Ruthless Empire (Royal Elite Book 6) Page 16

  I dream of voices. At first it’s my mum’s voice telling me I’m a disappointment and that this isn’t how she raised me to become.

  Deep inside, I know it’s the guilt talking, but I can’t help the tears that stream down my cheeks. I’m that eight-year-old again wearing the princess dress with butterfly ribbons and running down the street and crying.

  “Papa! Mummy! I’m so sorry. Come back please.”

  They don’t. They continue to walk in different directions. I stand in the middle of the street, not knowing which one to follow. My feet are frozen. My heart palpitates faster with every passing second.

  “Mummy! Papa!”

  They don’t turn around or acknowledge me. They just keep going, getting farther with each breath.

  “You want help, my beautiful?”

  My head snaps up at the suave voice. Adam. He’s big, like in real life, and he’s wearing his rugby jersey. He smiles as a trail of blood oozes from his teeth and then down his chin.

  “S-stay away from me.” I step back. He steps in.

  The blood is now dripping down his blue jersey and his white shorts. His smile has turned red and his eyes are camouflaged in shadows.

  “You’re beautiful, a masterpiece.” His voice turns monotone like those demons from horror films. “Come with me.”

  “No!” I keep walking backwards as I stare at the road my father took. “Papa!”

  He stops and hope flares in my chest, but when he turns around, a scowl covers his face. “You disappointed me, Silver. You’re no longer my daughter.”

  Then he evaporates into smoke.

  “No! Papa!”

  Adam and his shadow are getting closer. I’m taking larger steps back, my heart nearly skipping over itself.

  I stare at the other road. “Mum! Come back, please.”

  She does, but she’s crying. Her tears are red and her hand is wrapped around her wrist. Blood splashes from it and pools at her feet.

  “Why did you do this, Babydoll?” she whispers and then drops into the pool, drowning in it.

  “Muuum!”

  “You only have me now.” Adam reaches a black-coated hand in my direction.

  I scream.

  The sound is muffled when another hand wraps around me from behind and snaps my neck.

  I startle awake to be greeted by the darkness in my room.

  My harsh breathing echoes in the silence and my clothes stick to my back with sweat.

  He’s coming for me.

  He’ll catch me.

  He will —

  “Silver?”

  The sound of Cole’s voice instantly calms me down. I don’t know how, but it does.

  He hits the light switch to reveal he’s been sitting on my bed. Grabbing my hand, he slowly uncurls my stiff fingers from around my necklace. I’ve been holding it and my chest in a death grip as if that could’ve saved me from the nightmare I was seeing.

  No. I didn’t only see that nightmare. I lived and felt it to my bones.

  Papa and Mum left me.

  Adam was coming for me, and then he or something else killed me.

  No one was there for me.

  A sob tears from my throat and it’s like I’ve been holding on for eternity to express whatever is lurking inside me.

  “Come here, Butterfly.” Cole opens his arms.

  I don’t hesitate as I dive into them, my hands wrapping around his waist and my face disappearing into the hard muscles of his chest.

  Whenever I inhale, I take in his clean scent mixed with cinnamon, and it’s like my own therapy.

  For long seconds, we stay there as he strokes my hair away from my forehead and rubs small circles on my back.

  My breathing evens out, and just when I think I’m going back to sleep, his quiet voice surrounds me, “What happened?”

  It’s like a spell has been broken. Whatever halo I’ve been trying to pretend exists shatters all around me.

  He’s the reason why I had that nightmare. How the hell could I take refuge in him?

  I start to push away, but Cole keeps me pinned in place by the hand on my back. Literally on my back. He has reached under my oversized T-shirt and has his palm on my bare skin.

  Holy shit.

  I’m suddenly fully aware that I’m completely naked under the T-shirt.

  “D-did you change my clothes?” I stare up at him with horror.

  “Mum did.” His lips tug in a smirk. “Not that it would be something new if I saw you naked. I can even picture you right now.”

  I scowl at him, then fist my hand and hit him across the chest. He chuckles, the sound quiet and easy in the room.

  “There you are.” He strokes my hair from my forehead. “I thought I lost you for a second there.”

  “It was just a nightmare.” A very real one at that.

  I feel like it’s the nightmare of my life. Since my parents’ divorce, I’ve had similar nightmares of them leaving. After Mum’s suicide attempt, I dreamt about blood for months.

  However, this is the first time everything’s poured out at the same time.

  “Nightmares are usually a manifestation of your subconscious.” Cole’s fingers are still lost in my hair, and I’d purr like a kitten if I didn’t want to stab him right now.

  “Yeah, and my subconscious, just like my consciousness, hates you.”

  That nightmare was a symptom of my guilt over what I let happen with Cole. The perverted pleasure I got from it. The heart-pounding sensation I keep on getting whenever he pushes my buttons or challenges me.

  It’s all because of him and his damn existence that I’m spiralling out of control.

  “I didn’t know you were fainting,” he says calmly.

  “As if you would care?” This time I do pull away from him, inserting much-needed distance between us. “Your only goal is to get what you want. What if I faint or die or get hit by a freaking bus? It’ll all just be a part of your sick games.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Not true? Give me a break, Cole. You’re only doing this to me to prove you can, to be the winner as usual, to see me shatter and lose.”

  He interlaces our fingers and lays them across his stomach as he watches me with an unreadable expression. “Is that what you think?”

  “That’s what it is.”

  “It isn’t.”

  “Are you telling me you would’ve done all this rubbish if you didn’t feel threatened by Aiden?” My voice loses strength by the end, and I curse myself for being this affected with that thought.

  “Stop bringing him up when you and I are talking.” His tone lowers. “If it’s only us, then it’s going to be only about the two of us.”

  “You want it about the two of us? Fine. Here’s a two-of-us talk… I want you to leave me the hell alone.”

  “See, you have a problem, Silver.”

  “A problem?”

  “You’re a liar and you’re in denial. You can lie to yourself all you want, but you can’t lie to me. You don’t get to spy on me when I’m playing football or when I’m swimming and then pretend you don’t care about me. You don’t get to act territorial about me by chasing all the girls away, then decide you just did that for the family image. You don’t get to come all over my fingers, my tongue, and my dick, then pretend you don’t fucking want me.”

  Oh, God.

  I swallow the lump in my throat, staring at him as if he’s grown two heads.

  “But those aren’t the only lies you tell yourself,” he continues in that infuriatingly calm tone. “You pretend you’re happy for your father when you secretly hate his new marriage because you always had a fairy tale dream about your parents getting back together. You love my mum, but you feel guilty towards your mum because of it. You sometimes wish you were never born as your parents’ kid, because maybe that would make you feel wholesome like other children with non-separated parents. You feel guilty for dropping your friendship with Kimberly, but you act like a bitch to her because
it’s your only defence mechanism to keep her away. You don’t want her to see the ugly parts of you or how empty you actually feel inside. You’re flawed and you hate those flaws, so you use the attitude and the looks to make everyone believe you’re a perfect human they wish they could turn into.

  "You keep Summer and Veronica as friends, because they’re disposable and so you won’t feel the pain you still do whenever you look in Kimberly’s direction and realise she also left you behind and chose Elsa over you. Truth is, you’re jealous of Elsa and it’s not because of Aiden. You’re jealous not only that she took Kim, but also that Ronan and Xander are gravitating towards her and leaving your snobbishness behind. But you can’t tell them to spend time with you, because that will make you seem weak, and you loathe that more than losing all your friends who actually matter. You let guys get close, but never close enough to see who you are, what you are. You don’t allow anyone to see your makeup-free face, because you’re self-conscious about the freckles on your nose. You’re also self-conscious about listening to rock music, and you do it in secret because you’re worried that if Cynthia or anyone finds out you do listen to it, they’ll think you don’t deserve to play the piano. You —”

  “Shut up!” My voice shakes, then breaks, coming out as haunted as I feel.

  It’s like I’ve listened to a distorted retelling of my life. As if someone dipped their fingers inside me and wrenched out a part of me I’ve always kept under lock and key.

  No. Not someone.

  Cole.

  He once again took my choice and learnt things he has no business learning.

  Considering how observant he is, I figured he knew a few things about me, but never in my wildest dreams would I have thought he delved too deep.

  “Why?” he speaks casually, as if he didn’t just flip my world upside down. “You don’t like listening to the truth being thrown in your face? I can tell you about —”

  “Stop it.” I meant it as an order, but it comes out as a plea. “Just stop, Cole.”

  He drapes a hand around my nape and pulls me over so our foreheads connect. I gulp in harsh intakes of air, breathing him in with every inhale.

  “Here’s the thing, Butterfly, I can’t stop.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you’re my chaos, and I can’t survive without chaos.”

  “I’m chaos?”

  “The worst of all. The most beautiful of all. And you know what? You might as well be the deadliest.”

  My breathing chops off. “Are you ever going to let me go?”

  “Are you?”

  No.

  The word stabs in my head as real and as gut-wrenching as that nightmare. There’s no need to think about it. I know for a fact that if I saw any girl near him again, I’d plot her fall and break her to unrecognisable pieces.

  But I don’t say that, because truth is, I knew Cole lived for chaos. Under his calm exterior, it’s the only thing he plans for. The only thing he lives day-to-day for.

  He always, without doubt, loses interest once the chaos turns boring.

  That’s the same case for me. If I stop bringing chaos into his life and disrupting its flow in some way, he’ll drop me as if I never existed.

  That thought pierces my heart more than the manifestation of my subconscious in that nightmare.

  If I even remotely want to have him, then I need to be his chaos.

  His only chaos.

  And for that, I’m letting Papa, Mum, and even Helen down. I’m free-falling to sin and I have no way to stop it.

  “That’s what I thought.” He grins, drops a kiss on my nose, and pulls me to him again.

  He lies on his back and hugs me to the crook of his body so that I’m half-laying over him.

  “Cole? What are you doing?”

  His eyes are already closed. “What does it look like I’m doing? I’m sleeping.”

  “You can’t sleep here,” I whisper-hiss, but when I try to get up, he pins me to his side.

  “Sure I can, Butterfly. In fact, I don’t like my bed. I’m going to use yours every night.”

  “You can’t do that.”

  “Watch and see.”

  “Papa or Helen could come in.”

  “It’s locked; they won’t.”

  “Still —”

  “Just shut your busy brain for a second,” he cuts me off, sighing. “Close your eyes and sleep.”

  “You think it’s that easy?”

  “It is. I’ll give you pointers to sleep better.”

  “Pointers?”

  “Actually it’s one. Dream of me.”

  I groan as I place my hand on his chest. Now that he’s put the idea in my head, I’m so sure I will.

  “I hate you,” I tell him.

  He smiles as his lips brush against my temple and stay there. “Not as much as you want me, Butterfly.”

  21

  Cole

  As much as Silver acts like a bitch or directs all her maliciousness towards me, she sleeps like an angel.

  Literally like one.

  She snuggles to my side, her nails digging into my T-shirt. I inwardly groan at the memory of her dragging them down my back. She thinks she was hurting me, when in fact, she was proving how territorial she actually is about me.

  Did she really think I wouldn’t notice she was leaving those marks so all the female population would see them? She was basically marking her territory.

  Silver might be more low-key about her possessiveness, but it’s lurking in the background, waiting to be unleashed on the world.

  Her long lashes flutter on her cheeks and her lips part the slightest bit, wishing for my fingers inside them.

  The loose T-shirt slides down her cleavage, outlining the pale flesh of her tit and there’s a hint of her rosy nipple that’s begging for my fucking mouth on it.

  I slowly pull the shirt up to hide it. My dick protests, but he needs to wait. Silver might sleep like an angel, but she’s a light sleeper. If I touch her, she’ll wake up, and I know I won’t stop if I start touching her. I have to take care of something else first.

  Of course, I haven’t slept. One, she’s too distracting, moulding to my side like this. Two, this is one of the rarest chances I’ll get to take care of unfinished business.

  I could’ve done it in the car earlier after I made Aiden drive us while I held her in the back seat, but I was too focused on her well-being to think of anything else.

  Aiden was right — I took it too far. But that’s the thing about Silver, it’s clear that I have no brakes when it comes to her.

  That’s not good.

  Control is everything I have. I command situations and people before the action even plays out. I’m a director, but my sets are real and my actors are actual people.

  However, when Silver showed up dressed like a fucking fantasy at my room in Ronan’s house, and not only kicked out Jennifer but also took her place, I lost all common sense.

  After the last text I sent her, I suspected she’d follow; I never thought she’d be that direct about it. I never thought she’d actually let me tie her down and gag her and blindfold her. Or that she’d enjoy it the way she did.

  Then she pissed me off by refusing to admit she wanted it and I lost track.

  I can’t do that.

  I need a remote control when I’m with her. Or that’s what I told myself. Then I found myself sneaking into her room again.

  It was a bit easier when I didn’t have her. Now that she’s mine, I can’t stay away. Not touching her has become equivalent to physical torture.

  And now, I need to know what’s bothering her. No one fucks with her.

  Or at least, no one but me.

  Moving slowly, I retrieve her phone from the nightstand and use her forefinger’s print to unlock it.

  She mumbles something, but then her breathing evens out again.

  Her wallpaper is a picture of the four of us from the wedding. She’s hugging Sebastian’s waist and I’m s
tanding beside Mum.

  I grind my teeth.

  I know what she’s doing. She’s reminding herself every second of the day that the world sees us as siblings — even if she doesn’t.

  We’ll see about that, my Butterfly.

  I open her gallery and scroll through her recent photos. They’re mostly a few selfies she took with Summer and Veronica on their way to Ronan’s party.

  Then I find a picture that makes me stop and click it.

  It’s a shot of her out of the shower, wearing a towel, her wet blonde hair falling on either side of her. It’s a selfie, but her entire face isn’t visible — only from the nose down.

  She’s trapping her lower lip under her teeth. Her towel is slightly loose around her tits to show the hickey — the same one I left above her right tit when I fucked her in the shower.

  Silver took this picture right after I left. She wanted to memorise it, to store it for safekeeping.

  I smile down at her. If hickeys are what she wants, I’ll bathe her body with them until the entire fucking world knows she’s taken. They might never know it’s me, but they’ll know she belongs to someone.

  After sending the photo to my phone, I delete the text to myself and go to her messages, ignoring her group chat with her shallow friends. I don’t have to search long to find what I’m looking for. Unknown Number.

  My muscles tense the more I read the texts. They started years ago — three, to be exact. It was around the time she became glued to her phone, sometimes smiling, other times frowning.

  The number sends texts almost daily. In most of them, he tells her she’s beautiful, and in others, he’ll mention details about her daily life he wouldn’t know unless he watches her closely.

  The Queens’ mansion has high security. No one but the family members and Sebastian’s team is allowed inside without supervision. And Cynthia. Somehow, Sebastian allows her free access to his house.

  He hasn’t sent texts about her home clothes. They’re mostly about what she wears to go out. So this means he’s close, but not too close.