Chapter 46: Chapter Forty-Six

Hours later, after that embarrassing moment with Ryder outside the archive building, Saffron found herself standing in the middle of the vast meeting hall, ready to finish up with her last chore of the day.

Why she had been reassigned back to cleaning was anyone’s guess, but she was grateful she didn’t have to deal with the leering looks and mocking laughs that followed her wherever she went when she had worked at the bar.

The upside to her new relocation was that she got to do her chores alone, with no one watching her, a verbal attack ready on the tip of their tongue. The environment was peaceful and void of hostility.

The downside to it, however, was that she had to sweep and scrub thousands of square feet of wooden floors, wash dirty bathrooms and linens, with no lunch breaks to be had.

With a deep sigh, she crouched beside the bucket filled with soapy water, dipped her brush in, and began to scrub the floor like her life depended on it.

Her back ached from all the buckets of water she had hurled around, from one end of the island to the other, and her stomach ached from hunger. But that didn’t stop her from doing as she had been ordered to, even though she wanted to be anywhere but there.

With a self-deprecating sigh, she shook her head and returned her attention back to the task at hand, her eyes widening in shock when she saw the area she had already cleaned now caked in mud, looking filthier than when she had begun to scrub it.

Her brows furrowed in confusion as she looked back and forth between the filthy floor, her hands, and the bucket of water.

The water was the same as it had been, with bubbles of soap floating over the bucket, and her hands were spotless, save for the drops of water. When she dunked the large brush back into the bucket and brought it out again, blue-ish water dipped down the floor.

She bit her bottom lip, contemplating whether she had cleaned the muddy spot or not, if her mind was playing a trick on her, or if the fatigue was finally getting to her and making her forget where she had cleaned and where she hadn’t.

She hurled the bucket back towards the spot and began to scrub the floor in earnest, her breath becoming ragged, as the harder she scrubbed the floor, the filthier it became.

What the hell was going on? She wondered, choking back on a sob, her fingers numb and aching from how hard she was working her hands on the floor.

She threw the brush down and sat back on her hunches when it became apparent that the floor was not getting any cleaner because the harder she scrubbed at it, the muddier it became.

She covered her face with her hands, past caring about the filth they were covered in, as she took in large gasping breaths, trying to fight off the sob that wanted to escape from her lips.

She had cried enough. She didn’t want to waste any more tears.

She scrubbed her hand through her hair as she tried to rationalize what was happening.

There had to be some sort of explanation for how a clean bucket of soapy water was making a wooden floor dirty when there had been no mud spilled on it prior to when she had started scrubbing it.

What though?

What could explain away what she was seeing?

She huffed out a laugh, shaking her head as she leaned her body against the wall, tears spilling down her face, yet her laughter never ceased.

This was it.

This was the moment where she had finally lost her mind.

This was the moment where her mind had finally broken, and the Alpha had won.

It was ironic how through every torture, every pain, every humiliation she had endured, every attack she had suffered, nothing had broken her. And all it took was a wooden floor that wouldn’t get clean, no matter how hard she scrubbed at it, to get her to break down.

She thought about Ryder, about the feelings she was developing for him, about the times he had come to her aid, and that final scene when she had seen him locked in an intimate embrace with another woman earlier, when she had been reminded of his tryst in the woods and how he had forced her to watch.

She thought about the Vaughns and how every one of them had contributed to harming her; Myra, who may or may not be Ryder’s lover, her father Alaric whom Saffron had killed, and her brother Alex, whom Saffron had no idea what to think of when it came to him.

While he hadn’t directly harmed her, he also hadn’t made an effort to help her. So, if Saffron had to blame someone for the murder she had committed, then Alex was to be blamed.

If he had helped her when she had begged him for help, Alaric Vaughn wouldn’t have been dead, and Myra wouldn’t have attacked her.

The thoughts ran in her mind in a loop, creating a cacophony of emotions she wasn’t ready to face yet.

However, the more she thought about everything, the more irritated and angry she became.

With the Alpha.

With his men, with everyone on the island.

With Ryder.

With her conflicting feelings about him, the scary gangster who had accosted her that first time she had woken up in the slave quarters.

Except, he hadn’t scared her at all, if she was honest.

Not that first time and definitely not the times that had followed after.

And try as she did to make sense of it, she couldn’t come up with a concrete reason why she didn’t fear him besides the magnetic pull she felt whenever she was around him.

She wondered why he had come to her aid all those times, why he had taken care of her and tended to her wounds when she had been attacked.

And those kisses on the forehead, why? Why was he so tenderhearted around her?

Did he also have feelings for her? Did he care about her, just like she did him?

Would he help her escape?

“You are better off without him,” she muttered under her breath as she eyed the muddy floor calling to her like a beacon and begging to be scrubbed clean. But she couldn’t move. Exhaustion and frustration kept her limbs stagnant.

Instead, she curled her hand around a lock of her hair and pulled, her gaze unfocused as she thought about how she was going to finish the impossible chore and get back to her bed before she collapsed in the hall.