Ruin & Rule

He laughed as I squirmed out of his hold and ran to hide behind the couch. Stalking me with his hands up ready to tickle, he said, “I’m the president and definitely the boss of you.”

I squealed, my seven-year-old legs not fast enough to outrun him and his tickling hands.

“What does that make me, then? If you’re the president, does that mean I’m the princess?” I couldn’t believe my luck. I was Princess Buttercup, just like my favorite movie.

He smiled, smoothing my tangled hair. “I suppose you are in a way. My own little princess.”

“He killed them for nothing.” I curled in on myself, hugging my rib cage.

Arthur’s voice was strained. “I’m so sorry, Cleo. Believe me, the fucking bastard will pay. I can’t change the blood flowing in my veins, but I can make it up to you by putting him in the ground.”

I shook my head. Death for death wasn’t justice, it was just a tragedy. But at the same time, I couldn’t stomach the thought of him living and ruling a Club he’d taken by evil—a Club belonging to my father.

I can’t live in a world where my attempted murderer prospers.

My soul wept. “Why me? Did he try to kill me because we were together? Because he knew how we felt about each other?”

Arthur’s eyes darkened, his hands curling tight. “No. He never planned to kill you. You were at the wrong place at the wrong time.” He looked away, his jaw clenched so hard he couldn’t say any more.

Grasshopper jumped in. “He wanted you alive.”

My eyes shot to his blue ones, begging for the riddle to end. “Why?”

Arthur finally got his rage under control, whispering harshly, “He knew what we were going to ask him that night. He knew how much I fucking loved you. But the bastard had other plans.”

I didn’t think it would be possible for my stomach to fall any further, but somehow it slipped through the floor and plummeted down and down. “What plans, Art?” I breathed, every muscle seizing against his answer.

“Sell you,” Grasshopper said. “What better way to formulate loyal Chapters than selling off the daughter of the president he just killed? He planned on using you to unite another large Club out in San Diego. You were to be used like—”

“Like a pawn.” Now I saw the chessboard. Now I understood the players if not the rules. My eyes met Arthur’s. “He was never going to let us be together.”

Arthur shook his head sadly. “I only found out a few years later that he left you inside the house to terrify you. He planned on coming to your rescue, making you believe he tried to save your parents—just like he saved you. He planned on using your gratefulness as a weapon and bribe you into paying back the debt of his kindness.”

Oh God. I had evaded not only a horrible death but a horrible existence, too. “But I escaped,” I whispered.

Arthur hung his head, his face white. “I still don’t know how he missed you getting away, or if someone found you and took you—”

“They didn’t.” I sucked in a breath. “I crawled on my own. I remember. I managed to get to the road, where someone found me and took me to the hospital.”

His face twisted in brutal pain. “You do remember? God, Cleo. I never wanted you to remember that fucking night. The agony you must’ve been in.”

I shrugged, looking down at the table. “At least I know how I got away and before he found me.” I’d been destined for a fate worse than the one Arthur almost sold me into.

The irony and parallel between father and son didn’t escape me. Arthur was now president—just like his father. He’d been about to sell me—just like his father.

It doesn’t make sense—even more so now that I know the truth.

Sitting straight, I said, “Those girls, Art. How could you sell them when you knew what he planned to do to me? You made other girls suffer. What if that had been me? What if—”

“I would’ve found you and saved you. Fuck, Cleo, I would’ve come for you and slaughtered everyone in my path.”

I shook my head. “You couldn’t. You were in jail—remember? I would’ve been swallowed by a world that takes no prisoners. Even if you did find me once you were free, I wouldn’t have been the same person I was—the same girl you fell in love with.”

“You disappeared for eight years, yet you’re still mine. Still the redheaded girl who stole my heart.” His eyes were broken—a faded muddy green.

I smiled weakly. “Living a life where I was happy, if not lost, isn’t the same as being someone’s slave.” Sighing heavily, I said, “You have to find them. You have to save those women you sold.”

Grasshopper laughed coldly. “Do you honestly think Kill would sell innocent women into a life of horror?”

My head snapped up.

Mo said, “Those women were handpicked. Not for their looks—although they were pretty hot—but for who they associated with.”

My skin broke out in goose bumps.

“They were his whores, Cleo,” Arthur whispered. “We took any girl who’d slept with him since my mother died a year ago.”

Diane.

The softly spoken woman with dark hair so much like her son’s. The scents of fresh baking would drift across the courtyard, tantalizing my taste buds and making me skip across to Art’s house and plonk myself in her kitchen with my legs dangling behind the breakfast bar.