Twenty-five

TWENTY-FIVE

Aria

My body was pushed forward harshly. I stumbled to the ground, barely taking in what should have been familiar surroundings, and put my hands out in front of me to brace for the fall.

As my body went crashing to the floor, Ronnie spoke. "You have one hour to make a decision. It better be the right one."

Two hours and fourteen minutes. That's how long it took from the time I was all but forced into the back of his SUV and brought here, a place I hadn't anticipated returning to.

And for two hours and fourteen minutes, I felt nothing but sheer terror. What were they going to do to me? Where would they take me? Would my family be okay?

The worries I felt quickly shifted away from my own self-serving interests. I worried about Sasha. In the heat of the moment, in the terror I felt with Ronnie and the guy I now knew was called Vic, I hadn't been thinking straight. I hadn't begged them to allow me to put my cat inside before they took me. My mind was assaulted by the worst thoughts imaginable of what might happen to her. I prayed she'd stay put until Paxton got home from work, that he'd see her and take care of her.

Of course, at the thought of Paxton, a new wave of emotions rolled over me. He was wildly observant and worked in situations like this all the time, so I had to assume he'd realize something was wrong. I even believed he'd take the steps to try to find me.

My biggest concern was that if he was able to locate me and save me from this situation, he'd get me home safely and walk away from me. Why would he, a man who was so good, who had such high moral standards, ever want to be with me, a woman who went against her better judgment and continued to work to help an illegal operation?

I knew I'd lose him, and my heart ached nearly the entire drive, thinking about how I was going to need to find a new place to live if I managed to survive this. It would be entirely too difficult to look out my window and see Paxton, knowing I couldn't have him.

Pressing my palms into the carpet I'd walked on thousands of times when I lived in this house, I pushed myself off the ground, stood up, and ran to the door. It was locked. The door was locked on the outside, when it hadn't been that way my whole life.

I let out a frustrated sigh, prepared to go out the window, but the moment I turned around, I froze in my tracks .

Because that's when I saw them—Mom, Dad, and Jasmine.

They were no longer gagged, but their wrists and ankles were bound together.

The moment was tense, uncomfortable. It was the first encounter we'd had with each other since I'd left Birch Creek.

"Aria," my mom rasped, tears spilling down her cheeks.

I wondered why she was crying. Was it because she was overcome with emotion at the sight of her daughter for the first time in months? Was she afraid for herself in this situation? Or did she feel guilty about how she had treated me months ago now that she knew the truth about why I left?

I said nothing to her.

My eyes slid to the side, taking in my sister. Unsurprisingly, she was a wreck. Admittedly, in this situation, her reaction was justified. She couldn't seem to bring herself to hold my stare. Once my eyes locked on hers, she looked away. And I was left wondering if that was the result of her feeling upset about me having left months ago or if she was sorry for having treated me the way she had because I did.

When my stare settled on my father, something I couldn't quite describe washed over me. Deep down, I loved him—I loved all of them. Sadly, the fact I was in this situation now, that I was taken from my new home while my cat was left outside, was the result of the choice my dad had made. And it was that knowledge which overshadowed my ability to want to run into his arms and hug him tightly.

I stepped forward, bent down, and untied the binds around my mom's wrists and ankles before doing the same for my sister. If Ronnie, Vic, or anyone else involved in this nightmare of a situation thought they were going to toss me into this room without any binds and expect me to leave my family tied up, they were mistaken. Despite what I felt about everything that had happened between us, they were still my family, and I wouldn't leave them like that.

With my mom and sister free, I finally moved to my father and untied him.

"I'm sorry, Aria," he croaked when I'd released the last of the binds.

I lifted my chin slightly and squared my shoulders, my throat bobbing as I swallowed past the tightness in my throat. "You should have listened to me. You never should have done what you did to begin with, but you certainly shouldn't have continued. You should have stopped."

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the way my mom and sister sat up a little taller, like they were worried they were going to miss out on hearing some crucial piece of information.

I ignored that first warning sign, stood, and kept my focus on my dad. "Aria, please don't.

I blinked in surprise at him. "Don't what? What's happening now? Why is Ronnie warning us there's only an hour to figure something out?"

"You know his name?"

My body tensed. "He followed me home from my job one night weeks ago!" I spat. "Do you know what that was like for me? Do you even care?"

He shook his head. "I'm sorry. I never meant for this to happen. "

"Then you would have done something about it a long time ago. You were the one who had the power to fix this."

"What is she talking about, Melvin? What is this about, Aria? You know who these people are? Where have you been?"

Sending a look of disbelief her way, I asked, "Are you serious? Are you telling me you have no idea what's going on here?"

Jasmine spoke for the first time since I entered the room. "Do you?"

My lips parted in shock, my eyes cutting to my dad. "You haven't told them?"

He sent a pleading look my way as my mom asked, "Told us what?"

"Are you going to tell them, or am I?"

He said nothing.

"Dad," I called, my impatience getting the best of me.

"We can still fix this, Aria," he insisted.

My brows shot up. "Oh yeah? We're prisoners in our own home, in your home. And despite not telling any of you where I moved to, these people found me. How is it even reasonable for you to believe we can get out of this mess?"

He shook his head slowly. "That's why they are giving us this hour. I need to convince you to come back, to paint again."

Feeling wildly disillusioned, I turned around and walked to the other side of the room. For far too long, I'd been doing everything I could to stay in control of my emotions, to bottle them up around my family. I fell in line, did what was expected of me, and never complained.

I did it because they were important to me, because I loved them. I did it because, even if whatever I was doing wasn't always what I would have wanted to do, I realized it could always be worse. Mostly, it was that I never wanted to disappoint them.

If ever there was a time for my family to be able to prove the same for me, now was it. And while it was clear my mom and Jasmine still had no idea what was truly going on, my dad did and couldn't be bothered to do right by me, to not want me to have to sacrifice my morals. Why didn't he care? Why didn't any of them care?

After pacing the room for a few seconds, I stopped, turned to face them, and declared, "I'm not painting again. You already know that."

"You have to," he said.

"That's just it, Dad. I don't. And I'm not going to."

"Is that what these men want?" Mom asked. "They want Aria's paintings?"

Dad nodded. "Yes, Florence. They want her paintings."

"If she painted, they'd leave us alone?"

Mom's disbelief was on another level. I couldn't say I didn't understand her reaction. The reality was that it made no sense why these people were only interested in my paintings, especially to the point they'd tie up a family and put their resources toward locating the estranged daughter who had moved more than two hours away.

"Yes," Dad confirmed. "All she has to do is paint."

For the first time since I'd been tossed into this room, Jasmine spoke. "Why are you being so selfish, Aria? You can save your family, and you're choosing not to. Why?"

I returned my attention to my dad, shooting him an expectant look. He offered a slight shake in response.

That was it .

I was done.

He'd had plenty of opportunity to share the truth, to control how this news was delivered. He hadn't done it, and it was clear he never intended to reveal what he'd done. And he didn't care that he was doing that at my expense.

So, I turned my focus to Jasmine and our mom. "You've called me names for months now, and I've refrained from sharing this truth with you. I was willing, once again, to take it all on my shoulders and be the scapegoat. Anything for my family. Anything . But I'm done. I moved away, and these last couple of months have been some of the best of my life. I've made a new life with friends who care about me. I've met an amazing man who treats me right, who's the only reason Ronnie didn't manage to hurt me weeks ago. And I've got two great jobs that I love, jobs I can be proud of, working with people who are loyal, decent, and kind."

"So, you're standing there rubbing your new life in our face?" Jasmine asked. "You make it sound like you had such a horrible life here."

"That's rich coming from you, Jazzy."

"I don't get what your problem is. These guys want your artwork. You want to be an artist, and they're paying for it. What is so horrible about this deal for you?"

"Drugs, Jaz. Drugs. These men don't care about my paintings. They're using them to move drugs, and Dad's known about it from the beginning!"

My mom gasped. "What? Melvin, tell me she's joking."

Defeat washed over him. "I couldn't lose you or this house. I didn't want you to have to worry about moving in the midst of the cancer. "

Her eyes nearly fell out of her head. "Are you telling me this has been going on from the start? What about the art dealer?"

The silence in the room was deafening. It went on and on for so long, and it became obvious my dad had no intention of responding.

I did it for him. "There was no art dealer. It was all a lie."

My mom turned her horrified gaze in my direction. "What?"

"Dad lied. You got sick, we had no money, and Dad took matters into his own hands. My paintings have been used as a front to sell drugs. I have no idea where they're ending up. Even the first set of paintings, the ones I did during your cancer battle, were used for drugs. Maybe they meant nothing to any of you, but they meant something to me. And we gave them up for nothing."

"We got twenty-five thousand dollars from them," Jasmine noted.

"Right. Well, yeah, I guess we did. If your only concern is the money, that's all the matters, right?"

"We needed money, Aria."

"Yep. But I didn't need to be deceived in the process," I told her. "You and I could have continued to work. We could have sold the house and changed our lifestyle. This never had to happen."

"It's all my fault," Mom murmured. "If I hadn't gotten sick?—"

"It not your fault, Florence. I got scared, and I did this. If I had to go back and do it all over again, I wouldn't hesitate. We needed to do it. I know Aria sees it differently, and I'm sorry she has gotten so hurt by this, but I'm not ashamed I did what I did."

I shook my head, feeling nothing but disgust and devastation. Not even hindsight would make him want to change his course of action. He was okay with this, content to have us at odds and in danger.

"And now what?" I asked him. "What is your plan to fix this?"

"There's only one way. We don't have any other option," he said.

Pressing my lips together, tears filled my eyes. "I can't. I can't do it."

"You can save all of us. What do you mean, you can't?" Jasmine whined.

"You're right. It's not that I can't. It's that I won't. I'm not going to do this. Dad promised me he was going to get out. I learned just over a year ago what was really happening, and I gave Dad the opportunity to get out. I continued doing something I didn't want to do for a whole year, just to give him the time he claimed he needed to get us out of this safely. As you can see, he didn't. So, that's why we're all here now. That's why we're all in danger."

"Please, Aria," my mom begged. "Please help us."

They didn't get it.

None of them did.

And no matter how many times I tried to explain it, I wasn't sure I was ever going to get them to see it from my side.

Recognizing I wasn't going to get anywhere I needed to with this conversation, I thought it was best to focus on my original plan. We needed to get out of here, and it seemed the window would be the only option. Though I'd never attempted something so ridiculous in my life, I figured I'd be better off with a broken bone or two instead of having to face this unknown.

I moved toward the window and unlocked it.

"What are you doing?" my mom asked.

"I'm getting out of here."

"How are you going to do that? You'll break your legs."

I shrugged. "It's better than the alternative."

"What happened to you, Aria?" Jasmine asked, her tone like acid.

"Pardon?"

"You left us and didn't give it a second thought. Is this about your new boyfriend? Your new life?"

I tipped my head to the side, my eyes roaming over her face. "Are you jealous? Are you mad? I did what I had to do for myself for the first time in my life. I'm not going to be a part of this any longer. I'm sorry if that's not what you want to hear, or if that means you have to find a way to support yourself, Jazzy, but that's the way it is. I'm not going to continue to be forced to do something I don't want to do. You can't guilt me into this. I won't be coerced."

"So, why did you come back? Why did you let them bring you here?"

Her words struck me. When I'd been shown the picture of them bound and gagged, my heart squeezed. I was devastated for them, and all I wanted to do was make sure they were safe and alive.

But now that I was here and listening to their words, I realized my mistake. They didn't care about me the way I cared about them. I'd told myself that was the case months ago, but at the very least, Mom and Jasmine were in the dark. And I guess in some way, I wanted to believe that if they knew the truth, they'd understand. They'd be horrified by what Dad did and demand we find another way.

"I guess I thought the three of you actually cared. I'm sad to say I was wrong."

"Aria, don't go," my mom pleaded with me. "Don't do this."

"What do you want from me? We've got psychotic men downstairs, and the three of you are content to sit around waiting for them to decide what happens next? I'm not interested in doing that. I've got something worth fighting to get out of this for."

"She's choosing a guy over her family," Jasmine announced.

"My family chose money over me."

With nothing left to say, I walked back toward the window and unlocked it. As I opened it, so I could assess the situation, my sister started screaming. "Help! Help!" She banged on the door, alerting Ronne, Vic, or whoever was watching over this room to what was happening. In that instant, any shred of love and respect I had for her was gone.

Not wanting to leave anything to chance, I shoved my hands hard against the screen, and it immediately fell to the ground. Then I was urging my body out the window.

But I didn't get very far, because a pair of arms clamped around my waist. I struggled against them, belatedly noticing they were my dad's arms.

And a moment later, Ronnie was back in the room. My dad helped him hold me down until they got my wrists and ankles bound together .

Any love I had for my dad died right there. What parent would do this to their child?

It was also in that moment when I learned what real love was. That's why a vision of Paxton flashed through my mind. That man knew what love was, would go to the ends of the earth for people he cared about. And the worst part about realizing how much he meant to me was that, even if some miracle allowed me to get out of this alive, Paxton would never want anything to do with me again. Not once he learned what I'd been involved in.

Once I was tied up and left alone with my family again, I shut down.

My mom tried talking to me. My dad and sister, too.

I didn't say a word.

There was nothing left to say.

So, I let them talk. I let them try to say all the things they thought would help convince me to do what they wanted me to do. But I'd never do it.

They'd never see another painting from me again.

Instead, I sat with thoughts of Paxton in my mind.

Time passed.

I didn't know how much.

Then the doorbell rang, and something told me the hour was up.