Chapter 23

Chapter 23

Glory

MAURA RUNS FOR the door as I come after her, tripping over her heels as she reaches for the knob. But I’m quicker, and I reach her first. My left hand wraps around her wrist, tugging her back as I reach with my right and squeeze my palm around her throat.

Her hand comes up to shove my forearm, but I’m stronger in my fury, shoving her back and slamming her against the door. Air rushes from her lungs with a satisfying oomph as she slams into the wood, the back of her head bumping against it.

The fear that lights a blaze behind her eyes fuels me, tears through me, strengthens my primal rage that calls me to tighten my grip around her throat. She fights me, throwing her hands and hitting my arms, my shoulders, even my head. But there’s no pain when I’m so focused, so intent on choking the life out of her for all the pain she caused Huxley, for all the nights I’d made myself forget that she’d been a witness to the horror I had experienced.

She was there…

She saw what my father did…she knew what he was doing to me. I guess I’ve repressed the memories, but suddenly, it all comes rushing back. She’d seen it happen. She’d witnessed my torment. She’d called me a whore, watched my father shut and lock the door, and she did nothing.

Nothing.

She turned a blind eye to my abuse and blamed me for it, but she’s not getting away with it anymore.

No more.

No more.

No. Fucking. More.

I feel something hit the side of my head, like a sharp point slamming into my skull. I hear Huxley and Ambrose shout, anger sinking through their voices as one of them drags me back. I blink and look at her hand as Ambrose grabs Maura by the shoulders, spins her, and tosses her to the floor. She’s holding her stiletto in one hand.

Is that what she hit me with?

Huxley’s hands are on my shoulders as he twists me to face him. I lift my hand and press my palm against the spot where I was struck, just above my ear. It throbs and aches, but it’s nothing more than a headache.

“You okay?” Huxley asks, bending to level his eyes with mine.

I nod. “I’m fine.” I look around him to see Ambrose straddling Maura’s waist on the ground, struggling to grab hold of her flailing wrists as she fights him.

I give Huxley a quick glance—another reassuring look that I’m okay—before I move around him, marching past Ambrose and Maura’s struggle on the ground beside the kitchen table. I head for the stove and the knife block beside it, but the red, violent filter falls in front of my eyes, dragging me back to a memory that stops me in my tracks only a step away.

Bent over the kitchen island.

Cell phone ringing.

Reaching for a knife.

My father’s bloodied, lifeless body on the floor.

Landing on my knees in the snow.

Hands red, covered in his blood.

Huxley appearing before me to come to my rescue.

I snap from the red filter of memory and twist back into black reality, taking the last step, reaching out and pulling a long blade from the block. I turn and take a step, ready to drop to my knees beside Ambrose and drive the tip of my weapon through her sick heart, but Huxley’s calm, determined voice stops me.

“Wait.” He looks down at Ambrose. “Tie her hands so she can’t hurt Glory again.”

Maura’s eyes widen as fear grips her, as understanding hits that her son is with us and not with her. “Huxley! What are you…Do something!”

He pulls a chair from the table and spins it to face her, his eyes cold and hard as he watches Ambrose pull her up from the floor. “I am doing something, Mom. I’m taking my life back.”

“Your—” she stammers, her fight slowing with her quickening confusion as Ambrose twists her around and shoves her down onto the seat. Her blouse is half untucked and her pinned up hair falls in tangled pieces around her head. “What are you saying, Huxley? What are you doing?” She adds a pained inflection to her voice, and it’s so fake that it makes my blood boil.

I stomp forward, brandishing the knife and waving it in her direction. “We’re doing to you what you wanted done to us. Don’t act like you’re surprised.”

She shakes her head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You can’t lie to us, Maura!” I point the tip of the knife down the hallway. “We were right there when you told Ambrose to finish the fucking job! He recorded you in your office and we heard it all…We know everything you asked him to do. We heard every goddamn word you said!”

She turns her head, looking up and over her shoulder at Ambrose as he pulls rope in tight knots around her wrists, her arms held behind her back. “Ambrose?”

“You were fooling yourself to ever think you could trust me,” he says. “I never even liked you. You were an okay fuck when I didn’t have someone better, but now you’re just a waste of space standing in my way.” He gives a final tug, eliciting a sharp moan with the tightening of the rope as Maura straightens and purses her lips. He moves around to her side and bends to give her striking eye contact. “And your son gives me far better orgasms than you ever did.”

“You fucking liar,” she spits as Ambrose straightens and moves to stand beside Huxley. “My son isn’t gay.”

Huxley’s voice is flat, monotone, and darkly perfect for the situation at hand. “I wouldn’t say I have a preference, Mom.” He looks her up and down. “But I would say I have a far greater capacity to love than you do.”

“It’s not that I don’t love you…” Maura starts, scooting forward on the seat, trying to play the part of contrition.

“It’s exactly that you don’t love me. You never did, did you? You played it off as sick, sarcastic humor all those times you said I ruined your life, but it was true, wasn’t it? Did you hate me from the moment I was born?”

“How dare you even ask me that? I gave you everything, the whole fucking world, and you see where it got me? I sacrificed and sacrificed for you. Do you know how many dicks I had to suck before I found a man who would take care of us both? I didn’t want you when I was sixteen, but I—”

“And you don’t want me now,” Huxley charges forward. Through his outstretched arm, he points his finger back in Ambrose’s direction. “You told him to find us and kill us.”

“I wouldn’t have asked him to kill you if you hadn’t already been missing. You were probably as good as dead anyway, weren’t you? Where did he find you, anyway?”

“As if you care. As if it matters. You told him to kill us.”

“The opportunity presented itself—”

Huxley snaps. Reaching over her shoulders, he grabs hold of the top of the chair with both hands, bending to look her squarely in the eye. “The opportunity? Do you even hear yourself? I ought to let Glory gut you like a fish and let you bleed out.”

Maura’s face shifts, all the fakeness melting away and giving way to her cold, heartless reality. “What do you want, then? Money? Freedom? Take your pitiful allowance from my checking account and go. I couldn’t care less if you disappear from my life.”

Huxley’s head twists to the side. “But that’s the problem, isn’t it? You’re lying right to my face. The only reason we’re all here together is because you want Glory and me dead…because we stand in the way of you gaining complete control over the Tolliver fortune. Almost as if Beau knew you were a gold-digging bitch and made sure you were the last in line to get his money. But the damn bastard didn’t bank on just how heartless you are, did he? He didn’t bank on Glory fighting back and ending his life for all the pain he caused her. And you didn’t bank on the fact that Glory is stronger than all of us; she loves deeper than any of us are capable of, and her loyalty to me is thicker than blood. When you hurt me, you hurt her. And do you know what she does when she’s hurt?”

Maura has the gall to turn her head, to look at me with a sneer, and speaks to me with a mocking tone. “Cry and bend over for daddy?”

I grip the handle of my blade tighter. Ambrose shoves Huxley aside before backhanding the bitch, his knuckles landing with a reverberating smack that echoes through the room. She slips sideways from the chair, falling to the floor on her hip, unable to keep herself up with her hands tied behind her back.

Ambrose drops to one knee beside her, bending down and gripping her cheeks so tightly that I can see her skin turn white beneath his fingers.

“Do you have any idea what happened to Beau?” Ambrose asks. “Are you the biggest moron on the planet? I didn’t kill Beau. He was dead before you even knew he was missing. Glory murdered him after he raped her, and your son helped her bury the body. And we’re going to let her end your life the same way she ended his.”

Maura thrashes, tugging against her binding as Ambrose grabs her elbow and pulls her from the floor to her feet. He lets go of her and she wobbles, trying to catch her balance with one shoe off and the other still on.

“Fine,” Maura says. “So kill me. End all of our chances at getting any of that money. They’ll find out Glory killed Beau and she’ll go to prison.” She looks at her son. “And you will, too, because you helped her. What were you thinking?”

“I love her. That’s all I was thinking about,” Huxley says through gritted teeth.

“So much that you would go to prison for her? Huxley, please. You’ve lost your fucking mind.”

“Maybe I have.” He shrugs. “But I’ve found something I need more than my mind.”

She fake pouts, tilting her head. “Oh, and what have you found, my clueless child? Love? You think that will last?”

I see the shift in him, the way Huxley’s eyes flash as something inside him snaps and sets him free. He stands taller, stronger, somehow brighter and darker all at once. It’s like watching him take ownership of every deep and dark part of himself, and it sends a rush through my veins. My heart beats faster.

“It’s not just love, Mom. It’s sacrifice. I’ve done nothing but give my whole life. I’ve sacrificed and saved, but no one was there to save me when I needed it. No one until them. Glory and Ambrose want me enough to sacrifice everything for me, to help me do this, to get through this—”

“Get through what? Killing your mother?! That’s your goddamn choice, Huxley!”

“Oh, shut the fuck up, Maura,” Ambrose says coolly, drawing my eyes to where he stands beside the kitchen table.

I watch as he sifts through Maura’s black leather purse, finding and pulling out a couple of candies which are individually wrapped in brown plastic—our famous maple candies from Tolliver’s Treats.

“I think we’ve heard enough,” Ambrose starts, taking the candies with him as he circles Maura to lean his ass against the back of the couch. He looks over at Huxley. “Have you said what you needed to say?” He holds out his palm full of candy, beckoning him over. “Let Glory finish this. She’s fuming.”

I only realize it when he says it that I’m breathing heavily, huffing through my nose with my nostrils flaring. Both of my fists are curled tightly, the knife strongly in my grip at my side. I’m barely controlling myself, but I hadn’t even realized it until Ambrose said something.

Huxley stares at Ambrose, a strange, dark calm softening his features into complacency. Darkness and hatred shadow his eyes. He deserves to hold that darkness if he wants to, but I hate seeing him this way, in so much pain. I go to them before I can think about going to her, even though anger builds and builds inside me.

Stopping in front of Huxley, I reach up to caress his cheek with my free hand. He leans into my touch, his expression softening just a bit as he lets his eyes fall shut. “I’m going to make this right,” I tell him. “Just let me end her and then we can be happy again. All of us.”

His eyes open gently, and he turns his head to kiss my palm. “She’s left us no choice. It has to be done.”

“It has to be done,” I repeat.

I let my hand fall away as I take a step back and flash my eyes at Ambrose, silently begging him to comfort Huxley or shield him or something, anything. Because I know Huxley is too good for this, too pure, too loving, too kind. Though he’s raging and hurting in this moment, I know he will feel guilt for this later.

I take another step back as Ambrose turns to him, cradles his cheek softly in his strong and dominant hand, and leans forward to press a gentle kiss to his lips. My breath catches as it deepens, as Ambrose feeds him comfort in these violent moments.

I turn to Maura, ready to drive my knife inside her, to stab her, slice her, rip her to shreds, but I’m frozen when I see her smile at me.

“Wipe that grin from your face.” I try to sound strong, but I feel my meekness creep back in the longer she looks at me that way, with an evil grin spread across her cheeks that sets off warning bells in my mind. “You haven’t won. You’ve lost everything.”

“Maybe,” she says, then tilts her head. “Maybe not.”

I hear the crinkling of plastic wrappers and she and I both turn to look. Ambrose pops one of the maple candies into his mouth and Huxley does the same a moment later.

“I like a little treat with my entertainment,” Ambrose says in response to our attention. “Don’t let us interrupt.”

I give him a nod and he smiles at me. It gives me strength, though I’m suddenly feeling anxious. I try to shake it off, turning my attention back to Maura. I take a step toward her, and she steps back, but the damn smile is still on her face and it’s unsettling.

“Glory,” Ambrose says abruptly, and it stops me. His voice is suddenly strange. When I turn to look at him, he steps toward me, his eyes wide, smile gone.

“They say you shouldn’t take candy from strangers,” Maura purrs. “But perhaps you shouldn’t take it from heartless women, either.”

Ambrose slumps, his knees hitting the floor.

“Fuck…fuck…” Huxley says. He snaps his head to look at me as his fingers touch his lips, coming to the same conclusion I’m drawing at the same moment.

The candy…

What did she do to it?

“I wouldn’t worry too much,” Maura says. “He’ll be all right. Both of them will.” Ambrose tumbles sideways to the ground, and I rush to his side, but he’s already unconscious. “He was never going to get away with any of this, you know. I was going to make sure he’d done what I asked him to do, make sure he had a sample of our newest flavor treat, and leave him to sleep peacefully while I drove his truck back to get the police.” Huxley’s eyelids droop as he stumbles to his knees, and I drop the knife, turning to grip his shoulders as he sways. “It all makes sense, really. Ambrose was my slighted lover, who murdered my entire family thinking it would allow us to be together. You’d all be gone then, and nothing would stand in my way. The fortune would be mine, and I wouldn’t have to give a dime to Ambrose.”

“Do it,” Huxley whispers as he blinks, as his eyelids drift shut, and he falls sideways, too heavy for me to hold up. I manage to guide his fall, and he lands with his head near Ambrose’s knees.

I watch them both, my eyes on their chests, making sure they’re breathing and okay. When I’m certain that they are, I let it take me.

I let the shadow wrap around me, wring out whatever goodness might have been left in my soul, and let it take me entirely. I wrap my palm around the handle of the blade and slowly rise to my feet.

“You weak, pathetic, little girl,” Maura mocks. “Do you think you scare me? Do you think I’m afraid that you’ll hurt me?” Her face shifts from mocking to loathing. “I know you won’t. You’re not capable of fighting back. You let Beau hurt you for years, bending for dear old dad just because he wanted it. Your father was sick, and you probably are, too.”

I feel a calm wash over me. “I’m not sick. I’m strong. Stronger than you.”

“Stronger than me? You don’t know what strong is. Strong is having a baby at sixteen, getting thrown out of your house, and learning to fend for yourself. You’re an entitled, privileged little bitch who never had to work a day in her life.”

“Maybe I am. But you know what you are?”

“What?” She cocks her head to the side in challenge.

“Entertainment.”

I circle around behind her and grab hold of the rope that binds her wrists in my free hand. I shove her forward, marching her to the door. I let go of her to grip the knob, twist, and pull the door open wide.

I shove her into the entryway, seeing the snow fall slowly, but heavily behind her…slowly and heavily, like how the darkness falls over my soul. She turns to face me, looking at me with wide eyes.

I turn the blade in my hand, widen my stance, and let the darkness take control of me. “Run.”