Chapter 35
THIRTY FIVE
RUELLA
Something isn’t right.
Everything feels wonky and my arms aren’t moving the way they should.
My neck feels twisted and the usual scent of Asher wrapped around me feels too far away, in its place is a cold space.
I blink my eyes open and find myself looking at my legs.
I slowly lift my neck with a bite of pain at the base, how long have I been like this?
I groan and try to stretch my arms above my head, but I find resistance. That’s when I notice the tightness around my wrists. My hands are tied. Shit.
My eyes fly open completely on high alert as I scan every inch of the space around me.
What I find leaves me completely off kilter, the sight not making any sense as it unfolds around me.
“What’s going on?” I ask voice raspy. My focus bounces from body to body. Daylan stands by the doorway of my room, Jacob by the side table, leaning against it with a hard look on his face, his eye’s unable to meet mine.
And Asher.
Asher sits in front of me, eye level, in a chair dragged from somewhere else. His expression is devastation poisoned with venom. Rage I’ve never seen from him, rage aimed at me.
My heart lurches when I see the gun resting on his thigh, his finger already on the trigger.
“Asher,” I whisper, the sound of his name catching on my tongue. “Please. What’s going on?”
My voice cracks, and his nose wrinkles like the sound disgusts him.
“The scared, broken rich-girl act won’t work on me,” he snaps. “You can drop it now,”
I flinch. My mouth opens, but before I can speak.
“The jig’s up, Ruella,”
The words hit harder than the ropes biting into my skin.
He knows.
My eyes dart around the others again and this time Jacob’s gaze is lit like a match, an angry fire behind them that makes a shiver roll through me.
I have no one to blame but myself, I knew I should have told them sooner. Every time I planned on doing it, something else took priority.
“Can you untie me and…” I start but Asher scoffs and stands, the gun tight in his grip.
“I don’t want to hear you try to deny it,” He holds something up in front of my face and I flinch at the speed of his hand.
He looks taken aback for a second, ashamed, shifting away to compose himself then slowly raising it again.
It’s the photobooth print out of me and Marlowe I stupidly left out on the bedside between the pages of my book.
I nod.
“Who’s this,” He asks.
“Marlowe Astor,”
“And how do you know Marlowe Astor?” He grits out between a clenched jaw. Jacob shifts closer, his hand clenched at his side. Daylan is surprisingly the only one who looks like he might not want to physically hurt me right now.
“I don’t think anyone truly knows Marlowe,” I scoff knowing I am being difficult now, but they are rubbing me up the wrong way. If I feel attacked, I turn into a bitch. It’s something I am working on with my therapist. Or was.
Asher snaps but his touch is gentle as he takes hold of my chin and angles me until we are eye to eye. “Don’t start messing baby. I know you haven’t seen much of my dark side, but I can assure it is there and ready to be used at the drop of a hat,”
I wrench free. “Aw don’t you already know I like to walk on the dark side handsome,”
Before Asher can speak again, Jacob shifts forward and points his own gun at my head, and a little piece of my heart cracks inside at how Asher stays silent. There is nothing of the Asher I have known standing before me now apart from a glint of betrayal shining through along with the venom.
“Cut the shit Ruella. Answer the questions or I put a bullet in you brain,” Jacob snarls, his gloved finger calm over the trigger. Asher looks at the floor, almost unable to observe at the scene unfolding before him.
“Who do you work for and what do you want with my sister?” He demands.
I shake my head. “I want nothing but to keep Piper safe. This isn’t what you think…”
“Liar!” He shouts.
Jacob pushes the gun to my head, the metal cold between my brows. My stomach drops and I feel my eyes burn as the lump in my chest begins to make it hard to breathe.
“Enough Jacob,” Asher finally growls as my tears begin to fall. His hand twitching beside him as if his own body is trying to stop this madness.
“Let me explain,” I say softly. “Then you can decide what you want to do,”
“Give her a chance Jacob,” Daylan says from behind him. “If you keep shouting over her, she isn’t going to tell you shit,”
Jacob pauses as Asher’s shoulders droop.
“Go ahead then,” Jacob tilts his head.
“Can you drop the gun?”
“The gun stays,” No feeling in his words, face void of everything. He doesn’t even seem affected by this at all, Piper wouldn’t recognise this Jacob before me at all.
Then there is the man I crave like my last breath, if it wasn’t for the wetness in his own eyes, I would think he was the demon he pretends to be.
He is acting like this isn’t difficult for him; like he can just switch back to not caring about me with a click of his fingers.
I thought my father was the only one who could make me feel worthless and less than as I begged for scraps of his affection.
Nothing has ever hit me harder than seeing the man I love look at me like a stranger. Like everything has been a lie.
I swallow down the hurt and try to diffuse the situation. Other than the fact I knew Marlowe, I have nothing else to hide, despite whatever they think.
“My name is Ruella Griffith, my mother is Carmen Griffith and my father,” I stare at him. “Is Archibald Astor,”
“What the fuck?” Daylan moves forward as Asher’s brows meet in the middle. “I thought you said Bishop looked into her past,”
“He did. I went over the file myself,” Asher spits as Jacob pushes the gun against my head, harder this time. “Keep going,” He snarls.
I flinch at the pain and with my discomfort, Asher lifts his gun to Jacob’s head.
“Really?” Jacob’s stare never leaves me as he addresses Asher.
Asher’s mouth opens and shuts as a million things rush through his brain. “This woman could be responsible for everything that has happened to Piper. To your sister. And now you are trying to protect her. You are falling for the lies she fed you to fool you,”
Asher shakes his head but stands firm. “Lower the gun and back away,”
Daylan shifts back, his gaze darting between his two best friends as they stand resolute.
“This was your idea Podonok!” Jacob snaps.
“And now I am telling you to drop the gun. And back the fuck away from her,”
Jacob’s jaw shifts from side to side, the muscles rippling. He finally snorts and drops the gun, stomping to the side of the room with the window and placing his back against it. Legs wide and ready to shift if needed again. His eyes a blaze.
Asher clears his throat as my heart starts to calm slightly.
“Continue,” Asher demands, his face falling to the floor once more.
I blink away the tears as best as I can, but they just don’t stop falling as I speak shakily.
“I am the product of an affair. My mother no longer wanted to be a mother so dropped me on my father’s doorstep,” I shrug.
“Turns out his wife was already pregnant,” I look off to the side, unable to observe the change in Asher towards me any longer.
“Anyway, long story short, they hated me but raised me, didn’t ever claim me but kept me clothed and fed.
The basics while separating me from my sister.
Well half-sister,” Daylan puts his knife back in his pocket and settles against my desk.
“I stayed home while she came to the academy. Then one day, she suddenly stopped replying to messages. My text’s being ignored was the norm for us because we weren’t that close, so I didn’t think anything of it.
But, not replying to my father’s messages, that was unheard of.
He’s not the type of man you get to simply ignore.
As the days went by with no contact my father started to worry,” Jacob and Daylan glance at each other.
“Do you expect us to believe that?” Asher growls. “That you aren’t a part of this too along with your sister,”
I shake my head in confusion. “What?”
“Did you come to finish what your sister couldn’t?” He starts to pace back and forth before me, agitated, angry and with no outlet for it.
“I don’t know what you mean…what…”
“Is dear old daddy in on this as well? Is any of it true Rue? Did he even abuse you or was it all part of your broken girl act to get me to soften around you. Tell you everything about me. Let you get close to my sister. Just so you can take her again like you have taken all those before!” He shouts as I try to take in what he is saying.
He truly believes this, that I am part of whatever happened to his sister all because he found out I was connected to Marlowe.
“Calm down man,” Daylan pulls Asher away from me. “I don’t think she knows what you are talking about Ash,”
Asher scoffs before looking at me, no emotion as he speaks.
“You’re telling me you didn’t know Marlowe was Piper’s so-called friend.
A friend who drugged her and had her transferred to a holding facility here on the campus before collecting a huge amount of money as she sold my sister off to a group of men,” My heart stops in my chest. The air in my lungs frozen as I feel the blood drain out of my face.
“The same men who planned on selling her as a virgin and forced her to watch another girl getting gang raped. Her only saving grace is that I managed to find her, or she would have more than likely suffered the same fate,”
I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. Oh my god.
I lean over and vomit all over my arm, chair and floor where it splatters at my feet.
I keep hurling as the others jump back to avoid the spray. The gurgling soon turning into cries as I let it all consume me. Marlowe was a part of this. She was the insider luring girls to sell into sex trafficking. She did this to Piper.
I gasp, the shock rocking through me like a tsunami. The room frozen.