Chapter 57 Hadrian
HADRIAN
I scowl at Parker, trying to figure out where his sudden sense of assuredness comes from. “Why would they care enough to be watching, especially enough to respond that quickly?”
No one will ever hate them as much as I do.
Every single thing they tried to use on me to make me love the family backfired.
I’m suspicious of them more than ever, and I believe they can use everything in their arsenal to push their control over us, but they are important businessmen who own this town.
Not one of them is on standby to pick our whores up off the floor.
They’ve never been before, and they certainly aren’t now.
“Hadrian is right,” Lex agrees. “It doesn’t make sense that they would be waiting to pick her up. That was minutes.”
“Maybe they have someone on call to clean up our fuckups. The more they fix, the more they can hold over us,” Soren suggests. He would know all about fuckups.
“That was my doing,” Sable says, pointing at the hall. “So I don’t know what they would hold over your heads.”
“If anyone is paying attention, they know we love you,” Soren says softly. “Whatever happens to you, happens to us. That makes you excellent leverage to be used against us.”
She smiles at him like he hung the fucking moon, and while I couldn’t agree more, I’m not sure how we arrived here—with Soren.
Parker seems to have many questions about it all too. His eyes cut to them, caught up in the interaction with furrowed brows. “We’ll get into our families watching us in a second.” He decides to step in. “Let’s start from the beginning.”
Which beginning is he talking about? I think he’s going to interrogate her about Soren, but instead, he looks around, moving his arms as he goes. “Where are we?”
Sable swallows and doesn’t say anything as she makes her way to an ancient-looking chair.
The apartment is a mirror of ours, though hers looks frozen in time.
It obviously belongs to a fifth family, but as far as I know, no one has ever mentioned them.
It’s like they were scratched out of our history, just as their name was scratched off the door. How does Sable have access to this?
“This is the fifth’s family room,” she finally says, and I see that she’s choosing her words carefully.
I cross my arms over my chest, waiting for what else she has to give me. Sable told us multiple times she craves freedom, and I want to give it to her, but it’s difficult to hold myself back from asking everything I’m burning to know.
“This is where I slept the night before last,” she adds, as if we didn’t assume that part.
When silence follows that statement, and I realize she won’t give us anything else, I shift on my feet. “And how did you get the key?”
“A friend.” She clears her throat.
“A friend?” Lex’s eyebrows soar. “A friend in Bellthorn?”
Sable shrugs. “Maybe you guys aren’t the only social circle I have.”
The realization is a thousand-pound weight.
There’s only one friend Sable has ever had at Bellthorn, but just like this is her secret, we haven’t told Lex, Parker, or Orion about Nina’s involvement.
I shoot her a look, knowing exactly what she’s been getting up to.
She has the grace to give me an apologetic little pout.
“Soren knew first?” Parker voices what’s really bothering me. “Why would you tell him of all people and not the rest of us?” He sounds hurt, and frankly, I am too.
Why would she trust him with this and not us? How can he be the reason she left, and now her confidant? It doesn’t make sense. I shake my head, trying to make it fit, and find the same confusion in everyone’s eyes but Soren’s.
“I’m sorry…” Sable starts, but then she doesn’t go anywhere, and I’m feeling profoundly let down.
Yes, I brought Soren with me to find her, but he wasn’t such an amazing help as to make her forget everything.
He was dead weight. Though I have to admit, seeing him now, I don’t think he’s high. He just looks like shit.
“Why did you go to him?” I know I sound like a dick, but the question rips itself out of me before I can stop it.
“Why confide in him and not the rest of us, especially when he’s been such a fucking wreck?
” Rage and hurt build inside me, looking for an outlet, and even though I’ve spent weeks feeling bad for him and wanting my friend back, now I just want to kick his ass.
“It’s not that.” She rubs her temple like this is a complicated math question, but it’s not complicated. It’s simple.
“It sounds like that,” Parker says. “Sounds like he fucked up and chased you away and still ended up with the golden seat.”
My anger builds inside me. I’m not usually like this.
I’m calm and measured. I’m the one who found her when the rest of these assholes were about to give up and die.
How could she let Soren in first? I’m not talking about this damn apartment.
It’s a metaphor for her entire life, and he doesn’t deserve a place in it.
“There’s no way,” Orion says. “There’s no goddamn way! Is that why you made me fuck him with you last night?” Disgust drips off him, and his question punches me in the gut.
“You’ve been fucking her with him?” I ask Orion in shock. Maybe I’ll fight him too. Fuck all of these guys.
“Please, guys, calm down,” Sable says, and the only thing that actually settles me down is how afraid and sad she sounds.
She walks over to Soren. I watch mesmerized as I’m forced to watch this fucking bullshit. She grabs his hand and whispers, “We need to tell them. They need to know the truth.”
“No,” he says, voice hard and not whispering like she is. He raises his eyes from her to us in a clear challenge. “There’s no way.”
What the fuck is going on here?
“Everything leads back to it,” Sable tells him. “How else am I going to explain what I did to her? They are going to kill you because of this stupid room. We need to tell them.”
He shakes his head. “You have a lot of reasons to hate her. They don’t need to understand one night in your room when I was trying to k—”
He cuts himself off, but I already know where he was going.
I’ve been worried about him since the night he told me he was going to jump out the window, but I convinced myself that I had no reason to be.
My gaze cuts to Orion, who looks like he’s stopped breathing, pale, and vaguely sick at the realization he almost lost his brother.
“I’m tired of them hating you.” Her voice carries so much emotion that I wince.
I never wanted to hate Soren, even when he hated me. I remember him as the clever boy who was actually different from the rest of them. The only one who saw the world like me.
“What is she talking about, Soren?” Orion cuts through the bullshit. “Because I am about to freak the fuck out if you don’t tell me what’s going on.”
Soren shakes his head, and Sable approaches him with an apologetic expression and her arms spread. She expects him to reject her, but I know better, and he immediately folds her into his arms. “This was really fucked up, baby,” he says.
“I know,” she admits. “I’m sorry. I know I promised to keep your secret, but I love you, and I can’t carry this anymore. It’s not right.”
Soren breathes her in, a shaking hand resting over her blond hair. “I love you too.”
“Soren, what is happening?” There’s too much vulnerability in Orion’s tone. That’s not something that happens often, and the pain in his brother’s voice registers on Soren’s face like a strike. His brother’s fear is too much for him to take, and while I won’t admit it, I’m scared too.
“And it’s not safe to keep them all in the dark anymore,” Sable adds. “Someone is watching us, so there’s no telling who else knows.”
Soren’s eyes flash like he hadn’t considered the possibility she’s suggesting.
He nods against her and lifts his eyes to us.
He doesn’t move away from Sable, and I know he needs her strength.
I wait quietly, not daring my own mind to try to fill the silence.
Whatever I think, I know it’s worse. I can see it in my friend’s eyes and feel it in the hollow pit of my stomach.
“Arabella drugged me before someone recorded that video.”