Chapter 68

* Ryder *

Shit! How did I forget that Sydney, her mom, or anyone else for that matter, might see that stuff play out and get it back to her? Because I knew that Rachel had been the one in charge of her social media and that she’d pretty much stayed away from anything to do with entertainment news in the last five years, I erroneously believed that I could get away with it, but that was stupid.

In trying to protect her, I’d overlooked a lot, and now I was teetering on the bridge of something destructive. I can’t lie to her, and yet I can’t tell her the whole truth. It would be so easy to slip back into my old ways of not giving a damn with anyone else but her. Just the thought of putting her through anything other than happiness makes me sick to my stomach, which I guess is a good thing. A good reminder of what not to do going forward.

Lyon and his men make it seem so easy, keeping the darker things in life away from their women, but I’m new to this, and it seems hard as shit starting out the gate. It’s a fine line, that’s for sure, between being honest and open with her while keeping her in the dark. One wrong step, and I know things could go south, given our history.

I don’t even want to lie to her, which is also a good thing, but I agree with the guys that some things are best left unsaid. Not because I don’t trust her or think that she’s weaker than me. Of the two of us, she’s the only one who really faced the music after the breakup while I buried myself in drugs and other means of detachment.

She, on the other hand, had gone ahead and built a whole new life without me, becoming even stronger than the phenomenal woman she already was. You’d think, knowing all that, I would be quick to tell her everything, but this was different.

This was evil in its highest form, an evil that even I was having a hard time wrapping my head around. And more than that, she’d been through enough already; she didn’t need that on her mind as well. But how do I make this work? I can’t stop her from talking to everyone, and with Rachel gone, she’s bound to look at her accounts at some point.

So far, the public was mostly concentrating on my failed marriage and whether or not the news about the divorce was true. But it won’t be long before the rest of Janie’s ramblings start a conversation, and then what.

She’s asleep now after I’d distracted her the only way I knew how, but I can’t fuck her to sleep every time this shit comes up. And what about when I’m not here? Now that she knew there was no movie and no upcoming tour, how was I going to explain my absence? Even though Saunders’ wife was going to keep her busy, there was no way I could go for as long as the rescue mission was going to take without talking to her, and if I did, I’m sure she’d never forgive me.

Dammit, I didn’t think this thing through, and now that I think about it, there’s really no way to keep the worst of it away from her. I’m not so much worried about the Janie situation or all the ugliness surrounding my marriage; I just don’t want her to know anything about the trafficking scam or the fact that she’d almost been taken. Later, when things cool down, maybe, but not right now.

I know her well enough to know that she wouldn’t be able to stay out of it. That’s just the kind of cause she’d rush right into without thinking, and from what I’ve learned so far, it’s an ugly, dirty business that someone with her soft heart wouldn’t be able to endure.

I want to protect her; I need to. I did a poor job of it the first time around and had promised myself that from now on and for the rest of my life, I would make it up to her. As much as I can, I will keep all the ugliness at bay and show her only the good in life. I want that so much for her because she deserves it.

She deserves to smile each day when she wakes up because the thought her words provoke in me when I listen to her talk about the way things were for her when I deserted her are almost too much to bear. The knowledge that I was the one to put a black mark on what we once had, that it was me who had broken the bond between us almost beyond repair, is something that will haunt me for the rest of my life.

I live in fear that I may never be able to make it up to her. That there’s nothing I can give her, nothing I can do to erase the hell that I had put her through. My own suffering doesn’t compare because she’s the one who’d been wronged all across the board. She’d been innocent all along, and I had played the biggest part in causing her pain.

I can blame Janie, Mary, and all the others as much as I’d like, but the reality cannot be ignored, and that is the fact that it was me; I was the one they’d used to strike the blow. But that was only because I was weak enough to have put myself in the position to be used. After she’d spent so much time trying to warn me, to protect me from those very people, I had been the one to turn around and bite her like a rabid dog.

That fact has been tearing me up inside every day since she took me back, and the ease with which she did it, proving once again that she’s a better person than I am, is something I still marvel at. How can I not protect and cherish her forgiving heart? I will; with everything I’ve got in me, I will. I won’t let anyone hurt her again, including me, especially me. And I’ll be damned if I’m going to let any of them get to her in any way.

The more time I have to think, the more I realize how fucked up this whole situation has been. Now I’m faced with all the things I tried to run away and hide from all those years, and it’s like carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders. Some days it seems impossible to make it all right.

It was good coming here though, because I hadn’t given a second thought to anything that was going on back home. She’s always been able to do that to me just with her presence alone. My thirst for revenge pales in comparison to the joy I feel that I have her back in my life again. I feel whole, like a new man, and like those dark grey days when I just wanted to give up are far behind me.

I looked down at her sleeping face in the crook of my arm, and the warmth in my heart brought tears to my eyes. That feeling of peaceful calm that had been missing for so long was back and better. I didn’t know life could be like this, that I could go from one extreme to the next in the blink of an eye.

I thought I’d lost everything, that at my young age, I was going to have to live the rest of my life in misery without her by my side. And it’s almost like a dream that she’s here with me now. It’s because of her that I don’t feel as bogged down as I would have in this situation. With her, I feel like I can do anything, but most importantly, I want to do better for her.

There was a lot left to be done and said between us, things that needed to be made clear, but now was not the time. The hardest thing I have to look forward to is how to keep her in the dark while I go off with Lyon and his squad on their rescue mission.

Because it’s so soon after we got back together, I’m a little worried about how she’s going to take my absence, but the only alternative is to not go, and I have to be there. The more I think about what had been done in my name, the more enraged I become. It breaks my heart to know that while I was on stage living my best life, young women who had come to see me perform were being snatched away from their families.

It’s a sinister and disturbing act, but I can’t say I’m surprised that Mary Hudson had come up with something like that. Scott and Matt, yeah, those two surprised me. I knew Scott was money hungry, but I didn’t realize that he would go to such lengths. As for Matt, I’d trusted him to keep me safe. He was the one I went to when things were at their worst when I felt my soul was in danger.

I shared my innermost thoughts with him more than I ever did with anyone else. I stupidly trusted in his title, spiritual leader, because I was too blind to see the truth right in front of me. I know now that I was just being lazy, looking for some quick fix that was going to make everything go away without having to do the work.

I believed the shit he said to make me feel good about myself and the life I was living. I needed to believe that there was some kind of redemption for me, and he gave me that. But I didn’t realize at the same time he was using me for his own gain or that he had another agenda that was set to destroy the one good thing in my life.

It was he who talked me into marrying Janie, him who had always been pushing for the two of us to be together every time Elena and I had a falling out. I never paid it too much mind since I was never in any danger of marrying her or anyone else, so I always just laughed it off when he would start singing her praises. But that was before they concocted that horrendous lie about her killing my unborn child. Both Matt and Scott knew how much I wanted to start a family with her.

They’d complained at first that I was too young, but we’d been together for so many years by that point that I knew I was ready, and so was she. We were at that point in our lives where we were ready to settle down; we’d even talked about putting the whole entertainment scene behind us, at least for a while, and concentrate on us and starting our family together.

I’d stupidly shared those hopes and dreams with the two men I trusted more than any other. Not knowing that they would use my trust against me. What hurt more than anything, though, was not their betrayal of me but the way they’d hurt her. I could overlook everything else but that.

As for Mary, I know just how to hurt her. The nieces have been doing a pretty good job at tearing her down in the public eye, but there were things I doubt even they knew about that family, and I was just the one to expose them. I never had any interest before, but now that she’d crossed the line, I’ll make sure and bring to light all their dirty little secrets.

Now that I’m no longer under the influence of anything stronger than coffee, it amazes me that their fans haven’t seen through their bullshit yet. It’s hard for me to criticize since my own livelihood depends on public favor, and I’m far from perfect, but I’m still dismayed that human beings are so blind that they can’t see beyond the painted faces and fake luxury goods to the real monsters behind the masks.

As far as I was concerned, it was all business. Mary had a great business plan that she’d turned into a billion-dollar franchise using her daughters and the faces and bodies she’d bought them over the years. It wasn’t like they were the first to do it; she just did it better and on a grander scale, but that’s all it ever was, a business venture, at least in my eyes.

Because I knew them, I knew the real deal and saw them for what they were, actors playing out a scene. Too bad the rest of the world forgot that and started buying into their bullshit and trying to live their lives the same way. Again, if that’s what people wanted to do, that was their business, not mine. I just wanted nothing to do with any of them after seeing their real faces and the greed and ugliness that they kept so well hidden from their adoring fans.

I never thought Mary was my friend; I was never fooled into thinking that way, but neither did I believe her to be as evil as she’s turned out to be. Money and fame aside, the things that the nieces had brought to light are some of the most heinous things anyone could imagine, and the bad thing about it is they haven’t released the worst to the public just yet.

Even with that, there are things I saw and experienced myself with that family that might be hard for some to believe. I might have felt sorry for her daughters had I not seen them willingly partake in some of her misdeeds, all in the name of getting rich and famous. I just have to decide when and how I’m going to share what I know and put an end to them once and for all.

***

* Janie *

The skin on my face itched to the point that I tore it with my fingers, and it still didn’t let up. The more I scratched, the more it itched until my fingers were covered in blood and tears. The fear of being seen like this was overshadowed only by the fear that I was slowly losing my mind.

I kept wanting to scream but had to hold it inside for fear that I’d be found. I couldn’t even stop to think about what was going on because it all seemed to be happening too fast for me to keep up. I felt like someone coming off of a drug binge or awakening from a coma after months.

Nothing seemed real, and my mind kept flitting from one fear to the next until I was sure there was more than just the paparazzi after me. I don’t know how long I walked or even which direction I was headed in; I just knew I needed to get somewhere safe or, at the very least, off the streets for now.

The dive that I finally found was the last place anyone would expect to find me, so I figured I was safe for the time being, but now I felt trapped and alone. I was hungry, cold, and scared, with nowhere to run and no one to turn to. I can’t use my phone because it’s almost dead; I have no money and had used Apple Pay to pay for the room, which meant I couldn’t stay here for too long because although it was still in my maiden name, it wouldn’t be too long before someone figure it out.

I was about to climb the walls after pacing back and forth across the filthy carpet to peep out the windows expecting to see cameras flashing and voices raised with questions I didn’t have answers to when the phone pinged. I felt my heart race and pick up speed at the thought that whoever was on the other end of the line might be of help, but what I saw next made the world come crashing down around me.

The scream of rage got trapped in my lungs, and I threw the phone across the room. It didn’t break, thankfully, but even face down, the image I’d seen there was already firmly planted in my mind. The phone rang, and I knew without looking who was on the other end. It was almost a sixth sense now, and as much as I hated to answer, not knowing what that little monster had to say would kill me.

“What?” There was enough hate in that one word to end an army.

“Did you like my little gift?”

“It’s a lie. You doctored it just to screw with my head. Even if Ryder wanted to go back to her, she’d never take him back; I made sure of it.” Yes, all the lies I’d spread to the press had been for that purpose.

My fear of losing him to her one day had made me proactive, and though I never quite understood why Mary hated her so much and wanted to slander her, her plans fell very well in line with mine.

I’d used Ryder’s social media accounts multiple times to spread hate against Elena in the hopes that she’d see it and believe that it was him. Why wouldn’t she? I’d made sure that they never spoke to each other, and she’d been such a wimp in the beginning that she’d hid herself away, so there was never any danger of them running into each other.

I’d used everything I knew about her, things he’d said while high as a kite, to defame her. Those were things that only he would know, and in the very beginning of our marriage, when he still believed the lies that I’d told him and was full of venomous rage against her, he’d had some pretty colorful things to say. I’d used all of it to my advantage, along with the other made-up things I’d come up with to paint her in as awful a light as I possibly could.

But I knew that the words that were supposedly from Ryder were the worst. The hate behind each post I’d made had been hard to miss, especially the ones decrying her talent. I’d had a lot of fun with those. I never got too personal because even at his worst, Ryder never said anything derogatory about their private life together, but that hadn’t stopped me from hinting at things that were bound to make her think he was the one saying them.

So there’s no way that the picture on my phone could be real. “I promise you; it’s very real and in real-time. Did you take a good look? Doesn’t he look like the new Ryder? His hair is well-kept, there are no bags under his eyes, and he has a cute little mustache that he didn’t have before. He got all cleaned up for her; I can’t say the same about when he was with you. Anyway, that picture is about to hit the net, so I just thought I’d give you a heads-up.”

She hung up, leaving me shaking with rage and a nasty feeling in my gut. The world cannot see that image of Ryder and Elena together, looking so happy. I made myself look one more time just to be sure that it was real because, for some reason, I believed the little bitch and didn’t think she would lie to me.

Isn’t it odd? I’d come to trust my enemy’s word more than the people I had surrounded myself with. They’d all told me that everything would be fine. That I’d have everything I ever wanted in this life, and Ryder would never leave my side. I’d done everything they’d asked of me, even going so far as to rip him off in order to help my mom and dad, but where were they now?

I looked at the screen, holding my breath to try to keep the nausea down. They were standing at a window looking out at the night. He was behind her, his arms wrapped lovingly around her middle, smiling over her shoulder while she rested her head back on one of his. They looked the way they used to, only better.

My hands started to shake, and I had to sit down, no longer worried about what might be crawling around on the mattress. I won’t let them get away with this. No matter what, I will not live in a world where those two are happy together. I’ll never let that happen.