Chapter 41 Aftermath #2
“You wanted to leave me buried under a house that had parts of it on fire! What the hell kind of strategy is that?” I argued. “And then you left me completely defenseless! What if you had lost the fight? I’d be completely fucked right now!”
“Watch your fucking mouth, little girl,” Darren growled, causing my back to stiffen. “I already explained to you what I expected and why, and that it was not up for debate. Yet you chose to defy me anyway.”
“I tried to find the panic room!” I continued desperately. “There was so much going on. Bullets were flying everywhere, parts of house had been blown apart, noise in every direction. Sorry if my navigation was a little off while I tried to find it!”
In three long strides, Darren grabbed me by my neck and hauled me up to slam my back against the wall above the iron headboard, my bare feet still digging into the mattress.
We were practically eye level now, his face inches from mine as fury ripped his features into something vicious and predatory.
His grip tightened harshly when I started to struggle, the blood flow to my brain heavily compromised. My hands instinctively clawed at his wrist, using him as an anchor to hold myself up, but his arm never moved.
“Keep lying to me, Jaden. It’s doing you a world of favors,” he threatened, his voice deep with malice.
“I did try,” I croaked out on a broken whisper.
“You fucking failed is what you did,” he rasped. “Imagine my disappointment when I found you trapped under a fucking wall with five rifles pointed at your head. If I hadn’t gotten there in time, you would be fucking dead right now.”
I scoffed as I tried to reposition my neck in his grip, barely gaining a centimeter. “First, I have a 100 percent success rate,” I grated, “and now I’m a failure. Just like that.”
I shuddered angrily at the truth, hating that he did have a point. Pinned under that wall frame, I was about to lose that fight had he not intervened when he did. I would have lost Camaro in the mix as well.
But what had followed next was an alarming display of swift and lethal brutality.
The violence Darren was so skilled at left me frozen with near disbelief, accompanied by the horror of realizing he was still alive.
He was so fast, so efficient, so goddamn deadly it terrified to me think Jason would ever last more than a few moments against him.
“That’s how failure works, you disobedient little brat,” he growled, squeezing tighter and making me wince.
“Something you consistently do when it comes to following my orders. And now it’s costing you your safety and my fucking sanity!
” His dark gaze bore down on me with an intensity I could feel, his energy searing my skin with the kind of wrath that made me want to shrink away instantly.
“Apparently, I’ve gone too soft on you,” he murmured, his eyes scanning me with disapproval.
“Clearly too lenient, too indulgent…and far too merciful. Evidently, you’re not nearly as afraid of me as you should be if you’re willing to defy me so easily. That ends today.”
With that, he released me and stepped away, letting me crumple to the bed like a rag doll while I struggled to regain my bearings. But now that he’d gotten his wrath out of his system—for now—I needed to know what he knew.
“What happened after you drugged me?” I asked, my voice grated by his bruising grip. “Who was it that attacked us?”
Darren was quiet as he turned back to study me, his eyes searching for any little clue my body might reveal to him. Sometimes he was too damn good at reading me and it scared the fucking shit out of me.
“Miguel’s attack on our home failed,” he stated plainly. “There were very little casualties on our side.” His flat tone was bored like he was delivering the weather report instead of the result of the massive assault that nearly claimed my own life.
But there was one word that captivated my attention. One very special noun. Miguel’s attack. Not Matt’s. Not Jason’s. Miguel’s.
Thinking back on my conversation with Matt, he had refused me the very important details I needed to be prepared for this attack, like who the fuck was going to execute it. I assumed Jason would be involved since Matt said I could be free after the attack.
Why else would that even be a possibility if not for Jason to secure my rescue? But Darren would have to be killed in order for me to be free, yet here he was, standing like the dark omen of my fate.
What the hell had happened? What went wrong? Why had the operation failed? Why had they attacked ahead of schedule?
“How do you know it was Miguel and not Matt, or some other enemy you have?” I asked carefully.
Darren’s brow furrowed as he glared down at me, the shadow of suspicion darkening his eyes before he finally answered.
“Because I’m very good at motivating people to talk,” he replied.
I nodded in acknowledgment. He did have a knack for that.
So if it was Miguel, I could see Matt teaming up with him, especially since he’d had a business relationship with his brother, Javier, before Darren had him killed.
“What happens now?” I asked dryly, my mind already exhausted from everything.
“I’m going to kill Miguel within the next hour. And you’re going back to the estate where you will stay until I say otherwise,” he said definitively. “I suggest you make peace with your position there because you won’t be leaving the grounds for a very long time. If ever.”
I felt a metaphorical door suddenly slam shut in my face, the lock deafening as it clicked into place. Back to square one, just like that. Back to my original prison. And this time I knew—I knew I’d never get to leave it again.
Fuck.
I felt my entire body deflate into a dark void of nothing, the weight of hopelessness crushing my soul. Exhausted and broken, I laid my head against the pillow, utterly devastated by it all.
Absolutely nothing had gone according to plan. Not one damn thing. In fact, everything was worse now. If Darren successfully took Miguel out of the game, it was one less ally Matt and Jason could count on.
Was I really this stupid? This naive? Too eager and arrogant to see the potential flaws in Matt’s plan? Why did I even bother at this point? I couldn’t trust one goddamn thing that might actually save myself from this fucking nightmare I was trapped in.
I could feel Darren moving closer to me, his presence drawing me to him like the gravity of a black hole. But the closer he got, the harder it was to contain my impending tears.
I thought I had been so close. So fucking close. Or, fuck, maybe I had never even come close at all. Either way, I would never know. And the pain of it was like having a crater punched through my chest.
All I knew was that being drugged had prevented me from knowing the truth. Whether or not Jason had been there. Whether or not Matt could be trusted, which was a stupid question to begin with. Of course, I couldn’t trust him.
But if his illusive words held any kind of sway over the margins of my life then this failure was all the proof I needed to judge the truth.
While my brain tried to rationalize it all, my heart wanted nothing more than to deny it. I wanted to believe Jason would be there, and the only way to know was to fucking be there myself!
But considering everything that had happened, it was clear to me Jason couldn’t have been there at all. If he had been, I’d be waking up to a very different situation than my current one.
And now I had to sit on my ass in isolation and figure out what the hell had happened that made everything go so wrong. I supposed in hindsight, I was glad Jason wasn’t there or had evaded Darren’s capture. I was sure Darren would have rubbed it in my face if he had finally caught him.
“Fine. But I’m going to bitch about it the whole time,” I stated, my voice flat and lifeless.
Darren moved away from the bed, grabbing his jacket off the side of a nearby chair and slipped it on.
“Bitch all you want, princess. The only thing it will change is the color of your ass. And you know how much I love to paint it.”
I cringed at the implication.
“At least now you’ll finally have all the chances you’ll need to fulfill your end of our first little bet you lost,” Darren said as he brushed his hands through his unruly hair.
I furrowed my brows. “What are you talking about?”
A tight grin formed in the corner of his mouth. “Babysitting Ella. You’ll be seeing a lot more of her when you get back.”
My brows knitted in confusion. “What? Why?”
His eyes turned grave as he lifted his gaze to mine. “Because Daniel’s home was attacked at the same time we were,” he replied, causing my body to stiffen with suspense. Had this been part of the plan?
“Are they okay?” At least let Katherine and Ella be okay. Fuck Daniel.
“Ella is fine, but Katherine and Daniel were badly injured. They barely made it out before their home was completely destroyed, and the majority of their staff were killed.”
My breath caught in my lungs, my heart frozen with horror for Katherine.
“So they’ll be coming to stay with us for a while until their house is rebuilt.”
I didn’t know why I was going to ask because I already knew the damn answer, but I needed to hear it from him.
“Do we know who attacked them?”
Darren’s features tightened into a scowl. “Take a wild fucking guess.”