Chapter 4

ChapterFour

Asher

Ella’s been crying. I don’t like how that makes me feel, and discomfort twists inside me.

People usually cry without crying—a grotesque squinting of their eyes, jutting their bottom lip, and incessant whining. The most amusing part of the scenario is that the entire time they’re playing victim, not one tear falls from their pathetic eyes. Women have mastered that shit. I can’t blame them, I guess. They’ve been allowed to get away with it for years.

But looking at Ella, I know that her red, puffy eyes, the dampness on her pillowcase, and the tears drying on her face are real. Her pain isn’t constructed to win sympathy she doesn’t deserve.

When we first moved here, I thought Ella was the same as any rich girl. My perception of her was based on my lived experience with pretty, snobby blonde girls who made it clear I didn’t belong in their society. Scars left behind as a poor kid too smart for schools in the slums but not good enough to fit in with the upper crust.

“Don’t wallow in your sorrow so long that you allow those deluded by their power to have a hold over you.”

Ella stares blankly at me as if my words are a cluster bomb of confusion. I lean forward, allowing my fingers to brush her soft hair and holding my tongue to let my words settle.

Her eyes shut. “You don’t need to pour salt on my wounds.”

“Stand up. Yell at him. Tell him you won’t break simply because he told you to. Take the pain, humiliation, and grief and swallow it, burn it, pulverize it until it’s a small ember that fuels your right to persevere.”

“Who’s side are you on?”

I smile as her nose scrunches and her eyes slant in suspicion. Pride blooms within me, something that doesn’t happen often these days. Even when broken, a lioness dwells inside her, tearing down the facade she’s been forced to create. Ella is a survivor, and as much as Alaric is willing to walk away from her, I’m not. “Alaric’s side, River’s side. Your side. But most of all, I’m on my side.”

The corners of Ella’s lips lift with the sweetest smile, confirming that despite her fragile appearance, she has what it takes to burn in the flames with us and come out on the other side.

I’ve never been allowed to have anything good in my life, nothing pure. It’s led to the notion that innocence is both repellent and fascinating. Guess that’s what happens when you’re a kid forced to look at the chocolate cake without ever being able to savor the decadent taste.

I resigned myself to a life of corruption, pain, and heartache. Never to know softness or a kind word, especially from women. Until that day with Ella.

“Asher,” a soft voice called from the other side of the door.

I turned up the music. Nirvana. I wanted to drown her out, drown it all out. It was easy with Alaric and River. They knew my reasons. They accepted that the ends needed to justify the means.

But the way Ella had looked at me, like I was a monster, had set me back. With one look, she’d taken me back to the scared kid pushed around in the locker room, covering my head, desperate to limit the blows, while steel-toed boots kicked the shit out of me.

Another knock.

She was like a fuckin’ gnat, a permanent annoyance. I’d tried to stay the fuck away from her, but she sprinkled sugar and fairy dust every fucking where she went. I could be a dick to her, but that would be like kicking an injured animal for shits and giggles. I was many things, including an asshole, but I wasn’t sadistic. That was more River’s deal. If he were in my situation, he would’ve slit her throat and considered the consequences on the flip side.

I didn’t think I was doing anything wrong, at least not in my world. But what was acceptable in my world would drive a regular person to the brink of madness and beyond. They had no right to judge me because they wouldn’t last a minute in the lifetime of misery I’d survived. The memories lingered in my mind day in and day out. Their suffocating grip on my heart told me that if I didn’t harden it, I’d crumble in despair, destitute and insignificant.

I shut my eyes tightly as I sat in the dark, reeling at Ella’s perseverance and her demand for answers I was unsure I could give. I wanted to lash out at her perfect existence. I told myself she would never understand because she’d seen nothing but the bounty and glory that life could provide for her. But the look in her eyes lingered like a beacon, flooding the darkness behind my eyelids. Her soft eyes were a spotlight of pity, sorrow, and horror. But they also held something else: the anguish of grief. She mourned me, a man she barely knew. She was mourning me as if I had died.

“Well, I’m not dead, bitch!” I yelled into the abyss.

My venomous roars were propelled into every corner of the room, drowned out by the thumping music. I roared the words because I wanted her to hear me, maybe even fear me. I wanted her to run from me. I wanted her body to rock with tremors at the mere thought of looking at me. But the reason I covered my screams with music was because, deep down, I couldn’t bear the idea of her hating me. I didn’t want her to gaze at me and witness the same image I saw every time I stared in the mirror. A monster.

The soft knock was now a vicious roar of fists banging against wood. A violent demand to be let in.

I remembered those knocks from many years ago. The same turbulent bangs Alaric had inflicted whenever they’d forced me into that room. His small fists had banged as he’d screamed and pleaded, his little boy tears mixed with the rage of a child with nothing to lose. So he’d fought with the last remnants of hope and the tightening noose of desperation. I’d never forget the anguish in his voice when he’d demanded his mother take him over me. A prisoner swap, a pathetic attempt at hostage negotiations which went unheard and ignored by Celeste. She’d had no desire to leave anyone alive in the rubble. That would be a failure of her corrupt pathological need for power and greed.

“I’m not leaving, Asher.” Ella’s voice burst through the cloud of doom hanging over my head. “I’m not leaving. I’ll sleep outside your door if I have to, but I’m not leaving.”

With three large strides, I swung open the door. My face was directly in front of hers, my teeth bared like a wolf facing off with a small woodland creature. “You have no self-preservation, do you, Ella?”

She didn’t back down. Squaring her shoulders, she stuck out her chest and faced me. It didn’t matter that she was craning her neck back even as I bent forward, lowering my massive height to her level.

I stepped forward to make her retreat, but other than a slight wobble, she didn’t budge.

I laughed as I gripped her neck and raised her from the floor, not with joy but with the urge to frighten her. Her eyes morphed from concern to horror as she finally clued into what I was capable of. Little Miss Perfect thought she could tame the beast, and now she regretted her foolishness. “You should’ve left well enough alone, Pup, but you barked up the wrong tree.”

“Ash—” Her clawing slowed as my fingers tightened around her throat.

I could end her right now. Squeeze until her final breath escaped from her lips. Revel in the wave of satisfaction as her lifeless body fell to the floor.

But the desperate look in her eyes froze me. There was no reason the terror in her eyes should captivate me, but their silent plea forced me to abandon my grasp and watch as her body crashed to the floor. “Stay. The. Fuck. Away. From. Me.”

Turning my back on her, I was about to return to my prison in this mausoleum of a house when her soft voice punched me directly in the gut.

There were moments when people believed you had an angel with you. A small sign from a divinity roaming in the heavens trying to reach you. Save you. Perhaps even heal you. I’d never given much weight to idiot notions of the divine. Fictional concepts in a world where redemption and salvation were possible invoked deep-rooted feelings of manipulation.

But this pure girl with her bright eyes clouded with concern forced me to stop because I saw the innocence that was ripped so violently from me in Ella. But there was something else. Shame. The anchor that had held me down for most of my life, causing my anger and violence to fester and grow.

I stood in the hall, shrouded by shadows and ambiguity. The powerful man I’d convinced myself I’d become suddenly seemed like a delusion. The only notion rattling in my brain, like a ship tossed on the murky waters of an angry, turbulent ocean, was that I was lost and frightened. Just like that little boy many years ago who’d wanted nothing more than to be cradled in his mother’s arms while she told him everything would be okay.

Turning in horror, I witnessed the irrefutable proof of my handiwork on Ella’s delicate neck. Red marks viciously highlighted her flesh.

I dug the heels of my hands into my eyes, trying to erase my savagery. Intrusive voices whispered from the past, deeming me an animal, a piece of meat to be manipulated and discarded. The words echoed with disdain and venom, eroding my self-worth, and painting me as something inhuman.

I forced myself to remember that things had changed. How the days of being less than nothing had forged my resolution to own the brutality forced upon me. The realization that my oppressors’ hatred had created a man who would not slither into the void without a volcanic explosion of redemption, stripping the wrongdoers of their violence and harm.

The retribution I sought, my desire to ensure the offenders suffered the same fate as so many innocent people, could not equate to me becoming one of them. That was why I’d turned the corrupt darkness into the hollow parts of my soul unto myself. Every fiber of my being contained a conflicting war, a confrontation between good and evil. The truth glared at me like a reflection in shimmering water. If I harmed Ella, I’d become what I hated the most.

Celeste.

Ella tucked her legs under her arms, shrinking away from me. The same thing I’d done many years ago. An irrational impulse to make yourself smaller so you’d become invisible to those who wanted to hurt you. It never worked because, for demons, those moments of fear and desperation heightened their vampiric desire. It was an aphrodisiac—a twisted game of foreplay. But Ella was far more fortunate than I’d been. She hadn’t faced a monster who’d subjected her to unknown torture for its pleasure. I was a broken man trying to find my way.

I bent, forcing myself to appear less threatening, more vulnerable. “I’m not going to hurt you, Ella.” I raised my empty hands in the air, hoping she believed me. I couldn’t begrudge her if she didn’t. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. I meant those words more than anything I’d ever said.

I stiffened as her shaky hand moved toward my face, forcing myself to hold still. I needed her to know I wouldn’t harm her, no matter what. The electric touch of her skin against mine was a budding inferno. But it wasn’t a fire that singed in retribution and judgment. It was a heat that warmed after being caught in a blizzard you didn’t think you would survive.

Ella offered me a faint smile, one I didn’t deserve, and whispered, “I forgive you.”

Those three paltry words gifted me something I’d never had. Grace.

Ella rose from the floor and towered over me, offering me her hand. “Will you walk me to my room?”

I wrapped my fingers around her soft hand, and we silently walked down the corridor until we reached her door.

Ella turned to me and offered me another smile. This one was more vibrant, perhaps more earnest in its goal. “I won’t pester you to tell me what that was about. Not because I don’t want to know but because it’s not something you’re ready to share. But I want you to know I’m here for you, Asher. I won’t judge you.” She got on her tiptoes and kissed me on the chin, the only place her lips could reach.

At that moment, I knew that no matter what happened or what heinous acts I’d yet to commit to finally get my revenge, protecting Ella would take priority over everything.