20
Manson
I shouldn’t feel so hopeful about the things Ash admitted, but I can’t help it. I think this is where the tide turns in all of our favor, but we have to go about it the right way. He’s not just going to apologize and treat her better because the sun rose the next morning, he’s going to need a push.
Without talking myself out of it, I make my way out of my room toward hers. If I can convince her to be sweet for a couple of days, there’s no way he doesn’t step up and prove to her he can be better, but if she snaps at him at every opportunity, he’ll cling to that mask he wears and pretend he’s unfazed. He’ll be the same asshole he’s been their whole relationship, and while I know it isn’t on her to kiss his ass, I know a little sugar goes a long way with that dick.
I’m in the middle of arguing with myself about what to bribe her with when I overhear her talking on the phone.
With one of her fucking clients.
It’s clearly the older one she told us about, the widower I’m supposed to have sympathy for because Rhea does, but all I feel is rage at the fact that she’s being overly sweet with another man.
“I love you.”
“I miss you.”
“It’s been too long.”
Blah blah blah.
She’s never spoken to us in such a soft, loving tone, and while I can admit that is all our fault, it still stings like a slap across the cheek.
She may never feel this way about us, but I can’t have her feeling this way about someone else either. She’s ours.
Asher’s door opens a second before I barge in there, and the look on his face tells me he overheard some of those sweet sentences as well, only he immediately tries to erase the murderous expression he was wearing.
So she doesn’t overhear us, I shove him back into his room and follow him in.
“How long have you been eavesdropping?”
“Probably as long as you,” I snap.
“Then why the fuck did you stop me?”
His intent to kill is back now that he has someone to pin it on, but I don’t let it phase me. “Well what were you about to do when you walked in there, huh?”
“Tell him if he ever calls her again, I’ll show him what his insides look like by gauging out his eyes and shoving them up his ass.”
Sounds right up his alley. “And to her?” I add, because I couldn’t care less what he does to the guy, I care about which side of himself he shows her.
He scoffs, but the way his eyes drop to the floor tells me everything I need to know. “I’d have fucked that sweet little mouth until she remembered who she belongs to.”
“Exactly. All I did was give us both a moment to calm down and plan our next move. Is it worth finding this guy to send a message? Or do we just take her damn computer away because she needs to remember she’s ours? I personally think computer... I’d like to know what the fuck else is on there anyway.”
“Weren’t you the one always preaching that the shit we do will make her hate us more?” he pushes. “You think taking away her computer and making her quit her job will be better than facefucking her for telling another guy she loves him?”
Scratching my head, I think about it a little longer. He’s right. We’d be better off just facefucking her, but where do we go from there? “So what? We go in there, punish her for doing her job and then what? Let her continue doing her job? And what else does her job really entail? What kind of fucking videos are out there right now of our girl?”
Fuck, I’m spiraling when I’m the one who’s supposed to keep it together.
“A lot,” Asher growls. “She sells her fucking sexsomnia videos, remember? You really want to see those? We’ll need a bigger grave out back.”
His words make me growl and pace like a caged animal, and this time I need his help pulling me back from the ledge. “I don’t want to share her with anyone else. She needs to take all those videos down.” The second those words are out I have another thought, one that might truly make Ash murder again. “You think she uploaded ours?”
Something dangerous flashes in his eyes, and I know there’s no going back now. “She wouldn’t fucking dare.”
Once again, he’s right. He has to be or all the progress he made last night was for nothing, because things are only going to get worse between us. “Only one way to know.”
I hate it, but in reality we don’t have a choice here. Our faces can’t be on the internet, our livelihood relies on us being ghosts, and if she’s fucked with that we have more problems than we think.
Asher’s jaw ticks. “Stay here. Only one of us needs to be the devil, and we both know it’s been me for a while.”
He pushes past me to Rhea’s room, stopping for just a moment with his open palm against the doorframe. I watch his fingers curl slightly, his shoulders tense. He doesn’t want to be the devil anymore, he just doesn’t have a choice.
The sound of him clearing his throat has Rhea whipping around and holding a finger to her lips, but Asher doesn’t care. He stalks across the room to unplug her headset, then picks up her laptop and removes the power cord and HDMI adaptor that extends it to a monitor. “What the fuck are you doing?” she snaps, standing so quickly her chair rolls back a few feet. “Give it back, I wasn’t done!”
Without a word, Ash rushes out to the living room with her belongings, and Rhea and I both follow. I can’t make him carry all the weight here, I just can’t. “You’re over here telling some other dude you love him. What the fuck is that, Rhea?”
“It’s my fucking job,” she retorts. “That’s what. Give it back.”
Asher clicks around for a minute, not saying a word, and going off of how tense he is, shit isn’t looking good. May as well rip off the bandaid now, I can’t wait on Ash to find the answer. “Did you upload the video of us?”
Her body goes rigid. “Yeah. I did. You said this was all transactional, remember? So you two get a fuckdoll and I get fucking paid.”
Asher picks up her lap and raises it up in the air like he’s about to smash it to bits, and I yell for him to stop. “She has to take it down, Ash! Don’t fucking break it yet.”
He’s trembling with restraint, but I breathe a little easier when he sets it down and rounds on her. “You just fucking exposed us, pet. Is that your endgame? Getting us fucking killed?”
She backs up a half a step toward the couch, but stands tall. “I didn’t know what you did when I uploaded it. And who cares, anyway? It’s not like you admitted to anything except for taking advantage of me. Newsflash, the guys that buy my videos like that sort of thing.”
Asher crowds her space, shoving the computer into her hands. “Take it down, or you’re going to find out just how cruel your big brother can be.”
As his eyes travel down to the burn on her hand, Rhea relents. Fear takes over as she realizes exactly what he’s saying — take it down, or Asher will finish what he started that night.
She’d be an idiot not to.
Trembling, her fingers fumble on the trackpad and slam the keys a bit too hard, but she nods when it’s done. “There were only three downloads, the rest were all streams. It’s down.”
“Take all of them down,” I rush out. “All videos of you.”
“That’s over half my income,” she argues. “Especially since you two keep me either handcuffed to a bed or - or paralyzed half the time and I can’t take as many clients as I used to. Why do I have to take them down?”
“Fine,” Asher snaps, stealing the laptop back. “I’ll fucking do it. Manson, keep her away from me until I’m done.”
He spins away to disappear with her laptop, and when she moves to rush after him I grab her and carry her to the couch. “What do you even need money for?”
“I’m saving to buy a house,” she admits with quiet desperation. “Somewhere far from here. I almost have enough for a downpayment, Manson. Please don’t let him do this. I’ll never afford it without that revenue.”
My phone dings in my pocket with a very specific sound — one I set up to alert me when I get notifications from our bank. We only have one, housing a joint account we use for business that either can’t be handled in person or be paid for in cash. It’s silent unless we’re actively on a job.
Boxing her in, I pull it out and stare down at the little deposit notification. “Let me guess. You had $7,353.64 saved up?”
Blinking, she nods. “Yes. That’s... is he snooping through my shit?”
I don’t know if snooping is the right word, but he did steal every penny she has.
Before I respond to her I have to close my eyes and kiss our happy little family dream goodbye. “Something like that. But you don’t need to buy a house when you live here. I told you to let us take care of you.”
“Right, live and die without ever seeing the stars again. Without ever having the possibility of making friends or having a family. Without being able to buy things I want, go on vacations, have anything at all that’s mine except a collar I didn’t ask for. A collar that makes sure I obey men who don’t deserve it. What kind of a life is that for me? You two want a slave, and when I’m gone, you’ll find another one. I’m almost there. Just please, Manson. Please. Stop him from taking them all down.”
My phone dings again with a text telling me it’s done, which means I couldn’t help her even if I wanted to.
“I’ve been trying to work on that all being different and you two fucking siblings seem to be against it. I want us to have all of those things, Rhea. How do you not see that? It doesn’t have to be a fucking war in this house, we could be a family.”
Ash walks back out and sets her laptop on the counter, looking much calmer than he did before. “He can’t stop me because deep down he doesn’t want to. Did you really think he’d share you with outsiders for long?”
She ignores him completely, her eyes locked on mine. “Tell me one thing either of you have ever done to show me you wanted more. To show me you’d care about me, love me. That I was anything more than a pet you choose to play with when you want.”
It’s bad I can’t think of one thing while on the spot, but if she really believes I haven’t tried to make our home peaceful, than she wouldn’t regardless if I did. There’s no arguing with someone who already wholeheartedly believes something, so why bother? “I can’t.” I shrug. “I guess we haven’t.”
“Get out of your feelings about it, Manson. Don’t go fucking soft right now. She’d never see it, and how could she when everything nice you’ve done has been overshadowed by everything bad?”
She doesn’t know the half of it. If she thinks it’s been so terrible, wait until she finds out what he just did.
“This clearly isn’t working,” she says almost too calmly. “Can’t you see that? We’re just not a good fit. I don’t want to be what you need, and you’re incapable of being what I want. So just let me go. I don’t have much saved, but I can get something modest with it.”
“You don’t have anything,” Asher retorts. “You really should learn not to save your passwords.”
I see the moment it hits her. It’s not hatred or anger in her eyes this time, it’s pure devastation. Asher just popped a hole in the only life raft she had.
I’d feel bad if I wasn’t so fucking deflated here. “When are you going to get you’re staying with us?” I ask. “Maybe we can’t be what you want, but we can be what you need. We will take care of you.”
It’s like beating a dead horse at this point, but I can’t seem to stop.
“You’re not taking care of me,” she whispers, then stands abruptly and points a shaky, furious finger at Asher as she screams, “Give me my fucking money back and let me out! I’m done. Do you hear me? I’m fucking done!”
“No.”
Rhea jerks with the word like he physically slapped her, but turns away from him. I don’t realize why she’s walking toward the end table until it’s too late.
She grabs the gun we keep hidden there, locked and fucking loaded, and points it at the only man on this planet I really love.
“Give. It. Back.”
“Rhea, what the fuck?!” I yell, moving to step in front of him, but the fucker shoves me back onto the couch.
“There she is,” he says challengingly, eyes wide as they bore into hers. “It’s uncanny really, how much you look like mommy dearest right now.“ These two are going to give me a heart attack one day, what the fuck is he doing? “Go on! Do it! Pull the fucking trigger.”
“No, don’t. What the fuck! Rhea, put down the gun!”
“Fuck that. She had the balls to grab it, she better have the balls to use it. Do what you black widows were made for.”
Her once shaking hand is now steady as hell as she levels the gun with his heart. I see it now, what he means. She looks like every photo I’ve ever seen of Joanna, just cold indifference wrapped up in a lethally attractive package. But right now, she’s holding my life on the line because she’s holding his.
“There’s one problem with your little theory, big brother,” she croons, stepping forward with an almost psychotically stoic look on her face. “You’re wrong. You’ve always been wrong, and you’ll always be wrong. I’m not her.“
She shoves the side of the gun against his chest and turns away, and for a second, I fear Asher’s going to do something he won’t ever be able to take back.
The click of the safety unlocking makes me flinch and stop breathing all together. “Have you ever even shot a gun, Rhea?”
He follows every step she takes away until she’s spinning to face him. “Yes, I have. Please leave me alone.”
“Oh, so we’re saying please now, huh?” I breathe again when he clicks that safety back on and tosses the gun aside, but before I realize what’s happening he’s grabbing her by her arms and shaking her once. “Why didn’t you do it?”
There’s a manic confusion all over his face that barely seems to phase her. It’s like she shut down and the Rhea we know isn’t home right now. “Because. I realized I’d rather kill myself than you, and I won’t do that. I still have hope, Asher. Even after everything I’ve been through, everything I’ve endured... I still have hope that things will be better someday. That all of it was leading up to something amazing. And you? I pity you. You don’t have any hope at all.”
“Because hope hasn’t ever given me shit!” Releasing her, Ash turns away like he can’t stand to face what he just admitted, and I take it upon myself to stupidly intervene.
“But yesterday you had hope, we both did.”
He gives me a look I’ve never seen on his face before, but I’d be an idiot if I didn’t realize what it was. That sliver of hope is gone.
“Ash.”
“No, you had hope, and I let you convince me it had merit. Look at her.” He waves a hand in her direction without looking. “She’ll never want what you want. Wake the fuck up, Manson.”
It seems that way because we’ve never fucking come out and said it. We’ve beat around the bush, we’ve pushed her, alluded to it, whatever — but we’ve never once admitted out loud that we want this to be more. That we want her to love us, and we want to love her. Why would she want something she doesn’t think exists?
I stumble over the words, choke on the admissions, because at this point they seem pointless. We just stole every penny from her bank account and now I want her to believe I want to love her? That I already might? I feel like an idiot. “It didn’t have to be this way. We could have been so fucking good together!”
I’m yelling at him now, and I don’t even know why, because it’s me I want to hit. There were so many opportunities for me to turn this around, and as much as I want to pin the blame on Ash, I know he would have listened at any point. People might think he’s the asshole that runs things here, but we know the truth. I’m the only one he trusts enough to listen to.
“Rhea,” I practically plead. “Don’t close off yet. If hope is what you cling to, then cling onto whatever fucking sliver you got for this situation here. I am.”
Her eyes are filled with tears that won’t spill as she answers quietly, “I’m tired.”
That’s it. No hope, no denials, no anger or hatred or love. Just exhaustion.
It’s barely 11:00am, but I can’t say I blame her. I feel like I’ve lived a year in the last hour. I take one glance at Asher before I move in to pick her up and carry her to her bed. I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing, but knowing it’s better to be safe than sorry, I cuff her to the bed again. I can’t risk her getting up to shoot him for real.
With guilt practically suffocating me, I turn to leave her alone, but she grabs my wrist with her free hand. “Stay.”
Frowning, I take a deep breath and climb into bed with her. We both flinch when we hear a loud crash come from the kitchen and somehow I know Asher just broke her laptop. So much for us starting over.