Chapter 4 #5
“That’s me, Arden,” he said, some of his pain leaking through the words.
“To Monty, Heath, Mickey, Matthias, and—I hope sooner rather than later—Florence. I’m their root, the thing that if they pull me out of the ground, they’ll all decay.
So what do you think will happen when my cancer takes me?
” he demanded, his chest heaving and his eyes dark.
“They’re going to fall apart unless I have someone strong enough to pick up where I left off, someone who can grow as a new root in my place and help more and more assets flourish into what they’re meant to be—saviors, heroes, goddamn normal ordinary people.
” He tugged my ring from his pocket and lifted it between us, shaking it a bit.
“This is an insurance policy, to give you everything in my name and to take care of my family. You…you’re that person, Arden. When I die, my empire is yours.”
Looking at him then, I saw so much of myself in his eyes, the agony there a replica for the wounds festering inside me.
Maybe it was some cruel aligning of fate that two kids from that same fucking estate were sitting in bed discussing a future as if either of us truly had one, but we were, and all the panic I felt receded into a calming clarity.
I was bright. I’d felt shame for it, hated that the light I felt inside me was constantly being used against me to hurt the people I loved.
I let myself become Halden’s corpse because it was the easiest way to get through the day, but I was free.
That chapter of my life was, thankfully, over.
I couldn’t afford to be hollowed out and cold.
Creed didn’t need that. Alexander’s family didn’t need that.
All of them needed the girl who got Creed through—“Another fucking hell,” I muttered.
Alexander studied me curiously, waiting for me to explain.
“Creed,” I said, “we said that to each other, that we were surviving one hell and the next, that the moments we truly lived were in between hells.”
“You think I’m handing you another hell?” he asked, stricken.
I inhaled and steadied myself. “Any life where I am the thing that destroys those I love is hell, Alexander. A heart, glue, a light—call it whatever you want, but it feels like a curse. I’m not saying I don’t accept it, that that seems to be my purpose, but I’m acknowledging it sucks what you’re asking me to do.
Enter hell. Again. Leave behind my training in being numb and deciding to feel again.
The last time I did that, I lost everything.
” My burned hand drifted over my stomach and I swallowed.
“They raped me. Every day. To keep Creed in line—”
“Arden, I would never—”
“They took my baby,” I whispered hoarsely, tears welling in my eyes, “then they took my ability to ever try again.”
“Fuck, I’m sorry I—”
“Halden made me burn Buyers alive to keep them from hurting me,” I continued, half in a trance, reliving the worst of my memories.
“They would count the different ways I screamed, pinned me down with knives through my hands and feet, beat me until—” My fingers ghosted over my indented temple and then my bad ear—“I was deaf, blind, permanently defeated.”
Tears lined his eyes as a sob cracked out of me.
“Caring,” I told him, “cost me me. Choosing to live has been the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make.”
He took my shoulders then, bringing his face close to mine and leveling our gazes. “Arden,” he whispered, shaking me slightly. “Caring is what keeps us human. The moment we stop—they’ve won.”
My chin trembled.
“Darling.” He cupped my face, his brows drawn as his thumbs swiped away my tears. “Being loved by others isn’t hell, and being loved is not your fault.”
I squeezed my eyes shut.
“No, look at me. Please look at me.”
I shook my head, trying to pull out of his grasp.
“Arden,” his voice broke. “Please.”
Slowly, I peeled my lashes apart, my tears completely blinding my bad eye and blurring the rest. He was close, his nose brushing mine.
It wasn’t intimate, at least not sexually.
It felt more like a yearning to connect.
In that moment, Alexander wanted me to know I wasn’t alone in such twisted, horrible thoughts.
“You are beautiful. You are bright. You are loved,” he told me sincerely. Then his throat bobbed. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
But something inside me was shifting. It felt as if I was fitting into old shoes, finding who I was before the compound.
There once was an Arden that believed in escape and retribution.
She wanted safety and calm, and maybe what Alexander was offering wasn’t exactly that, but it was the best I’d ever encountered.
Then he did something I thought he never would: he opened up to me.
“Florence and I are half siblings,” Alexander said, and I relaxed against my pillow as he let go of my face and smiled softly.
“But she’s my sister. Through and through.
Our parents met when I was eight. She was so small and so scared when she was born, and while I’d originally hated the idea of having a sister to compete for attention with, the moment I saw her, I knew I’d never let anything or anyone hurt her.
” His shoulders hunched a bit and his grin faded.
“When I was ten and she was two, our parents died in a car crash.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
He shook his head. “I don’t remember much about them, to be honest. I mean, I remember some things, like how my mom would make Florence and I gingerbread cookies, even when it wasn’t Christmas, because they were our favorites.
I remember that Florence’s dad was a lawyer and was gone a lot, but when he was home, he’d play dress up with Florence.
” He chuckled. “It was fun watching a grown man as serious as her dad put on a tutu and fairy wings.”
I smiled at that. “I don’t remember anything before Viktor’s,” I admitted. “I think I was too young when he took me or was sold me. As far as I can recall, I’d always been at that estate.”
Alexander blew out a breath. “You didn’t deserve that. No kid deserves to know that, let alone only that.”
“It is what it is,” I said.
He glanced my way. “Yeah, I guess so.”
“So after the crash, was that when you were taken to Viktor’s?”
He nodded. “Florence and I were put in a foster home for about a month. That was when I first met Viktor. He stopped by the house frequently, surveying the kids. He had some kind of deal with the foster parents. Any time Viktor took a kid, the parents told social services they ran away, and with the system the way it is, no one tried all that hard to see if they were telling the truth.”
My stomach twisted.
“The day he took me,” Alexander started. Then he stopped. He cleared his throat, staring down at his twined fingers. Hesitating at first, I tentatively reached over. I clasped my fingers around his with grim understanding.
“I was there,” I told him and shook my head. “I know. You don’t need to feel scared or embarrassed to talk to me about any of it. I promise.”
He brought his gaze to mine, emotion bright.
“He took me but he didn’t take Florence.
I tried to fight him, but he drugged me.
By the time I woke up in that fucking bedroom at his estate, I had no idea what had happened to my sister.
I hoped she was there, in the house, somewhere.
Then Viktor came to my room and I hoped she wasn’t. ”
I grasped his hand tighter.
“I used every chance I had to get back to her, to find her, but there was no escaping the estate without severe punishment. It became clear to me that Viktor was building. His empire as it is today was at its beginning when he grabbed me. There were only a couple other kids at the estate. I realized we were his trial run, and before he invited his first Buyers, he tested every method he had for breaking us in. Your friend Rafe was there.”
I froze. “You know Rafe?”
“Yeah. Right before I was bought for the first time.” He shook his head.
“Hell of a coincidence. I hadn’t realized he was your sharp shooter until that day I came to watch Creed.
It only solidified further that I wanted all four of you out of there.
Rafe had felt like a kid brother when I was at Viktor’s.
I never forgave myself for leaving him in that place, but I was young, selfish, and by the time I could go back for him as a Buyer, he was gone. Sold off to some Buyer somewhere.”
“Is that why you didn’t go with me to see him in LA?”
Alexander shrugged. “It’s been a long time, and I’m pretty sure Rafe thinks I abandoned him on purpose. In some ways, I did. I had to.”
My frown deepened but I waited for him to continue his story. I needed to know his truth.
“We tried to escape. Rafe and me. But…we didn't make it. We were caught trying to sneak through the fence, and after that, I think it made Viktor escalate his plans. He put a group of us in his courtyard and gave us switchblades,” he continued, his voice hollow. “‘One hour,’ he said, ‘kill or be killed’. I don’t think he cared if we all died. It was a sick experiment to him, and if it weren’t for the hope that Florence was out in the world somewhere, needing her big brother, then I probably wouldn’t have tried as hard as I did to stay alive.
Of course, that did mean killing. By the end of the hour, only three of us were left standing—me, Rafe, and a girl named Sarah.
Viktor said only one of us could win a prize.
He said it’d be to leave the estate, and as soon as he said that, I went after Sarah. ”
Alexander’s fingers shook against mine.
“I killed her,” he whispered hoarsely, “thinking I was earning some semblance of freedom, but instead—”
“You were sold,” I said, exhaling.
He nodded. “That night before the Buyer came is when I carved To the great escape into my bed at Viktor’s. I thought maybe, even if the Buyer was cruel, they’d have something I could use to find Florence.”
“Who were they?” I asked.
He lifted his free hand and tugged the collar of his shirt down.
He tapped one of the more faded, stretched out pieces of ink.
It was of a skull wrapped in barbed-wire, and I recognized it.
I’d seen the same on Rafe’s rib cage. “A man,” he said, letting his collar fall back into place.
“I was never given his name, just commanded to call him Sir. He bought me at fifteen for five grand and four years.”
Shock overcame me. “That’s it? For four fucking years?”
“Like I said, Viktor was just starting out. To Viktor, back then, that was a great deal,” Alexander explained. He grimaced. “But part of me wishes I hadn’t been a guinea pig. As far as I know, he doesn’t sell kids to that particular Buyer for longer than a few months now.”
I tried to think back to when Rafe first got that particular brand. He’d been young, too. Maybe seventeen. And Alexander was right. Viktor only sold Rafe for a month to that Buyer. “W-what did he do to you that would cause the contract to be so short?”
He lowered his voice. “I’ve blocked most of it out,” he admitted with a tense shrug.
“I do remember getting dropped back off at the estate, unable to walk and being severely malnourished. Viktor had to get me intensive medical care from a discreet doctor. I’d been nineteen by then, but I looked like I was twelve.
It took a year before I was stable enough to be valuable again in Viktor’s eyes. ”
“Wait.” I stopped and turned to him. “I would’ve been at the estate by then. You’re not that much older are you?”
“Twenty-eight,” he told me and offered a small smile, “and yeah, our paths crossed once or twice when I was allowed to visit the estate and the courtyard. I stood before Buyers a few times, but I was still too weak and sent back to the doctor. It’s why, though, when I heard Halden bought Creed, I was invested on getting you all out, not just Florence.
I knew what you all had been through. I was…
sentimental, I guess, in a demented, fucked up way.
” He took a breath then and pried his hand from mine.
“Alright. Enough reminiscing for now. I’m sure they’re ready, so I need to go change. ”
“Ready?” I asked, siting up as he slipped from the bed and padded toward the door.
He tossed a small smile over his shoulder. “Clean up the best you can and come out when you’re ready. It’s time you earn your wings, Raven.”