Page 32

Skylar

They’ve been in there for almost a fucking hour.

What could he be doing to her? And why the fuck would he go without insisting that we go together? He doesn’t get a free pass just because she put on the fucking mask.

She’s ours, or she’s mine. There is no in-between.

This is complete bullshit. It’s supposed to be me in there. How is it that she’ll fuck me as her stepbrother when she’s desperate enough, but when she’s finally ready to succumb to being a Ruby, she still chooses Julian? I’m the one who made her comatose with that balcony fingerbanging on her birthday.

All he’s ever done is leave her crying.

I’m ordering my fifth drink when I spot her in the corner of my eye, emerging from the Red Room hallway. I must be drunk, because it almost seems like she’s walking right towards me.

Scarlett looks absolutely fucking delicious; that sleek, sexy dress hugging the serpentine curves of her body, those spiked heels I can’t get enough of, and the cherry on top—her intricate red mask. She’s finally embraced who she is , but I’m starting to get the feeling it may have been a mistake to push her there .

The look she’s giving me is unscrupulous, and I can’t help but notice Julian’s not with her. She strokes the side of my face before sliding her fingers over my lips and into my mouth. When a metallic tinge coats the surface of my tongue, I grab her wrist, only to realize her arm is drenched in blood.

“What did you do?” I ask, tightening my hold.

She just smiles. The corners of her mouth twist into a nasty grin like nothing I’ve ever seen before, but before I can ask anything else, she rips her arm away and storms out.

Fuck…fuck…fuck. What the hell did she do?

I bolt from the bar stool and get to the Ruby section as quickly as possible, opening every door until I find him. Julian is lying on the bed with his shirt hanging open, chest covered in blood. She somehow found a way to bind, gag, and blindfold him. There are no signs of resistance, so she must have tricked him—Julian would never let someone touch him like this.

I don’t know where to start first, but I figure the gag works best so he can tell me what the fuck happened while I’m untying the rest of his bindings. “Jules, it’s me,” I rush out, ripping the tape from his mouth and taking out the…panties?

Jesus, this bitch is adjusting to our malady faster than I thought she would. We’ve always said we knew she had it in her, but this is diabolical warfare.

Once he’s completely freed, I prepare myself for the incoming blast of rage and despair over getting tricked into captivity, but he says nothing.

I observe every action, study every facial twitch—anything to get a feel for his mental state—but still, he gives me nothing. “Julian, wake the fuck up!” Snapping my fingers in front of his face, I try to get his attention.

His neck is bent down, his eyes engrossed on the left side of his chest. Smearing the blood around, he clears away the crimson massacre to reveal a word. Not a word—a name.

RUB Y

His fingers trace each letter, and when they finish the tail of the ‘Y’, he murmurs something. “...her initiation.” I don’t understand what he’s talking about, though. Adérfia Aímatos doesn’t accept women, and this isn’t anything like what our initiations looked like. “Her name, signed in blood. She’s ours,” he clarifies, but I’m more confused than ever.

She mutilated him—this was done in anger, not acceptance.

“Let’s take you home, she’s got you all fucked up.” I refasten the buttons on his shirt, being extra careful not to irritate the wound on his chest when I make it to his collar. “Come on,” I insist, but he grabs my bicep before I can make it out the door.

“No. We have to find her.” His entire demeanor flips—the hint of that smile gone from his face and replaced with a stone-cold sense of purpose.

What the fuck is this zombie-brained asshole actually talking about? “Are you insane?” I rebuke. “She tore you up, I’m not letting her anywhere near you.”

I feel like I’m the only reasonable person speaking right now, but he looks at me with a raised brow as if I’m the idiot. “Do you really think she doesn’t know we’re coming? She knows how consequences work with us, and she did it anyway. She’s expecting us.”

“Yeah…well, I’m still wondering how she did it. Are you going to tell me what happened?”

“In the car.” He doesn’t give me time to respond before he’s out the door, so I just follow his lead.

Not like I can do anything else.

I’ve become a passenger on this road trip to hell, with Scarlett and I stuck in the backseat together while Julian drags us wherever he pleases.

I’m no longer in control.

“You told her not to go easy on you? Are you fucking psychotic, why would you do that?” I throw my hands up in exasperation, completely dumbfounded by his stupidity. “You know she’s on a warpath for the Penelope thing. What is wrong with you?”

The bitch slaps and spits on him, and he loses his mind. Yet when she points a knife at him and orders him around, suddenly he’s the ultimate submissive pet? That’s her fucking job, not his. Role reversals don’t work for us, and especially not for Julian. I don’t understand what’s going on with him to make such a turnaround for her sake.

He just shrugs his shoulders. “She made a compelling argument.”

“She called you daddy , you weak little shit. Have some fucking dignity. She got the better of you, and you know it.” I have to laugh, because I’ve seen how controlling he is over her—how vicious he was with her on New Year’s—but this pussy dropped his guard and let her play him like a damned fiddle.

“I’ll admit, I was thrown off. And I definitely didn’t expect her to carve my heart out, but it is what it is. Now it’s my turn.”

“ Our turn,” I clarify, in case it wasn’t fucking clear. “You seem to be forgetting why you’ve even been able to fuck with her at all. Don’t start being a prick now when I’m the only reason you can even do this shit.”

I turn to look at him in the passenger’s seat, and he’s staring right back at me. There’s something about him though. He’s nothing like the Julian I know.

We’re not strangers to a bit of razzing here and there. Like I said, we’ve had our fair share of fights, but the glare in his eyes is unknown to me.

He’s never looked at me like that. Like he doesn’t give a shit what I think. Like he doesn’t care what I want or feel. Like he’s got something else occupying his brain, and whatever—or whoever—it is, is pushing me out.

“Right. I’m the one being a prick. My apologies, your fucking highness,” he scoffs, turning away from me to look out the window.

After making a quick pitstop at home for our cloaks and masks, I drive down campus to her house and park off the main road. When I visited on her birthday, I found a secluded area that’s unfrequented enough to keep my car from sight during these hours of the night.

We take time donning our costumes before trudging through the woods to her balcony, but I’m not sure what the plan is here. Julian has a bag slung over his shoulder, but he hasn’t spoken a word to me in the past 30 minutes, so I’m not holding my breath for an explanation.

I had no intentions of following her—this is all him.

All the lights are off when we approach the house. She’s not on the balcony waiting for us like he thought she’d be, and the TV isn’t on in her room. The house is completely dead. After climbing the trellis and stalking through the balcony door, I’m surprised to find her in bed, slumbering peacefully beneath the covers.

Yeah, there’s no chance in hell she thought we’d come after her immediately. She was saving her energy for the big comeback, so ambushing her in her sleep just feels boring and artless. That’s not our game.

We wait. We watch. We stalk. We hunt.

We take our time coming up with punishments, but we don’t act on impulse.

Julian hasn’t lost his ambition, though. I watch as he gently sets the bag on her floor, rummages through it, and pulls out a few items. It’s too dark in here to actually see what they are, but when he hands me a set of handcuffs, I get the impression he’s going to recreate what she did to him.

He signals for me to follow behind him, coming up beside the bed to make our move. She’s in that weird mid-way position between being on her side and rolling onto her stomach, so Julian takes advantage of it.

After ripping off a piece of duct tape and slapping it across her mouth, he jumps up to mount her ass and wrestles her arms behind her back. “The cuffs, now!” he bites at me through closed teeth, but the way she’s barely trying to fight him off gives me pause .

For a second, I think she hasn’t even woken up because she’s laying so still, and the only sounds coming from her are a few throaty groans and huffs from her nostrils as she tries to breathe through the tape.

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe she was waiting for us. But then why go to sleep and leave herself vulnerable for an attack? That doesn’t seem like her. I would assume she’d want to confront us as usual, not give up her chance to act the brat. Did she give up her fight? She couldn’t have—nobody who doesn’t want to fight would do what she did to Julian.

I hand over the cuffs to him, not particularly interested in taking part in whatever this is. It doesn’t feel right to me, and it’s not the approach I would have wanted to take. This isn’t fun for me, and this isn’t the Scarlett I took pleasure in torturing.

Julian doesn’t take long wrangling her into submission, and now she’s bound, gagged, and…looking right at me.

What the fuck did I do?

He’s the only one who’s put his hands on her, but she won’t stop glaring at me like I’m the goddamn problem. He ties something around her eyes before picking her up and hoisting her over his shoulder, not even bothering to check for Penelope when he opens the door and drags her downstairs.

I don’t know if I should lock her door or leave it open so Penelope thinks Scarlett just went to work in the morning, but I do know it seems like I’m going to be spending the night cleaning up after a madman’s mess if he won’t include me in his plans.

I opt to lock the door from the inside, then climb back down the trellis to meet him around the front of the house. It shouldn’t seem weird for her to be keeping Penelope out of the room—not with all the drama we injected into their relationship.

I still haven’t had time to sit and regret that decision yet, but there will be plenty of opportunities later, I’m sure .

Across the yard, Julian’s carrying her through the trees and straight for my fucking car. He doesn’t bother to ask for permission or take the time to fill me in on whatever idea is bouncing around his head; he just opens the trunk and tosses her inside.

“Kidnapping?! Seriously, you fucking idiot, what are you thinking?” I storm up to him, but he closes the trunk in my face before I can reach her.

Grabbing my arm, he leads me a few feet away from the car—I assume so she can’t hear us arguing—but I shove him off when we’re safely tucked away in the shroud of surrounding forest.

“Look, I get that it might seem crazy, but you have to get on board because I can’t do this alone. Are you not in this anymore? What happened to wanting to make her suffer, make her scream, make her cry?” he asks.

“I did—” I don’t like to talk about my Scarlett shit because he psychoanalyzes me to hell, and I’m not going to let him do it now. “I do , but you’re acting like an insane person, and you won’t tell me what the fuck is going on. I’m not going to blindly go along with whatever you’re doing. We do this shit together, or we don’t do it at all.”

His head drops with a sigh before he nods lightly. “You’re right, sorry. She does have me fucked up, I know, but the idea just sort of came to me when we were riding over.” He looks back at the car, finally giving me the explanation I deserve. “I just want to have a little fun with her, that’s all. Then, we’ll let her go, but you saw her—she’s not fighting it. Maybe you’re still skeptical, but haven’t you realized she’s accepting us?”

I can acknowledge that something has changed, sure…but I don’t think it’s the green light he assumes it to be. “Just don’t cry to me when she hurts you, because I will say I told you so,” I warn. “So, what’s this big plan of yours? Where do you want to take her?”

The Julian I actually recognize starts to resurface, his conniving smile giving me a sort of comfort to know my friend is still in there. Whether I like it or not, we are stuck in this together. Scarlett rejected me as Skylar, but she came back for us at Eden. If this is the only way I can have her, I’ll take what I can get.

“The basement,” he says. “What better way to break it in than using it to break our girl?”