’s help, I’d have fun killing her.
“Asher tried to drown it in the pool,” I force out. “I didn’t want it to get hurt, so I said it bit me.”
“For the third time, well done. We were aware of Asher’s curiosities.
Something like that cannot exist, so we gave your parents a choice: make another sacrifice…
” She lifts one hand, bobbing it like a scale as she lifts the other.
“Or lose the protection we offered.” I notice the faint freckles over her knuckles as she claps, grinding her palms together.
“They did not choose wisely. We stepped away to allow the shadows to re-enter their lives.”
“What? You really thought they’d murder a child they’d killed to protect?”
“No,” she grits. “They had a choice to keep one child. You. Or lose you both to the bounds of your blood. They chose incorrectly, which is a mistake I hope you won’t make.”
“What are my choices?” If she even fucking suggests hurting Delilah in any way, I’m killing the bitch.
“Your choices are,” she says slowly, tapping her heel against the dusty tile, “remove a sister. Either Scarlet or the one you’ve found in your pet.”
“I’m not killing them.”
“Not them. Either kill Scarlet or give me your pet.”
Sasha.
Betray Sasha or do something that will make Delilah fucking kill me.
She won’t forgive me for killing her sister, but it’s not a decision I can make with the memory of Sasha hugging me for making her food.
Or how she gets excited whenever we finish a job or gets scared whenever we’ve stayed somewhere near a church, so I have to make sure the buildings I’ve picked are nowhere near one.
“Sasha has no one. There’s no one to miss her,” Asher unhelpfully suggests, like losing her wouldn’t be like losing Kid all over again. I love the little nutcase.
“The choice is yours,” the woman says as she turns to leave.
I step forward to drag her back, but glass shatters. There’s a whistling beside my head, so close it skims my hair before a bullet is embedded into the wall, sending more dust into the air that glimmers in lines as five red dots are pointed at my heaving chest.
“Welcome to our world.” She smiles over her shoulder, slipping between the abandoned machinery. “Mr. Kobalt.”