Chapter Forty-Three - Elise
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
Elise
“What the hell is going on?”
Mason turns to me. “Nice to see you too, Elise.”
I open my mouth to respond, but Ryder steps forward, stealing my brother’s attention.
Lifting his hand to his ear, Ryder pulls out a small object and tosses it to the floor. “I did what you asked. Now, let her go.”
What the hell? Why would Ryder kidnap me and bring me here just to demand my release?
Unless he’s not talking about me.
“Lyla,” I breathe.
Ryder cuts his eyes at me, and white-hot guilt courses through my veins as I recall what I said in the car.
Mason shakes his head. “I’m not done with you yet. Your daughter will be released when I get what I want and not a second sooner.”
“What does that mean? What’s going on?”
Mason doesn’t answer my question but looks to Nate. “Take Ryder downstairs to see the kid, then bring him to my office in twenty minutes.”
Nate nods and takes hold of Ryder’s upper arm, which he rips away immediately. Still, Ryder doesn’t argue as he follows Nate around the corner.
It’s just Mason and me now.
“What have you done?”
He grabs my shoulder and pulls me in the opposite direction that Nate and Ryder go. “We’ve got some catching up to do.”
I get my first good look around the space as we walk, and I’m surprised to see how well-kept it is. The factory is rundown on the outside, the kind of place thrill-seeking teens would make their playground, but it’s only a front for this hiding spot.
The inside looks like it was recently renovated by a two-star construction company that volunteered to do the job for free.
The floors are an uneven concrete but shine like they’ve been scrubbed clean in the last hour.
The cracked drywall has a coat of light gray paint covering most of its divots, which makes me wonder who decided that painted walls were a priority in the midst of what seems to be a hostile takeover.
We turn down a series of hallways, footsteps echoing against the concrete floors. Neither of us speaks as we finally stop to enter a set of grand double doors. A giant desk occupies one side of the room, while two lounge chairs and a couch fill the rest of the space.
Mason takes his place behind the desk, not bothering to untie my wrists as he gestures to one of the chairs across from him. “Take a seat.”
I contemplate whether or not to obey him, but much like with Joshua, I decide cooperation will get me further than resistance.
I study my brother’s face as I lower into my seat, but he gives nothing away. It’s different from Joshua’s stony mask, more neutral and pleasant.
Completely unreadable.
“What are you doing, Mason?”
“You really do look just like her.” His eyes fall to a small picture lying on his desk and though I can’t make it out from here, I can guess who it’s of. “Do you remember what she looked like?”
“I was seven,” I answer. “I don’t remember much of anything.”
“Thought so,” he says and slides the image across the desk.
He’s right. I’m my mother’s spitting image.
The picture is an old one, and she looks to be around my age now. Her thick, dark hair and brown eyes are just like my own. I even have her small nose and high cheekbones.
“I started noticing inconsistencies about her death when I was fifteen, but it was six years later when I began looking into it. By that point, she’d been dead more than a decade, and the family that killed her—the Venturis—had already fallen apart.”
“What does this have to do with holding Lyla hostage?”
Mason doesn’t acknowledge my question.
“There was one cousin, Marty Venturi, who skipped town a few months before the family collapsed, so I went to pay him a visit. He knew exactly who I was as soon as he saw me. He said he’d never forget her eyes.”
My chest squeezes. “Mason, stop.”
“He said he’d never forget her scream.”
“Stop,” I croak again.
“He said he’d never forget her begging for her life.”
“Stop!”
“He said he’d never forget the look in her eyes when she heard her husband tell them to kill her.”
The air is sucked from my lungs—the life from my soul.
He wouldn’t, right?
Of course he would. He did it to me.
“He let her die to protect his empire, just like he did to you.”
I squeeze my eyes shut. “Why are you doing this?”
“Because my mother is the least of what he’s taken from me.”
My eyes meet his, and the pain there hides just beneath the surface.
“You have no idea how lucky you are,” Mason says as he stands from his chair. “Dad just let you go off to live whatever life you wanted, but us? Damon, Logan, James, and I were damned to this life from the minute we were born. We had no say in how the rest of our lives would play out.”
“He would’ve let you go, too! Mason, you don’t have to do this—”
“But even then, with my mother and future taken from me, I still followed him. I didn’t know any better.”
He stares out the window, lost in his memories. “A few months after I found out about Mom, Dad had me going to the docks a few times a week to monitor our shipments. That’s where I met Mary Anderson.”
He says her name with such reverence.
“She worked security there, so I saw her every time I went.” Mason looks at me, and for a moment, he looks just like the sweet brother I grew up with. “I was in love with her, Elise.”
None of my brothers have ever dated or seemed even remotely interested in the concept, so I know these words are said with utter sincerity.
“We kept it a secret for a year, and then we found out she was pregnant.”
My mouth falls open.
“I had no choice but to tell Dad, though I knew he wouldn’t approve. He has this idea that relationships of any kind are a distraction unless it’s time to produce heirs, and even then, it’d be through marriages arranged by him.”
This is the first I’ve heard of this, and I’m furious. I’m furious at Mason for all the horrible things he’s done, and I’m furious that of all my family, he’s the only one telling me the truth.
“I went to see her the night before I planned to talk to Dad, but she was gone. There was only a note that said she left and wasn’t coming back. She told me not to look for her, to let her and our child live a peaceful life, but I knew it was a lie.”
“What do you mean?”
The look he gives me is so cold, so patronizing, that I flinch.
“He killed them, Elise. Dad found out before I could tell him, and he killed them, then made it look like she left me.”
I’m careful to speak softly, like I’m talking to a child and not my estranged brother. “You don’t know that. She could be—”
“Don’t be stupid. He wouldn’t save his own wife or daughter. Do you honestly believe he’s above killing the woman I love?”
I hate that I can’t say a single word in our father’s defense.
“He took my mother, my future, the woman I loved, and my unborn child.”
“Mason, why didn’t you tell—”
“Our brothers?” he laughs, but the sound is bitter. “They wouldn’t have done anything. They worship the ground our father walks on. Even if they did believe me—which is doubtful—they would still side with him.”
“No, they would’ve defended you.”
“You’re so na?ve.” He steps forward, pushing me back into the chair, and I gasp, surprised by the physical aggression.
“I’m sure you’d love to believe that our brothers are honorable men, but they’re not. Damon’s been an alcoholic most of his life—”
“What?”
“Logan became an egotistical ass when he was named heir to the family, and James will always be Logan’s mindless follower. None of them would’ve attempted to fight Dad, and why would they? Dad doesn’t lose.”
I’m momentarily stunned by the overload of information. Damon’s an alcoholic? Logan’s the family heir? Why didn’t anybody tell me?
I thought Mason was the only one with something to hide, but it turns out that my whole family has been keeping secrets from me.
“I know Dad has made mistakes, but that doesn’t mean—”
Mason towers over me. “Mistakes? You think killing our mother was a mistake? A momentary lapse in judgment?”
He only shakes his head when I don’t answer. “Dad’s not stupid. He doesn’t do anything without thinking of every possible angle. He knew exactly what the consequences would be, but he didn’t care. He doesn’t care about anything except his own power.”
I straighten in the chair. “Then why did you give me to Joshua? If you knew he wouldn’t save me, then why would you do it?”
“After Dad took everything from me, I still didn’t have a way out. The only way to really be rid of Dad was to destroy him and everything he’s built, but I couldn’t do it on my own.”
“You started working for Joshua.”
“I wasn’t surprised when Moreno had me working undercover for a year, but when it became clear that he intended to keep me there and take over our father’s empire for himself, I got to thinking.
What if I took over both families? What better way to make Dad pay for everything he’s done than to take him down while simultaneously growing more powerful than he’s ever been? ”
The wild desperation in his eyes sends a shiver down my spine like a caged animal desperately clawing its way to freedom.
I don’t like where this is going.
“With one foot in both families, I started pulling men from either side who were fed up with how things were run. It was pathetically easy to recruit soldiers.”
“Do you want to skip to the part where you sell out your only sister?”
“I’m getting to that,” he assures me. “A few months ago, Logan started noticing problems with the shipments and other deals that I’ve been sabotaging, and they figured out that there was a mole. When Moreno proposed expanding his territories, I knew it was time to make my move.”
“You mean it was time to hand me over?”
He, unsurprisingly, ignores me.