Page 75 of Twisted Truth

The hammer moved from his knee, then pounded into his temple.

He fell to the ground after that.

He’s still on the ground.

“You killed him, you fucking idiot!” one of the men in the ski masks yells at the other. “We weren’t supposed to kill him! We were ordered to break him until he agreed to the terms, not kill him in the process!”

“What do we do now?” another masked man shouts, panicked.

“We have to make it look like an accident! No one can know!”

“What about the kid?” the third masked man shouts.

“He has to go, too! No one can know what happened here!”

I wake with a start,my breaths heaving and gasping. I push Ella aside as gently as I can so I don’t wake her, and I sit on the edge of the bed.

I haven’t dreamed of that night in years.

The memory of it still flashes through my mind—too often—but I’ve managed to keep it as just a flash and nothing more. But tonight, the dream makes it too real. The dream digs up all the details, still seared into my mind, after all these years.

This is what can happen when your life and money and “exceptional existence” is paraded for the world to see. People come after it. They always do. And now it’s not just me and my family at constant risk. It’s now Ella.

And I can’t take it.

This is wrong. I should have never agreed to this. I should have said no. I won’t bring someone into my life like this, and I need to figure out how to undo it.

Before it’s too late.

22

ELLA

The hair and makeup team arrives at Asher’s penthouse just as I’m finishing up my lunch. Matthew marches in with them with purpose in his step, his eyes expectant as he looks at me.

I nod at him, blushing. I hope it conveys enough.

He gives me a sly smile. “I want to hear all about it,” he whispers, passing by me to help set up the beauty station in the empty space between the kitchen table and the living room.

“I don’t kiss and tell.”

“You do with me!”

I snort.

In truth, I’ve felt a little like an un-moored boat today. Asher was gone before I woke up, and he didn’t respond to either of my texts this morning. I texted him good morning and an hour later asked how he was, but it’s been nothing but silence from him. I hope he’s okay. And now I’m worried again about where we stand. He obviously didn’t want to take things so far last night, but once we started, it was too hard to stop. I would say it’s because we’re only human, after all, but this felt like morethan that. It felt like a loaded force that pulled us together and couldn’t be fought. And it seemed like Asher enjoyed himself, but who knows what was going through his head? I haven’t stopped worrying about it all morning. Even through my fittings for wardrobe staples, I couldn’t shake off the worry over why Asher had disappeared without a word.

I try to wrangle my thoughts as the hair and makeup team get to work.

“Your skin is divine. Tell me about your skincare routine,” Trenton, my makeup artist, asks as he applies my skin prep moisturizers.

Matthew scoffs. “Don’t ask. The fact that she has skin like she does is a gift from God alone. You would cry if you saw the products that I threw out yesterday.”

“Yeah, dick move by the way.”

“No, darling. Bestie move. You’ll thank me in ten years.”

“I don’t even know what to do with all the new products.”