Chapter 22

Chapter 22

Glory

I’M IN LOVE.

Profoundly and strangely in love with two men I never should have fallen for—my stepbrother and my former captor.

Even stranger, I’ve allowed my former captor to place me back inside my cage for a sick test of my stepmother’s morality.

And it was my idea.

My mind isn’t right…I don’t think it ever has been. Yet somehow, that doesn’t bother me anymore. I’ve found passion and pleasure and devotion in this sickness, and I never want to be well again.

But Huxley still struggles and keeps me soft, keeps me gentle and loving because I never want him to feel hurt or fear. He paces the small space as we wait for Ambrose to return with Maura. He sent her a vague text, letting her know he had something to show her, and she agreed to let him pick her up and bring her to his home.

I don’t know if she’s stupid, careless, or fearless because it’s well past four in the morning and she’s letting a man drive her to an unknown place deep in the woods.

Ambrose says she’s never been to his home before—that no one ever has—and I believe him. I saw how the path his truck would travel disappears into the tree line, narrow and hidden. He said it would take him thirty minutes to drive through the forest and get to the paved road. We’ve been here for over an hour, waiting for his return, and Huxley’s anxiety grows with each passing minute.

“What if he doesn’t come back?”

“He’ll come back, Hux. Why wouldn’t he?”

“What if all of this is just some…some game to him? What if he’s not coming back?”

“How can you even think that now? After everything that’s happened between us. You know he’s coming back.”

He spins to face me. “I think I have good reason to question it at this point, don’t you?”

I shake my head. “No. Not at all.”

This is odd, this flip between us where I’m calm and sure and he’s anxious and suspicious. I go to him, slip my arms around his waist, and hug him close as I press my cheek against his chest. He sighs, wrapping his arms around me and cradling the back of my head in his hand.

“I know you’re right,” he whispers after a beat passes. “I know. I’m just afraid.”

“What are you afraid of?”

“Afraid I’ve found something I can’t let go of. Afraid for our future. Afraid that I’m ruining my life over some fleeting passion.”

My eyebrows twitch as anger seeps in. But somehow, I’m able to push it away, shove it back, keep it from gripping me and shutting me down. That alone is enough to make me know how real this is, how important, how special this bond is between the three of us. It keeps me present. It’s the only thing in the world that could keep me grounded in reality because it’s the only real thing I’ve ever really wanted.

I lift my chin to look up at him. “Do you really think this is just fleeting passion? Do you really think we could ever part ways and be okay? If that’s what you think, then you should never have gotten back in this cage with me. You should’ve left me behind and found your own way home. Go back to school, become a lawyer, and forget we ever happened to you.”

He swallows hard, a pained expression tugging at his features. “But then I’d be without you…without him…”

“And what does the thought of that make you feel?”

He squeezes my head, pushing my face against his chest again as he pulls me closer. “Like falling from grace.”

I sigh, squeezing him tight. “You could never fall from grace. Not with me. I love you. I’m in love with you both, and the thought of being without either of you just—”

“You don’t have to think about that.” He strokes my hair. “You don’t ever have to think about that.”

The low rumble of an engine interrupts the silence that surrounds us, and I feel Huxley blow out a long breath. “Help me, Glory. Give me strength to do this.” The way he whispers his words sound like a prayer, like a dark prayer to a goddess of vengeance—to me.

I’m quickly overcome with rage and determination, as if his faith in me spins my soul, turning away my meekness and revealing the blood-red screen of justice that took hold of me when I murdered my father.

He had it coming.

And so does Maura.

We let go of each other as we hear the front door open and voices—specifically Maura’s grating tone—fill the house. I back away from the bars, pressing my back to the wall behind me, but Huxley steps forward and grips the bars in his fists.

“You really need to quit smoking,” I hear Maura tell Ambrose. “Your house reeks.”

“Thanks for the tip,” he replies coolly.

Her voice shifts, her tone dropping into something heady and expectant, and it makes me want to gag. “So, what did you want to show me? Your bedroom? God, I hope your sheets are clean. How can you stand living out here like this?”

“I didn’t bring you here to fuck, Maura.”

Huxley’s knuckles go white as he grips the bars tighter.

“Then what the fuck did you bring me here for? I’d rather not stay any longer in this fucking wilderness retreat than I have to. Christ, who lives like this?”

“I want my money.”

She laughs. “You haven’t finished the job yet.”

“It’s almost finished. That’s what I brought you here to show you. But I’m not finishing it until I have money in my account.”

A brief whisper of doubt ripples through me, a quick shiver that makes me wonder if Ambrose would betray us. If he would, in fact, kill us now to get the money from Maura. But I quickly push the thought away because I know the entirety of his soul, just as I know Huxley’s, and he would never, could never, do that to us.

“What do you have to show me then?”

“Follow me.”

Their footsteps approach and I hold my breath, waiting for them to appear in the doorway. Anxiety over her reaction, over Huxley’s reaction, makes me sick to my stomach.

Ambrose appears first, giving us both a moment’s eye contact—a quick flash of his dark eyes to acknowledge that nothing has changed, that he still loves us and wants us, that he would never betray us for her.

Though he still holds the key to the cage that keeps us bound to him.

He moves inside the room, stepping off toward the side and crossing his arms over his chest. Then Maura appears in the doorway, stopping dead in her tracks the moment her eyes land on the metal bars.

She’s dressed sleekly, as always, in a black pencil skirt, tucked in white blouse, and pointed high heels. She would be dressed to the nines this early in the morning—always so damn concerned with her appearance. She’s always looked younger than her thirty-seven years, though that’s mostly because she’s used my father’s money to pay for injections and treatments to keep herself looking fresh. I suppose she had to pay to look younger to keep my father’s attention.

Sick, fucking bastard.

Her mouth drops open in surprise and she turns her head slowly toward Ambrose, though her eyes stay fixed on us.

“Mom?” Huxley says in mock surprise.

He needs to test her to clear his conscience, and I understand it, I do. I just hate that he feels like he has to put himself through this show to prove that she deserves this.

“I told you to kill them, not keep them alive in a cage,” she says and red begins to consume me.

I push off the wall and move to stand beside Huxley, wrapping my hands around the bars like he does.

Ambrose turns and leans his back against the side wall, kicking one foot up against it. “I thought you might like one last chance to save your son.”

What kind of mother doesn’t want to protect her child?

She doesn’t even look at Huxley, doesn’t attempt any comfort or encouragement or reassurance that she loves him. She just stomps toward Ambrose. “I don’t want to see him,” she grits through her teeth. “I just want the job done. Can you handle it? If you can’t, there will be no money for you, Ambrose. Only jail time.”

“Jail time?” Ambrose pushes himself upright, forcing her to take a step back as he moves into her space. “Oh, I don’t think so.”

She pushes right back, jabbing a finger into his chest. The moment she touches him, the red filter descends. I feel myself fade away, feel myself losing to violent rage and an urgent need to wrap my hands around her throat. I reach out for Huxley, grasping for something to hold on to, anything to keep me present and awake and aware.

He sweeps his arm across the small of my back, wraps his fingers around my waist, and drags me close, holding me tightly against his side. It grounds me, though the rage is heating inside me, boiling me from the inside out.

“Do your job,” Maura tells Ambrose. “End it now and then we’ll talk about your money.”

“And my freedom,” he adds, twisting his lips into a cocky smile. “You promised me freedom from you. Freedom from all the dirt you have on me.”

She waves her hand dismissively. “Yes, you’ll fucking have it, but this,” she swings her arm, pointing her finger at us instead, “needs to be done now.”

Huxley’s fingers curl, digging into my side, helping me stay present. “What needs to be done, Mom?”

Her eyes snap to his and she looks him up and down…but she doesn’t see him. She couldn’t possibly see him with the way she looks at him so dismissively, so uncaring and cruel.

I hate her.

I fucking hate her.

Hot tears well and burn behind my eyes as she easily tugs her gaze from him, as she turns away from her own goddamn son and looks at Ambrose without ever answering Huxley.

“Kill them. Do it now. I’ll fucking wait.” She turns and leaves, her high heels clicking over the hardwood floor.

Pain washes over me, so much pain when she turns her back on my Huxley, that somehow, it washes away the rage. It overcomes me, filling me with the worst kind of sorrow I’ve ever known—it breaks me because she’s hurt my love, and that hurts more than anything anyone could ever do to me personally.

Unable to stop the tears, I cry, and Huxley grabs me, turns me, pulls me into him to wrap me in his warmth. Ambrose slams the door to the hallway shut and comes to us quickly, slipping his key into the lock and opening the door.

I feel a strange sort of relief ripple through Huxley as the cage opens, as Ambrose pushes inside and circles behind me and they both cover me with warmth in their joint embrace.

“I’m sorry, Hux,” I whisper. “I’m so sorry for what she’s done.”

I feel the twitch in his chest against my cheek, the catch of his breath as he tries to halt his emotions to comfort mine, and I feel selfish.

I have to stop.

I have to make this better for him.

I look up at him, wiggling my arms to free them so I can grab hold of his cheeks, force his face to angle down to meet my eyes, and hold him there.

“I love you,” I tell him with raw honesty. “I love you so much, and I won’t ever let anyone hurt you like this again.”

He nods slightly, but I see the sheen forming over his eyes and it hurts me so much. My mother was everything to me before she died, and I can’t imagine her rejection, her hate, her willingness to let me die.

“You still want to do this?” Ambrose asks from behind me. “I can do this for you if you need me to. Your hands can stay clean.”

Huxley shakes his head slowly, anger forcing a sneer across his cheeks as his eyebrows dip inward. “I don’t want clean hands in this. Not after that.”

“I want to hurt her…” I tell him.

His gaze darkens, narrowing in on me as he lowers his forehead to mine. “I won’t stop you.”

The relief I feel in that permission is overwhelming, painful, blissful, as all-consuming as my violent rage, but so, so much better.

I’m not a bad person…I know I’m not.

But the thought of hurting her, killing her, destroying her for the way she’s hurt him makes me shudder with need.

“Then let me go after her.” I lower my hands to his chest, pushing softly, not to push him away but to encourage him to let me go and hurt the one who hurt him.

He visibly swallows, then presses a kiss to the top of my head. “Go,” he says, then releases me and steps back.

I’m frozen on the precipice of this dark moment—a dark moment that will define the rest of our lives together. If we go through with this, if we kill Maura, our fates are sealed together forever. We’ll have to leave everything we know behind and flee, find our own place together, somewhere we can hide from the world. And though a part of me hesitates to leave behind the comfort of a wealthy lifestyle, the rest of me begs to run from it, from the life that burnt my heart to ashes and broke my soul into pieces.

I want my future with Huxley and Ambrose, even if all we have is each other.

Ambrose presses his palm to the small of my back as he steps away, encouraging me forward. “We’re right behind you,” he says. “Go.”

I turn my head, looking back and forth at both of them before I nod, before I step from the cage, open the door, and step out into the hallway.

I turn, take a step forward and there, standing in the kitchen where I fucked her son, stands Maura, holding up her cell phone, trying to find a signal. She won’t get one, and it wouldn’t matter if she did.

No one can save her now.

“How do you live like this?” she says as she lowers her head to look across the room at me, thinking I’m Ambrose coming out to tell her the job is done.

Her eyes lock on mine and her face falls. Her head cocks to the side, and I see the confusion shadow her expression. She pushes off the counter where she leaned and takes a step forward.

“What are you—”

But I never let her finish the sentence.

The angry red tries to take hold of me, but my pain is stronger, crossing my vision as a dark black shadow…and it’s so much better. It doesn’t take me away. It doesn’t disconnect me or hide me from reality. It wraps around me and strengthens me, emboldens me, gives me the fury I need without hiding me away, trapped in my own mind.

With the darkness surrounding me, I run for her.