40. Anastasia
Anastasia
I don’t feel gravity weighing me anymore and I can’t tear my sight from Matthew’s lifeless form.
Blood now pools from his head, and his green eyes turn to haunted glass.
Adam’s tightening grip is the only thing keeping me from buckling, but I heave, doubling over, sick from the gruesome, brutal murder I witnessed.
The sound of the gunshot still rings in my ears, and I’m slashed back in time. But this isn’t like when Rhett held me to him and exacted his revenge. Rhett was good even when he didn’t want to believe it. The man he killed had wronged him so despicably.
Jacob is not Rhett.
He is one monster slaying another.
My whole body trembles tightly, but Adam doesn’t let me go. At least not by choice.
The first sound to return to me is the agonizing cry of a father.
No matter what, Gregory is mourning his child.
I think I’m in shock. Nothing seems grounding and everything seems chaotic.
Adam is ripped away from me at some point.
More men flood the room. Two take down Gregory, and I glance back, terrified for Adam as they bind his hands behind him, but I can’t move.
“It’ll all be over soon, darling,” Jacob says softly, so close to my ear I don’t know when he approached.
“Tie them together for now. I have to deal with this.”
I sit in a chair and don’t fight. They tie my hands behind me, and Adam and I are back-to-back. I’m facing Matthew and I risk throwing up again as they drag out a fighting Gregory.
“Close your eyes, Ana,” Adam says gently. His fingers brush mine—the first contact of something that feels safe, and that lashes me back to this nightmare of a reality when my mind had drifted away in denial that any of this was real.
“Oh god,” I whisper. Tears prick my eyes and flow down my cheeks.
“You’re going to be okay.” He tries to console me.
Maybe I don’t want to be anymore. I’ve seen things that will forever haunt me. I’ve lost Rhett who I yearn for more than anything in the world right now, and that breaks me. I sob, unable to hold it back. I can’t be strong like Rhett.
Be brave, little bird, he would say.
I try to absorb the echoes of his presence that wrap around me now. The only thing that will get me to survive this.
“How did you know I was here?” I ask weakly, closing my eyes like he instructed.
“I must have fallen asleep too. But I didn’t think you’d want to wake to me there, so I left.
I saw Matthew Forbes lingering in a car outside your house, but he didn’t see me.
I’ve always had a bad feeling about him.
The way he looks at you, stalks you, and it’s like you’ve never noticed his creepy fixation. ”
“He ... he’s Liam’s brother. Or I thought he was ... He’s always been around.” My cheeks burn at the enlightenment to how na?ve I’ve been.
“I don’t blame you for not seeing it,” he says softly as if he can feel my humiliation.
“He put up an excellent front, but I guess, having a deeper care about you, I was more observant to those around you. I followed Matthew tonight, which led me here, and then I had a really bad fucking feeling. I watched him kill the two police that were guarding the safe house after Gregory lured them out. I was about to call the police until ...”
At his pause of silence I conclude, “Jacob found you?”
His voice quietens. “No, actually?—”
Jacob returns, which silences Adam and turns me stone-cold with fear. He doesn’t look frightening. In fact, he’s so charmingly beautiful that it’s chilling to know what all the wealth and the pretty face hides.
“Anastasia.” He rolls my name around his mouth as if he’s sampling fine wine. “You caused quite a lot of trouble for me in New York. Or at least Rhett Kaiser did in taking my girls.”
“They’re not property to be sold, you piece of shit,” I hiss.
I’m boiling with rage at his audacity. How he can talk so easily about selling people. Women. With families and friends who’ll be searching for them. Mourning for them.
“I don’t expect you to understand the business, so let’s not waste our breath.
I hoped I would get the chance to kill Kaiser myself, but I heard of the unfortunate accident.
The notorious leader of Xoid, gone in a mere blink from a car crash.
It’s so disappointing, really. I could have made it far more fun. ”
“You’re a sick, twisted bastard.”
“Perhaps. But you don’t get to pick your monster this time, Miss Kinsley.”
“What do you want from me?”
“I don’t want anything from you. I want all of you.”
“Fuck you and go to hell,” Adam spits.
I squeeze his fingers, my anticipation shooting at his boldness. I can’t watch Adam die too. “I’ll go with you,” I say quickly.
“Ana—”
“Just let him go, please?”
Jacob regards us, looking over Adam curiously as though deciding whether his bullets should take another life tonight.
“A friend?” Jacob ponders.
“Yes. Just a friend.”
“What will you give me to spare his life?”
Jacob’s eyes flick sideways with a silent command that has one of his men untying my bonds. I rub my wrists, heart thundering to keep track of all his movements that could become unhinged at any moment.
“Am I not enough?” I ask, trying to keep my voice from wavering and straightening with confidence.
“I don’t think you’re willing to do what it takes to be enough. To be mine,” he says, his voice so arrogantly smooth. Coming close enough, he tips my chin up with the barrel of his gun. Adam struggles, and I clamp my fists and my teeth against my trembling.
He’s a fucking sadist.
“Then what do you want?”
Jacob’s smile slithers down every notch of my spine. Tears prick my eyes when I don’t know what he’s going to do, and a man with no morals exposes my mind with a million fears.
“An alliance,” he says.
His hand is so smooth circling my waist. He’s surprisingly gentle, but he presses me to him and I bite my lip against a whimper. This closeness feels so wrong, and I prepare to fight him if he tries anything further.
After scanning my eyes, my face, like he’s admiring every surface of a diamond, he leans in close.
Not to kiss me.
His lips come close, but they brush over my ear. Then he speaks. Every word races my thoughts. Faster and faster. My heart is going to explode out of my chest.
Then he pulls back, gives one wicked smile, and lets me go.
“Sir, we’re about to be surrounded,” one of his men says to him.
Jacob hovers around me, stopping only to graze his fingers under my chin, and maybe he does contemplate kissing me then. But a crash erupts and he’s broken from his trance.
“Until we meet again, Anastasia.”
I shiver at that promise.
Then he’s gone, but his presence lingers like a ghost that will follow me.
“Uhh, wanna help me out so we can get the hell out of here?” Adam’s voice snaps me back from my reeling thoughts.
I twist and scramble to undo his bonds.
“What the fuck was that about? He just left?”
“We’re not in the clear yet,” I say through my tight throat.
Adam takes my arms when he’s free, scanning me over like Jacob could have harmed me during the seconds I was in his hold.
“Darling Ana.”
The sound of Alistair Lanshall at my back makes my next inhale shudder.
“Didn’t I tell you not to leave your home? We’ll have to work on your obedience first.”
Adam’s expression hardens, his grip tightening like he’s about to push me behind him, but my hand goes over his to stop him. He pins me with a look of incredulity.
I turn to Alistair. He’s all dark, haughty confidence in his black coat and slicked dark blond hair. Older than Jacob, but it’s easy to see they’re cut from the same blood-soaked cloth. They both feed from the same roots of poison.
“You missed Jacob,” I say, slipping into the detached person I need to be. “Would have been quite the show to see you go head-to-head.”
Alistair smiles wickedly. “You would like to see that, wouldn’t you? You really are starved for violence, darling. We’ll fix that soon enough.”
He holds out a hand and it’s my ticket to the devil’s playground.
“What are you doing?” Adam hisses.
I have no choice. This opportunity won’t come around again.
There’s a war in the underworld, and I’m going be the reason they both go down in their battle. I’m going to find out myself what happened to Rhett, because in my heart he’s still out there, waiting for me just like he was on that bench on a snowy Christmas Eve.
To the people I’m Anastasia Kinsley.
For the people I’m Anastasia Kaiser.
So I take the hand of one evil, with the hope I can defeat it, not become it.