Ruin & Rule

But something was different.

Memories swarmed—recent and terrifying.

“Take her.”

“I’m not taking her.”

I groaned, my cheek squashed against the hotel carpet. My head rang from being cuffed and nausea took my stomach hostage, threatening to evict the room service I’d ordered only an hour before. “What—what do you want with me?” I slurred, trying uselessly to push myself upright.

The carpet was comfortable. My only friend. I would stay there for a little while.

The men stopped arguing.

One squatted beside my face, his horrible fingers brushing aside my hair. “We’ve found you. After all this fucking time. Didn’t believe him when he said it was true. But here you are.”

“Here I am?”

The man with hazel eyes chuckled. “Here you are. A girl who should’ve stayed away.”

Why was I there? I couldn’t remember. Then, in a flash of remembrance, I said, “A letter. I received a letter.”

The cold chuckle came again. “Yes, a letter from him. He said you’d come. I didn’t think you would. You owe me a hundred dollars for betting wrong.”

With a kick to my stomach, he rolled me over so I lay staring at the light shade above. My eyes tried to focus on the two men looming above but couldn’t—they were blurs.

“Take her. We’ll keep her separate from the other shipment. Kill will never know.”

“Why don’t we just kill her? He wants to ruin him. This would do it.”

The other man, in a deeper voice that rumbled with rocks and tar, said, “It’s not enough. She needs to be seen. Doubt needs to be planted before we can get rid of her. Besides, I want the money that her sweet little body will bring.”

A boot pressed against my breast. I cringed away.

Cold fingers wrapped around my forearm. “What’s it going to be, Cleo? Fire or persuasion?”

Cleo?

My nose wrinkled. “You’ve got the wrong girl. My name is Sarah.”

For some reason they both laughed. “This is just getting better and better.”

The deep-voiced man said, “Do it. If he’s right, then it will solve our issues. He’s been right about everything else.”

I cried out as a knife rang in the sparsely decorated Dancing Dolphins hotel room, slicing efficiently through my cardigan.

Fight filled my limbs and I lashed out. I went to scream but a large hand clamped over my mouth.

“Do it. Now.”

The flick of a lighter and whiff of fire sent my heart tripping over itself in terror.

Fire.

My nemesis. The one thing I was petrified of. I couldn’t light a stovetop or go near a barbeque. Fire. I hated it. Hated!

“No!” I screamed behind the hand—the sound remained muffled and useless.

Lighter Boy moved closer, waving the naked flame by my arm. “Ready, Cleo?”

My name is Sarah!

I hated that everything they did was to the wrong person. I pitied this Cleo person but I wanted her to take whatever repercussions her life had brought upon herself—not me. I wasn’t her. I didn’t deserve to be burned. Couldn’t they see my body was full of scars? Hadn’t I suffered enough?

The first singe of flame on flesh made my body snap and shudder. The man holding my mouth moved, planting his knees on my shoulders and pinning me to the floor.

I couldn’t scream.

I couldn’t move.

The lighter moved closer, the merrily orange flame stealing more than just my sanity and pain but the past eight years of my life, too.

I snapped out of the memory, breathing hard.

All along, I hadn’t seen the truth.

I suffered two layers of amnesia—seemingly two events triggered by fire, but all along they’d been linked. All along I’d been Cleo Price and Sarah Jones—joined by a tragic history.

My mind had learned that protection came from forgetting and it had once again tried to save me.

I lay on a bed that was decorated with buttercups and daisies, staring at a ceiling.

A horrible blanket of terror covered me.

No… this can’t be.

My eyes drank in the cursive quote from The Princess Bride on the ceiling.

“As You Wish.”

I gasped.

This was my room.

My childhood room at the Dagger Rose compound. But that can’t be—it burned down.

“Ah, you’re awake, Buttercup.”

I shot upright, huddling into the corner on the bed. Everywhere around me rested familiarity and home. From the frilly yellow bedside light to the macaroni-and-glue photo frame holding a photograph of Arthur and me at our favorite swimming hole.

Although… the photo that’d been in that frame before was of us baking with his mom, all covered in flour, not swimming. And the light shade had been bigger.

“Do you like it?”

Unwillingly, my attention shot to the one man who should’ve been there to protect me. A surrogate father, an uncle, my in-law if Arthur and I ever got married.

Wrapping my arms around my knees, I glared at Scott “Rubix” Killian. He looked similar to his youngest son, but not completely the same. Arthur had inherited his beautiful green eyes from him, but the kindness in his soul definitely hadn’t come from this bastard, who’d set my house on fire and left me to burn.

“What’s going on?” I asked. My voice was a wispy thread, tangled in memories and uncertainty. Clearing my throat, I tried again. “What am I doing here?”