Chapter 30
Indie
exile - taylor swift ft. bon iver
I’m leaning against the entrance gate of the Pit, flanked by Dawson and Rex who are acting like my personal pitbulls. My head is still pounding from the other night and won’t shift. The sun’s rays beating directly onto my face aren’t helping either.
Everything’s still a bit fuzzy. I thought the text messages I found on Saint’s phone were a fragment of my imagination, that I’d had a drunken dream when I woke up, and fabricated the words I read.
Dawson has analysed the new messages that came through a hundred times. He also managed to uncover a deleted phone call. The context, we’re not sure of, but it happened right before Saint left the Pit to make it to the coast.
A familiar feeling is blooming in my chest; I don’t even want to feed into it. It’s the most fatal of them all. It destroyed me slowly for six whole years. If I let it fester, it might be my final undoing.
Even though it’s the first time I’ve felt anything other than my heart tearing itself apart in the days following last hearing his voice, I shove it back down from wherever it surfaced from.
If this is just another scheme, then allowing myself to be fooled into it is going to ruin me far worse than the last six days I’ve had to exist without him.
Hope is a dangerous thing.
“Are you sure about this?” Rex asks Dawson, glancing at him over my head.
He looks just as tired as I feel, the sunlight unmasking the dark shadows that ghost beneath his eyes. Him and Jenna stayed in my room again last night.
Dawson finally answers after scanning the woodland. “I’ve got bodies dotted through that entire treeline. There’s no chance of being taken here. Besides…she came alone.”
The text message keeps flashing behind my eyes:
I need to talk to you about her, alone.
I can’t let them have her.
My mind didn’t want to believe it, but I knew immediately who it was.
And as I stare down the trail towards the oncoming blacked-out jeep, the sender is in the passenger seat.
The sound of gravel crunching beneath tyres grows louder the closer it gets. Black-clad bodies emerge from the foliage like fog, slinking onto the road, and standing guard the minute the car rolls to a stop.
My pulse roars in my ears like ocean waves, and rage rattles every vertebra in my body. It’s the most I’ve had a reminder I’m alive in days. All this coiled-up anger and grief just waiting to be unleashed the minute she gets close enough.
If she’s lying, I’ll kill her with my bare fucking hands, and it won’t be as quick as I gifted her husband.
The car door slowly pushes open, and when her heel hits the ground, every single gun points at her. One wrong move, and Louisa will be filled with bullet holes.
She closes the door shut, hand resting against it as her shoulders work up and down, and then her weary gaze lifts to meet mine.
Fuck this.
I let the coil snap.
I surge forward on instinct. Two pairs of hands land on my shoulders and shove me back against the door, the metal rattling with the force. “Speak first, kill her later,” Rex says, patting me on the shoulder as he throws a death glare at my sister.
I have to give it to her; she’s got bigger balls than me, anyway. When Dawson contacted her, she agreed to come alone and get into one of our vehicles an hour out of town, knowing every single person here wants her dead.
She didn’t give him any answers; her words were nothing more than a desperate plea to see me. Half of me doesn’t want to hear her bullshit excuses. If she’s here to cry over Barry, she can kiss my ass, then the tip of my knife before I plunge it into her.
The other half though? It screams I need to hear her out, especially when she’d mentioned his name.
Louisa holds her head high as she walks over to me, hands in the pocket of her brown winter coat. Despite the confident show, she looks dishevelled, hair tied back in a loose ponytail and eyes holding evidence of lack of sleep.
Each step she takes towards me sends the atmosphere shuddering. The air grows colder as if death itself follows behind her. It probably does; who knows how many lives she’s responsible for.
When she’s a few inches from me, it feels like an arctic wind is spiralling around us. It’s at this moment I realise, I hate her.
I truly fucking loathe everything about her.
“I killed Morgan by the way. He made up for your husband getting off lightly,” I mutter, waiting for a reaction. She was always friendly to him when he first entered our lives, too friendly when I think about it. I guess they were old buddies and had history.
She’s probably the damn reason he was in it in the first place.
Rex notices my wrath making a reappearance, giving my shoulder a squeeze before he returns to his prior stance.
I wait for the colour to drain from her face the same way it did in the cell, but it doesn’t come. Louisa stands stone faced as she stares at me, but the wariness in her eyes is like a beacon, flashing each time she breaks it to nervously glance at Rex and Dawson. “Can we talk alone?”
“No,” they both reply in unison.
My voice laces with venom. “Anything you have to say can be said in front of them.”
She swallows. “You killed Morgan?”
Still no change in her features when she voices my act. “I did, and he cried like a bitch. Seems to be the kinda men you surround yourself with.”
Anyone would if they were gutted from the gut to their breastbone, not to mention what happened when Saint got his turn. Emasculating these men that my sibling seems to think so highly of is making me feel better.
Her lips twitch upwards as she glances at the ground, and if my gaze hadn’t been fixated on her, I’d have missed the swift tug. “Right after he held me down and was going to let Conrad rape me, I don’t doubt he had the same intentions,” I add, and her gaze snaps upwards.
“He what?”
My eyes roll. “Cut the shit, Louisa. Don’t act like that behaviour is news to you. You married one of them after all. Close enough with them all, that you knew exactly the kind of men they were.”
“Indie—”
“I’m only entertaining you because I want to know where Saint’s body is. Anything else is just going to piss me off. I have a knife, and my patience is wearing thin—”
Louisa’s composure snaps. “Indie, fucking listen to me for a God damn minute!”
She drags in a breath that visibly shakes her, dragging her hand across her scalp, and her blue eyes pin me in place. “Saint’s not dead.”
My brain is slow to register the words that come out of her mouth.
Or maybe I misheard her.
Maybe I heard what I wanted to hear.
My head begins to slowly shake.
The silence is so still, no one dares breathe to disturb it; not even the birds chip in the distance.
Rex is the first to wade through the fog of disbelief, hand snapping out and grabbing Louisa by the collar of her coat. “You really do have a fucking death wish, don’t you?”
She yanks out of his hold. “I’m not lying. He isn’t dead, and I know where he is.”
My eyes snap closed, the tears already building behind, and fuck do they burn. Only a whisper finds its way free from my lips. “Stop it.”
“Indie, I’m telling the truth.”
The last tether on my restraint snaps—all the anger, everything I’m holding together these past six days. Hell, everything buried inside me since the moment I saw her on that stage, from when my life tore itself apart all those years ago, rises to the surface with a vendetta it’s ready to claim.
I step into her, staring into a face that may as well be a reflection in a mirror, and yet, I have no idea who the person is looking back at me.
“No, Louisa, you’re not. You’re always fucking lying.
Every single word that’s left your mouth since you married that piece of shit has been a lie.
To me, to Mom. To everyone…You probably fucking lied to Dad too.
” I throw my hands out wide. “Haven’t you done enough?
When does it fucking end for you? Whatever you did that pissed Conrad off so much to have our dad killed, to have me fucking raped, it all boils down to the same thing.
Your lies. Do you get a fucking kick out of having the people who loved you hurt?
Have they corrupted your mind that much? ”
My voice cracks at the end.
I don’t even care that everyone heard it; I’m so done with walking around like everything’s okay, that I’m holding on, that I’m strong. That I don’t show my weaknesses, and again, I cover them up when they slip.
I don’t want to be brave on my own anymore.
I just want Saint back.
Louisa’s eyes glass over, and I look away, but her voice keeps my attention on her. “I didn’t know Conrad had hurt you.”
A scoff heaves my chest. “Fuck off, Louisa.”
She reaches out and touches my shoulder, and I immediately retreat between Rex and Dawson.
Her face…softens. “I swear it to you. I didn’t know about Morgan either, not until I found out he and Barry went to Mom’s.”
I shake my head, letting my blurred gaze travel along the treeline. We’re going to go around in circles, and I won’t listen to this shit like a broken record. She has to feel as exhausted as I am listening to it; she’s been at this for years.
I brace myself to tell her to leave, but her next words hold me prisoner.
“When I got together with Barry, I…I had to join the society to be able to marry him. I loved him so much that I would have done anything to be with him. So, when we both graduated, I blindly agreed to be a part of Omnia. He promised me all my dreams, a life where anything I wanted would be mine. That’s how I became a Senator so fast. It was them who pulled the right strings in the background to get me there. ”