30. Ivy
CHAPTER 30
Ivy
B ile, fast and hot, rises up my throat.
I clamp my hand over my mouth and rush for one of the three doors I spotted, my feet skidding on the floor, but upon trying the first door, I enter the en-suite bathroom.
Spotting the toilet, I make a mad dash for it, open the lid, and then I’m throwing up my entire gut out.
Each time I think I’m done, the image of Jackson’s wide-open eyes flash before my own and I retch again. It’s so bad that I retch until I’m dry heaving over the toilet.
I can feel myself getting feverish.
I don’t know if this is the result of the fear, what I just saw, or the drug’s aftereffects wearing off but suddenly, I’m so exhausted.
The heaviness in my body returns and I feel every inch of my body heating up.
He has a dead body—the one he brutalized, mutilated, and bludgeoned—in his bedroom.
And the sick thing is, the red he was using to paint when I woke up—that was Jackson’s blood.
He was using blood to paint!
I dry heave all over again, until my throat feels dry and itchy, as if I need a scraper to get everything out.
Feeling out of sorts, I blindly flush the toilet, then I just sit there, feeling disoriented and unable to move.
What the hell was that?
Crouching down, I slowly sink down until I’m lying on the cold tiles, pressing my forehead against them to try and cool down.
I realize then that I’m still trembling, and my feet are still covered in Jackson's blood, and there’s someone standing in the doorway of the bathroom, with his huge arms folded, his towering figure looming large as he watches me.
“Why?” I croak, peering up at Emmett.
He doesn’t say anything, just watches me. His stare penetrating but mostly unpredictable. I don’t know what he’s going to do.
The calm way he talked to me from the moment I woke up, walking me through the events of last night in a soothing, almost gentle manner.
Then he came for me, touched my face, traced his thumb along the seam of my lips, peered down at me with an unreadable look in his eyes, disarming and arousing me with his lethal nearness—all the while he had a major bomb waiting for me.
This man… he’s nothing at all like I thought he was.
Is Emmett a psychopath?
“Are you going to kill me?” I croak because at this point, there’s no point delaying the inevitable.
I hear a sound from him, then in my peripheral vision, I see him come into the bathroom.
Noticing him walk towards me, in that measured, perfect stride, my hackles rise and I feel it again.
My fight-flight instinct.
But it’s useless.
If I fight, I’ll lose.
If I try to flee, he’ll revel in catching me and then making me pay.
In a few strides, Emmett is looming over me, looking down at me like I’m literal filth on his gleaming tiles.
He crouches down, his cold gaze on me.
“So you do know that crossing me is a sin deserving of death, huh?” he murmurs softly. “And here I was thinking you’ve been nothing but a pathetic, na?ve pain in the ass all these years.”
All these years…
My breath comes out like a stutter.
“Emmett…”
“Let me tell you a few things,” he says, ignoring me completely. “The videos that bastard took of you were distributed.”
I feel my blood freeze in my veins.
I stop breathing.
“Did you know that your little friend over there was working with your sister, Melissa?”
“W-what?” I stutter.
“I know you don’t use your head as much as you should, but you knew that this boy approached you right after that girl contacted you. Do you think that was a coincidence?”
As he says that, the chaos in me starts rumbling, shifting, flashing back with all the memories of the past few months.
Jackson mostly asked about me.
He asked about my family.
He asked about my future plans.
And me… being so lonely and desperate for companionship, I told him everything.
“Haven’t we taught you all these years about coincidences?” He holds my gaze, his words harsh, unrelenting, and cold.
“T-there’s no such thing as coincidence…” I mutter, my mind buzzing. I recall Melissa’s smile. The way she was calm. “She has the videos then?”
Emmett doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t need to.
Bad luck happens in threes.
Jackson tried to rape me, he took videos of me that are now in the possession of my so-called twin sister, and who knows if there’s someone else.
Emmett not only knows all my crimes, I’m sure he has perfectly documented each one and will gladly use them to lock me away for the rest of my life—but he won’t.
That was before.
Now, he somehow found out about a plan my brother and I had years ago and now, he has my brother… and me.
Tears stream down my cheeks as I face him.
“What else?”
At this, Emmett smirks. The bastard actually smirks with amusement.
“Your quick wit always makes my dick swell.”
“Emmett, please.”
“I’m surprised it took you this long to piece things together,” he taunts. “From the moment they pinged you, they set everything in motion, but, Angel, do you even know how they found you?”
That question had been at the back of my mind.
“Beverly always knew…”
“She knew you were alive, yes, but she didn’t know where you were. Do you wanna know why that is?” Emmett's posture reminds me of what it means to be lured into hell. Each word, the sound of his deep voice that pierces my soul like sharp knives. Everything about him is a setup and I’m helpless. I will definitely fall.
“Why?”
“Because your poor brother that you rebelled against has been keeping you hidden,” he says. “And now, not only did that fuckhead take videos of you, he also kept details of your cybercrimes, and guess where he sent them and how they will weaponize your crimes against you?”
“Oh God.”
Samuel… he works for the country’s secret intelligent agencies. They will use my crimes to make it seem as if it was all my brother’s doing.
“You wouldn’t.”
“I don’t have to do any of that,” Emmett says simply. “But to break you, they are already doing it.”
I can hear the rain and thunder loud and clear, but as I stare into Emmett’s cold, sharp eyes… he’s no longer the boy that jumped over a cliff with me.
He’s the man that hates me.
“Pandora…” Emmett repeats, his voice dropping a few decimals deeper, closer, more dangerous and mocking. “Either you’re plain dumb or just unlucky, but you have a knack for predicting your own downfall, and meeting me, fucking with me, that was your end, and now, it’s time to dole out your punishment.”
“Punishment?” I croak.
I stare at the now unfamiliar man crouched in front of me.
He watches me back… our gazes holding.
As I watch, he smirks, but it’s not playful.
It’s not flirtatious.
It’s not calming or even humorous…
That smirk has a hint of dark, twisted malice in it. The kind I know damn well Emmett has kept under a tight leash all the years I’ve known him.
But this time, he’s letting me see a glimpse. On purpose.
Oh no.
I can’t help but pull back, my fingers clenching my shirt to the point of pain.
“Emmett, listen—” I stutter, but he doesn’t let me say another word.
“Did you think I wouldn’t be able to detect the treachery that lives in you, Ivy?”
The treachery that lives in me…
“Don’t worry, though,” he says softly. “You’re going to learn the consequences of your sins in the only way you and I understand each other. And that is intimately painful.”
With that, he stands and strides out of the bathroom.
Panicked, and worried for my brother, I flush the toilet and scramble to get up to wash my hands before going after him with my feet still covered in Jackson’s blood and wearing Emmett’s t-shirt, but I don’t care.
“Emmett!”
I follow him out of the bedroom and into a huge, dark hallway.
He’s now wearing a black silk bathrobe and already at the end of the hallway, so I run after him and enter another room, only to be met with darkness. Only a lone lamp by the huge desk is switched on.
“My brother?—”
“His life is up to you,” Emmett says.
“Governor Hughes and Beverly are also threatening me with my family. What makes…”
“Then you must think I’m at the same level as your wretched parents,” he says simply. “I won’t be playing dirty tricks. I’m sure you know that I don’t have time for that.”
In other words, he’ll kill him.
Tears stream down my eyes as I look up at him where he sits on the black chair that looks like a throne, regarding me silently.
“Please, Emmett,” I whisper brokenly. “They have my brother…”
I expect him to laugh.
I expect him to say he told me so.
I expect him to taunt me, ridicule me, but instead, he leans back in his seat and our eye contact doesn’t break.
The way he watches me doesn’t falter.
The way he rhythmically runs his thumb over his bottom lip is becoming more hypnotic the longer I stare.
At this, he actually narrows his eyes at me.
“Do you know what Pandora’s problem was, Angel? It wasn’t her curiosity, as everyone says. It wasn’t even the mere fact that she just wanted to know what was in the box she was never meant to touch. It was the hate she secretly harbored in her heart.”
“What?” I gasp, tears filling up my eyes.
“All the stories say she was beautiful. And that she was gifted by the gods and placed in the world as the first woman. Logic would have it that she lacked nothing, but what if she was just a malicious woman who knew what she was doing all along?”
Malicious?
Why is he looking at me like that?
I clench my fists tightly, not knowing what to say.
“I don’t know what you’re trying to imply,” I whisper.
“I’m not implying, just coming up with a theory that just made itself apparent the moment I saw your face.”
I look up at him. What does he mean?
“What if Pandora knew all along that the box contained all kinds of horrors, mayhem, and pain? What if she knew that opening it would release all that shit into the world? A world that was cruel to a being like her. A world she resented because it never quite accepted her or knew what to do with her kind.”
He says the words slowly, deliberately, as if coaxing something out of my soul, pulling it out with the low, deep cadence of his dangerous voice.
“So… what if she hated that world all along and desired to see it fall into ruin? To see civilization descend into chaos with every living thing suffering in misery and agony like she was, subjected to loneliness and sadness? What if all along she vowed to exact revenge against the beings that used her, tormented her, taunted her with the very things she had always longed for?”
Images of Melissa smirking at me at the dinner last night flash in my head. Did she already know what Jackson was going to do to me?
I see her and her mother whispering to each other like best friends, fawning over each other.
I see the way Beverly was caring for her, fixing her hair, hugging her… and yet, she decided to threaten her own mother and son’s lives just to make me do what she wants.
It all awakens the desperate anger and resentment I’ve been feeling.
And Emmett is like the pied piper, playing the enchanting, dramatic yet alluring tune.
“What if she wanted to retaliate for all that pain she suffered? How would she feel if she could watch them all fall? If they all collapsed beneath her feet?”
If they all fell? If they all suffered…
In this moment, I’m totally putty in Emmett’s palm. He knows it too, because that’s when he delivers the final blow.
“What if she was that kind of woman? Fake, smiling in the face of being mocked, pretentious? Pathetic…like you.”
That hurts… like he just wrapped my heart with a thin copper wire, and now he’s slowly pulling, squeezing everything until I start bleeding. Shredding my heart into raw chunks of nothing.
I shake my head, denying the truth.
“No…”
Emmett smirks. I hate that smirk!
“I’m not like that! I’m not… I’m not fake and I don’t wish any violence on anyone!”
Fat teardrops fall on my cheeks.
Emmett watches it all without saying anything, but his silence only drives me insane.
“My curiosity is just that! Curiosity! It’s not…”
Malice.
I’m not a malicious person.
I don’t want revenge.
Why would I care about that? It’s none of my business!
They roped me in, made it seem like they’d been looking for me all these years, but Grammy and Samuel had been hiding me and now… they found me to use me.
Anger unlike anything I’ve ever felt comes crashing down on me.
I start breathing heavily, not knowing what to do.
Do I scream? Do I cry? Is this why I came into this world? To be the spare for everyone?
“That’s not true!” I whisper.
“You don’t have to pretend in front of me. I’ve seen just how dark and malicious you are right from the start.”
Is he right?
Am I as malicious as he says?
No, this is just because of the circumstances! I’m a good person.
Then why am I here?
“And now, I’m debating if I want to make you repent for all your sins or not.”
Lightning strikes somewhere in the distance, illuminating the dark room for a moment.
“Repent?” I whisper brokenly.
“For lying to me. For believing I’d ever fall for someone as fake, cowardly, and pathetic as the na?ve wallflower you made yourself to be.” I gasp, looking away from him, but he’s not done. “And for other things you’ll be getting down on your knees for.”
I can’t breathe anymore.
It’s cold but I feel like my blood is coming to a simmering boil.
“I’ll never get down on my knees for you,” I grit out.
“Is that so?” Emmett mumbles, not bothered by my stubbornness in the slightest. “You can leave.”
Leave? I can’t leave now!
If I do, I’ll be caught!
If I leave the most secure place on earth where not even the most powerful can touch, what will happen to me? What will happen to Grammy and Samuel? I can’t just…
Emmett is watching me intensely.
“You know I can’t leave.”
“And why is that?” he mutters softly.
My heart literally stops beating.
Everything comes to a screeching halt.
I look up into the dark, frozen emerald eyes of the devil and he stares right back at me.
That old sixth sense I’ve always had when it comes to this man stirs up in me.
Run.
I have to run.
If I don’t, there’s no telling what this man will do to me.
Unlike King, Noah, and George who are every bit dangerous and unpredictable, Emmett is different.
When he sets his mind to something, no one can change it.
And when he vows to do something, it’s the same as being inked into eternity.
I’m doomed.
And this time around, I know that my sass will not save me. Especially when he once told me that I will be the one begging him to save me.
I guess the time has come.
I drop down to my knees right then. “I’ll do it!”
Silence stretches for eons.
My heart is thundering in my chest.
I press my sweaty palms against my thighs, sinking my nails into the soft flesh.
“I’ll sign it!”
Emmett watches me intensely, and with Emmett I’m finding that having his full attention is equivalent to inviting agony into your soul.
He’s too much and I’m simply too powerless to deal with him, let alone take his intensity.
Against gods, mere humans will perish.
“The contract…I’ll sign it!” I rush to say. “I’ll agree to your terms! Every single one of them. I’ll be yours! You can do whatever you want with me!”
Maybe, just maybe, Pandora was desperate like me.
Maybe she was just a pawn, endowed with all the beauty but with no power.
Maybe she took a desperate gamble and did what she was told not to do—because she’d had enough of being walked over, trampled on, being seen as less than.
So she gambled, opened the box and unleashed misery.
Why can’t I do the same?
Why do I have to be considerate of others when no one ever considers my thoughts and feelings?
What’s signing away my life to this cold, ruthless god when I know he’ll do what he is capable of? Destroy my enemies with just a flick of his wrist.
I hold Emmett’s gaze for a heartbeat.
I let him see what he’s looking for in me.
How pathetic I am, begging for a god to help when I once scoffed and told him off.
I let him see my pain… because only he’s ever seen it clearly.
“Why now?” he growls.
“Why not?” It’s not like you’ll live long.
That contract is only as good until you kick rocks, and besides, my heart is no longer involved in this.
In fact, my heart when it comes to Emmett Easton is no longer a concern. It simply doesn’t exist and will never exist.
This is purely business.
The ghost of a smirk appears at the corner of his lips, then it shifts into something that neither resembles a smile nor a frown, but my God does he look every bit as intimidating and all-powerful as ever.
“Do it then,” he says simply, as if daring me. He places the now familiar black envelope on the desk.
I quickly rush towards the letter opener on his desk, take out the contract paper I had denied before, believing I would never be so stupid as to sign it, but now...
Emmett’s words from what feels like ages ago echo in my ear.
“You will sign it, Angel. With blood and tears.”
And now, he leans back in his chair, watching me with a dark, hooded gaze with his robe open enough for me to still see his solid chest.
He doesn’t believe I’ll do it. He still thinks of me as a coward.
But see, my desperation and pain outweigh my self-preservation.
I really shouldn’t do this—and he himself has warned me that once I sign this piece of paper, there’s no turning back.
There’s a reason why the rituals of this agreement are far from the ordinary.
With shaky breaths and even more unstable heartbeats, I take the sharp edge of the letter opener and prick my forefinger—all the while holding his gaze.
And without feeling the pain or listening to the warning bells chiming in my head, screaming at me to stop and find another solution to get out of this maze, I press my bleeding finger to the paper…and sign away my life to the lord of hell.
And he…. He actually smiles.
Silently, Emmett picks up the same letter opener, pricks his finger the same way I did just seconds ago, and stamps his blood right over mine.
Something in me sizzles as I watch the action.
‘I’ll never let you bleed alone.’
He said that before. I guess he did mean it.
I don’t think I’m breathing… and I know there’s no turning back now.
“It’s done. What do you want?” I snap, feeling reckless and helpless all at once.
Emmett looks up at me. “Don’t you already know?”
I almost roll my eyes. Power. It’s always about power.
“Fine.” I glare at him. The man I now hate. “I’ll do as you say. In a few hours, I will announce to everyone, including your grandfather, that I’m marrying you.”
In that way, Emmett will get what he wants.
And I will belong to him… But then again, it’s better the devil you know…
“Who said that’s what I want?” Emmett suddenly asks very calmly.
I freeze.
“But…”
“You’re right that you will be announcing to everyone who you’re going to choose, but you will marry him.”
My heart stops.
Everything in me grows cold.
Him?
“What?” I croak.
“You are all mine, Angel, that’s a fact that will never change even after I’m gone,” he says the words slowly, clearly, and directly, there’s no mistaking him. “I will use you in every way I desire, and the first thing you will do is marry Vaughn.”
TO BE CONTINUED…