Chapter 164 HELL
KAI’S POINT OF VIEW.
Her voice….it was still the same as the last time I’d heard it. I thought I knew how much I’d missed it…until I heard it for the first time since after what felt like forever. She looked ethereal, and it wasn’t because of the way she was dressed. It was the way she’d matured, but even as I tried to keep myself calm, to restrain my desire to pull her into my arms, kiss her, and hug her so she wouldn’t leave me again….so I wouldn’t…lose her all over again.
I could see something haunted in her eyes….it looked like perfectly concealed pain, like something she’d kept hidden for so long that she’d masked it so wonderfully, the average man wouldn’t see it. But I could see it. Maybe it was because of the kind of man I’d become, or the simple fact that I knew her.
“Twenty thousand dollars.” She scoffed, a pained laugh escaped her perfect red lips. She looked away from me, and it felt like someone had shot me. ‘No…please let me see you again.’ I yelled on the inside. I didn’t want to scare her away. I don’t know what I'm expecting, but I know I'd be a fool to think she would jump on me excitedly, and we’d reunite… she seemed too…wounded for that.
“I should have known. It seemed too good to be true, but I was a fool because I wanted it to be real.” She turned her gaze back to me. This time around, I could see annoyance clearly in her gaze. “Tell me, Kai…do you think your billionaire status makes you a fucking god?
I might be a stripper, but I am no whore. You can't just throw that amount of money because you think I'm some cheap slut who’d come running like a dog….I still have my dignity attached to my being.”
“What on earth are you talking about?” I furrowed my brows and rose so my form stretched over hers. “I only did that so you wouldn’t escape…I didn’t mean anything like that, Rory.”
“Do not call me that!” she flinched as if I’d burned her. “Don’t ever call me that again. My name, as far as you’re concerned, is Barbie….understood?”
“No….you’re Aurora…my Rory, and nothing would change that. What happened all those years ago? Why did you suddenly stop coming to school?” I fired questions, my mind drifting to that morning of school where I'd waited for hours at the gate, just waiting for her father’s black Benz to pull in so she could hop out.
But she never did, not that day, or every other day id waited till I gave up.
“I tried searching for you at your house, but still…no one told me anything.” I would have said more, but the way her eyes widened, coupled with her sudden trembling, cut me off. She looked as if I’d told her something terrifying.
“You did what?” she hissed. “Why the hell would you do that, Kai?! Wait….it’s all your fault,” she whispered, and started pacing, her words coming out more frantic now.
“Everything happened so suddenly. I wondered why Dad switched up on me suddenly. It’s because of you….you’re the reason hell tipped over on me,” she pointed at me suddenly. “How could you do this to me…you know everything, yet you acted so selfish….Kai…..why?” Her tears gathered in her eyes, and it stung me.
“What are you talking about….I don’t know what you’re saying…please explain to me.” I walked over to her and tried to touch her cheek. But before I could even lift my hand properly, she flinched and moved further away from me. “Aurora….” I winced.
“I said…that’s not my name,” she hissed at me again.
“Listen….what was I supposed to know? I promise, tell me, and I’ll make amends. How did I ruin things….how did I go to your house to ask after you make things worse….and what things?”
“Do not play pretend, Kai…..it’s not fucking funny.” She grimaced.
“I really don’t know….tell me, and I'll fix it.”
“There's no fixing this!” she yelled. “No fixing us either, Kai. You really want to tell me you don’t know about the long-standing rivalry between our families, even dating back at least ten generations?”
“What…no…what rivalry? Why would we be rivals, and even if we were, why does it matter to us, and the way we feel about each other?”
“It matters! Because the second someone saw us kiss on the rooftop that day at school, they reported to my father…and when I got home…” she shivered, her arms going about wrapping around herself as if she was trying to protect something. “My father wasn’t too happy about it…and he let me know. He pulled me from school immediately, divorced my mother, kicked her out of the house too, because in his logic, it was her fault that I was corrupted by a Lannister.”
It was my turn to flinch, and it was at that darn name.
“That’s not my name.” I threw her words back at her, my tone of voice hard and raw; the memories of the name and what it entails pulled me to another place entirely….a dark place I crawled to get out of every day because the demons attached to it knew how to torment me.
“What?” She asked, confused.
I swallowed, looking away from her so I could rein my anger in….the last thing I wanted to do was yell, especially when she’s here. “Nothing….you were saying?”
“My father thought a mere kiss was enough to damn my soul to hell, so he said I wouldn’t go to Ravenscroft High anymore, but to a convent school for all girls that he would choose. He also betrothed me to someone….But I couldn’t live like that, so I tried to escape.
I wasn’t so lucky. The woman my dad married after my mother found out, and told him.” She scoffed, a lone tear fell, but she wiped it off immediately. “And when my dad returned that night….he let me know just how disappointed he was in me.”
She turned her back to me, so I could see something….a long, red, jagged scar on her back. It’d been covered with a small tattoo…But I still saw it.
“Fuck.” I clenched my hands into a fist, wishing more than anything for it to be her father so I could bash his face into the wall.
“Yeah…..it hurt, and I told myself that night, that I wouldn’t be shipped off to a convent, I wouldn’t marry some man or guy I didn't know. I planned my escape, and this time, I made it.” She smiled, but just as soon as it appeared, it disappeared.
“But the universe hates me, because my mother fell sick one day. We were in the small apartment she’d managed to get in the shittiest part of town. I thought it was a cold, or she was tired from her job of washing restaurant dishes every day.
I took her to the hospital, reassuring her it would be okay, because the doctor would give her some medication, and she’d be back home asleep again. Only for the test results to come out, and we saw she had stage four lung cancer.”
I blanched at the news. I had never seen the woman before, but this news, her reaction…how did I not see that she wasn’t okay while she was at school, still in my grasp….how did I lose her?
“So I ran back to my father. I couldn’t afford the bills, but he left a condition….I would have to return home and marry the man he chose for me after three years in the convent. I agreed.” I clenched my jaw at the thought of her marrying someone else or doing what she didn’t want.
“But I was too….tainted, as my father said.” I saw the tears in her eyes, the pain, the hurt… but she didn’t let one drop fall. Instead, she smiled humorlessly. “He’d found out about my job here at the club…ask me how he found out,” she laughed out.
“How?”
“He was one of my customers….for a private dance.” My eyes widened.
“So after that, he said he wouldn’t support my mother or me. He’d only cover half the bills when he felt like it. You would think I would be able to blackmail him.
But the club protects its premium members, so if I dared ask for the footage of the supposed private dance, or the manager got whiff of how I spoke to him, because who’s to say my dad wouldn’t concoct some lie against me, I would have been fired.
My father hasn’t paid up to half of the medical bills, so I have to dance extra hard, I have to refuse to sleep with anyone because I still have my dignity attached….so…now you know.
You were the poison that led to the start of my hell."