Chapter 13
CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
ASHER
If we all make it out of this alive, I know there’s no way I’ll be able to part with Asher’s presence. I’ll be tied to his name, his legacy, the damn spotlight that comes with it, for the rest of my living days.
I won’t be able to resurrect the legends of Mariée de la Mort even if I want to.
As soon as I’m back in the living room, it’s obvious the seating has changed. Camille relocating beside Asher doesn’t surprise me as much as it annoys me.
It’s desperate. She’s desperate.
Fuck it all. If this is truly the way things are going to go down, then I guess I will play.
“Are you feeling okay?” Elea asks, squeezing my knee.
“Yes.” I smile, side-eying Atlas when he stretches an arm along the back of the sofa behind me. “I think I’m just jet lagged.”
“Mmm.” She pops a grape in her mouth. “I’ve done that very flight multiple times throughout my life and it is not kind.”
My smile doesn’t fall. Not a single slip. Fucking robot, that’s all I am. A robot with real feelings that have been twisted and trained, played with by everyone but myself.
Atlas’s thigh brushes mine and my scalp prickles. Asher wants me to play house, but this isn’t my script.
Wait. Did he say play house or did I imagine that?
Elea’s attention shifts back to me. Up close, the similarities between her and her sons sharpen. “Ivanya...Dubois?”
My last name drops from her lips and my spine locks against the sofa.
She leans closer. “Interesting. Was it your father or your mother with that last name?”
Her shoulders are relaxed, eyes warm. It’s a genuine question.
“My father,” I reply honestly, welcoming the burn of alcohol down my throat.
At this stage, either I’m dying or all of them are, so there’s no point in hiding what I would usually lie to protect.
“Ah.” Elea nods, placing her empty glass on the small table. “Did Asher tell you we have French heritage too?”
He didn’t. Neither did Atlas. Hell, I barely know anything about this family except his grandfather’s billions and now his mother’s unsettling kindness.
That’s not forgetting his own special trick that makes me see red in less than five seconds, of course.
She waves the thought off. “Nothing too extravagant. Now, you!” Her finger lands on Camille, our conversation already lost. “When Khloe arrives, we cannot have another repeat of that Christmas. I get you and Asher have been friends since you were young, but we can’t have any more arrests.”
Camille ignores her, cleaning her nails.
Young? How young? In all the time I’ve seen Asher and her together, they’ve maybe been handsy a handful of times, none of them while we were on Veilarath.
Or maybe that’s just my self-preservation feeding me lies.
Elea’s voice cuts back in. “No dangerous acts. Best behavior. From all.”
Camille scoffs. “It’ll surprise you who is the most dangerous in this room.”
My eyes snap to her, restraint crumbling beneath me. Years of training, years of perfecting control, all amounting to fucking nada if I get my hands around this woman’s throat.
I hold her stare. “I believe you’ve dated him.”
Her lip curls. “Yeah, because that’s who I meant.”
I smile. “I—” Was about to rip her face off.
Out of control.
“Camille.” Tension threads through Elea’s tone. Most wouldn’t catch the threat, but I’ve delivered similar ones myself.
Atlas’s arm slips from the sofa to my shoulders, nestling into my neck. “Mmm. You smell good.” His voice vibrates over me as his other hand lands on my bare belly, thumb circling. “Almost as good as you taste.”
Asher’s eyes harden on Atlas’s movements.
Blonde hair swings into my line of sight when Camille pats Asher’s arm. “Take me upstairs? I could do with a massage.”
Asher curls his hand around hers as she leads him out. I’m a complete idiot for believing a word of what he just said.
“I’m well out of my comfort zone,” I confess, forgetting I’m still sitting in a room full of witnesses, and none of them are mine.
I miss my life. Punk. Luce. Jord. Leon.
Elea squeezes my knee, then rises. “Come. I’ll make us a fresh drink.”
I stay seated, watching her disappear through the archway, still lost in my self-pity.
Atlas taps my thigh with his. “Follow her. She doesn’t like being ignored.”
I turn into him, ready to swear at him or I don’t know, put pressure on his weak points, when his eyes hold me in place. Why does he have to look so much like Asher yet not like him at all?
“Don’t look at me like that.” Atlas clucks his tongue, eyes narrowing on my lips. “I’m starting to get the gist of how he fell for you, Ivy…”
My pulse stutters. “He doesn’t know shit about falling, Atlas.”
“Oh, trust me.” He exhales through his nose. “I don’t think anyone wants to be privy to whatever it is you and my brother share, but for now, follow Mother.”
Not comforting.
I trace her steps through into the kitchen. A large window overlooks a roll of iced mountain tops. It’s the same as one side of my bedroom, only a different vantage point.
“When Asher was little, I watched him do all sorts of tricks on his board. It didn’t take long before the ramps were built and his little brother wanted exactly what he had.”
The sun catches the gold in her hair, and her tanned face stays eerily smooth when she reaches for a glass, not a single crease around her eyes or mouth.
I stop behind the oval kitchen island. “Did you bring them up in Chicago?”
“No.” She answers over her shoulder. “We moved there when the boys were small. I always wonder if Asher would have grown to be the man that he is today if we hadn’t.”
She dries the glass and places it on the counter, turning to face me and resting her back against the sink.
“I love my boys, but I’m not blind. You are a very beautiful woman, and you have all the attributes that I’m sure he thinks he needs.”
She keeps pouring shots into the cocktail shaker, but my head hasn’t left that bathroom. Whatever lives between us started from the same rotten place. Me, married. Him, engaged. And she’s still here, still attached to him like a second skin.
Now he’s upstairs, fucking her into a coma.
Anger simmers under my skin as my grip tightens around the stem of the cocktail glass. I was never good at emotional regulation, because I always drew from the only kind I knew. Hate. For men, in particular. Older ones.
Elea glances at my grip, then back at my face.
Now I have to watch the only man I’ve ever felt anything for parade whatever she is to him in front of me while I wait for the next ball to drop.
She gestures to the side. “Come on. I want to show you something.” She’s not quite reached the threshold when she calls out, “And you’ll want to bring your drink.”
I follow her, shoving my phone into my back pocket. The clean white kitchen gives way to dark moss walls. Ornate black frames hang around the room, with a chandelier dangling overhead. A round table sits beneath it, ringed by seven chairs. Seven. That number’s going to drive me crazy.
Elea pulls out a seat and sets two full glasses on the table, then turns to the cabinet behind her. Photo frames sit behind locked glass doors, rows of frozen smiles and rigid poses, and my eyes catch on each one as I sink into the chair opposite her.
I nod toward the cabinet. “Family portraits?”
She chuckles, stepping around the table. “Something like that.”
I twist the ring clasped around my finger, wondering if she’ll continue.
She lowers her glass and places down a leather-bound book. “I lost someone recently too. Actually,” she chokes on her laugh, “I’ve lost so many people in my life that I’m beginning to think I’m cursed.”
Her laugh dies as she slides it across the table, tapping the cover. “Here. I thought I’d show you some photos of Atlas and Asher when they were children.”
I flick over the next page, and two boys stare back at me from a snow-blasted slope, both strapped to snowboards. One throws a hang-loose sign with a grin that’s all teeth, the other has his middle finger aimed square at the lens.
“Ha!” Elea points to the photo with the hand holding her drink. “Now that was an interesting day. They both took the highest mountain in the world. Caused me a lot of grief. Boys. They’re reckless.”
She pauses and I flip to the next page. A woman and a man sitting in front of an old farmhouse. Same kind eyes as Elea, same smile.
“You were beautiful.” I peer up at her. “Still are.”
I was so distracted by her that I missed who was beside her.
Thick beard. No. Not thick.
I squint.
Familiar. So familiar it drags up the memories of him on the yacht. No. How did we miss this?
I rein in my spiraling questions, steadying my heart and showing not a single flinch across my face.
My silence must be obvious because she shifts in her chair to look at what has my attention. “The boys’ father.”
Parker was Asher’s father. Not friend—fucking father!
Did she know what she was doing showing me this? Answering a question she knew her son wasn’t giving me?
I push the book back towards her. “You have a lovely family.”
What did this all mean? How could Asher be Parker’s son without us knowing all this time?
Silence.
If I wasn’t so lost in my own thoughts and focusing on not displaying it, I’d maybe had noticed that she was staring at me sooner.
“Thank you.” She tips her glass in a cheers. “Ivanya?”
“Mmm?” I say, letting my face go soft and open. It always works. The perfect way to look unassuming is to play Innocent.
She flashes me a double-sided smile. “I—”
“There you are!” Atlas breaks the conversation.
Elea’s eyes fly up to her son as he leans into me. “Come. I have to show you something that I think you might want to see.”
Every muscle in Elea’s face tightens before she nods, dismissing us.
Fucking Atlas and his stellar timing as per usual.
“Very well,” she says, shooing us away. “I won’t stop you kids.”
I ease out from under his touch as he smiles at his mom. “We’ll see you for dinner.”
My chair scrapes against the floor when I push back, and before I can put enough distance between us, Atlas catches me around the waist, leading me down the hallway.
Instead of opening the doors to my room, he pushes through the black pair beside them, and Asher fucking Jameson hits me before I even cross the threshold.
His scent is everywhere.
A billiards table sits at the center, a large TV hanging on the opposite wall. The whole room is soaked in tobacco and spice.
Atlas closes us inside. “What’d she tell you?”
I keep walking until I reach the billiards table, sinking the eight ball with my knuckle. “Nothing. She showed me baby photos of you and Asher.”
I turn to face him, crossing my legs at my ankles.
This room is almost a replica of mine. Only with emerald walls and a wrought iron staircase spiraling to a second floor.
Like every other room in this mansion, it boasts at least one floor-to-ceiling glass wall that takes in the view of the backyard. As if the person living inside it always needs reminding that he’s cold.
Ha!
“Leave, Atlas.” Asher’s order cracks across the room.
Speaking of cold.
Asher rounds the table until he’s close enough that I can count the pale stripes in his irises.
My lungs grow heavy as neither of us blinks. Is it always going to be like this between him and I? So fucking tense?
Atlas coughs once. “Ah, I don’t know if this is safe.” He shifts his weight near the door. “You sure neither of you are going to kill each other?”
Asher’s lip twitches. “Undecided.”
I shrug. “Probably.”
Atlas sighs before the door clicks closed.
I never give Atlas enough credit. Clearly, he’s trying his hardest to keep his brother alive. And even me… sometimes.
Asher searches my face, dragging his tongue over his lower lip. “Venom, whatever am I gonna do with you?”
I say nothing.
He takes another step and my eyes drop to the waistband of his sweats.
“—and I don’t mean that,” he deadpans.
I snicker, lifting a brow. “Amusing that you think I might.”
Even his jaw looks harder, like he spent the whole year grinding his teeth while thinking up new ways to kill me.
But there’s a flicker behind the scowl he wears every time I walk into a room. He hasn’t managed to bury it beneath all that hatred. Yet.
I’m guessing it’s the very thing keeping me alive.
He leans in, until his mouth is at my ear. “Might? Bet if I touched you right here.” His hips arch into me. “You’d be wet enough to change it into a would.”
He steps back. “Are you done with the lies?”
“What lies?” I answer, annoyed at the betrayal of my voice.
“Yeah. What I thought.” He turns, gesturing out the door. “You can come back when you’re done hiding shit.”
“What about your lies, Asher?” I snap, the fresh news about Parker sitting right at the edge of my brain.
Only, I can’t betray Elea. She didn’t have to give me what she did and I don’t want to punish her by being a snitch.
He shrugs, unfazed. “I never lied to you, Ivy. I remember specifically trying to tell you something right before you pulled that trigger.”
“What happened to you?” I whisper again, but as the words leave my mouth I already know the answer.
Me. The answer is me.
Betrayal fills his face, and for the first time, he lets me see it.
How am I supposed to win back his trust if he’s only ever going to see the girl who killed him?
He kicks away from the desk and crawls closer, winding my hair around his finger. “I hope you’re wearing your best mask, Venom—” he lowers his voice until the air around us thins. “—Because you’re gonna need it.”
He lets the strand of hair fall, turning his back to me. “Get out.”