Chapter 46
Chapter Forty-Six
KIT
I almost throw up when I hear Scott. “What did you say?”
“Your mother,” he says again like it's the most normal thing his psychotic ass can tell me.
“What are you talking about?” I haven’t seen my mother in years, not since I saw her trying to find me that day at college. I’d hidden from her and then moved less than a year later. I never went home and she never came looking for me again. Over the years, my mother had faded into the background, a bad fucking memory—a monster that I’d put enough distance between that I could live free of until now.
Now she was in every room I went in and every thought I had when no one was around. Now, she’s the reason I’ve been put through hell.
“Your mother deserves better than you gave her. After everything she did for you.” Those words are from Alexia.
“You don’t know the first thing about my mother,” I spit the words out at her and take a step towards her. “You don’t know what kind of person she is.”
“I know she took care of you, that she supported you while you got your ass into Havard and the second you had a chance at better you left her and the rest of your family in the dust. How could you do that? It was a death sentence.”
I don’t understand the words she’s saying but that’s nothing new with the day I’m fucking having.
“Fuck off,” I snap. “You’re crazy.”
“And you left your mother and family to die.”
I tear at my hair and shake my head. The last of my composure snaps and crumbles away. “What the fuck are you talking about?!” I scream. Why is it that I can’t keep control of myself when my mother is involved? It’s like I’m an emotional and insecure teenager and I haven’t even spoken to her. Just the thought of her is enough to send me into a death spiral. You’d think the dead body in the freezer behind me or the fact that a madman has a gun to my best friend’s head would do it but no. It’s the threat of my mother that has me screaming and on the verge of tears.
“She’s not my mother. I don’t owe her shit.”
Alexia shakes her head. She looks so calm and collected compared to the chaos pulling me under. “You really are sick. You can say that and know that she’s dead because of what you did to her? Well, you know what? You’re not getting away with it anymore. You’re going to pay for what you did to her once and for all.”
The world stops and there’s a ringing in my ears. I sway on my feet. It’s like the ground has been pulled out from under me and I’m in a free fall.
“What?” I whisper.
“Did you really think you were going to get away with what you did to her? Leaving her for dead like that?”
I’m nothing if not an eternal optimist and my heart soars at Alexia’s words. “My mother is dead?”
Her pretty face scrunches up in anger. “What?”
I move towards her. I forget about the gun and the dead body and the fact that Jax and Scott are the two lunatics that have been stalking me. “Is my mother dead? She’s really gone?” My voice shakes and my knees are going to give out. If I’m not careful, I’m going to eat shit but I can’t help it.
Is my mother dead?
A world without her seems unimaginable. I’d worked so hard to block her out, to lock away her memory but it’s been eating me up. This entire fucked up nightmare is proof there’s no outrunning her memory or her touch. She’s been able to reach through time and wreck me. There is no world where she doesn’t own me but if she’s dead?
If she’s dead, I’m free.
My bones sing at the thought of being free. The weight of not having to look over my shoulder or hear her voice in my ear whispering how unworthy I am of the life I live, of the love I have. That I can for once and for all know that she’s never coming back, because she can’t.
I’d kill everyone in this room for that freedom to be real. Even the taste of it has me ready to lick it from the barrel of Jax’s gun after I use it on him.
I lift my chin to look Alexia in the eyes. “Is my mother dead?” I whisper. When I move forward, she falls back and her eyes widen. She’s a dead woman. She knows it.
“Stay back you crazy bitch!”
“Hey, back the fuck up, Kit or I’m gonna blow your bestie’s brains out.”
That stops me but just barely. I look over my shoulder at Jax. “I’m going to make you fucking scream. Now, answer my damn question. Is that cunt dead?”
Jax’s face twists in anger. He moves the gun off Alana and points it at me. “Call her that again, I dare you.“
It’s him that I advance on next. I throw my arms wide and spit at his feet. “Is my cunt of a mother dead?! ” I scream the last word at him. He flinches and I smile. Alana looks at me like I’ve lost it.
Maybe she’s right. She has to be. It’s the only thing that makes sense when I hear my mother’s voice.
“Now, is that anyway to speak about your mother, little girl?”
Little girl.
She always did love to call me that, but I don’t freeze like I used to when she would say those two words. I don’t shake, either. The feeling that came over me when I thought she was dead doesn’t return. The thought of freedom is far too strong for me to give a fuck about fear right now.
“What the fuck is going on here, Noreen?”
My mother narrows her eyes. Disgust rolls over me when those familiar hazel eyes look me up and down. “Oh, you think you’re grown now, do you? Funny how that happened once you got those boyfriends of yours.”
I don’t say anything. I let her talk.
Noreen Salazar loves to hear herself talk.
For years I’ve thought of her only as my mother. The untouchable ghost of my past that broke me in so many delicate and razor fine ways that there was always another hurt to heal when I tried to put myself together and move on. Healing never seemed like a real option until Grant and Rafe came into my life.
My men have taken me apart and put my back together in a way that my mother can’t recognize. I know she doesn’t from the sneer she’s giving me now. I remember her eyes being so sharp, so capable of tearing me to shreds. She didn’t even have to say a word against me but in the bright light of the building I see she looks tired. She’s wearing makeup and her mascara is smeared across her bottom waterline and the thunderstorm has done her no favors. She’s soaking wet and there’s a smear of mud up the side of her boot. I wonder idly if she slipped coming down the stairs. She probably did from the way I see mud on her jeans and the side of her dark raincoat. Her normally perfect light brown hair is plastered to her head and she’s standing in a puddle of water that’s dripping from her raincoat. She looks so mundane now.
So…average.
The power she had over me doesn’t feel the same and a laugh bubbles up in me.
This is who I was afraid of?
A middle aged woman with a sneer on her face and mud on her boots. I laugh. My mother frowns.
“Shut the fuck up, Kit.”
“No.”
“No?” She blinks at that one word. “You call me a cunt and tell me no? You think you’re going to disrespect me after all these years? You’re going to give me what you owe me.”
“By what? Telling you no? What are you-” I shake my head and look from her to Alexia and then to Jax. “What are you doing? I never wanted to see you again, not after you ran me off.”
“You think you could hide from me at Harvard? That I wasn’t going to find you?”
“You had no right to find me!” I scream. “You made my life a living hell and now you’re back to do what? Do it again? What the fuck are you doing?”
My mother lifts her chin and points a finger at me. “Getting what’s mine.”
“Which is?”
She surprises me when she crosses the space to come right up to me. She still smells like the expensive cloying floral perfume I remember she wore. She grabs my arm and I gasp as he yanks the golden bracelet Rafe and Grant gifted me off my arm.
“Your fortune. I want it. I earned it. You think it was a joy pushing your screaming carcass out of my body? You ruined my life! I want my life back !” She waves the bracelet in my face as she screams at me, each word she hurls at me so guttural that it sounds like it’s being ripped from her body.
I want to bash her beautiful face into the ground. I lunge for the bracelet but she moves away from me and back to Scott’s side.
“Give that back to me! It’s mine.”
She smiles evilly and slips it on her wrist and turns it to admire it in the light. “I think it looks better on me, don’t you?” My blood boils watching her wear something precious to me. Something Grant and Rafe gave me as a token of our love being on here, even being touched by her is too much. “And besides you owe me for what I did for you. You wouldn’t have anything if I hadn't buried that boy for you?! You should be in prison, not famous!”
I look away from the bracelet and to her. “It was an accident. He tried to rape me. You know that. I was scared and young and I called you. You made me do it.” I point at her and my hand shakes. I take a deep breath and squeeze my fingers into a fist to stop the shaking but it doesn’t do anything.
“You made me do it! I didn’t want to bury Mark like that. I was just a kid!”
“You think the judge was going to see a kid when you walked in? He would look at you and know what a whore you were. Do you think I was going to let you embarrass me like that?” My mother sniffs and walks closer to me. I feel smaller the closer she gets to me. When I look up at her, she’s looking down her nose at me with a haughty sneer.
How can she make me feel so insignificant? She does it so subtly that I don’t realize I’m drowning until there’s no air in my lungs.
“I did what I had to. I’m your mother, after all. Aren't I? And now you’re going to pay me back or I’m going to let every tabloid and limp dick paparazzi know exactly what you did to poor old Mark. I’ll even draw them a map if they need. If you want me to keep your dirty little secret, you’ll pay up, Kit.”
“How much do you want?” I ask, even though I already know the answer.
“All of it. Every fucking cent you’ve made, I want it.”
The talk of money snaps Alexia out of it. I know it when her eyes dart nervously from me to my mom. She looks at Jax pleadingly but the man doesn’t look at her. He’s watching my mom.
“Mark? Who’s Mark?” Alexia asks. She’s off to the side, looking at us in confusion. There’s a slow realization starting to seep into her eyes and part of me feels sympathy for her. Whatever game my mother is playing, she tricked Alexia into being a part of it.
“The boy my darling daughter murdered.”
“I was defending myself. He slipped. I never meant to hurt him.”
“You should have listened to me and stayed home but you didn’t, did you? You ruined my life and yours that night. The difference is, that I’m going to be just fine after this. It’s you that the world is going to finally see as a heartless monster. Jax and Scott are going to make sure of it. Aren’t you, my loves?” she asks and I freeze at hearing her tone to the two men. It’s softer, intimate, the kind of voice used between lovers. I hear it.
So does Alexia.
“Jax?” Alexia moves to go to him. “What is happening? This isn’t-you said she was sick but she’s here. Who is Mark?”
What I hear clicks into place when my mother snaps her fingers at Jax. “Kill her.” I know who she means. I understand how she played Alexia in this game of hers.
But Alexia doesn’t.
Jax’s gun swings towards Alexia and he pulls the trigger. Alana screams and grabs her ears and so do I. The sound makes me feel deaf and I drop down into a crouch out of instinct, even though the bullet wasn’t meant for me. Alexia hits the floor facedown, the back of her shirt is staining dark red and blood pools under her where she’s fallen, one hand outstretched towards the man that betrayed her.
“She’s my girlfriend. She’ll say any fucking thing I want.”
Alexia got played because she loved the wrong man. She died not understanding her error either. I look at my mom while Alana sobs.
“Why did you do that?”
“Because too many fucking witnesses, Kit. Jesus fucking Christ. You’d think you would be smarter, going to Harvard.”
I shake my head. “She would have lied for Jax. She did lie for Jax. She wouldn’t have told anyone what she knew.”
My mother crosses her arms and looks down at Alexia’s body with distaste. “She would have but I was tired of letting her touch my things. Let me tell you, I was fucking tired of it weeks ago. Isn’t that right, darling?” She looks at Jax and I feel sick.
“You’re together,” I say and my mother smiles at me.
“We are. You didn’t think you were the only one who could pull two men, now were you?”
My eyes go wide and I look at Scott who’s grinning at my mother. “Oh god. Y-you’re with both of them.”
My mother laughs. “Oh my god, you did , didn’t you? You really thought I couldn’t have what you have. That’s sad, Kit. Anything you can do, I can do better. You know this. That’s why I found Jax and Scott so perfect. They’re what your washed up boyfriends could never be. They’re the real thing. True killers. True heroes. Your men only pretend to be the monster but I have the real deal, Kit. You’ll never do better than me.”
“You’re sick,” I whisper but there’s no real venom in my voice. I’m playing for time while my mother goes through her villain speech about how her two shitty boyfriends are better than mine. I haven’t seen her in nearly ten years and this is what she does?
She chooses to compare boyfriends?
Fucking pathetic.
“If I am, it’s because you made me like this,” my mother snaps and holds out an arm to Scott, who comes to her. “You destroyed my life but that’s over now, isn't it?” She simpers and looks up at Scott like he’s her savior and she’s a damsel in distress.
I have to find a way out of this. I edge around the blood pooling around Alexia. I have to find a way to get Alana in the clear so that I can handle my mother and her demented lovers once and for all.
“I didn’t do shit to you. I was a kid. You were my mother. You were the adult. Just because your life never amounted to shit, you don’t get to ruin mine.” I move closer to the window. It’s locked. It’ll take too long for me to get it open and get outside. I’ll never make it before they hurt Alana. I stop and look at my mother. “You’ve been dead to me for nine years, mother. How have you not managed to make something of yourself in all that time?” She pales when I say that.
“Shut the fuck up,” she snaps and grabs onto Scott’s arm. “You don’t know shit.”
“I know a washed up aging bitch when I see one.” Now it’s me that looks her up and down. I do it in a mimic of the way she looked at me all those years and I must do it well from the anger that makes her face go red.
“You never could quite make it, could you? Never smart enough, never pretty enough, never connected enough, because you ran everyone off with your temper. It must have killed you to see me make something of myself, didn’t it?” I ask her and it’s as I’m talking that a switch inside of me flips. It’s the one that Grant and Rafe tried to turn for me but never could. The one that I should have been trying to flip off all my life. I do it now.
“You couldn’t stand knowing that it wasn’t the world that was set up wrong, it was you. You were the reason you never made anything out of yourself because I had no problem doing what you couldn’t. That’s why you tried to break me, isn’t it? Because if I made something of myself, if I became someone worth something, it was you that was wrong. Then you’d know. It was you that couldn’t do it.”
My mother screams. The sound is raw and ragged. Hate morphs her face into a grotesque picture of her normally pretty features but it’s how I’ve always seen her.
“You’re the one that’s wrong,” I tell her.
She lifts her hand and I know she’s thrown her revenge plan out the window. She’s not going to ask for the money. She’s going to tell Scott to put a hole in my chest the way Jax did to Alexia. I only have a second, maybe a few at most, to do something. I start to shift towards the freezer. I’ll have to get inside with Jane and pray his shot misses me. But before I can turn, the lights cut out while the generator keeps humming away. That tells me one important thing.
It’s not a storm that knocked out the lights.
It’s my monsters.