Chapter 41
NATE
Unknown Number: Faking your own death in a plane crash, darling?
I didn’t know you had it in you. How does your soft-hearted bride feel about the collateral damage involved in that charade, hmm?
That pilot had a family. Wife and children at home.
And he’s dead because of you. I bet that’s causing friction with sweet Carina.
Unknown Number: Don’t worry, no need to reply.
I already confirmed you’re alive and having a lovely vacation in Dubrovnik right now.
It’s a shame…Ashley will be dead before you even wake up to read these messages.
I’ll be sure to donate her organs to science before she passes entirely, so she can be useful for once in her life.
Please pass along my condolences to Carina. She will be simply devastated.
T he pounding in my head was what woke me, my pulse thumping so hard, it was like a kick drum inside my skull. Pain radiated in waves from the back of my skull, and I groaned, vaguely recalling the hit that had knocked me unconscious. I hadn’t seen it coming.
“Sweetheart, you’re awake,” my mom said from somewhere nearby. I blinked a couple of times to try and clear the haze from my eyes and frowned at the vaguely familiar surroundings. “I was worried that big oaf had fractured your skull, but it seems to be fine.”
She was behind me, her fingers probing at the painful spot on the back of my skull where her lackey had struck me. I should have been more aware of my surroundings, but it had just never occurred to me that she had an accomplice.
Actually, that wasn’t true. I knew she had accomplices; there was no way she could’ve done everything she’d managed alone. I just hadn’t expected to be ambushed and smacked over the head while she distracted me in the woods outside Royce’s family home.
I’d done my best to draw her away from the house long enough that Heath would have had Ash safely indoors, but then I’d been knocked out. And brought here…
“Are we…?” I asked, looking around at the room we were in. I was seated upright, but my wrists were bound to the chair back and my ankles to the solid oak legs.
“In our home? Yes. Your father thought it was sold to investors, but I bought it under a shell corporation. I thought it might come in handy one day, and well, what better place for what’s to come?
” She said it so matter-of-factly, like she hadn’t just abducted me and had me bound to a chair.
And to do what? Kill me? She could have done that by now.
I swallowed hard, glancing around the room again.
We were alone—as far as I could see, anyway.
She had to have some evil scheme up her sleeve, or I wouldn’t have still been breathing.
No, if I’d learned one thing about my mother in the last six months, it was that she was more twisted than I ever could have thought possible.
She wouldn’t be satisfied simply killing me, like she wasn’t satisfied with killing Ash any of the multiple times she’d had the chance.
This was all a game to her. And we were the pawns.
“Why are you doing this?” I asked as I attempted to subtly test the strength of my restraints. “Why do you hate Ashley so much?”
“I don’t,” she replied. “She seems perfectly nice. If you excuse the fact she’s dull as old paint, dumber than a bag of hamsters, and horribly raised. But I have nothing against the girl herself. Her mother, on the other hand…”
“So you’re torturing Ashley because you’re jealous of Carina?” I spat, disgusted, despite the fact that this wasn’t new information. I had just assumed there was something more to it.
My mother scoffed, coming around to face me with an unhinged smile on her face. It was the same smile I’d seen her wearing in the woods, right before I got knocked out.
“I’m not jealous, Nathaniel. This isn’t some petty, scorned-wife revenge.
Honestly, I’m insulted that you would belittle my life’s work to such trivial matters.
What I’m doing is revolutionary, son. It’s going to forever change the path of governmental control and military operations.
If the trash gets taken out as a side effect, well, that’s just a happy coincidence. ”
I laughed, disbelief choking me. “You’re delusional. You aren’t changing the world. You’re getting revenge because your ego couldn’t handle the divorce.”
My words didn’t seem to bother her. She just shrugged. “Maybe. The results will be the same, regardless of my motivations, though.”
I needed more. I needed to understand because she’d done so much damage, hurt so many people, repeatedly put Ash in danger… She’d done it to me —her son. I needed her to explain, despite the fact it really didn’t make a difference in the long run. It was just for closure. Nothing more.
“Are you going to kill me here, Mom?” I asked, nearly choking on that name. She’d stopped being my mom a long time ago, well before this hypnosis shit started. “Is this the end for us?”
Her head tilted to the side, and a small frown creased her brow.
“Don’t be silly, Nathaniel. You’re clearly just bait.
If you play your part as intended, there will be no need to kill you.
Be a good boy and smile for the camera, yes?
Ashley is refusing to play without confirmation that you’re alive. ”
She held up her phone, aimed at me, and I just glared back at it.
“Okay, well, that’ll have to do, I suppose,” she muttered, presumably sending the video to Ashley as evidence that I was still alive. For now.
“Ashley isn’t stupid,” I told her through gritted teeth. “She won’t just do what you want simply because you asked.”
“Not even to save her fiancé ?” my mother mocked with a pouty face. “I think, Nathaniel dear, you’d be amazed what a woman would do for the man she loves.”
That fact struck me like a knife through the heart. The idea that Ashley’s feelings for me could potentially get her killed was so gut-wrenching, I wanted to vomit. All I could do was cling to the thin shred of hope that maybe… maybe… she didn’t love me like I loved her.
A minute later, that hope dissolved like it’d been doused in acid as my mother’s phone dinged and her face lit up in a bright smile of victory.
“Oh, good, she’s on her way. Alone too. Such an obedient girl.
It’s a shame she has to die. She could have been a valuable player in my experiments, like Abby was. ”
I snorted my bitter disappointment. “She won’t be coming alone. You’re not that dense.”
Mom—Jocelyn—just clicked her tongue and sighed.
“Obviously I gave more incentive than just asking nicely . There’s a bomb underneath your chair, honey.
I made sure she got a good look at that in the video I sent and warned that I’d detonate if there was even a sniff of anyone with her.
That includes your annoying little friends. ”
My breath caught in my chest, and I leaned forward as far as the bonds would allow, trying to see whether she was bluffing. This was, however, the same woman who’d loaded C4 on a floating platform designed to blow me and Ashley up so…it was plausible.
“You don’t need to hurt her to get your revenge. She’s innocent in all of this, Mom. You can’t?—”
“Hush, Nathaniel.” She cut me off with a wave of her hand. “I need to let my team know that we have a visitor on her way.”
Panic flooded through me. “Wait! I want to know more about your experiment!”
Jocelyn tossed her head back with a laugh.
“Oh, honey, it’s adorable you think I’m going to stand here and spill my life story in a clichéd villainesque soliloquy.
This isn’t fiction, sweetheart. The big bad doesn’t need to justify their choices to help you sleep better at night.
Sometimes sad things happen, and we don’t get closure. ”
Then she left the room. She left me alone, strapped to a chair with a bomb underneath it, and a rapidly dwindling sense of hope.
I was alone for the better part of an hour, by my guess.
Or maybe it just felt that long because of how fast my thoughts were whirling.
I tried everything to get out of my restraints, to the point where my forearms and wrists were slick with blood and every tiny movement hurt like a bitch, but I was finally starting to make a little progress.
The bonds seemed ever so slightly looser.
I was alone for so long, I started to hope that Ashley had changed her mind. Saving me wasn’t worth her life. Surely she knew that? Surely she understood that I would never be able to live with that guilt? The guys would never let her. I had to have faith in them if nothing else.
Still I kept working on my wrists, gritting my teeth against the burning pain as I pulled and pulled, using my own blood as lubricant to try and slide out of the rope.
The front door opened with a huge bang, and my heart dropped out of my ass.
It also gave me the final push I needed to jerk my left wrist through the tight restraint with a grunt of pain.
It felt a whole lot like I’d just peeled the skin off my whole hand, but I didn’t look.
I needed to get the other wrist free, and fumbled for that knot as Jocelyn reappeared in the dining room with me.
A moment later, Ashley stepped into view, and my whole world shattered.
“No,” I croaked, shaking my head in disbelief. “You shouldn’t be here! ”
Her eyes met mine in a torturous clash of emotions that shredded my soul. Determination, anger, fear, love …but not a single drop of regret. That infuriating, beautiful woman was utterly fearless, and it was going to be the death of us both.
With visible effort, she broke my gaze and gave a hard look below my chair. At the bomb. Then her lips curled up in a quick smile before she raised the cuff of her hoodie— my hoodie—to her mouth.
“It’s a fake. Breach.”
Right as she gave that command, my mother surged forward in panic and snapped her fingers in Ashley’s face.