Chapter 37 #2
“She wasn’t always like that, you know. Elena’s death changed her,” Ashley bites her lip, looks away.
“It wasn’t her fault. Viv like…lived inside her head.
Viv lived inside all our heads. She would play mind games.
Limit the amount of food we could eat. Give compliments and then backhanded ones.
And she was our manager. It was complicated. Piper… She tried her best.”
“Ashley,” I say earnestly, “I want you to know; I tried to stop her from jumping overboard, I really did.”
Ashley gathers herself, turns back to me. “Why didn’t you tell the truth? I know you blamed Viv and only Viv. Why? Why not tell them we were all there? We all killed her.”
“There’s nothing to implicate you guys,” I reply.
I can’t discuss sending the video to Sage’s phone without admitting what I did to my former best friend.
Telling Viv the truth was bad enough. “The only physical evidence they have is Viv’s bloody fingerprint on Elena’s phone.
Viv’s prints were in the system. Shoplifting. So the rest of you are in the clear.”
I don’t tell Ashley that the only remaining copy of Piper’s video is waiting on Sage’s phone. I’ll never turn the video in. In fact, I might go back home and pitch Sage’s phone into Lake Michigan and be done with this whole thing.
“But Elena’s death was our fault,” Ashley says, eyes glazed. “We didn’t do enough. I didn’t do enough.”
“That’s not true,” I say softly, remembering Ashley in the video, the only one not frozen in shock. “You tried to stop them, Ashley. You tried to help.”
Ashley stares at me for what feels like a long time. Finally, she says, “Fiona is quitting social media. She’s devastated by Carl’s death. I think she has PTSD from the whole thing, to be honest. She’s…not doing well.”
I can sympathize. My own experiences on Empress clearly stemmed from a similar issue.
Seeing figures that weren’t there, hearing drips, smelling salt.
The drowned woman I thought was haunting me.
I haven’t seen anything else since I mistook the seaweed in the ocean for Sage’s face the night I almost drowned.
A therapist would probably tell me it was transference.
After all, Elena didn’t drown. She was stabbed.
My brain must have seen what it wanted to see, sick with shame from what I did to Sage.
Guilt is powerful. I suspect whatever haunting I experienced on the boat is over now that I’ve acknowledged the truth about what I did to Sage, even if it was only to Viv.
Doing so allowed me to release some internal pressure, some psychic wounds. It’s over.
It has to be.
“And how is Rachel?” I ask.
“She’s worried you’re going to change your mind and turn us in,” Ashley explains. “She’s stressed. She wants to go live in an ashram in Virginia for a little while to regroup.”
“She needs help, Ashley,” I tell her. “In that video, it was Rachel who held you back. She’s carrying that around.”
“I know,” Ashley says, her tone warning. “And she knows too. She’s…blaming herself, I think.” Ashley’s voice grows hoarse, and she glances away. “She asked for some time. Away from me. To figure things out on her own.”
“Oh, Ashley. I’m sorry.”
“No.” She shakes her head, meeting my eye again.
“It’s good. We’ve been together our entire life.
Side by side. Doing the same thing, trying to be our own person while still holding on to our twinhood.
It can be…exhausting. She’s right. It’s time to see who we are away from each other.
” Ashley pauses, sighs, running a hand across her forehead.
“Ironically, it was Viv who encouraged us to branch out, carve out our own niches and identity online. Before Empress, we were basically the same person. Living on Empress changed us. Now it’s time to figure out in what ways. ”
I remember Ashley’s implication that she got plastic surgery in order to differentiate herself from her twin.
How she seemed, at times, to be intentionally behaving in an abrasive way, as if she was trying to directly oppose Rachel’s softer, maternal energy.
Twins are so often seen as a package deal instead of two separate people.
It’s not ideal that trauma has forced Rachel and Ashley apart, but maybe they’re right.
Maybe this time will allow them to understand themselves—and their relationship—better.
I nod. “That makes sense. But still. I think she should talk to someone if she’s struggling that much. She doesn’t have to admit…the truth. Survivor’s guilt is a real thing.”
“I know,” Ashley admits. “And I think she will. Talk to someone, I mean. When she’s ready.
But you’ve got to understand, Rachel was protecting her family.
Not this bullshit Empress family. Her real family.
Me and our mother. She’s the older twin, did you know that?
By two minutes. She was looking out for the people she loves. That’s why she did what she did.”
Rachel’s room on Empress was covered in photos of her family.
“I get it,” I reply. “I guess Empress is no more.”
Ashley pauses, then swallows hard. “Charlie, I need to explain why we were all like that with Viv—”
“It’s okay,” I interrupt her. “You don’t have to.”
“None of us could go back to our previous lives,” Ashley says anyway.
“We were all broke and desperate when we joined Empress. Viv made sure of that. It’s how she controlled us.
We hated what happened to Elena, but Viv had us by the throats.
If I could take it back, do something to save Elena, I would. ”
“I know,” I say earnestly, because I do. “Look, I barely survived a few days with Viv. I can’t imagine how screwed up I’d be after a year with her. Trust me, I understand.”
“Yeah.” Ashley locks eyes with me. “Well, we ended up in the same place anyway. Now we’re jobless again.”
“Is Trey scuttling Empress or something?”
“I don’t know about that,” Ashley replies. “But Trey isn’t going to renew our contracts; he’ll say this whole thing was bad press. We’ll never be able to go back to Royal Yachts.”
And there it is, the idea that has been floating around my head, half-formed, ever since reading the email from Sage’s agent. It’s ballooning up now, full and ready to be popped.
I know what my next move is.
“Trey got away with a lot on that boat,” I say casually, waiting to see Ashley’s reaction.
It’s instant and vicious. Her eyes narrow and lips snarl. “He sure did. And I don’t know about you, but I’m not interested in letting him get away with it.”
I grin. “We’re on the same page.”
Ashley clocks my expression and straightens in her seat. “There are millions of eyes on us right now, Charlie,” she says slowly. “We can either let the attention fade away or we can capitalize on it.”
“I want to write a book,” I tell her. “About Empress.”
“A takedown,” Ashley says, voice tangy and dripping like the juice from a green apple. She understood so quickly. I was right to confide in her. “Of Royal Yachts. Of Trey Bardi. An investigative social media exposé.”
For so long, I thought I’d never write again. Inspiration evaded me—Sage’s betrayal snuffed my passion. But here, finally, is something new and shiny calling to me. Roaring to me. A story that demands to be told.
At the center of all this drama is a man who thought he could do anything he wanted, and knocking him down is more interesting to me than finishing Sage’s story.
It was, after all, hers. Even if I agree to write for the publisher and have my name on future covers, it will have always started as Sage’s book.
It was my idea, yes, but the truth is that Sage wrote it.
I only ever got a few lines of The Last Time We Drowned down.
Sage created a whole novel. I have to admit that she did do the work, even if the idea wasn’t hers.
A few months ago, I could never have conceded that. Maybe I am healing.
When this began, all I wanted was credit and the truth.
I would have jumped at the chance to write the second ASOSAS book, even if it wasn’t exactly what I wanted, because it would have felt like some version of closure.
Not anymore. Lingering in the pain and regret of what happened with Sage ended with her death.
It doesn’t seem right to benefit from that now.
Besides, I don’t want to make it in publishing because of Sage. I want to make it because I can. Because I have the skills and talent to get to where I want to be. And now, there’s a new story I can write to prove that.
“I’ll need your help,” I tell Ashley. “Interviewing people. Digging up dirt. Getting the inside scoop on what happened on Empress before I came.”
“I can do all that and more,” Ashley says, getting to her feet and coming over to sit on the bed next to me. “The reason I came to talk to you today is because Piper left me something.” She pulls a sleek silver USB drive from the pocket of her white joggers and shows it to me, somber now.
“What’s that?”
“I found this in my bathroom,” Ashley says. “It was sitting next to the sink. I don’t know why she picked me. Maybe because I was the only one who tried to stop her and Viv from hurting Elena. I’ve looked at it. There are hundreds of files organized in folders. All Royal Yacht employees.”
“Viv told me Piper had a thing for blackmail,” I say.
“She kept meticulous records,” Ashley agrees. Then she smiles. “There’s a file on Trey. I haven’t gone through all of it yet, but I suspect it’s a treasure trove. Evidence of cheating. Bad behavior. Screenshots. More than enough to get us started.”
I look at Ashley. “What did Trey do to you?”
“The same thing he did to everyone else,” she says. She shakes her head but puffs her chest out, steely-eyed. “I’ll tell my story. I’ll be in your book. Three people died on that boat. And not one of them was him. That doesn’t seem fair.”
“I know,” I concur. “But maybe this is why. Maybe he survived so he would have to face this. Face us.”
Ashley bares her teeth. It’s not a smile. It’s a declaration of war. “Does that mean we’re doing this?”
“Oh, yeah,” I say. “Let’s fuck him up.”