5. Chapter 5
Chapter five
MICAH PRESCOTT
Even with the sun coming up, it’s cold as shit out here. But I figure it’s the best place to talk.
Adriana steps out quietly behind me, a slight look of dread on her face. The sliding door shuts with a soft click, leaving us out here alone with the sound of the river moving through the trees. It’s crazy how everything outside of me can be so calm, while my insides are twisting with anxiety.
I lower myself onto the steps just outside the door, the wood cold even through my sweatpants, and stare straight ahead at the river. Snow falls quietly, catching the rays of the morning sun. My gaze lands on the tree where I cried my soul out last night.
Adriana sits beside me, leaving a small gap between us. We both hold our mugs of coffee close, savoring the warmth. For a minute, neither of us says anything. Until I finally find my voice.
“You need to tell us what they did to him. Everyone is going to want to speak to you today.”
Adriana doesn’t answer right away.
I glance at her, catching the way her fingers tremble slightly around her cup, her gaze fixed somewhere out past the trees.
“I know,” she says finally.
“Is there anything you can tell me right now? He woke up in the middle of the night, and looked awful.” I pause. “The fucker looked like a demon, Adri.”
Her bottom lip trembles. “That’s exactly what I thought.”
“How did that happen?”
“Alexei made him fight.”
My jaw locks. “Fight who?”
“Anyone they put in front of him.” Her voice doesn’t waver, but it’s quiet. “They hurt him a lot.” Her voice breaks on the last word.
Rage twists in my chest. “And if he didn’t fight?”
She lets out a breath that fogs in the cold air. “He didn’t have a choice, Micah.”
I look back toward the river, my grip tightening around the mug until my fingers ache.
“They trained him,” she continues. “Conditioned him. Broke him down until he reacted the way they wanted.” Her voice drops slightly.
“And when that wasn’t enough, they…” She trails off for a second, her throat working as she swallows.
“They fucked with his head. Over and over. Sleep deprivation. Drugs. Isolation. They’d reward him for violence.
Punish him for anything else. For any sliver of softness that remained inside him.
Alexei ripped it out of his fucking veins. ”
I can’t breathe.
“You remember how kind he was?” she asks, a single tear rolling down her cheek. “How happy? Before Nolan sunk his goddamn claws into him? Before the needles?”
I sigh. “He wasn’t really ever happy. He tried to be, though.
But the moment he walked away from Emma…
” I drag a hand down my face. “He left part of himself with her. But he did try to accept the life that you and Nolan forced him into after that night in LA. Every time he kissed you, slept with you, laughed with you…it was only to survive.”
She sucks in a breath like I hurt her feelings. “Um, I have to tell you something.”
I don’t look at her this time. “What.”
A pause. “Jude never killed anyone in LA.”
My head turns slowly. “What?” I say again.
“The blackmail,” she whispers, her voice tightening now. “That first murder. It wasn’t real. Nolan fabricated everything. There was never any evidence because there was never anything to prove.”
For a second, I just stare at her. Like my brain can’t fucking catch up. Then it hits hard. “You’re telling me—” My voice breaks off as rage surges up my chest. “You’re telling me he went through all of that—everything—for something that wasn’t even real?”
She winces. “Yes.”
A harsh, humorless breath tears out of me.
I push up halfway like I’m going to stand, then drop back down again, my hand gripping the back of my neck.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” The words come out sharper now, anger bleeding through every syllable.
“That was the whole reason. Everything that started this—”
“I know,” she snaps, her voice cracking. “I know, Micah.”
I turn on her. “You knew?”
Her face tightens. “Not at first.”
“That’s not what I fucking asked.”
Silence stretches between us. “I found out later,” she says, quieter now. “After it had already happened. After—” She cuts herself off, her grip tightening around the cup. “It doesn’t matter when I found out. I still stayed.”
Yeah.
Yeah, you fucking did.
“Why?” I ask, the word coming out rough.
Her laugh is short and broken. “Because I didn’t think I had a way out.” Her eyes drop to her hands. “Because I was selfish. Because I told myself I was surviving.” She shakes her head once, sharply. “None of that makes it okay.”
No. It doesn’t.
I look back toward the river, my jaw tight enough that it aches. Motherfucking fuck. “How often was he sold?” I ask, my chest caving in with everything I’m learning about my best friend. “How many times did someone else rape him?”
She flinches, guilt flashing in her eyes. “Just that once. When Alexei filmed that video that he sent Emma.”
I exhale heavily, running a hand through my hair.
After a few quiet moments, she speaks again. “I don’t think he’s coming back,” she says quietly.
Her words slap me across my face. I turn to her sharply. “Don’t fucking say that.”
“Micah—” Her eyes flick to mine. “I watched Alexei torture him with Emma’s photos. He was so sure that Jude was hesitating or holding onto any remaining softness inside himself because of her. And, well, he was right. So he used her to destroy the last of it.”
“No.” I shake my head, the motion sharper than I intend.
“I mean it.”
The certainty in her voice makes me fucking nauseous. I press my palm hard against my mouth for a second before dropping it. “He’s not gone forever,” I mutter, more to myself than to her. “He can’t be.”
Adriana’s voice is softer when she speaks again. “After Alexei killed Nolan, everything got worse.”
I don’t interrupt. I don’t think I can, with the thorns squeezing my throat.
“They moved us into his guesthouse,” she continues. “A small, one-bedroom place.” Her shoulders tense slightly. “We were there for months. But really, it feels like we were there for years.”
My gaze catches on a raven flying through the branches, drenched in morning sunlight.
“We didn’t have a choice,” she adds after a moment. “There was nowhere else to go or way out. We were watched constantly.”
I inhale a slow breath through my nose, trying to keep my head on straight. “And him?” I ask. “How did he lose his fucking mind?”
Her silence says more than anything. “At first…he was still there,” she admits.
“Not fully. But enough. Enough that he could talk. That he knew who I was and what we were being forced to do. We attended Alexei’s events together, and he was present.
” Her gaze drifts out toward the trees again.
“Though toward the end…” Her voice falters. “I started getting scared of him.”
The words sit heavily between us.
“Why?” I ask quietly. “What changed?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t know exactly. The last time they took him behind that fucking door—” She presses her lips together, forcing her voice to steady. “When he came back, he wasn’t the same. When he came back, he looked like a…” she exhales, her gaze clashing with mine. “A demon.”
My hands shake in my lap, exhaustion settling deeper into my very bones. It doesn’t matter that I slept.
“I wish I had never met Nolan,” she says suddenly.
I glance at her.
“I wish I had never met Jude,” she adds, her voice shaking now. “None of this would’ve happened. Maybe he wouldn’t have gone through any of it.”
I chew the inside of my cheek, focusing on my pulse.
“Even if I…” She swallows hard, her eyes watering. “Even if I love him.”
I go still. My shoulders tense. “You love him?”
Her gaze drops, as if she’s embarrassed by the admission, but she nods.
And anger flares inside me. “How?” The word comes out harsh.
“How the hell do you love him after what you did to him? That’s not fucking love, Adriana.
That’s an abused piece of shit getting abused by a piece of shit who turns around and abuses an innocent person!
You’re a fucking abuser. That’s it. There’s nothing redeemable about you at all. ”
She sniffs, tears spilling over with no attempt to stop them. “I told him everything.”
That throws me for half a second. “I genuinely don’t give a single fuck, Adri.”
“I told him,” she repeats, the last word shattering into a sob.
“I told him what I did. I apologized.” Her hands shake slightly where they’re wrapped around the mug.
“I know it doesn’t fix anything. I know it doesn’t erase it.
I used him to get out of my life, and I hurt him doing it.
There’s no excuse for that. Trust me, I’m coming to terms with it myself.
He never told me he forgave me, and that’s okay.
He never should forgive me, Micah, I’m a monster.
I’m to him what Nolan was to me in that regard. ”
Her voice drops.
“I hate myself for it.”
“Yeah, you should.” The anger doesn’t disappear, but it complicates.
I know she was being abused by Nolan. Logically, it makes sense that she’d claw for joy somewhere else.
Hell, I did that the moment Heather came into my life, regardless of the fact that at the time, I was a piece of shit.
But I wasn’t about to deny myself something so beautiful and pure.
I guess we’re all ten levels of fucked up in that way.
But it doesn’t make it fucking okay. Jude and I never hurt anyone like that.
She put him through so much towards the end.
The earlier years weren’t so bad, but the more depressed and into drugs he became, the more she demanded the attention that he suddenly stopped giving her.
She would take it, instead of him offering it freely.
He tried getting over Emma by acting boyfriend with Adriana for a while. But it never really worked.