Chapter 36

*Ryder*

Well, this is interesting. No wonder they allowed Mary into the house today. They must've known what was coming and were planning some scheme to put her visit to good use. Both Tyler and Zak seemed too laid back and unbothered while the rest of the world was about to crash and burn. At least L.A. Was.

I've been following the theatrics online, and I think I see a pattern forming. "Hey, is there any rhyme or reason to whatever it is these nieces of yours have planned?" I still had no idea what the end result was supposed to be with this whole thing. I knew they were supposed to be helping me in some way, but to what end?

"I wouldn't go sticking my nose into that mess if I were you." These two tough guys were the last kind of men I'd expect to sweat whenever those little girls were mentioned, but just like Saunders, they seemed to tense up and look around for cover whenever I brought them up.

Had I not seen their handiwork firsthand, I'd find it comical, but in the last couple of weeks since I returned, I've had to admit that they were vicious as hell. I'm almost certain that they were trying to drive Janie and her cohorts crazy, just as they'd planned on doing to Elena. Poetic justice if you ask me, but I find it a bit daunting for little girls to wield this much power.

They took no prisoners, and even I had come under attack, though not in the same way. I did not appreciate them telling the world to stop pairing me with Elena since I was a married man or the fact that they called me a drug-addicted skell who didn't deserve her. They did at least leave me a caveat, which was that if I cleaned my shit up and got myself together, I just might be worthy of her.

They're not lying, so I can't fault them too much, but damn, they didn't have to go in on me like that. I thought we were playing for the same team, but from what I've gathered, they don't give anyone a pass, friend or foe.

They also had a font of information that was never-ending, and I never knew what to expect from one day to the next and who was going to get it next. Sometimes it seemed like if I looked away for a second or even blinked, I'd miss something new from their end.

What I didn't expect, though, was for them to crack the code in my song. They put me on blast, and now the whole world knows that I was singing to my old love about how much I love and miss her. How the frig do they know so much?

Now, everyone and their mother have been combing through my songs with a fine-tooth comb, looking for clues. Every song that I've released since getting married has come under scrutiny, but what really cinched it for me is the fact that these little girls had somehow gotten hold of three songs of mine that weren't released and that I'd even forgotten and released snippets of them to the public.

Those songs had caused quite a rift between me, Scott, Janie, and even Matt, my spiritual advisor. That's because there was no decoding needed to recognize that I was singing to Elena. I guess I was high out of my gourd when they were written because I don't really remember writing let alone recording them.

Zak's phone made one of those weird noises it makes, and he read the screen before putting it away. He nodded at Tyler, who was just lounging with that semi-permanent smirk on his face that he always wears, then turned his attention to me.

"Let's go. It's time."

"Time? Time for what?"

"We can't talk here." Oh, yeah, I'd almost forgotten that they'd swept the place every day since coming here and that they'd found listening devices planted throughout my side of the house.

They'd done something to my bedroom and theirs, along with the studio, that made it seem like the devices were still there, but the listeners could not hear what we were saying. I'm not sure how any of that works, and I had given up trying since they were never forthcoming with information.

We headed to their rooms, which were two rooms connected by a door, and closed the door behind us, and for the first time, I grew nervous. I listened to what they had to say with new hope burning in my chest at the end of it. "Let's see how good your acting skills have become." Tyler clapped me on the back. It was the first real sign of comradery either man had ever shared, and somehow it felt as if I'd just been accepted into some elite club, members only.

***

*Janie*

"Which octogenarian who has lost face for pimping out her own blood is now trying to fool the public into believing that she's a doting grandma? If the world only knew, they wouldn't let this soulless viper anywhere near children. Anyone who's a friend of Alice shouldn't be allowed near an innocent. This April twenty-fifth, we'll be watching and waiting for you at the end of the rabbit hole.

"How do they know? Who has been talking to these people? You still think this is some little girl, you fool?"

"I don't even understand what any of this means." I looked at Mary's phone screen, where the latest post from the night before was breaking the internet.

"That's because you've only ever been interested in your own means."

"You never gave a damn about anyone else. But if you think I'm going to burn along with my girls while you go off into the sunset, then you're more of an imbecile than I thought. Remember, if I go down for this, so will your parents. None of you will be safe."

"What do my parents have to do with this? What's this friend of Alice and down the rabbit hole nonsense?"

"You keep pretending. I guess you're practicing for what to say in front of the cameras. But don't forget I have evidence. If I go down, we all go down. So, you'd better think of something to head this off fast, or we're all going to end up in a very bad way."

I didn't flinch, didn't do anything to let her know the fear that was coursing through me. Another minute and my knees are going to give out. How had everything come to this? How had I not seen that this could be the end result of everything that we had done?

Years; this plan had been in the works for years, and all the adults had made sure that it was foolproof. When it all started, I was too young to do much. All I had was my love for Ryder, something I knew even then was real.

When Dad offered to help, with the promise that he'd make sure I got the boy I wanted when it was time to marry, it was like all my dreams came true. What little girl grows up knowing that her every wish is going to be met as soon as she is old enough?

It had been hell waiting for the day, especially when Ryder went on with his life, not even knowing that I existed. Watching him with all the women who came and went in his life had been like dying a little bit each time. But none of them had scared me more than Elena. Even as a young teen, the love they had for each other was plain to see.

To combat the agony, I felt I pretended to admire their relationship. Since I couldn't tell my peers at the private school I attended how I truly felt, since everyone was rooting for them and their relationship, I'd gone the extra mile, pretending to be a super fan.

No one knew how I died inside each time their names were mentioned together or how many times I'd destroyed my room whenever they were on the front of some magazine. But that was before Mom told me that this was perfect, the perfect way for one of her spells to work.

Since then, I have never questioned anything I was told to do to win Ryder on my own. If I was told to dress like Elena, I did; if I was ordered to mirror her in any way at all, I did it, and the proof that it worked was my wedding day.

Though things still carried on after that day, with the matching tattoos that everyone noticed after a while, I didn't mind. Mom said I had to let those things be seen and noticed by the public because it would only strengthen the spell. I was literally stealing Elena's life force right in front of the world, and no one could stop me.

I think Mom and the aunts came up with that idea after it was ascertained that Ryder still wasn't over her, so, instead of just taking him for my own, the plan had changed, and now I had to erase her completely, which I didn't mind in the least.

I hated that she still had a hold on him, that he still lusted for and pined after her. So, when the idea of destroying her life was mentioned, I was all in. I thought after she became ill that our plans were working, and I'd be rid of her. But everything seems to have gone to hell, and I have gained none of the things I dreamt of.

Sure, the world knows me as Ryder's wife, but no one ever really respected our marriage. I have yet to live one day without her name being mentioned with his, and now the little bitch has been stirring up trouble each time I blink. I have my own shit to deal with, so I don't see why Mary would think that I have time to deal with hers.

Now she's here threatening me as if I don't have enough on my plate to deal with. Her words, though, were not to be taken lightly. I can't have Ryder if I'm behind bars, and some of the things I'd done in the past to get my way just might land me in jail if they ever got out. I felt sickening fear begin in my tummy and spread to the rest of my body.

"I only agreed to do that stuff because you promised me that no one would ever find out. It was all your idea…."

"Good luck telling that to a judge. I suggest you stop acting as if you're detached from this and start doing your part to get us out of this mess. If you'd done what you were supposed to, none of this would be happening. I should never have given him to you; years of planning are going down the drain because you were too stupid to keep your husband satisfied. Nicole would never have allowed this to happen."

I hated her smug reminder that her filthy daughter had once shared my husband's bed and hated even more that I'd had to swallow my own feelings at the time to get what I was after. Back then, my thinking was that as long as it wasn't Elena he was in bed with, it was fine. Because I knew he didn't love any of the women we drugged him into sleeping with, that she was the only one he truly loved and wanted.

Each time I helped them trick him into bed with one starlet or the other, I felt that I was that much closer to breaking the bond between them, but that was never the case. Instead, I got to witness firsthand the guilt he would feel when faced with what he had done while under the influence, and it fueled my need to hurt and humiliate her.

The more evident his genuine love for her was, the more I wanted to destroy her, and that feeling never went away. That's why I had so much fun with Nicole, Noel, and a few of our friends, tearing her down, knowing what the stress was doing to her mental health, not to mention the flare-ups it would cause, which would lead her to take more pills, which only destroyed her body more.

It was a win-win situation, and if she died, so much the better. But now it was all falling apart. Ryder was no longer listening to me, he wasn't even pretending to care any longer, and if that wasn't bad enough, this MengeLiNi person was hell-bent on destroying everything we'd worked so hard for.

It's been weeks since she started this campaign against me. I know it was a concentrated effort because she didn't appear anywhere else online. It was as if she'd just appeared out of thin air one day, and I was her only target. Well, that's not exactly true; she was going after Mary, Scott, Matt, and my parents, anyone who'd had a hand in getting Ryder and me together.

But why? I still don't understand it. I thought I knew in the beginning when she first started. I was sure she was doing all this just to get Ryder and Elena back together, but then she'd scolded Elena's fans for wanting them to get back together, and I was once again at a loss as to what her true motive was.

In the last few weeks, I've been tormented to no end, day after day. Each morning I dreaded waking up to face the new day because I never knew what new secret would be revealed to the world. Her information seemed to have no end, and no one could figure out as yet how she knew the things she was revealing, so there was no way to stop the flow.

As soon as we thought things were dying down, she'd come out with something else that was worse than the last, and the public was just eating it up. I'd graduated to hard drugs, but they weren't doing much to numb my nerves because the onslaught was never-ending.

The threat of my every secret being revealed was something I could no longer handle, and I was at the end of my rope. What will she say next? Whose life will she destroy with her next move? I haven't been out in days because there was no escape, but if I had to stay in this house alone with Ryder and his new friends, along with the new staff that he'd hired after getting rid of the people Mary and my dad had hired, I'd really lose my mind.

These people didn't listen to me; in fact, they acted like I didn't even exist, only taking orders from Ryder, and those two men, who I was more convinced daily, were not who they claimed to be. My phone dinged an alert. It was Elena's, the alert I have on my phone that goes off whenever she's in the news or mentioned online anywhere.

Mary's phone went off at the same time, and we both read the latest at the same time. "Oh no, this is bad." She turned and left without another word as I slumped into the nearest chair, feeling lifeless.

Why was Heather Saunders seen having lunch with Elena Gianni? Her husband was working with mine on a project together, so shouldn't I be the one she was having lunch with? I'd done my research on that family after Ryder came back and knew that she was very selective in who she kept company with. She's the true sense of Hollywood royalty, the type of woman people would sell their firstborn just to meet.

So what was she doing with her? And what did it have to do with my husband? The scream that I'd been holding in check for so long threatened to escape, and I had to dig my nails into my palms to keep myself grounded.

I got up and went in search of Ryder once my legs were steady enough. It's time to put this thing to bed; time I get things back on track. I was surprised to see him coming towards me as I left the room where I'd met Mary. It had been some time since he'd come to my side of the house, and I felt a glimmer of hope at the smile he gave me.

"We need to talk. Come with me." I was more surprised than any wife should be when he took my hand and led me back to the room I'd just left. Maybe things were about to turn around after all. Mom did say not to worry.