Chapter 40 Ella
ELLA
Why so many socialites aspire to this lifestyle, I’ll never know.
Don’t get me wrong, swimming and sitting by the pool most of the day and doing yoga on the balcony surrounded by tropical plants as the sun rises is a dream.
But after doing it for six weeks straight? I’m bored as hell and going crazy.
Well, not a full six weeks. I spent a week in bed after I ended things with Asher.
I cried and cried until I was sick. Until my eyes and nose were so red and raw that I could hardly touch them.
Five weeks later, I’m still a mess. I still cry over everything and nothing, but it’s hard to get past it when I’m stuck in this limbo.
No amount of negotiating has convinced Flores and Jenkins to let me go.
I’ve insisted time and again that since I’m no longer with Asher that I shouldn’t be kept here against my will.
They’ve insisted that their orders are to bring me back to New York only when Asher gives the word that it’s safe.
So, I’ve been here for six weeks, slowly going crazy.
It doesn’t help that I’ve been cut off from the world.
There is no phone or internet. There’s only a TV, and it’s not hooked up to any internet, streaming services, or even cable.
All I can watch are the blue-ray disks in the house.
If not for the books, I’d have gone batshit by now.
My days consist mostly of stupid amounts of yoga and Pilates, self-defense training, reading, sitting by the pool, and watching whatever movie I can stomach each night.
I do take a few short strolls around the property with Flores or Jenkins, and that helps suppress the cabin fever a bit, but it only does so much.
I’m still in a prison. It’s a luxurious, tropical paradise, but it’s still a form of prison.
My other saving grace is that Flores and Jenkins feed me updates on what’s going on back home any time they get an update from Asher. I’ll give Asher one thing: he’s definitely following through on all his threats. To a scary degree.
Almost everything Asher wanted to accomplish is done.
Jenkins let me know that Sergei’s untimely demise happened yesterday, so the only thing we’re waiting on is for Yegor to be brought to justice.
And then I can get the hell out of here and go home.
But as I think about it, my heart sinks, and for the thousandth time, I cry.
Because . . . where is home now? I went from Kyle’s apartment to Asher’s, and now that things have ended, I’ll have to find my own place.
All the dreams I had begun to let myself have deflate in a puddle of fresh tears.
The night of the car chase, Asher had asked me if I wanted to have kids with him.
I’d meant it when I’d said yes. Then we had ended up at his estate on Long Island, and even though we had been in danger and there was so much going on, and even though the house is ridiculously big, I couldn’t help but picture it—a life there with Asher.
A wedding on the vast grounds. Children eating at the table in the sun-filled dining room and hiding in all the nooks and corners, causing chaos in the pristine manor.
I couldn’t help but picture it and want it.
I still want it.
But how can I trust it? How can I trust that Asher won’t do this to me again someday? Is that a risk I’m willing to take?
I don’t know.
But being away from him feels like torture.
And I don’t know if I can take a lifetime of this.
I’m still so mad at him, but I can’t stop loving and wanting him despite it.
When this is all over and I’m back in New York, I don’t know if I’ll be able to stay away from him.
I don’t know if I can just let those visions, those dreams of our future, go. But I also can’t trust him.
It’s all a mess.
“Emily just emailed me,” Flores says, sitting down on the pool chair next to me. “The breakup will be formally announced a week after Edward Langford’s memorial, which is in three days. They don’t want the news to overshadow the event.”
I swipe away my tears and nod.
Clearly Asher doesn’t feel the same as I do. If he’s ready to release a PR statement, it seems he’s okay with our breakup and is ready to move forward with his life. Without me.
“Can I go home then?”
Flores winces. “No. Mr. Langford thinks it would be best for you to be out of the media spotlight when the news hits. For your safety and privacy. Plus, Yegor is still proving to be difficult to get a lock on. You’re not leaving until that changes.”
“If Asher doesn’t want to be with me, why does he care?” I hiss, wiping snot from my nose.
God, will I ever be done crying?
“If you think Mr. Langford doesn’t want to be with you, you’re a fool. You’re the one who broke up with him, remember?”
I shoot her a glare. “He drugged me, had me brought here, and is keeping me here against my will.”
“To keep you safe.”
“I’m a prisoner. Yes, I know, it’s a luxurious prison,” I say for the millionth time, rolling my tear-filled eyes, “but it’s all been done without my input or consent. Why does no one seem to understand how violating that is?”
Flores gives me a pitying look. “I get it. He did a shitty thing. He shouldn’t have drugged you, and he should have talked to you about his plans.
But you also wouldn’t have agreed to come, so in some ways, you forced his hand.
Even now, you still aren’t willing to see how dangerous Yegor is.
He’s one of the heads of the Russian mafia for Christ’s sake.
He’s a very dangerous man, and if he got a hold of you, you don’t want to even imagine what he’d do to you.
“So, if you can’t understand why that might make Mr. Langford a little paranoid, a little overreactive, then you’re not helping matters.
Your life is in very real danger, Ms. Hale.
Especially now that Mr. Langford has thrown down the gauntlet.
He’s destroyed everyone but Yegor, and Yegor is aware of that and won’t go down without a fight.
The last thing any of us want is to hear that he’s taken you hostage.
Death may very well be a mercy in that scenario.
So, get over your tantrum, enjoy your tropical paradise, and stop calling it a prison. It’s for your protection.”
She stands and leaves without another word.
Jenkins bear hugs me from behind and roughly hauls me into his chest.
“What are your options to break my hold?” he asks, his arms gripping me so tightly they might leave bruises.
The warm, humid air coats my skin, making it slick with sweat as we work through our self-defense session on the grass behind the house.
“I could head-butt you if I have the angle to hit your nose.”
“Only do that if it’s your last resort, don’t forget that a head-butt, even using the back of your head, could hurt you. What are other vulnerable parts of my body you could reach without hurting yourself?”
“Your instep.” I lift my foot and pretend to stomp down on Jenkins’s right foot.
“Good. What else?”
“I could use my elbow.” I twist and shift my weight and pretend to elbow him in the stomach.
We go through the motions again and again until we’re both dripping with sweat and out of breath. When Jenkins is satisfied with my progress, we end our session and head into the blessedly air-conditioned house.
As I shake out my exhausted limbs, I bitterly wonder why I’m even continuing with the sessions since I can’t help but think that my need for self-defense is about to become obsolete.
No one cared who I was before I dated Asher, and I presume that after some time, people will forget about me.
It’s not that I care about the notoriety, it’s that I still can’t believe that our relationship is over.
“The breakup will be formally announced a week after Edward Langford’s memorial.”
Flores’s statement, no matter how gently she delivered it, still rakes across my mind like jagged glass. I know I asked for this, I know I ended things, but that doesn’t mean it’s not killing me inside.
I wonder again what my life will look like once this is all over. Where will I live? Where will I work? Will Lennox Rose still want me as a brand ambassador? There are a million unknowns, a million unanswered questions, and the thought of facing them fills me with dread.
The only thing I’m sure of is the fact that I’ll stay safely hidden away until the fallout over the breakup is over. Because I have no choice. Fucking overprotective Asher.
I’m also dreading the moment I re-enter society.
According to Flores, Emily is already barely keeping her head above water with the rumors and questions about my current absence, and that’s without a breakup.
A very public breakup where one member of the relationship is hidden out of sight.
People will only buy the “she’s on a much-needed vacation” excuse for so long before it becomes suspicious, and a suspicious public does not make for a quiet life—PR wise.
But most of all, I’m dreading a life without Asher.
“Hey,” Flores says, sitting down on the couch next to me that night after dinner.
I pause my movie that I’m not really paying attention to. “Hey.”
“I was probably a little harsh with you yesterday, but I wasn’t wrong.”
I raise my brow. Where is she going with this?
“I have the intel Sterling gave Asher on Volkov regarding his past crimes and victims. I think it’s high time it was shared with you. But be warned, what I’m about to show you is graphic, so if it’s too much, just tell me. I’d rather you not lose your dinner.”
What the hell?
She pulls out a tablet and holds it between us.
“These are the crimes we know are connected to Volkov. He’s never pictured, he’s very good at staying hidden, but that doesn’t mean the blood you’re about to see is not on his hands. He either performed these acts himself or they were performed by his men on his orders.”
She swipes her finger and pulls up an image.
A shock pierces through me, and my breath catches in my chest.
The image is of a man lying in a pool of blood. His open eyes stare blankly into space. But it’s not the death you can see in his eyes, or the blood, that has me reeling. It’s the mutilation of his body. His body was carved and sliced and broken a hundred different ways, presumably before he died.
I swallow hard.
Flores swipes again.
Another image, this time of a much-younger man. A late-aged teenager, probably. Shot through the head and chest at least dozen times.
Another image. Several men dead on a warehouse floor, shell casings surround their bodies, littering the ground like confetti, shimmering among a sea of red.
Another image. More blood.
Another image. More death.
Another image. More carnage.
Swipe after swipe of heinous, graphic, violence, all at the hands of Yegor Volkov.
Another image.
This time of a woman. She’s beautiful, with long golden hair and big blue eyes. Her naked body is covered in blood, mutilated, almost beyond recognition in some places.
“That was the wife of a man who betrayed Volkov,” Flores murmurs. “She was . . . raped by six men before they ended her. He ordered the same thing to be done to the man’s daughter.” She pauses and takes a long breath. “The girl was barely sixteen.”
Tears spring to my eyes as bile creeps up my throat.
I race to the bathroom and hurl up my dinner, just like Flores predicted I might.
A moment later, Flores is there, holding my hair and running a soothing hand down my spine. When there’s nothing left inside me, I flush the toilet and slump down next to it.
“There are at least twenty more pictures I could show you,” Flores says, sliding down the wall to sit next to me.
I turn my head and look at her. Her brown eyes are sad but fervent.
“I agree with you that Mr. Langford went about this the wrong way. But as we discussed yesterday, you wouldn’t have left willingly.
You know you would have put up a fight. I want you to ask yourself, if you were him and you saw those pictures, what would you do?
Yegor and Sergei made it clear they would come for you to hurt Mr. Langford.
If you knew someone was capable of what you saw in those pictures, would you take that risk?
Or would you do everything in your power to keep the person you love safe from that kind of fate?
“You don’t know the conversations we have had as a security team.
You haven’t seen the absolute terror on Mr. Langford’s face when we discussed all the things Volkov is capable of.
He has looked at every one of those pictures and imagined what it would be like if you were the victim of those heinous acts.
I know this situation is hard and confusing, and yes, I agree with you that it is violating.
But Volkov would do a hell of a lot more than violate you.
The reason Jenkins and I went along with this plan is because we care about you, and we agree with Mr. Langford that this is the only way we can guarantee your safety.
“Mr. Langford is not a regular man, and his enemies are not regular men. These threats against you are the worst of the worst. Whether you believe or not, whether you agree with it or not—it doesn’t change that reality.
You are in danger. Full stop. If Volkov gets a hold of you, you may end up as one of those pictures.
Do you really want to live through the pain, the terror, and the trauma he would inflict on you before he killed you?
Think about it, Ella. Think about what it would be like to live through that.
You’d be begging for death. Mr. Langford and the rest of us are doing everything we can to prevent that. ”
She stands and exits the bathroom, leaving me alone with my shocked and splintered thoughts.