Chapter 31

CHAPTER 31

ROSE

I stood in front of the doorway to the home I had grown up in for several minutes. Just staring at the dark grain of the solid wood door, with the antique brass knocker in the shape of a snarling lion’s head. When I was a child, I was afraid of that lion’s head. Afraid that it would come to life and eat my hand, if I dared to grasp the ring that hung from its teeth. My nanny had tried to scare me by telling me that hitting that knocker would summon the monsters.

At least she was just trying to scare me. Now that I thought about her warning as an adult, I wondered if she wasn’t right.

As an adult, I saw the knocker and her stories for what they were. Warnings. Behind that door was a den of lions, controlled by one lioness with a fierce bite and a cold, dead heart.

An icy breeze lifted my hair from my shoulders, but I barely felt its frozen touch. My skin was hot, my anger had bubbled up in my gut and boiled my blood. I had told Thomas that I had felt the rage he spoke of.

That was a lie.

His anger may have been correctly focused on my mother, but no matter what she did to him, his fire couldn’t touch mine. His anger was the kind that would let him seethe, the kind that would stay at a low simmer for years while he plotted his revenge.

Mine didn’t simmer. My rage was an inferno, betrayal feeding it. He thought he knew what it was like to have his life destroyed, and maybe he did, but to have your life destroyed by the person who should be biologically predisposed to love you, to support you, was at another level.

He didn’t know what it was like to find out that you were nothing more than a puppet, a tool to be used by the one person you thought deep down had your best interests at heart.

So I stood in front of the door, not trying to work up the nerve to go inside and confront my mother, but to temper my rage so that when I faced her, I didn’t lose control.

I expected tears to burn behind my eyes, but there were none.

I was done crying over people that were simply just no longer worth my tears. That list included my mother, but it included Thomas too, and Raul, and anyone else who ever thought to use me as a pawn to further their own agendas.

They didn’t see me as a person with her own dreams, wants, or even mind. I was done becoming collateral damage in the games of other people.

Pushing back my shoulders and lifting my chin, masking my fury as confidence, I walked into the house I used to call my home. The plan was simple. I would confront Mother, I would tell her I knew everything, and I was leaving. Once I did this, I would walk right back out those doors and call Harrison. He had helped Amelia find her own apartment. He would help me too.

It had occurred to me to call my brother first, but then he would insist on fighting this battle for me. He would want to protect me, but I needed to do this myself. To prove to myself that I could.

Then I would finally make the choices for my life myself.

“What are you doing here?” Mother screeched the second I opened the door. Her heels clacked across the marble floor as she stomped her way toward me. “You were told to remain where you were until I got this entire mess cleaned up. Do you know how much damage you did? Do you think I can just snap my fingers and sweep all of it under the rug? You have almost destroyed this family.”

“I’m not the one that’s destroying this family,” I said, keeping my chin held high and ignoring the tremble of fear in my gut.

“Excuse me?” Her eyes narrowed into tiny slits as she gave me an opportunity to retract my words.

Instead, I took the envelopes out of my purse and threw them at her feet. The evidence of her betrayal.

I didn’t know what I expected. Regret, maybe some flash of guilt over her face when she realized I knew what she had done. I should have known better.

Only people who had a heart could ever feel regret.

“You!” She stared at me, her face twisting into a grotesque mask of malice. "It was you? You had the audacity to steal from me? Where’s the rest of it?”

“That’s what you have to say for yourself?” I yelled. For the first time in my life, I raised my voice at my mother. “You kept this from me. I got into every single one of those?—”

My words were cut off when her hand slammed across my face, her nails raking down my cheek.

“I will have your head for this! You insolent little bitch! Where is the rest of it? Where is the money? The files! You will return those files to me immediately or I swear to God, I will?—”

“You will what?” I asked, cupping my cheek quickly before dropping my hand and fisting it at my side. “You already took the only thing from me that ever mattered. What else do you think you can do?”

“I can do so much worse.” She tilted her head back and laughed. “I can make your life so miserable. You will be an outcast once I tell everyone how much of a disappointment you are. The failed art student who couldn’t get into a program, even at a state university, with your father’s name and my money. I will show the world how you are my greatest failing.”

“No one will believe you, especially with those letters of acceptance,” I sneered. “No one listens to you anymore anyway, no one respects you anymore. You have no standing in society.”

“They’ll believe me when I tell them the truth, that you are nothing better than a common whore. I will destroy you.”

“You will do no such thing. If you’re so concerned about this family, how would that look? And if they think I’m a whore, then all any of them are going to say is I’m exactly like my mother. The woman who had her husband raise her bastard son and tried to hide it under the rug. Do you think people are going to believe you? That you can throw me under the bus and regain your standing? If I go down, you’re coming with me.”

Her hand flew again, catching the side of my jaw, but I didn’t care. Standing up to her felt so good. It felt overdue. If she knew about me and Thomas, then she was going to make my life hell, anyway. There was no reason not to push her further. Maybe if she destroyed me, if I was no longer of any use, she would leave me alone.

“I know about the gardener. I know you were sleeping with him, I can tell?—”

“Yeah, I did. I was stupidly acting out, and I thought I was in love. Then I found out that you were paying him to fuck you since the summer he turned sixteen. You can call me a whore, but then you like to fuck underage boys,” I fired back with so much conviction in my words that it felt like spitting venom.

There was a small part of me that was grateful that she only knew about Raul. If she knew about Thomas, then she would have the upper hand. That would destroy me and him. I didn’t care about me anymore, but he had suffered enough at her hand.

She let out a scream and lunged for me. Her nails were out in front of her like claws poised to tear into my skin.

I grabbed her wrists and held them back from me, but there was nothing I could do. With more strength than should have been possible for a lady of the Upper East Side, she pushed me to the floor, my head smacking into the marble tile. She was on me in a second, pinning me down, her hands raking over my face slap after slap. I could taste the blood filling my mouth and no matter how I tried to lift my arms to shield my face, I couldn’t stop the barrage of her practically clawed hands attacking me.

“You are a disgrace, a disappointment. I should have just gone to the clinic and gotten rid of you. You are worse than your siblings, you ungrateful, spoiled bitch.”

Fighting off dizziness, I twisted my hips as hard as I could, trying to throw her off of me. It didn’t work as well as I wanted it to, but I was at least able to knock her off balance and scramble to my feet. My face stung and I could feel the blood dripping down my neck.

She was going to come at me again, and I needed to defend myself. I backed away from her until I hit one of the antique tables in the entryway. I reached for anything I could find. My fingers wrapped around the cold metal of a sword-shaped letter opener.

“What do you think you’re going to do with that?” she said, eyeing what I held.

“You will not come near me again,” I warned, holding the Tiffany letter opener in front of me. My hands shook, the sterling silver of the blade gleaming where it caught the overhead light.

“There’s not a single thing in this world that’ll stop me.” She took a step toward me, and the surrounding room seem to tilt. My eyelids felt so damn heavy, but I needed to stay awake. I needed to stay focused. This needed to end. Despite her actions, I didn’t want to hurt her. I didn’t know if I had it in me to hurt her, even if she attacked me again. The only thing I wanted was for her to know I was no longer hers to control. My silence would be the price of my freedom.

All she had to do was not stand in my way.

“I’m leaving. You can’t stop me,” I said, my voice trembling. “You have no more control over me. Tell people whatever you want, I don’t care. I’m no longer yours to control and use. I will never be used the way you used me again.”

She started to lunge at me again, but then the butler, the butler who was her favored minion, grabbed her hand, stopping the strike.

“What do you think you’re doing? Unhand me!”

“What my employer has paid me handsomely to do, madam,” he replied. “You are to never lay a hand on the youngest Miss Astrid again.”

Several others on the staff hurried into the room and stood between me and her, their arms intertwined, locking together like a chain.

She glared at all of them.

“I am your employer, and you will move.”

“That is no longer true, madam. Mister Astrid is the one that signs our checks, and he has us under strict guidelines when it comes to your more violent tendencies.”

I leaned against the wall, not sure I could keep myself upright much longer. Everything hurt, and my body felt so heavy.

Still, my father had finally stepped in and stopped her.

I always assumed he knew what went on here, but maybe he didn’t. Or maybe he was trapped just as much as the rest of us were. Maybe he had found his own way out.

“You’re all lucky I’m late for an appointment. All of you should consider yourselves unemployed at this very second. When I get back, every single one of you had better be out of my house, and do not try to use me as a reference,” she spat. “And you, you ungrateful little bitch. You had better be here waiting for me, ready to grovel, and so help me God, if you do not return every single file that was taken, and the money that you stole, I will have you arrested. I will have you thrown into the darkest, deepest hole and you will live there the rest of your life. You think I’m mean? Wait until you meet your cellmates.”

She spun on her heel and walked out the front door, slamming it behind her. That’s when my legs finally gave way, and I slid down the wall to the tile floor.

“What do we do?” a maid asked. “Do we call 911 for an ambulance or?—”

“Call my dad. Please.”