Chapter 108 : Two-faced

AJAX.

Brother. If I didn’t know his silhouette and his voice, I would have thought that this man is not my brother at all, but perhaps a leper or a madman trying to steal this house.

Draco is unrecognizable. And to say that is even an understatement. He looks completely and utterly different. Half of his face is bearing the familiar yellow traces of a healing bruise, while the other side seems to have been peeled off almost completely, covered in watery blisters. Some of them are popped and oozing liquid, and I can see the straight marks on the burst skin. It seems that he did it himself by stabbing at his own face, and that just makes me cringe despite the situation.

He has always been pretty much obsessed with how he looks. He thinks it’s his key to someday ruling the entire land. He’s always been vain and manipulative, and I don’t think he has ever gotten with women because of his personality. It’s always his face and his body, and the privileges that come from being the Alpha Heir.

His face falls into an expression of complete repulsion when Yelena takes my arm and walks with me up to their house. When we pass by him, he crinkles his nose like I’m the gross one.

I can’t help but say, “What happened to your face, brother? Who burned you and deformed you? And why hasn’t it healed yet?”

“Shut the fuck up, Ajax,” he hisses, shoving me onto a chair.

Instantly, men around me appear and bind me onto it with thick silver chains. I want to push them all off, but then I see that they’re doing the same to Yelena and I’m scared they would get back at her for something I would do.

They push me out of the foyer and into the living room. Immediately, my thoughts about taunting Draco has vanished from my head.

Bound in chairs like what I’m sitting on right now, is the Beta, his wife, and Jonathan. I search the room to see if they found Livia, but what Yelena told me seems to be right. She’s hidden well, and there seems to be no problem about finding her.

But there is a huge problem about getting out of here.

Beta Jackson is beaten up. His head is lowered against his chest, and I can see the traces of blood on his shirt. His wife is sitting there with her face up, and there is no mistaking the blood on her nose and her busted lip. Jonathan is also there, his face completely clean. The fact that he isn’t touched makes me feel like they have a bigger plan than this, and I hate not knowing.

I look at Jonathan, inviting him to talk to me through mind-link, but he doesn’t even look at me. I don’t know if he really knows I’m there.

Anger flares inside me. The misfortune just keeps happening. I’m so sick and tired of being outsmarted, of having someone always one step ahead of me.

I look at Draco as he approaches and I just feel a strong need to end it once and for all, even if it means tainting my hands with his blood.

He walks in front of me and I make a lunge, but the chains hold me fast. And to my surprise, they’re scorching my skin as though they’ve been dipped in hot lava before getting wrapped around me.

“Look at you,” he muses in a darkly amused tone. “You’re not getting out of there until I let you go. Look at the Beta. He’s much stronger than you. Look at how hard he fought against those chains. Almost split himself in two, he did. But he’s not out of there, is he?”

I don’t say anything. I don’t give him the satisfaction of hearing my thoughts.

I can tell it bothers him. His deformed face twitches. “So, a little birdy told me you and the Beta planned something. What is it?”

A laugh escapes my lips. I know it’s probably not a good move and I should have kept it in, but I couldn’t. Draco seems to be shocked by it, and that’s all that matters.

“Well, your little birdy is wrong,” I say.

Draco raises his eyebrow at Jonathan. “Well, heard that, little birdy? He says you’re wrong.”

My heart drops. Jonathan told him? Jonathan put him in the loop? Why?

I look over at Jonathan and he doesn’t say anything. Again, he refuses to look at me. Now I know why.

“You’ve been working with them all along?” I ask, my voice surprisingly calm. “So that’s why you were here? Were you here all along?”

He doesn’t say anything. He just hangs his head in shame.

“So he’s right, you do have a plan,” Draco concludes. “I just want to know… what’s so great that you feel the need to betray your own family? Is it that Maxine girl? You do realize she will never fuck you, right? Why the fuck are you doing this? What do you want to happen? If you don’t tell me, then maybe they will!”

He takes out a weapon that looks like a spear. I think he's going to stab me with it, but he presses a button and the tip of the spear ignites with electricity. Then, he presses it against the chains that bind the Beta and his wife. They both groan, shaking, their voices later on spiraling into tortured screams that seem to fill the air with the same electricity. Yelena cries out for both of them.

My heart breaks. Panic is rising in my throat like bile. I can’t tell him about Livia, and by the looks of it, the Beta would choose death over confession.

But I need to say something. I need to save them from Draco.

He blasts the spear again, and this time I can feel the electricity. It’s greater than the last. It has more power.

And I know certainly that it can kill. Easily.

“Tell me now!” Draco yells, then he points the spear at Yelena. “Or she dies.”

“Stop it!” I scream at him. “We were planning something. I was the head of it all. I was asking them to find Maxine and Theo, to house them if necessary. That’s it. That’s why I came here. That’s why I have communication with them. Now let them go.”

Draco smiles. “That wasn’t the deal, brother.”

He motions to his men and they set Jonathan free. He falls on the ground like a child, but Draco doesn’t lift his gaze from me even when he starts to address him.

“Jonathan… make sure you bring Maxine and Theodore to my father before dark. Let’s tweak Ajax’s plan, but let’s make it happen.”