Ninety Three
Ayden
The sound of tires crushing sticks alerted me to him. I flew up in my bed and tossed the covers aside. Shit. I’d forgotten this was the first of the month! Eagerly, I threw on a pair of jeans and pulled a t shirt over my head. Scrambling to the door, I looked out expecting to see Ash’s black Range Rover.
But there was no one there.
Puzzled, I went back in to check my calendar. It was only the 26th. Ash wasn’t due for another six days. No one other than Ash and Sasha knew where this place was. In the entire time I’d lived out here, not one soul other than the two of them had ever driven down this road.
Had I been dreaming? I walked outside to see fresh tire tracks in the dirt road. Someone had been here! Then, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a large spider scurrying across the dirt. Now that was strange. It was quite cold outside and I hadn’t seen a spider since I’d gotten here. Puzzled, I went back inside.
Maybe someone had just taken a wrong turn. Maybe the people who owned that old hunting shack thirty miles down the road had finally decided to return. Saddened that Ash wasn’t coming today, I turned my coffeepot on and waited.
As the day wore on, I forgot about the incident. I called Ash on the phone and chatted with him briefly reminding him of the items I wanted when he came back.
Darkness fell upon the cabin as I lit the kerosene lamps. As I sat in my easy chair with the fire roaring in the fireplace, I flipped through the pages of a book.
Then, I saw a pair of headlights shining through the window. Sucking in my breath, I ducked down beneath the window. Someone was here!
Fearing the FBI had finally tracked me down, I braced myself for the worst. But then I heard a soft knock at the door.
“Open up! I know you’re in there. I can see the fire!” It was a female voice.
I thought I recognized it. My heart leapt thinking maybe it was Sasha.
“Ayden, it’s me. Open up!”
Cautiously, I pulled the door open. My hands flew to my mouth. I stood there stunned.
How did she of all people find me?
With her long legs encased in a pair of black pants strolled past me. “Nice place.” She commented. Lena ran her hands over the back of the couch as she slinked over to sink into my easy chair. “Quite a bit of trouble you got yourself into isn’t it, Ayden?”
“What are you talking about? How did you find me here?” My heart thundered so hard in my chest that I feared it would explode.
“You don’t think I know where my own flesh and blood is? You should know me better than that by now.”
Flesh and blood?
What the fuck was she talking about? She….
Oh, shit
Amelia!
Tremors racked my body as I attempted to grasp what she was saying. There was no way, absolutely no way that this was happening. Not her. It just couldn’t be her. “Lena, you were….my fiancé’s lover. We had an…an encounter together with her,” the words spilled from my mouth, but it seemed as though they were someone else’s.
“You’re quick, Ayden. Have you always been this quick or is this something new?” She ran her hand over the length of her black hair.
Gripping the couch, I allowed myself to collapse on it in a heap. The room was spinning. “Are you saying you’re my…our sister?”
Smirking at me, she nodded. “Surprised you never got that. You wanted me, but you knew you couldn’t have me for some reason. It bothered you and I liked that. Now you know why. I’m twisted, but not that twisted, brother. I’d never have let you actually have me.” Her eyes skimmed my body seeming to touch my well-muscled chest covered with tattoos. She admired my dark brown hair which I wore a touch longer than Ash did. I didn’t have any silver in my hair like my brother did. Yet anyway.
My thoughts were racing so fast I could barely keep up. I wondered if Ash knew. All that time we searched for our sister, Amelia and she was right in front of my face.
“Does—?“
“—Ash know? No, he doesn’t. After the stunt you pulled murdering that hideous man, I knew I had to start watching the two of you more closely.” She studied her expertly painted long red nails before meeting my eyes again.
Motherfucker.
“How could you? Your name…Lena not Amelia?”
“An alias I gave you, so you wouldn’t suspect. As soon as I learned the two of you were looking for me, I went undercover.”
“So what do I call you? Amelia? Lena?”
“Ava is what I prefer.” Her eyes glittered as she studied my reactions.
I felt as though I was being held under a microscope. “What happened to you? I mean, Ash and I heard about the orphanage, your mother’s death….”
“Not much to say. Rita was married to Ashler, our father, briefly, but because of her propensity to fuck her own life up she lost him. After Ashler kicked us out, she deteriorated rapidly as we moved from place to place. Finally, she died in a house fire. I was sent to a home for girls then sent to a foster home in California.”
My mouth was so dry I felt as though I couldn’t swallow. Stumbling to my feet, I lumbered into the kitchen. I grabbed a bottle of scotch from the cabinet and two glasses.
Ava observed the bottle and grinned. “Macallan. Just like your brother. So nice how the two of you have begun to get along.”
Taking a long swallow of the smooth liquid, I stared at her. She looked exactly the same since I’d last seen her-long wavy hair as black as night, full, red lips, soft, perfect features, and those same penetrating blue eyes. She sent shivers down my spine.
And this woman was my long lost half-sister.
I’d wanted her, but hadn’t been able to bring myself to fuck her. Now I knew why. “Lena,” I began.
“Ava,” she corrected with an evil smirk. Her high heel dangled deliberately from her foot as she rocked it back and forth.
“Ava, how did you know we were your brothers?”
Giving a light laugh, she downed the rest of her whiskey. A slow grin spread across her face. She sat there like a panther ready to pounce on her prey. “Come now, brother, you don’t expect a girl to give away all her secrets, do you?” She cocked a perfectly arched brow at me.
A distinctly uneasy feeling fell over me. It was difficult to describe. It was almost like when you decided to get on the biggest roller coaster at a carnival. You know the one with all the twists and turns that goes upside down because your friends keep calling you ‘chicken’ until you do it. It was like that only I’d eaten too much cotton candy and I felt the nausea hitting the back of my throat.
“Have you met Ash?” I poured the rest of the whiskey into our two glasses. Fuck, after tonight I think I was going to need a few more bottles.
She shook her head. She took the glass I handed her and licked the edge slowly before downing the liquor.
“I have a phone. I can call him.” I offered as I finished my drink. For the first time since I’d been out here, I felt myself wanting a fix. I began to rub my thigh hard through my pants as sweat broke out across my forehead.
“Really, Ayden? So do I.” She tossed her iPhone X at me.
“Ava, I don’t—I mean, I don’t know…”
She held up her hand as she leaned forward in her chair. Her long black hair spilled over her forehead as she flipped her head back. “I’ll be straight with you. I hate most people, to be honest. They’re backstabbing users who only care about what you can do for them. I have no time for such people. But you, Ayden, are different. Both you and Ashton. You’re my brothers. You’re the only blood family I have. You think you know about me, but you don’t. I grew up hard and fast with a degenerate for a mother. She never cared about me. She only cared about how many guys she could fuck for her next fix.” Ava’s pretty face turned down in a scowl.
Yes, this was a feeling I could definitely relate to. I knew the power of addiction all too well. My own veins were pulsing with the need to use. “So what made you find us?”
Ava shrugged. “I’ve always known who Ash was. My mother and Ashler were married for a while after his mother left. I remember being with him when he was young. The two of us would play together on our father’s vast estate. I didn’t know Ashler was my real father for years. I used to pretend he was, but in my heart, I knew he probably wasn’t. My mother, Rita had many lovers. I mean, come on, I was born in some hippie commune. God only knows how many men she fucked. I’m lucky I wasn’t born with two heads with all the drugs she took.”
“I’ve heard the stories. Alice’s Attic, Dad, Rita, Debra, and The Sons of Brotherhood. It’s so unreal to me.”
Ava chuckled. “Ah, the great MC, the Sons of Brotherhood. They’re still active on the West Coast. I had a few run-ins with them when I was running stuff with Marc, my foster brother. Once they found out who I was, they left me alone.”
“Did you ever hear any of Dad’s songs? Ash played a few for me. He was really talented.” I mused recalling the songs.
“Alice’s Attic. They had some great stuff. I’ve always had a thing for metal even 70s metal. I used to listen to their records while Rita was passed out on the floor. I can’t say I had a relationship with that woman. She was never a mother to me. She was only the vessel I used to come into the world. That’s it.” She fished in her jacket pocket until she came up with a pack of French cigarettes. She lit two and held one out to me.
Taking it, I inhaled deeply. It had been a few months since I’d had one. Ash continually ‘forgot’ to bring them. “We have that in common. My mother wasn’t anything to me either. She was a fucking train wreck. I got out of there as soon as I could. Been on my own since I was sixteen.”
Ava nodded taking a long drag on the cigarette. She was elegant, refined, yet so dark and dangerous.
“Seems like we’ve got a lot in common.” I finished the cigarette crushing it into an old green ashtray.
“Yes. I’ve watched you both for a while, Ayden,” she confessed.
“Obviously.”
“You’re as troubled as I was, although I was much smarter. I learned quickly how to make my way in the world. After the piece of shit who fostered me tried turning us out…” she broke off looking down. Her full lips quivered slightly.
The fire crackled as we sat quietly for a moment.
Ava ran her hands through her long hair before looking at me again. “He was a pig. He got what he deserved.” She smirked at me before lighting another cigarette.
I cringed as I pictured her adoptive father dead in ditch somewhere. Although she was thin, it wasn’t difficult to imagine her strangling some guy with her bare hands. “I heard. I met Estra.”
“Ah, Estra. I remember her. She was a good person. She’d suffered a lot in this life. I wished her well when I left.”
“She said you took off with your foster brother and another girl?”
“Two girls actually. One was my soulmate and the other was her baby sister.”
“Your soulmate?” It made sense. Ava was a lesbian. I recalled her hot scenes with Sasha.
She smiled. Her eyes looked soft. “She was something else. So beautiful, sexy, smart, but she made the same mistake most women do and fell in love with a rich asshole.” Ava shrugged.
“What happened after you left your foster father?”
Her deep blue eyes turned dark. A storm brewed behind them I could sense the rage boiling within her just below the surface. “We left for Reno. Did a little of this and little of that to survive. Fucking cops got called because the two girls were underage. The state took them away from me.”
“What about your foster brother? Wasn’t he there?”
“Oh, you mean Marc. He turned out to be the biggest pussy. I got us a deal with a cartel that ran with LZ. He fucked that deal up, so after the girls were taken away, we had to run to a place outside Dubuque, Iowa. Total drag.” Ava grabbed the bottle of scotch and filled her glass.
As fascinated as I was with her story, I was impatient. I was also getting quite drunk for the first time since I’d been here. “When did you think to find Ashton?”
She glared at me as she sipped the liquor. She was annoyed that I’d interrupted her story. She sighed swirling the dark liquid in the glass. “After Marc died, I felt all my ties to the past were severed. I wasn’t upset by it so much as it made me feel so disconnected with the world. I’ve never been one to entertain any type of long term relationship, but Marc had been with me for a while. Also, I couldn’t find my baby….”
“Baby?” I nearly choked on my scotch. She’d had a baby? Ava seemed about as motherly as a serial killer.
She laughed waving her hand. “Not an infant, you fucking idiot. Please. I meant my old girlfriend and foster sister, Reese. She’d left me and gone onto college. I’d had several lovers both male and female, but no woman satisfied me as she had and no man had stood by me as Marc had. So I was alone.”
Somehow, Ava seemed like the type who could handle being on her own quite well. She exuded confidence bordering on arrogance.
“I was cleaning out the house in Dubuque getting ready to move. I wanted to get a place in Chicago. As I was moving stuff, a book fell out. Several pictures fluttered to the floor. As I looked through them, I saw me and Ashton playing. He was only about eight years old and I was eleven. I was flooded with memories of my mother being married to Ashler and living on his New York estate. I never knew for sure who my real father was. The year my mother was married to Ashler I pretended he was my real father. He was so handsome, so kind to me.”
Abruptly, a huge gust of wind thrust the flimsy cabin door open swirling snow around the room.
I jumped up and pushed it closed latching it firmly. When I turned back to Ava, I saw her eyes blazing. I swallowed hard and sat down across from her.
“I found a letter that Ashler had written my mother asking about me. To make a long story short, the letters between them indicated that I was Ashler’s daughter.”
My eyes widened. “I found my original birth certificate. That’s how I found out,” I confessed.
She nodded as if she already knew everything about me. Somehow, I suspected she did. I shook the eerie feeling off as I listened to her.
“I decided to do a little research. I quickly found out how wealthy both Ash and Ashler were. I debated on whether or not to come to New York and meet him, but I decided against it.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Some things were going on in my life at that time. I didn’t want to draw unnecessary attention to myself.”
Her words hung in the air as I stared at the fire which was slowly dying. I got up to replace a few logs in the fireplace,
Ava sat back quietly inhaling on her cigarette. “After some time had passed, I found both of you. I’ve been watching you for a while.”
“Why did you tell me your name was Lena? Why did you fuck Sasha with me if you knew you were my sister?”
She shrugged with a smirk. “I like good pussy what can I say? And to do a woman with my half-brother…..well, that was a taboo I couldn’t wait to break.” She laughed flicking her ash into the green tray.
Good answer, I thought.
“Where is the lovely Sasha? I half expected to find her here with you.”
“She’s gone. After what happened with Amber’s brother, Mark, I told her it was over. Ash was going to put me in hiding and it wasn’t fair to her to make her wait.” I didn’t want her to know I’d broken my word to Ash and let Sasha visit me in the cabin.
“You’re a wise one, little brother.” Ava moved to the love seat and sat next to me. She brushed my hair from my face. Her touch was electrifying.
“I’ve been here for the past four months.”
“Pretty lonely out here, isn’t it?”
I agreed. “How did you find me? Ash was certain no one would.”
Ava ran her hands over her thighs and sighed. “It wasn’t easy, but I have my ways.”
My curiosity was piqued. This sister of ours was certainly diabolical to say the least. “Really? Like what?”
She playfully swatted my arm. “Like I’m going to tell you. I came here tonight for a reason. Do you want to hear it or not?”
Running my fingers through my tangle of hair, I nodded.
Ava gazed at me with a smirk on her lips. “I can get you out of here, Ayden.”