Chapter 33
“Mom!”I scream and try to pull away from the devil holding me.
“Rory! Sweetheart!” My mom’s eyes go wide when she sees me. “No! Leave her alone! She has nothing to do with this!” She turns her head, and that’s when I see him standing next to her, holding her arms.
“Aaron!” I yell. “What is going on? What are you doing? Let go of my mother! Help us!” That’s when I see the glint of something in his hand. The little light that there is bounces off of the metal of a gun that he is holding against the side of my mother.
I let out a gasp as the situation in front of me unfolds.
“Let me introduce you to your mother, Lisa.” David turns to me. “Bet ya didn’t know that.”
I gape at him. “Lisa? What? No, that’s my mom. Her name is June.” I struggle against Damien’s hold. “Mom, what is he talking about? Who is Lisa?”
“Wow. You kept Rory completely in the dark. Such a bad mom. Tsk tsk.” David stands between me and my mom, smirking.
“If she kept me in the dark, so did you, asshole. How are you alive? You died! We buried you! All this time I thought you were six feet under, and yet here you are.” Tears start to fall down my cheeks again. The anxiety, the fear, the confusion from all of this is starting to break free. I have no idea what the fuck is going on.
My dad is alive. My mom has been kidnapped. Aaron is holding a gun to her. One of their shit fucks tried to rape me. Dekker’s dad seems to be involved in all this, too. As for me, I have no fucking idea what the hell they want from me.
“You didn’t bury me, sweetheart.” My stomach turns at the way David says sweetheart.
“Yeah, I can see that. So who the fuck did we bury? If you are here, who the fuck is in that ground?” I seethe.
“Jonathan. My twin brother.” His smile goes wide, and I scrunch my face in confusion.
“Wait, what?” My mouth opens, but nothing else comes out.
Ledger lets out a deep laugh. “I don’t think she’s connecting the dots. Which is understandable since her mother left her completely out of all of this shit.”
“You want to tell her, Lisa? Or should I?” David walks over to her, grabs a fistful of her hair, and pulls. My mother lets out a pained cry.
“Stop! Let her go!” I try to kick Damien behind me, but he just laughs and pulls me against him. I can feel his hot breath on my skin, and it sickens me. “Aaron! Help her! You love her! Why are you helping these bastards?”
Everyone breaks out into a laughing fit. David pretends to wipe tears from his eyes as he comes up and places a hand on my shoulder.
“You really are a riot. Okay, okay. I will let you in on a little secret. You ready?” He takes a deep breath. “Your daddy really is dead. Oh, and his real name is Jonathan.”
The words hit me, but I can’t understand them. What does he mean, my dad is Jonathan Grey?
“She still isn’t connecting the pieces. You know, you ain’t that smart.” Ledger chuckles. “Must be the pussy. That must be what my boy sees in you. Good pussy.”
“I’ll let you know once we are done here,” Damien says, and I feel the bile rise up in my throat. He licks the side of my face, and it’s then that I lose it. I start dry heaving, and Damien pushes me to the ground. “Not all over the shoes, bitch.”
“Let her go, please!” my mother pleads. “She has no idea what’s happening, please just let her be. I can give you what you want.”
I hear the laughter of everyone in the room but my mother and me. I steady myself and groan as the nausea hits me hard. Looking up, I notice all eyes on me.
“I think it’s time we tell her,” Aaron finally says as he walks my mother over to some chains against the wall and locks her in place. He then places a ball gag over her mouth, and her eyes widen in fear as they meet mine.
“How could you do this, Aaron? You loved her,” I cry.
He shakes his head. “No, that’s where you are wrong. I have never loved her. This was all a means to an end. One your father started years ago.” He nods to David, who pulls up a chair and sits in front of me.
“I always wanted to be called Uncle David.” He smiles wickedly.
“You are not family. Fuck you,” I bite back as I sit back on my heels. I can feel Damien behind me, but he is leaving me be apparently if I stay on the floor.
“Unfortunately for you, we are family. See, your dead old dad—I mean dear old dad—fucked me over. His own brother!” He scowls. “I wanted to offer him and your mom the world. And he stabbed me in the back.”
“He obviously knew what a piece of shit you are. My father was a good man,” I seethe, pissed the fuck off he is saying this shit about my father.
He nods. “Oh, sure. Great man. So good in fact, he tried to change his name and go into hiding. To hide from me. His own brother!” His voice gets louder and higher.
“Maybe if you weren’t such a piece of shit, he wouldn’t have had to!” I don’t see it coming. His hand flying at my face. The pain that radiates across my cheek. I let out a groan against the burn and sting on my flesh.
“Piece of shit? I had the world at my fingertips, until your chicken shit father turned me in. Turned us all in.” David shakes his head, and he hovers over me. “He was going to have everything. But instead, he gave it all up. And for what? You? Your mother?”
“Then what the fuck are you even doing out of prison if my father sent you there?”
“Well, evidence and testimony can go missing,” Aaron speaks up, tilting his head. “When you know people, you can make shit happen.”
Ledger lets out a laugh. “Unless you kill a politician, well, then it’s a little harder to get out of doing time.”
“You should’ve just waited.” David looks at him seriously.
Ledger shrugs. “He figured out who dumped the evidence for you. I didn’t want to risk having to kill more than one person. So, the fucker had to go. Besides, I’m out now.”
“Aurora Grey does have an amazing ring to it.” David hums.
“I’m not a Grey. I’m a Dawson.”
“Well, you were born with the Dawson name, but your blood is Grey.” He walks toward my mom. “Lisa, Lisa, Lisa. Did you really think we wouldn’t find you? And it was so easy! You got lazy without Jonathan around. Slipped up. And you were so hard up to get some dick the minute Aaron came around you couldn’t wait to spread your legs for him.”
“What the fuck do you want from us?” I yell in disgust.
“So much. But we will start with simple things,” David drawls with a sneer.
“I just want in this pussy,” Damien laughs, and the other guys follow.
My body trembles at what’s to come. I look over at my mom, seeing her eyes are filled with tears. She looks so defeated. But I need to know what the fuck happened.
“See, here’s the thing, Aurora, sweetheart. Your dad was on his way to becoming an amazing architect. I was on my way to becoming a proud owner of some land in Atlantic City. I just so happened to have people in the right places to get me a license to operate a casino. A casino I wanted your father to help me design.”
David reaches out and caresses my hair, and I jerk back immediately trying to get away from his touch.
“Ledger here was going to run it with his crew. We’d have a nice little money laundering ring going on. It was going to be perfect.” David frowns. “And then your mother and father had to go run and tattle on us.”
“Oh, boo hoo. Big bad guy didn’t get his money laundering business up and running. What the fuck does that have to do with me?” I narrow my eyes at him.
“Well, at first, I just wanted you all dead. Drugging your father was fucking easy. The man had a routine. Same coffee, same place, same time. Such a shame that he got behind the wheel and drove after. And that poor truck driver who hit him. Just a horrible situation.” David runs a hand down his face. “Your dad should be more careful about who’s handling his drink.”
“You drugged him?” Tears trickle down my face. There’s a pain slicing through my heart at the thought of my father. He should still be alive. He should still be with my mom and me. But he was taken from us.
He nods. “Well, not me personally, but yes. And wouldn’t you know, the car just went up in flames. Burning your father alive. GHB is a hell of a drug. Man, by the time it kicked in, he didn’t stand a chance. Poof! Car was a goner, along with your father inside.”
“You’re a bastard,” I growl. I try to push the thought of my father burning alive to the back of my head, the mere thought of it making me feel nauseous.
“Wow. I’m so shocked you think so!” David places a hand on his chest like what I’m telling him is shaking him to the core. “You know, I did want you all dead. But I changed my mind. Can’t be that much of a bastard now, can I?”
My lips curl. “You almost killed me in my dorm room! And I’m gonna take a stab that it was you who set my dorm on fire.”
He chuckles. The man actually laughs at that. “No, wasn’t me directly. And also, sorry about that. You weren’t supposed to be caught up in the flames. Just wanted to scare you enough to come back home. So in a way, it worked out! You still came running. Well,” he pauses, “we had to get those whores involved to send you those videos. But a win either way.”
“What? What whores?” I gape at him.
“Oh, those friends of yours. The sorority sluts. You wouldn’t believe how much they jumped at the chance to fuck with you. You really should be friends with nicer people, sweetheart.” David laughs.
“First, fuck off with your sweetheart. Second, they are far from friends. Third, fine! You have me back here. What the fuck do you want now?” My knees are hurting under the hardness of the floor. My arms are sore as I try to wiggle from the handcuffs. Of course, my effort is futile.
“What do we want? Well, I wanted to know my family!” The three of them break out in howls. “Okay, okay. Well, see the plan was to get the money your dad had from the accident and the life insurance. Enter in your stepdad. But to our surprise, it was all only in your name. I’ll give Lisa and Johnny Boy credit for that. But how stupid to put you in the middle of all of this.”
That’s all this is for? For the money? All of this for just money?
“Take it,” I tell him. “You can have it all. I don’t give two shits about it.”
“There’s where the problem lies. There were provisions in there. Did you know you don’t have access to all of it?” Aaron speaks up.
“What? No. I never really looked. I’m sure I can just sign it over and it’s yours.” Please let it be this fucking easy.
Aaron shakes his head. “You don’t get full access to everything until you graduate college or get married. You get a little bit every month that you have barely touched.”
“Then take it. Just let me and my mom go!” I beg. I try to stand from the kneeling position I’m in, but Damien just shoves me back down. I grunt as my knees hit the floor.
David drawls, “Won’t work. So we have a better idea.” His lips tilt up, and a fear shoots through me. “We are in Vegas, so how about we throw a wedding?”
My mom screams and starts violently shaking her head. She struggles against her chains as the tears fall down her face. I can see the wrist cuffs cutting into her skin as she fights with all she has.
“Fuck right the fuck off!” I scream at all of them. Damien grips the back of my hair and yanks my head back. I let out a cry as my mom continues her protest.
“Be a good girl and just do what you said you would. Give us the money. All you have to do is marry Ledger. I mean, you fucked his son, it’s basically the same thing.” Damien grins wickedly.
“What? No.” I try to shake my head, but Damien has it gripped tight. “I am not marrying that asshole.”
It all happens so fast. The glint of the metal under the dim light and Ledger’s hand reaching for it. My eyes widen as I watch it come out and he stretches his arm.
The loud bang in the room we are in reverberates against the walls, and I let out a scream as I watch a bullet go right into my mother’s head. The light in her eyes is gone the second the bullet pierces her skull.
Her struggling stops. Her body hunches over. She’s unmoving. My heart skips a deafening beat.
She’s gone.
She’s gone.
No.
She can’t be dead.
“Mom. Mom! No! No! Mom!” I scream. “Mom!”
“Ah. Much better. She was getting on my nerves,” Ledger sighs.
“Did you really have to do that?” Aaron throws his hands up in the air. “Do you know how hard it’s going to be to cover that up?”
“She was annoying me. Besides, we don’t need her anymore. We have what we need.” Ledger smirks and shrugs.
“What did you do?” I scream at the top of my lungs. “Why did you do that?”
“You wouldn’t marry me. Now you have no one. Guess I’m your only option.” Ledger gets up and walks over to me. His hand comes up, and the force of his palm on my face knocks me over to the floor. “Happy engagement day, my future wife.”
“Fuck. You,” I say through the sobs.
Ledger laughs. “Feisty. I love it. I will have no problem working to break you. So act tough now, because that will not last long.”
He walks over to my mom’s body and admires the bullet hole in her head. He turns to me with a wicked gleam in his eye and licks the side of her face before kissing her on her lips. His hands coming up to her breasts as he rubs and plays with them.
Bile rises up my throat again as I lose it all over the floor in front of me. Snot and tears drip down my face as the taste of vomit sours my tongue.
“Goddamnit, Ledger. You just made her fucking puke again,” Damien gags.
“Well, like I said, I’ll break her.” He lets out an evil laugh. “Take her back to her cell until we can get someone to come down and marry us. Also, have Spike get the lawyer on the phone to ready the paperwork for the money. Aaron, you need to disappear and come up with a cover story. We will get her body dumped somewhere out in the desert.”
“Let’s go, bitch.” Damien yanks me up as I continue to dry heave. My head hurts, and my heart is completely dead at this point.
My mother’s gone. Dead. I watched her die. I let out another sob as the reality sinks in that I am in a mess that I have no way out of. And the only person I had a fight in me for is dead.
Damien drags me back into the cage and throws me in. I fall against the bed and let out a yelp. He comes over and crouches next to me, grabbing my hair and yanking my head back, causing me to shriek in agony.
“You need to listen to me and listen to every word I say. I am not who you think, and I’m going to get you out of here, but I need to send out the call for backup,” Damien whispers as he yanks on my hair again. “I’m only doing this for looks. I’m so sorry Rory.”
I blink a few times, unsure whether what I just heard was true. Did he just say he was going to get me out of here? “I-I don’t understand.”
He grips my face with his hand and squeezes hard. The look in his eyes tells me he hates that he has to do it. The regret in his frown.
He lets out a long sigh. “I’m undercover.”