Page 88 of Temptation
“Maybe.” A chuckle sounded behind me when another strike came. My entire body trembled, tears stained my cheeks, but I never cried out, never uttered a word. “But you still didn’t tell me what I was asking. Where are they?” The next blow came with his last sentence, harsher than the other, biting into my skin.
I whimpered and bit my lip to stop myself from crying.
“Big boys don’t cry.” Dad had told me almost a year ago when I fell from my bicycle and scratched my knee. “Just bite your lip, Ash.” He smiled at me while he cleaned the wound.
And I bit my lip now, the coppery taste invading my mouth when the blood spilled from the puncture wound my teeth created.
Whoosh, and another hit, and my father bellowed loud enough for everyone to hear.
“They’re in Althea! Please, stop doing this. Eleara and Gabriel are in Althea.”
But Judah didn’t stop. He didn’t stop when they cried. He didn’t stop when they told him that the little girl was with them or that she had hair the same color as his.
And he didn’t stop even when I started slipping into the darkness, all their voices just a distant sound.
* * *
I woke up with a start,the remnants of the familiar nightmare still lingering at the outskirts of my mind. My back tingled where the belt left permanent scars marring my skin.
Since we started living with Uncle Neal, I’d been having nightmares that resembled this one. Sometimes I had a feeling that the night my parents died was just the beginning of an end. In those first few years, I couldn’t see the faces—I could only hear screams—but once I remembered what exactly happened, it was as if the dam opened inside my chest, letting the anger consume my body.
I scrubbed my hand over my face and stared at the dark ceiling, replaying what happened last night. I could still taste both of them on my tongue. My skin remembered the feel of Skylar’s hands on me, of my hand wrapped around Dylan’s throat… A groan tore from my chest, and I covered my eyes with my hands, calming my racing heart.
The window on my right side was open, the breeze slowly moving the curtains. I fucking hated wintertime, and as each day passed, I could feel it in the air. The scent of snow, of bone-chilling cold, and the darker and shorter days ahead.
And just like snow, my dream still lingered on the edges of my mind, replaying like a bad movie I couldn’t quite forget.
Now I knew who Eleara and Gabriel were. Now I knew why my parents died, and who they were protecting. It should’ve made this all easier. It should’ve calmed down the rage I’d been feeling my entire life, but instead, it had the opposite effect because they died for nothing. They betrayed them. They betrayed Skylar’s parents, and in return, Skylar ended up with the Blackwood family, having a life filled with lies and monsters.
Everything my uncle told me, every single thing we found out, it was all there just to camouflage what was really going on. I dove straight into the vengeance without asking proper questions, almost getting myself and my brother killed. I was reckless and cruel, when I didn’t even have all the facts.
I came to Winworth with revenge on my mind—revenge against the Blackwood family—ready to use all means necessary to fulfill my goal, even if it meant hurting a girl who had nothing to do with what they did.
Turns out that I truly was just a kid, kept in the dark and only given enough information to go headfirst into battle without thinking about anything else first.
But why would my uncle lie to me? It made no sense whatsoever. He was my father’s best friend. He was our Godfather. He cared for us, took us in when we had nowhere to go and behaved like a father figure all these years.
Or was it all just a pretense so that he could get whatever he wanted to get?
I hated this weakness, this inability to do anything. My entire life was perfectly curated to fulfill this revenge Uncle Neal and myself talked about so many times, and now… Now there was a possibility that all of it was a lie.
A familiar pain still burned my heart, thinking about Skylar, thinking about all the mistakes I made.
I had to fix it.
Foolishly, I thought there for a second that she would willingly participate in the depravity the Order brought with themselves. But she was just a victim. Just another victim, another pawn in their fucked-up game, and she suffered as much as I did. I almost destroyed the only good thing in my life, too blinded by rage and revenge. I almost lost what truly mattered to me.
And then last night… Last night I let myself go. I’d spent years hiding parts of myself, too ashamed to admit that my body yearned for a lot more than only one person could offer. I should’ve known better than to suppress those cravings, because if I did, my life would’ve been much fuller.
Years of living a lie. Years filled with longing, with rage, with burning anger that destroyed pieces of me, and I thought it was alright. If I didn’t allow myself to feel, then no one would have the power to destroy me, to hinder the plan I had. Turns out that the plans I had were nothing but a lie, created by a man I thought I could trust.
Once we managed to untangle ourselves from each other, with Dylan on the other side of the bed, still sleeping soundly, we went through Judah’s office, trying to find something—anything really, that could help us understand this mess a little bit better.
Now I wished we had left that house empty-handed, because the truth had more power than secrets did. The truth threatened to destroy the walls we built around ourselves, because we didn’t want to know what truly happened. It was easier being angry, tormented by the past, because at least then we had something to hold on to.
I had held onto that anger for as long as I could, but with facts presented in front of me, I couldn’t keep going down the same path. This path I was on was filled with nothing but destruction, pain, and eternal misery, and I didn’t want that for myself. I didn’t want that for Skylar or Dylan. I wanted to wake up without the lingering thoughts of darkness on the edges of my mind. I wanted to look at my brother and smile because I truly was happy at that moment. I didn’t want to fill my life with misery.
There was light waiting for me at the end. There were good things waiting for me—two of them in fact. It was time to stop this vicious cycle our ancestors put us in. It was time to stop living my life for others, and to start living it for me.
