Chapter 30 #2
She drags in a lungful of air before speaking again.
“As soon as I married him, that’s when they took me in.
At first, nothing seemed unusual. I thought it was just a group of powerful individuals, pulling the right strings and helping each other get wealthier, scratching each other’s backs.
And for a little while, it did seem like that…
until it didn’t. I was already too far down the path to turn back, Barry made sure of that… H-He wanted you to join.”
My lips part. “What?”
“Three years before you graduated, he pitched the idea, and I told him no. By that point, I was well aware of what I’d been fooled into.
” She flexes her jaw. “I also learned the only way out of my life is by death, and not just me. Anyone you love goes first until you’re left alone and praying they come along and take you quickly.
They can’t trust that their secret dies with you.
When you’ve seen the sights I have, you learn to condition yourself early to disconnect from it. ”
My hand rubs up and over my face. “If you’re looking for sympathy—”
“I don’t want it, Indie. I’m telling you something that I’ve wanted to scream from the moment I thought you were in danger.
Barry had gone to the Montgomerys to ask for you to be initiated.
I knew from his plans it meant you’d be forced to marry one of them.
When I tried to stop him…he had our dad killed on deployment. That was my first lesson.”
Louisa mentions our father’s death so coldly, yet the mere mention of his name always feels like a stab to the heart.
Seems she’s disconnected from that too.
She glances up at the sky, squeezing her eyes shut briefly with a look of disgust. “The only reason I found out about Dad was because Barry told me drunk one night. That’s why I rarely come by Mom’s house. It’s why I never call you. I distanced myself to protect you both. But then…”
“Don’t even think about making up a lie, Louisa. I’ll leave you out in the middle of nowhere, bleeding out.”
She shakes her head at me, and it only annoys me further. If she was in my shoes, she wouldn’t trust a word I say either. Hesitation isn’t something Louisa ever displays, so excuse me for seeing right through her bullshit.
She drops her voice low and firm. “I’m going to assume you’re aware that Omnia killed Saint’s mom.”
Ice trickles down my spine.
Saint and Malcolm changed their surnames before moving here. He wiped any trace of there being a connection between the two. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Louisa sees through me. “You’ve never been good at lying, Indie.”
I scoff. “You’d be surprised at what I’ve become good at to keep people safe.”
She takes her hands out her pocket, interlocking her fingers, and I notice her wedding band is gone.
“When you and Saint got together, Barry kept asking why I’d allowed you to get in a relationship.
He’d made it clear that me saying no to you joining wasn’t anything he cared about.
That made the Judge look into him, because when he approves something, he expects it.
He found out exactly who Saint’s mom was…
They thought I purposely got you two together as a fuck you to them.
That I’d found the perfect opportunity to disrespect them.
That year I left? I had to because of what they did to me, and when I got back, you and Saint had just broken up.
Morgan had randomly appeared with Mom. I didn’t know he was there to keep an eye on everything.
Make sure I’d learned my second lesson.”
I can’t help but ask, “What did they do to you?”
She takes a deep breath, and it feels like she’s stolen my own. “You weren’t the first sibling that spent time in that cell.”
My muscles tighten as I whisper, “That was you?”
The indents on the wall, counting the days. I remembered as the ‘L’ scraped into them. The other letter, it would have been the beginning of a ‘K’.
No, it couldn’t have been.
She swiftly changes the subject when I notice her eyes glass over. “When Mom said you had a bad breakup, I just assumed they planted something to push you apart. I didn’t…I didn’t know Conrad raped you.”
She’s lying, Indie.
Don’t let her fool you.
She’s good at it, remember?
“I’m sorry, Indie. I really am, If I’d have known…I would have taken us away the minute I got back, you and Mom. I wouldn’t have stood by and done nothing. You’re my little sister, and I love you. All I ever did was try to keep you out of this life.”
My words are intended to sound unbothered, laced with a venom a snake would envy, but the way she’s looking at me…It’s so vulnerable, it manages to poke a hole in my armour. “You did a really good job at that, didn’t you?”
Destruction seems to follow her everywhere she goes.
She’s the reason our family is torn apart.
Why I’m so lost in a darkness I can’t see out of it, how Mom has had a fucking Omnia member roleplaying her boyfriend, when all along he’s been keeping an eye on us as a warning to Louisa.
Everything is a colossal fuck-up.
She clears her throat. “I don’t expect your forgiveness, not now, or ever.
I just needed you to know the truth. I’m not the monster you think I am.
Barry has been prepping me for this life since university.
I knew nothing else outside of it, and I didn’t know how to get out without everyone else coming with me. ”
A low humming throb makes itself known along my forehead. This is all too much for one day, never mind a lifetime. If I wasn’t so suspicious of every single person, if she didn’t have the track record she does, I’d maybe believe her.
Only a smidge.
But I need to know if there’s any truth in what she said, even if the lie is the last thing that ends me. “How do I know you’re telling the truth about Saint? That this isn’t just one of your ten personalities you like to slip into when the outcome benefits you?”
She steels her spine. “Barry’s dead. His threats don’t hang over me anymore.”
“But the Montgomerys’ do,” Dawson adds, stepping towards her.
She draws a familiar glare at him, one that’s cast itself upon my own face once or twice. “They believe I’m still loyal to them after I spoke to Indie in the cell.”
I laugh. “So you’re trying to tell me that was also a performance for their benefit?”
“Yes.”
Fuck.
I don’t know what to believe right now.
If Louisa’s speech to me in the basement was just an act, what’s to say this whole conversation isn’t as well.
“They don’t know I’m here, and when I saw you on the roof last night…I couldn’t bear to let this go on any longer.”
My cheeks heat, the hairs along my neck rising.
“You were here?!” Rex snarls as he steps into her.
“Conrad and Barry had me watching this place at all times; they thought if I was ever discovered that Indie would take my side. That I could manipulate her and get her to give them Regina and Saint.”
She turns her attention to me. “That was their intention until you revealed it was you they needed all along. So…I called Saint, and we made a deal. I promised I would get him back to you, but he told me to hold off contacting any of you until he killed the Montgomerys, except I didn’t plan on him being taken like that.
I’d managed to convince the Judge to spare you if Saint came to the manor.
Conrad, on the other hand, won’t let it go. ”
My eyes narrow at her mention of a deal with Saint.
I don’t know what kind of person the Montgomerys think I am, but I’m not the hesitant, naive girl they managed to drag to a party and drug.
I’m a killer when I want to be, and now that I’ve had the taste of just how unhinged I can be, I won’t hold it back.
“I don’t regret anything I did, certainly not killing your husband,” I mumble.
Not my actions, anyway. Maybe just the fact my best friend was hunted for the last couple of weeks because of it all.
That’s the only regret I have; I should have ran straight to the doors of the manor and told them it was me.
Louisa’s lips twitch at the corners. “And you shouldn’t. I just wish the part I played in this didn’t change who you were.”
This is getting too deep for me. She’s not worming herself back in. She lost her place in my heart; I’ll never reopen it for her.
Instead of dwelling further down a path I’d rather not, because my head feels like a volatile minefield, I shift to the whole reason why we’re here. “I want proof that Saint is alive and that your deal isn’t a load of bullshit.”
Her hand dips in her pocket without hesitating, and the guys standing off the side of the road erupt at the same time, raising their guns at her.
She pulls out her phone without a blink of an eye, her thumb working as she gets what she needs. Her blue eyes slowly glide up to mine. “Are you sure you want to see this?” she asks, breaking our eye contact to look back down at the phone.
There’s shame written all over her face.
“Show. Me.”
She pulls in a breath, and when the phone slips into my hand, playing a recording from last night, every single nerve ending catches fire.
And suddenly, I don’t want to give up anymore.
I want to rip the world apart.
I’m ready for a war.
Hope doesn’t feel as dangerous as I do right now.