Michael was in my dream this time too. Thankfully, he wasn’t ripping Adam apart this time. He was sitting with my mother, and it was strange how normal it felt in my dream to see the two of them sitting together. My mother was talking to him, and he was writing down what she was saying. As I walked closer to them, I could hear her words. I remembered those words because they had haunted me every day. She was telling him what to write on her suicide note.
She turned to look at me and smiled, but her eyes were sad and moist with tears. Michael turned to look at me too, and a single tear was streaming down his cheek and over his jaw until it dripped down onto his shirt.
I got down on my knees in front of both of them and cried.
“What does it mean, Mom?” I asked her through my tears. “What message were you trying to give me in your letter? I read it, and I don’t understand what the message is supposed to be.”
But she didn’t answer me. She just sat there and smiled her sad smile. And when I woke up from my dream, I was nowhere closer to knowing what I needed to know.
Her letter was with the rest of my things, which were still back in Adam’s bedroom in the Lineage apartment. I kept it tucked inside my favorite book that she used to read to me as a child. I’m sure by now, some Lineage thugs had already gone through all my stuff and taken it. I remembered what it said, but I wanted to see the note again because I still felt like I was missing something.
“Hey,” Michael said quietly as he woke up beside me.
He tried to reach over and hold me but winced when he went to move.
“Yeah, you’re pretty beat-up,” I said. “You should really try to lay still.”
I leaned over and put my head gently on his shoulder so that he could stay put.
“You should have seen the other guys,” he joked.
“I did, as Julian was dragging them all out of the apartment to bury them in a hole.”
“Wow, I didn’t think Julian had it in him to take care of something like that.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Me neither.”
“Speaking of which, did I dream it, or did he hear me say—”
“You didn’t dream it,” I interrupted. “Everyone knows.”
“Sorry,” he sighed. “I’m sure that puts you in a tough spot with both of them.”
“Actually, Adam was pretty cool about it. Julian was not happy.”
“Adam’s a good guy; just don’t tell him I said that. He’s put up with a lot of shit, and not once has he ever betrayed me.”
“Can I ask you another question?” I asked.
“I’m pretty sure that anything you ask from here on out won’t be as bad as what I’ve already told you, so yeah, shoot.”
“Why did you bring Adam into Lineage? He said you pleaded with your mom until she agreed to take him in.”
He nodded. “He’s right, I did.”
“Seems a little uncharacteristic of you,” I said.
But then again, there were so many things that I had been wrong about Michael, so who was I to say.
“He was there that night,” Michael said. “He saw me sneak into the halfway house, and he saw me sneak out. Because he had been a witness to what happened, they told me to kill him. So, instead of killing the poor guy, I made a deal with him instead.”
“What kind of deal?”
He sighed. “That if you ever started getting too close to solving your mother’s murder, that he would dissuade you from going any further.”
“Well, that didn’t work out too well, did it,” I said.
“No,” he laughed a little until his ribs moved. “I guess it didn’t. But he kept a good watch over you, and he became a good friend to me.”
“You saved a lot of people’s lives that night, apparently,” I said.
He shrugged. “But I wasn’t able to save your mom.”
I heard the front door open and close, and then Adam appeared in the bedroom doorway.
“Hey, you’re up,” he said to Michael. “How are you feeling?”
“Like shit. How come you’re not as beat-up as me? I thought I was a better fighter than you,” Michael joked.
Adam grinned. “Eh, it’s only because you dealt out most of the damage.”
“See?” Michael said to me. “What did I tell you? He’s a good friend?”
Adam laughed. “Now I definitely know you hit your head too hard. I hate your guts.”
It was nice to see the two of them bantering like brothers, even if they were rivals in more ways than one.
“Where’s Julian?” I asked.
He thumbed over his shoulder. “He’s out in the kitchen making some food. He’s okay, Lisette. Just give him a bit.”
“Okay,” I said. “Thanks for checking on him.”
Adam nodded and then went back out to crash on the couch for a bit.
“Thank you,” I said to Michael as I curled against him and tried to fall back asleep for a little bit longer.
“For what?”
I licked my lips. “For helping my mom write the note.”
I felt his breathe pause for a minute, then his arm wrap around me as I fell back asleep.
When I woke up again, it was dark out. I slipped out from beneath Michael's arms and walked out into the apartment. Everyone was sleeping. I quietly took a pen from out of a mug that was sitting on the kitchen counter and grabbed a napkin. I strained my eyes in the dark to see the words that I was writing.
They’re mostly after me. Please leave all of you. I can’t live with any more death around me.
I didn’t have anything else to say. It wasn’t a very good note, but it was all I wanted to write…leave, please.
I left the note on the kitchen table and quietly opened the front door and slipped out. They would all be furious in the morning when they found out that I had gone. I just hoped that they didn’t try to be heroic and foolish and that for once, they just listened to me and left. It’s not like they could be much help in their condition anyway, so maybe that would be enough to make them realize they should go.
I needed to hide somewhere that no one would find me, not the guys, and not Lineage. I also needed to be somewhere that I could easily get into the charity event, which was also being held at the aquarium. Of course, the answer to that was right in front of my face, the rooftop garden. When the aquarium opened in the morning, I paid for a single-day admission and went inside. I still had my hoodie on and sunglasses; to be honest, I looked like shit, but I also didn’t stand out. I walked the aquarium halls for a few minutes, so it didn’t look like I was making a beeline straight to the rooftop. There weren’t that many people there since it was still early. When I got my chance to slip unnoticed into the stairwell, I did.
The rooftop looked as if they were planning one of those privately rented parties. There were tables set up with big floral centerpieces and stand-alone lamps brought up to increase the lighting. That must mean that the event is going to be in the evening. I still needed to find out when the Lineage charity event was going to be held here. From the murmurs around campus, it sounded like it would be within the next few days, but I wasn’t sure exactly when. Maybe some of the staff at tonight’s party would be talking about it, and it would give me a chance to overhear. I also needed to find something to wear besides these dirty jeans and a hoodie. I was sure that the security at the charity event would be maxed-out, so I had to do everything I could to look the part of an invited guest until I had my chance to expose them.
Shit, I hope I had remembered to grab my phone. I reached in my pocket and pulled it out. The battery was only three-quarters charged, so I switched the settings down and put it on airplane mode. That would avoid any incoming calls and messages that the guys would try to send me once they woke up and realized that I was gone.
I tried not to think about that too much because it hurt.
I had to think about how I was going to survive staying on a rooftop for a couple days and ambushing a dangerous party without gettin
g killed until after I exposed these evil people for who and what they were.
The door from the stairwell opened, and I darted into the greenhouse since it was the only place to really hide. I ducked down onto the ground to hide behind the plants. As soon as I did, I started to think about the last time I was in here, with Michael. I thought about what he said when he was waning in and out of consciousness…that he wanted to make love to me every day. If there was any chance that I actually survived this, I’d like for that to happen too.
I wished I would have told him that before I left.
I wrapped my arms around myself and silently replayed the blissful moment in my head as the service worker outside swept off the rooftop. Since it was winter now, they probably rarely had people coming up to look in the greenhouse, so it was actually the perfect place to hide. If only being in here didn’t make me feel like there was a hollow pit in my stomach.
How was it possible that the feelings I was having toward three guys were causing me so much angst?
18
“Calm down, Michael,” Julian said to me as I flew into a rampage.
“Where is she?!” I screamed at the top of my lungs, ignoring the pain in my ribcage.
Adam had already left the apartment to search around the campus, thinking that maybe Lisette had foolishly taken a walk on her own to clear her head.
“This is my fault,” Julian said as he shook his head. “I shouldn’t have gotten so upset with her. It’s you I should have gotten mad at. None of this was worth her losing her life over.”
“No, you’re wrong, this is entirely HER fault,” I roared. “She knows exactly what she’s doing, and she’s trying to leave all three of us out of it.” I held up the napkin that Lisette had written on and waved it in Julian’s face. “There is no excuse for this! Not after all that we’ve done to try and protect her, not after everything we’ve walked away from in order to save her.”
Julian’s face fell flat. “That sounds an awful lot like you’re speaking for yourself, Michael.”
I picked up the empty whiskey bottle on the counter and launched it at Julian’s head. I was furious at Lisette for doing this, for leaving us behind. For leaving me behind.
But then, the door opened, and Adam walked back into the apartment.
“I can’t find her,” he said with a panic in his voice. “I’ve scoured the whole campus and even snuck onto the Lineage grounds to look for her there. She’s gone.”
I grabbed my leather jacket and shoved my arms through the sleeves; catching the makeshift stitches that she had sewn into my hand on the cuffs and yowling in an angry pain that made me pull a stitch out on purpose, simply because it felt good to be able to hurt something.
“Where are you going?” Julian asked me.
“To try and save Lisette’s ass again,” I growled.
I stormed across the Goldshire campus, straight onto the Lineage grounds, and straight into my mother’s office. A crowd of onlookers started following me before I had even reached the building. One of the security guards tried to approach me and say something about how he “needed to escort me to administration,” but when I bared my teeth at him, he shriveled away like the puny minion that he was.
I found my mother sitting at her claw-footed desk with a look of immediate disappointment on her face as I walked through the door.
“You have to call this hunt off!” I demanded as I walked up to her desk and slammed my hand down in front of her.
The coffee in her mug spun in a dizzying circle at the impact.
“Sit down, Michael,” she said calmly.
“I’m not going to sit down until you call it off,” I said.
“Well, I’m not going to do anything until you sit… down.”
She spaced her last two words out slowly, which is what she always did when she was about to lose her temper. I sat down in the chair at her desk. I knew my mother well enough to know that she wouldn’t budge until she felt like she had some sort of illusion of control over the situation.
“None of this had to be this way, you know,” she said, calmly picking up her coffee mug and taking a sip. “You’ve forced my hand.”
I balked. “Me? You’re blaming me for this?”
“Yes, you. How do you think it looks as Headmistress to have my own son aiding a girl that is plotting against Lineage? Do you really think we could have just let her go? Now? We can’t do that right before the big exchange of power. Even you aren’t that silly.”
I shook my head and dug my heels in. “Just call it off, and I’ll find her and take her out of here. No one will even have to know. It’ll be like she disappeared, you can say she was killed or something. I’ll make sure she’s so far away that no one will ever find her.”
She tisked. “You know I can’t do that, sweetheart.”
I grimaced at the nickname. “Mother, please. I’ve never asked you for anything. Just this once, please help me.”
My mother looked at me with those cold, stone eyes that I had gotten so accustomed to seeing during my childhood. Even when my father was murdered, she never showed any emotion.
In fact, I’d never seen her show any emotion.
“You may not have asked for me to do all of the things I’ve done for you over the years, but I’ve done more for you Michael, than you will ever know. That’s what mothers do. Do you think it was a coincidence that you were the one to kill Lisette’s mother?”
I blinked. “What?”
I didn’t understand what this possibly had to do with the hunt for Lisette currently taking place. “Pauline reached out to me,” I said. “I killed her because she asked me to be the one to do it, and she asked me to do it to keep Lisette safe from him.”
My mother laughed, as if I were making some sort of joke.
“You’re foolish,” she said condescendingly, her laughter stopping as quickly as it appeared. “There were always so many more things in play than you ever had the ability to see.” She reached across the desk and ruffled her fingers in my hair. “Cute, but foolish.”
I swatted her hand away as she continued.
“It wasn’t just Pauline’s choice that you would be the one to kill her. That whole thing was orchestrated to perfection by faces you didn’t even know were there. You were the one chosen to do it so that you and Lisette would hate each other. How could she ever have feelings for someone that killed her own mother? And how could you ever fall for a girl that would be a constant reminder of the murder you committed?”
I felt all the blood rush to my face, and my heartbeat started to echo painfully loud in my eardrums. “What?”
She sighed. “You see, son? I did it to protect you; to keep you away from that girl once I started to see that you were attracted to her. But in all my endeavors, this was the one time I failed. I’m not sure how it happened, but you ended up falling for her anyway. Ridiculous! Underestimating your foolishness is not a mistake I will make again. The kill-order on Lisette will stand, and hopefully, they’ll find her and extinguish this loose end before the day is up.”
I sat across the desk, staring at my mother and feeling as if everything I had ever known about my life, about her, about myself, had all just melted meaninglessly away.
“Now,” she continued as I sat there speechless. “I’m going to give you one more chance to set this all straight and fall into line. At the charity event, he will be there, leadership will exchange hands, and then you will have one last opportunity to fulfill the role you were meant to have.”
“What role?” I asked.
I felt as if I were still in a delusional state from the solid beating that I had taken back at the apartment. My mother’s thin lips pulled into the hideous grin that I had unfortunately inherited from her as a bad trait that appeared when I got mad. But, the words that fell forth from her lips stunned me so greatly that I almost puked on my shoes.
“You’re going to be the new Dean of Goldshire,” she said.
19
&nb
sp; The private rooftop party at the aquarium was going to be an office party for some marketing firm that apparently had an impressive financial quarter. I had been sitting inside the greenhouse, imagining how angry and upset the guys were that I had left without telling them where I was going when I heard the wait staff talking about the party.
One of the servers had mentioned needing to ask for time off during the “big charity event” that was coming up on Friday, and I assumed that was the Lineage event that they were talking about. That meant I had two more days to hide out here before the event. So far, it was the perfect plan.
No one would think that I would be brazen enough to hide within the aquarium, the actual venue for Lineage’s big plan, not even Michael. I’m sure by now all three guys had scoured the Goldshire campus and probably the Lineage grounds too. The only thing I needed to do now was lay low, not get caught, and figure out how to get food, clothes, and maybe a bit of sleep before Friday.
I spent most of the morning up there on the rooftop until I started to feel a gnawing pain in my stomach. I waited until the coast was clear and then slid back down the stairwell into the aquarium. Fortunately, since they were making so many preparations on the roof, which required lots of back and forth, the stairwell door remained unlocked for now. I wasn’t sure what I would do if I ended up getting locked up there for two days without food or even a bathroom to use. At least the greenhouse was warm enough that I wouldn’t freeze to death.
I slunk around and bought some food at the self-serve food court. I tried to get enough snacks and things to last me just in case my fear of getting trapped on the roof became a reality.
“Hungry today?” the cashier teased as she rang up my purchases.
Ruined: A Dark Bully Reverse Harem Romance (Beautiful Tyrants Book 1) Page 12
