Chapter 4 #2
Hidden behind the glazed eyes from her pills, knowing my mother was difficult.
She flitted in and out of rooms, high as a kite, socializing and servicing to a tee.
Our connection was fleeting; her attention glued to my father's approval, with no room to worry about something as complex as a relationship with her daughter.
I was simply a requirement of the marriage. The third child. The forgotten baby of a family that cares more about social standing than familial connection.
And my mother, for all her faults, performed perfectly for my father. Behind glazed looks and full smiles was a woman who knew how to run a house. A woman who knew how to bend my father to her will, even under the depths of her pill-induced influence. If she were so perfect, why is she gone?
Is anyone safe in our world?
The guests sip champagne, their conversations hushed, and their gazes are sharp and assessing. I refuse to shrink under the eyes that never quite leave me. It’s nauseating, but I will not crumble.
I force myself to breathe. To be still. I am a Huntington-Russell after all, I know how to play the part.
Smoothing a sweaty palm down my thigh, I stay focused on keeping my back straight as though my posture is the salve to my problems. Turning my face slightly out of the light, I knock back the remaining champagne, inhale sharply, and set the empty glass on a suited waiter’s tray.
Within moments, another waiter appears, offering a fresh glass, and I eagerly accept it.
I look up when the air shifts, and electricity seems to fill the room, covering my skin in goose bumps. It’s the same feeling I had when I arrived home, standing just outside the car.
The crowd parts. And that’s when he walks in.
The memory crashes over me suddenly and sharply. The dim glow of the walkway between dormitories. My throat burning from coughing, a cold glass pressed into my palm, the burn of vodka coating my tongue.
I had looked up then and was met with a pair of dark, unreadable eyes.
Eyes that made my stomach tighten, and my skin prickle with something dangerous.
Those same eyes now lock with mine from across the room.
He had been older than me and completely untouchable. More like a myth among the girls at school, whispered about behind books in the library. But I had never known him.
Now I do.
A voice murmurs beside me, guests in gossipy conversation. “That’s Hayden Herron.”
My chest tightens.
Hayden Herron.
The name coils through me, settling like a weight in my stomach.
His gaze locks onto mine, and suddenly, the noise of the party fades into nothing. The candles flicker, the air thickens, and I feel—no, I know—that something is about to change.
Hayden moves through the room like a shadow, the kind that lingers in doorways and stretches under your bed, the type that you overlook until it’s too late.
I blink, and suddenly he’s in front of me.
“Martine,” he says, low and rough. His eyes are even darker up close. I can see my blond hair reflected in them.
I can barely find my voice, but I do quickly enough to reply in a tartly posh formality, the only way I know, “Mr. Herron.”
A flicker of amusement crosses his face before it vanishes, replaced by something darker.
Looking up at him this close is overwhelming.
His lashes and hair are a dark blonde, but his eyes are a darker shade of blue.
There is no warmth in them, just the stillness of deep water before it drags you under.
I find myself studying him, absorbing every detail now that we’re no longer in the haze of that oddly intense first meeting, but here now—face to face.
Before any conversation has a chance to continue, I’m distracted by movement at the grand staircase.
My stomach drops. It’s the grand entrance, and my mother isn’t here.
Just Ford and Dex. And behind them—my father. I’ve never been included in these, as by design, I’m easily forgotten without my mother's attention.
The three of them descend side by side in a display of dominance and pure power.
The hall quiets the murmured conversations, dissolving into silence as all eyes turn toward them. My father carries himself like a king, surveying his kingdom, his expression unreadable, his presence commanding.
Hayden's hand raises to the small of my back, ushering me to turn towards him, but I’m frozen. My eyes locked on my father.
I hate him.
I hate him with every ounce of my being.
I know in my core he murdered my mother, and yet the cold bastard stands tall as if he feels nothing. Not a single crack in his stonelike demeanor. I could scream with rage, shaking from the overwhelming feeling it evokes.
The candles flicker. The chandeliers could sway with the energy vibrating about the room. The scent of the lilies thickens, and my throat constricts. The rage I feel turns to something so very wrong.
I'm ready to scream at Ford. I feel it in my gut that something horrible is about to happen. I have no reason other than the visceral pain in my stomach telling me someone else I love is about to die.
I feel it in me so powerfully, I ready myself to shout—
But then—
The first shot.
A sharp, cracking echo explodes through the room like a whip.
Ford jolts back instantly, a bloom of crimson erupting across his chest, soaking through his white shirt in thick arterial splashes as he collapses onto the stairs behind him. He clutches at the wound, fingers scrabbling uselessly, blood bubbling between them.
My mouth opens wide in shock.
The second shot.
Dex stumbles, a wet gurgling sound slipping from his throat. His fingers twitch as he reaches for something—anything—but there’s nothing to hold on to. His hand trails the air as if grasping for life itself. He looks out, and his eyes lock with mine, wide with pain.
The third shot.
My father’s body stiffens violently, his spine snapping straight like a struck puppet.
A strangled grunt forces its way out of his mouth before he crumples to the floor.
The bourbon glass slips from his grip, shattering against the marble-like brittle bone.
Blood pours from the perfect circular hole in the center of his forehead, thick and dark, snaking down his face in sluggish streams.
The world stops.
I don’t breathe.
I don’t blink.
My father.
My brothers.
Dexter turns his head toward Hayden, who is behind me, holding his gaze for just a moment—one last look—before he begins to fall. His body collapses like dead weight, thundering down the stairs.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
The noise is grotesque, his limbs bending in odd angles with every bounce.
Blood pours freely now, a thick, spreading flood across the marbled floor, seeping into the delicate cracks and drowning the cream runner staircase rug my mother once so proudly chose.
Someone is screaming—louder now. A raw, animalistic sound tears through the stunned silence as Dex’s body lands at the foot of the stairs with a sickening thump.
It’s me. I realize I’m the one screaming as I see Fordham’s lifeless body slumped against the cherrywood banister. Splashes of blood stain the cream carpeting, streaked across the gleaming marble tiles like something out of a butcher’s shop.
The champagne glass I’ve been gripping suddenly cracks in my hand. Shards slice into my palm and warm liquid—champagne or blood, I can’t tell—splashes my skin as it falls, shattering beside me.
A hand clamps around my wrist, and another tightens its grip around my waist. Strong and unrelenting. Pulling me back into the crowd of guests screaming and running for the exit.
Hayden.
“Martine,” his voice is sharp, cutting through the fog in my mind. “We have to go.”
“No.” I struggle against his grip. “No, no, no—” I try to push forward and run towards them. Run to my older twin brothers who are dying in front of me in pools of their blood. I hear a gurgle come from Dex, and I try to rush forward, screaming out for him.
Not my Dex. My fierce bear-like protector who could pull a laugh from deep in my belly just as easily as he could hurt anyone who so much as looked at me the wrong way.
Not Ford, the spiritual equivalent of my debaucherous equal. My best friend.
“No, no, no—” I continue to sob.
“We need to go.” Hayden's words are cold as his grip remains unmoving around my torso. Absolute in his movements, but beneath his words, there’s a threat I’m supposed to listen to.
I don’t believe him. I don’t want to believe him.
I continue my sobbing chant, my hands slippery with champagne and blood as I try to release myself from Hayden, who has a firm grip around my waist while trying to pull me back from my dying family.
“Oh god—” I cry.
Fordham and Dexter—my protectors, my brothers, the only constants in my life—are dead.
And my father. A monster reduced to nothing. A devil bound for worse than hell. Four people lost their lives in the span of only a few hours.
Looking around the room, all I can see are them.
The Bonesmen. They’re always here, always surrounding me. My family is a founding family, and my father held a high position.
As though incapable of grief, they watch unshaken, their expressions unreadable in perfectly tailored suits.
To see them standing there without reaction, so calm, tells me everything I need to know.
My father was guilty of something, and to be killed regardless of his level of power, it must have been very, very bad.
My father was powerful, but he wasn’t untouchable.
No one is.
But what were my brothers guilty of? I refuse to believe they were worthy of a death like this.
The punishment for my father killing my mother didn’t fit the crime for our Society. A wife murdered was a regular Tuesday for the Brotherhood. They don’t care about women. They use them as pawns, warm holes to do their bidding. I’m not naive to it.
And here I stand in the middle of a massacre. Forced to witness the death of my best friends. My older brothers.