Page 47

I couldn’t decide if that made me a horrible person or a smart one.

We walked down the hallway, Ryder and Asher on either side of me.

“Where are the others?” I heard Ryder ask Asher.

“I told them to meet me by the elevator,” he responded. “If we’re not there in ten minutes, I told them just to go without us.”

Ryder snorted.

“Do you think Calax will listen?”

“Not likely.”

“You know,” I began conversationally, sidestepping a family that was hurrying towards the staircase. “You guys don’t have to come with me.”

Asher smirked, and Ryder actually began to laugh. Elbowing me in the stomach gently, Ryder said, “Not happening, Kitten.”

“We already said that we adopted you,” Asher added.

“But not as a sister,” I pointed out. The two boys exchanged a quick glance - a bro glance, I surmised. It was impossible for me to decipher.

“Not as a sister,” Ryder agreed at last. We reached a fork in the hall, and I led the guys to the right, through a door, and into the kitchen.

For a moment, I stood there, stunned. This was the same kitchen that, only days before, I had been tortured in, to my utter mortification. And that was what I felt: embarrassment and something akin to shame. These, I realized, were not natural emotions one should experience when dealing with abuse. I felt sick at the direction of my thoughts. I had grown so used to the abuse, the torture, that it had become nothing but second nature. It was odd for a day to go by where I wasn’t attacked, either emotionally or physically. Instead of anger or sadness that one would expect, I felt nothing but a deep sense of failure. It had been my fault; it always was, and it always would be.

Asher, behind me, let out a gruff sound. It was apparent that he, too, was remembering that day.

“Why are we here?” Ryder asked with disdain. His eyes flickered towards the stovetop, as if he was visualizing my body erupting into flames on the surface. His brow furrowed, and he quickly looked away, as if he was in physical pain.

“I think my parents had a meeting today in the dining room,” I explained, taking stock of the abandoned kitchen. A pound of lettuce was left unattended on a cutting board, and smoke was beginning to curl from the oven. The crew had obviously left in a hurry.

Almost absently, I turned off the oven. The last thing we needed was a fire on top of a tornado.

“At least everyone was smart enough to leave and get to lower grounds,” Asher mused, obviously coming to the same conclusion I had.

“Hopefully my parents were some of those smart people,” I said, though I severely doubted it. Knowing my folks, they would be sitting in the dining room, alone, screaming for waiters that would never come. My parents were idiots. Smart idiots, but idiots. And not smart. But smart. But also kind of dumb. Could someone be a smart, dumb idiot? Or maybe a dumb smart-

“Focus Addie,” Ryder chided. I mentally cursed myself. Deciding whether or not my parents were dumb or smart was not productive towards our current predicament.

“I’m trying, but I-”

My next comment was cut off by a two-hundred-pound body jumping on mine. Okay, I know what you’re thinking. Again, Addie? Because, yes, I was being tackled to the ground, and no, it wasn’t in a sexy kind of way. I would consider it more like the piss-your-pants-because-there’s-a-guy-attacking-me way.

I screamed, lifting my hands to protect my face.

Why did this always happen to me?

I recognized the man as a chef - though I couldn’t recall his name. His bulky body was visible through his tattered, blood-stained clothing. Dark veins marred his skin, as if he had some parasite crawling beneath the surface. The skin itself flapped with each of his movements, not properly connected to his bones, and his eyes glowed a vibrant red.

Before I could do anything, his body was ripped off me and pushed to the side.

“What the hell?” Ryder shouted, grappling with the heavier man. Chef screamed, a guttural sound, and tried, ineffectively, to bite at Ryder’s face.

He was right. What the freaking hell?

Though Ryder was young, he was no match for the immense beast of the man. In a matter of seconds, he was pinned beneath Chef’s body.

Asher rushed forward and tackled Chef, a flurry of limbs and blood.