by C. Lymari
“Sammy…” I managed to get the words out.
“Ah, yes…Sammy. He got too suspicious. Looking in places he shouldn’t have. Hiring people who didn’t pass a basic check. Did you know he hired your little boyfriend knowing his résumé didn’t add up? On the day of the gala, he found out I had something to do with the accident. He was not going to stop me from having my revenge. I vowed I would see your family crumble, and I finally have. Everything else I do will just be a bonus.”
Hatred like his wasn’t born; it was created. Sooner or later, we all pay for our sins, but it’s fucked-up to pay for the sins of your father. I watched Silas leave, knowing what I would do. I didn’t have the strength to get up, so I slid down the couch, reaching into my back pocket as I did. Once on the floor, I crawled to my father.
I kneeled at my father’s feet, and after everything Silas said to me, I felt too ashamed to look him in the eyes. I put my head in his lap and cried. I cried for everything I’d missed out on with him, and the future we would never have.
“I love you, Daddy…I love you so much it hurts. I’m sorry for everything…”
I had to stop because I couldn’t keep talking from the sobs that were leaving my body. It was painful, and it was raw. It was the acknowledgment that what you felt was real.
“I was your biggest disappointment; I just didn’t know how to make you look at me long enough to feel proud of me… It was easier to pretend like I didn’t care,” I sobbed into his legs, knowing that my end was near.
One last time. I could look at him one last time.
Slowly, I raised my head.
I was a diamond, and diamonds don’t break. But hit them long enough, and they sure as hell cracked.
My father was crying, and that killed me. The man he once had been was now trapped in a body that failed him.
“Daddy…can…you…hold me one last time?” I knew asking the question was useless, but I didn’t it anyways.
Bringing the pills to my lips, I started to swallow them, forcing them to go down past my sobbing and dry throat to the point they felt like they were cutting me. Committing suicide was supposed to be an ultimate sin, but I didn’t think God could be so cruel to not grant me this out.
I laid my head on my dad’s lap, holding on to his hands for strength. “I love you, Da—”
The words failed me as my body started to shake violently. This seemed like the perfect end to Ember Remington, the princess of diamonds, wild party girl who didn’t give a fuck about anyone else. No one would ever know that she loved too deep and cared too much. They say you see life flash before your eyes, but I didn’t see anything as I laid there waiting to die, but I heard it.
A gut-wrenching, soul-crushing yelling of my name.
Then it was all silent.
Michael
Being trapped in your own body was the equivalent of being buried alive, except you could very much still see. I watched as Silas, the man who was raised as my brother, manhandled my daughter. Looking at her, beaten and bruised, I knew I failed her. In staying away for her protection, I’d lured her into the arms of the person who wanted to harm us all these years.
Everything he’d told her, I already knew. The only reason I wasn’t dead was that he wanted the code to get the Remington Ember out of the vault. I was the only one who had it. My daughter didn’t even know she had the code all along. A bit before the accident, I’d taken out the Ember to get it polished and ready for my daughter to wear on the celebration of her birthday, where I would proceed to hand her the reins to the company. She thought I didn’t see what she did, but how could I not when I loved her more than my own life?
Before Sam was killed, he brought to me his suspicions, and it was thanks to him that I had managed to stay alive, if only to see my daughter safe and sound. God, the things he did to her. I would never forget everything he told me. I felt like the biggest failure. Loving our kids blinds us sometimes. We want to give them everything when all they need is for us to be right there, holding their hands, and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d held my daughter’s.
“Did you miss me, Dad? Or did you barely notice I wasn’t here?”
God, those words killed me.
I wished I hadn’t taken the medication Dr. Wozniak left me for emergencies. I would have happily risked what I was trying to accomplish just so I could tell my daughter I loved her, to beg her to run away through the secret tunnel and leave me behind. Instead, when I heard Silas coming, I injected a neuromuscular-blocking drug, making sure I was paralyzed for when he got here so he could keep believing the ruse. The accident did make me invalid. I would never have use of my legs again, but my cognitive function came with time. I just kept getting drugged when Silas was near so he could think otherwise.
Despite everything, I love you.
My beautiful daughter. I didn’t deserve to be called a father, not after everything she’d suffered because I couldn’t protect her. Watching her get beaten in front of me was hell when I couldn’t do a thing to stop it. I couldn’t move, but I could see, hear, and feel. This was my cross to bear for all the pain I’d caused her.
“Daddy…can…you…hold me one last time?”
When the words left her lips, I panicked. I looked down at her knowing what she intended to do, and I couldn’t do a thing to stop it. I was yelling inside my body, and she couldn’t hear me when she grabbed my hand…fuck. My eyes burned with tears that were too stubborn to come out.
No! I willed my body to move, but the effects of the drugs were too strong.
Baby, don’t!
“I love you, Da—”
The words died on her lips. My little girl was dying in my arms, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to stop it. When her body started to convulse, I wanted to die right there with her.
“Ember!” A guttural scream echoed throughout the house.
It came from the second floor. I closed my eyes, praying for a miracle. The emergency tunnel was the only way someone other than Silas and his man could get in here. It’s how Dr. Wozniak had been keeping me company, more than Silas allowed.
Shots rang through the penthouse. They were quick, aimed to kill. Silas’s men dropped. Footsteps could be heard coming down the stairs, and I wanted to shout for them to hurry. My girl was now on the floor; her eyes rolled back. If I died tonight, that image would follow me to hell where I would relive it for eternity.
“I don’t care what you do to them…but Silas? He’s mine.” The voice was harsh, unyielding, and lethal.
My late wife was religious; she prayed and did it often. I never bothered, but today I did.
The man came into view. He was tall, fair-skinned, and he looked desperate. His eyes met mine, and they were cold. They slid to the floor, and just like that, I watched that coldness crack and break. He breathed heavily as he dropped to his knees. His hands came to Ember’s before he cradled her head.
“Ember,” he croaked. “Fuck, princess, stay with me.”
He pressed his mouth to my daughter’s lips and breathed into her mouth. He kept repeating the action every five seconds, keeping her alive.
“Someone get me a fucking ambulance!” He screamed the words, and it felt like the floor quaked.
I watched him repeat the action again and again until someone else said help was on the way.
“Damn you, Ember,” the man hissed. “I told you no one would take you away from me.”
I watched the man press a kiss on her forehead as help came for her. I didn’t know anything about him, and I didn’t care about the things Silas told me. This man loved my daughter, and that was more than enough for me.
Three months later
Have you stopped and smelled the flowers?
That’s one of the first questions my therapist had asked me, but I ignored it. Now, as I sat here in the garden of the rehab center, I couldn’t remember the last time I had done it. To stop and marvel at Earth’s beauty just for the hell of it. For the first time,
the unknown didn’t sound so bad.
I sat with my legs crossed on the bench and inhaled. You couldn’t have it all in life, and even though I was at peace, I was broken. My life had been lies after lies, making it easy to be manipulated. When I woke up in the hospital, Ren was at my bedside. The words Pam had said to me lingered. He had been honest, or so I thought. I didn’t want him anywhere near me. I wanted no one here.
I wanted to be alone.
I had been ready to die.
Ren went still when our eyes met. Everything Pam said came crashing back, everything Silas did was glaring, but all the half-truths and pretty white lies killed me.
“Ember,” he breathed my name.
“I told you I loved you and you didn’t say it back.”
He stayed silent, just staring at me. “I told you, it’s just words.”
“Words that meant everything to me,” I gritted out. “You knew that, and you took that from me.”
“Listen—”
“You can’t even say it back!” I shouted back, a small part praying, wishing he told me he loved me, and he didn’t.
My chest was rising and falling, and the machines I was hooked on started to beep like crazy.
“It was never about me. It was always about the fucking diamond.”
“Miss. Miss, you need to calm down.”
“Ember,” Ren warned, looking at me much like he had the first time I met him. He was mad, and I didn’t care.
“Get. Him. Out,” I shouted. The nurses were telling me to keep calm, and Ren looked at me, walked out the door, and never returned.
It was for the best; my life was now at peace without him. Except when it wasn’t, because Ren was like a damn tornado. Pure chaos, dark, twisted, beautiful, and destructive. I was too mesmerized. I got caught up in his path, and now that he was gone, I was not the same.
A part of me felt stronger, like I could conquer the world. I survived what Silas did to me, and I was surviving with a broken heart. Other parts of me felt weaker. There was a need that wasn’t getting fed, and I ignored it, pretending it wasn’t at the back of my mind calling his name.
I pulled my legs up on the bench, resting my chin on them, and I smelled the flowers. Tomorrow I would be getting out and rejoining the “real” world. My dad’s accident, my so-called uncle going AWOL, pushed me over the edge, and I finally sought help.
I was a diamond, and diamonds don’t break.
It turns out I didn’t pull that out of my ass. It was something my father used to say to me when I was little before we moved to America. My therapy sessions were intense, especially the first one I had with my father. There was a lot of crying, apologizing, feeling ashamed. He cried, I cried. We both lied to protect the other, and at the end of the day, he didn’t judge me, and I couldn’t do the same. After our first session, I told him I needed a smoke, and he just laughed and said I had to wait until I got home.
I always knew my problem wasn’t that I needed the drugs. I just did them to party, to have fun, to be what everyone already thought of me. When I was with Silas, they were a crutch, but now the only thing I craved was pot. Well, almost the only thing.
“May I sit next to you?”
My head snapped up at the soft lull of the woman’s voice. She had black hair and pale skin and was about my height, maybe just a tad bit taller, but that wasn’t saying a lot.
“Go ahead,” I said, getting ready to get up out of the way and let her have the bench.
“I love daphnes; they’re my favorite,” she said in the same low tone, almost like it was being controlled. “I’m sorry…I’m probably freaking you out. I come every week to visit my brother, and I see you sitting here looking so alone, I couldn’t help myself.”
“My father came already; he gets tired easily,” I mumbled, trying not to be rude to her.
“Ah, fathers. They can be a big blessing or the biggest of burdens.”
Wasn’t that the damn truth? I sat there with the weird goth chick until we got talking about other life things. She had a way of coaxing things out of you. She told me things about life, and I told her about mine without going into detail.
She went to play with her hair, and the tattoo at her wrist caught my eye. It was simple yet elegant, just the letter S, and I wonder if it meant something to her.
“Boyfriend’s name?” I asked her with pain because I was pathetic, and tattoos reminded me of Ren.
“It’s a family tattoo. We all get them.” She smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes.
“How about you? A boyfriend waiting for you once you’re out?” she asked, and if she knew if we were meant to wait before going into a relationship so soon, she didn’t care.
“There’s no one,” I mumbled.
“You have fire in your gaze,” she said as her silver eyes pierced me. I found it hard to keep looking into her eyes, so I looked away.
“My time is up,” she said as she stood up. She might have been short, but she carried herself with confidence. Before she left, she turned to me one last time. “You can often tell the measure of a man or a woman by simply looking at those they’ve given their hearts to.”
What a weirdo.
Even so, as I watched her leave, her words stayed with me.
Ren
Hidden in the shadows, I waited for the gates of the rehab facility to open. I was too far off that Ember wouldn’t see me, so I wasn’t worried about that. Leaving her in the hospital was the last thing I wanted to do, but she had almost died and didn’t want me there. So as mad as it made me, I left. I had shit to take care of, so I would give her time to get her pretty little head on straight, and then I would go for her.
I didn’t believe in coincidences. From the start, Ember was meant to be mine. Everything kept adding up. Out of all the people who lived next to her, it had to be Ashton Hill. Thanks to Enzo, I was able to gain access to the emergency tunnel. I lit a cigarette and brought it to my lips, not wanting to think about what would have happened had I killed anyone who stood in my way just to get to the top floor. I would never have made it to Ember on time.
She was my ultimate addiction, and I knew I was hers, so no amount of rehab was going to take that want away. I watched the gates open and her Maybach leave the grounds, and I knew her days of pretending she didn’t need me were numbered.
You never really let your addictions go; you pretended like they were irrelevant by making a new life where they are forgotten, to find something new to sink yourself into to forget that one craving you had. It would be a cold day in hell before I let Ember forget me.
I took a drag and exhaled. “You can run, princess, but you’ll never hide.”
So I watched her leave in her car back to her pretty little tower, and I stayed behind because, before I could go back to her, there were a few things I had to take care of.
Watching my surroundings, I made my way to my motorcycle. I was laying low in one of Gideon’s safe houses. The Estacados had done enough, and if I lived long enough, I owed them three favors.
The only reason G had been sticking around was that he was waiting for the day they came for my head. Last two months, I was busy tracking a scared little Pam all the way to Mexico. The bitch didn’t make it very far.
The only mercy I gave her was by killing her easy and making it clean. I didn’t know why she was surprised I had found her or why she thought her begging would mean dick to me.
Walking into my place, I pulled out one of my scalpels and went to the basement.
“Hope you didn’t miss me too much,” I said despite the smell of piss and feces.
One month later
In every newsstand in the city was Ember. I felt my chest constrict at seeing her picture. She was fucking gorgeous and took my breath away. She looked healthier; her skin glowed. Her hair was a little longer, but her smile didn’t reach her face.
“Just this,” I told the guy, buying a copy.
“I didn’t take you for the sentimental type.”
Ignoring Marcus’s comment, I turned around to look at headquarters.
“How’s she doing?”
“She’s good… She won’t say it, but she fears Silas will come back.” Marcus gave me a look that I ignored. If he suspected, he didn’t say or give any indication he cared. “I put in my resignation already.”
Marcus left shortly after telling me his plans. I looked up at the sky, trying to see all the way to Ember’s office, and then I left.
She got her so-called happiness, yet she wasn’t happy. She had her peace of mind, and yet she lived in fear. The time for waiting was over, and it was time I went back to her, but before I did there was just one little thing I had to take care of.
I went back to my place but left the lights off this time. My footsteps were slow and low; I didn’t want to give any warning that I was home. As I made my way down the steps, my heart pounded with excitement, and my dick grew hard. Because after this, I was going to go fuck the hell out of Ember.
I heard the rattle of chains now that he knew I was in the room. Once I was in the center of the room, I raised my hand and reached for the chain, turning the light on.
“Silas.” I smiled as I said his name.
He whimpered and cowered, trying to get closer to the wall. One day in the dark and you’re scared. After a week, you start losing your mind. But after four months, you forget you’re even human.
He had a chain around his legs, preventing him from going very far. I liked to monitor his every step, just as he liked to monitor Ember’s. He’d always been a pale-looking fucker, but now he looked gray; it was the lack of food, water, and blood. His body was frail, ribs showing, the skin marred and scarred from the cuts I’d given him, then wiped away with saltwater.
