Stepbrother Bear - Complete (15 page)

CHAPTER TEN

Finally. Finally it will all be over.

Within the
hour I am transformed. My hair is set back and my cheeks are powdered. I wear
lipstick and eye shadow that both match my sparkling blue dress. The General
puts nail polish to my fingers and Ryan attaches a necklace around me. They
show me the mirror image, but I can only glance at it. Behind a now pleasing
exterior, I am still very tired and afraid.

I’m so, so
afraid.

It’s well
after midnight when the limousine pulls up to the high-rise mansion. I stepped
out of the car slowly and into the flashing light bearing down on me. A woman
with a clipboard walked down the steps to approach me, with a guard on either
side of her.

“Mrs. Swan?”

That’s me.
“Yes?”

“Do you have
your invitation with you?”

I handed it
to her.

“Thank you
very much, Mrs. Swan. Feel free to come inside, and mingle. The bar is still
open of course. Would you like speak to anyone already here? The host perhaps?”

“I’d like to
see Aiden Phillips, if he is here.”

“Certainly.
I’ll see if he is available.”

I followed
the woman up the steps and through the main entrance while she spoke to other
staff members instructing them to locate Aiden. The carpet inside was almost
the same shade of blue as my dress.

“Wait right
here, Mrs. Swan.”

The attendant
disappeared up another flight of stairs, whilst I stayed down below. There was
a comfy looking leather chair situated nearby which I decided to sit on whilst
I waited.

A waiter came
over in less than a minute to offer me a glass of champagne.

I reluctantly
accepted.

Sipping the
champagne, I looked up in the direction of the staircase, anticipating Aiden’s
decent. Any moment now. I felt so awkward. So off. What if he saw me and just
turned around and walked away? It had been so long now. Perhaps we were never
really close, but these last three years really had made strangers of us.

Stepbrother
and stepsister.

Didn’t I once
tell myself we were in love?

Oh no.

I could see
he was coming now. Just his outline was visible from here, but I could see enough
to know it was him.

The attendant
trailed behind him.

I put the
glass down and stood up from the chair. I took a deep breath. Didn’t look in
his direction. And though I couldn’t be sure of the exact moment his eyes laid
on me, I felt his gaze go through me with the rays of a thousand suns.

“Bianca.”

His voice.

His
commanding, chastising, menacing voice.

“No – that’s
Marsha Swan, wife of –”

“Leave us,”
Aiden said silencing the attendant.

His footsteps
were getting closer to me.

I had to
turn.

“How on earth
did you find me?” Aiden asked.

And while I
wasn’t sure what I was going to say next, one thing was for sure.

I couldn’t
tell him the truth.

CHAPTER
ELEVEN

Aiden had bulked up. Underneath his
shiny black jacket and tie, I could see he had put on maybe twenty pounds of
muscle. His face had roughened. He had a light beard I could tell was hiding
the fading remnants of scars underneath.

The biggest
difference though was in the eyes. They were so cold, so fierce.

It was as if
he was a ghost of his former self.

“Shh,” he
said as I began to speak. “It doesn’t matter. Follow me please.”

I watched him
carefully as he moved past me and walked towards the double doors at the end of
the front room.

Inside the
doors we passed through various groups of distinguished individuals standing
around talking. Aiden and I weaved our ways to the end of the room once again,
this time leading us into the cold outside.

There were people
out here too. Though not as many.

“How far do
you think it goes?”

I followed
Aiden’s gaze from the steps out into the darkness of the garden before us.

“I’m not
sure,” I said. “They don’t have any lights on.”

As soon as I
said that, a purple light several hundred meters away flashed, in accompaniment
with five more lights of different color, location and sequence.

“Wow,” I
murmured. “It was as if they heard me speak.”

Aiden turned
to me. “You’d be surprised.”

“Would I?”

He smiled a
moment and then turned away from me. He started descending the steps.

I followed
him, at his side, wondering where he was going with this. Perhaps he was just
trying to get out of ear range from anybody else.

“How have you
been?” he asked.

“How – how
have I been?” I spluttered.

He didn’t
just ask me that.

“It’s not a
complicated question is it?” he asked, turning slightly.

Our feet soon
found the grass below.

“I’ve been
fucked that’s how I’ve been,” I snapped.

“That’s not a
very nice thing to say,” Aiden returned.

“What the
hell happened to you?” I hissed. “You just left me there. I thought you were
going to come back for me.”

“What we had
was wrong,” Aiden said, getting right to it. “It was a mistake.”

“What are you
talking about?”

“Us,” he
said. “I knew where it was going – and I couldn’t do it. It was … just wrong of
us.”

I almost
choked on my own breath. “Excuse me!” I shouted. “You just left me with those
bikers to do whatever they wanted with me. You – you left our family behind.
Like they were nothing. Like I was nothing. What do you have to say for
yourself?”

“Gosh you
look beautiful in this light,” he said dreamily.

I hadn’t
noticed the purple flash behind me.

“Prick,” I
swore at him.

“Bitch,” he
swore back.

“Moron.”

“Ugly.”

I could feel
my face go red at that point. I lunged out at him wildly, slamming my palms
into his chest.

But instead
of falling over, Aiden grabbed my hands and then attempted to dance with me.

“What are you
doing?” I shouted as he spun me around.

“Having fun?”

I let go of
hands and forced myself a few paces away from him.

He stared
back at me, a lifeless stare.

“I don’t
understand,” I said. “You just don’t care about anything. But yourself.”

“I couldn’t
help you,” Aiden said slyly. “Or them. If I’d come back for you that night,
they would have blown my brains out. If I had showed up to where the General
wanted me, she would have had them killed, and imprisoned me.”

“So you do
nothing – is that it?”

“Who do you
think I am?” he challenged. “You. The family. You guys are not my
responsibility.”

I nodded,
tears falling from my eyes.

It was as if
I’d forgotten our plan to set Aiden up. I just wanted to strangle him to death
right here.

“Bianca,” he
said, moving towards me. “You should have moved on by now. You should have
forgotten about me.”

“Like you
forgot about me?”

“Let’s be
honest. I never thought about you much to begin with.”

CHAPTER
TWELVE

Words. Words can hurt. I’m not sure
what I was expecting Aiden to say when I challenged him for abandoning us … but
I wasn’t ready for this.

My feet began
to feel weak. I looked away from him, and walked back to the steps. I sat down
on the last one and stared out into empty space. For all I knew he was just
going to walk away right now. And with it my chance to save the others.

“Sorry,” he
said moving towards me. “That was probably a little harsh. I can see I’ve upset
you.”

I shook my
head. “You haven’t done anything to me.”

Words.

Words that
had no meaning.

“Are you
alright?” he asked.

I shook my
head again.

“Tell me why
you came here,” he said. “Have you really been trying to find me all this
time?”

I looked at
him sideways. “I don’t know how you can do it. How you can …
feel
nothing.”

“If it had
been me that was imprisoned,” he replied, “me that was abducted. Which of them
would have sacrificed themselves for me? Think about that for a moment.”

“You’re just
an asshole.”

“Yes,” he
said. “I am.”

I looked up
at him. He wasn’t smiling, and yet it was there. Somewhere in his eyes. He was
proud of it.

And I wanted
to hurt him.

I wanted to
make him pay.

“Shall we say
goodbye now?” he asked. “Or is it best left unsaid?”

I swallowed.
“What’s happening up there?”

“Where?”

“In the
house.”

His eyes
followed my lead up the side of the mansion, to the windows up high. Wild neon
lights flashed within, and the sound of music stirred.

“I guess
they’re having a dance,” Aiden remarked. “Perhaps we could … hmm … no...”

“What?”

“Would you
care to dance with me? Put the past behind us, and just enjoy the now.”

As he asked
me, I noticed he was doing everything he could to sound sincere. The way the
skin around his cheeks shifted upward. The parting of lips and showing of
teeth.

He may have
even blinked a couple of times, but it was in vein. I’d already seen it.

The coldness
was still there.

“Well, what
do you say?”

He offered
his hand.

“We can dance
right here.”

And although
I hated him, and knew his selfishness had caused so much suffering, I could
still feel him break me. That charm. Those looks. My heart wanted me to reach
up and take his hand because deep down I still had those feelings from the
past, feelings I couldn’t run away from.

My head
wanted me to take his hand for another reason.

I was going
to have to manipulate him while he was manipulating me.

CHAPTER
THIRTEEN

The time is now. Time to decide. As
if there’s a decision to make. As if this can end any other way.

I have to
give him up. I have to betray him in order to rescue the others.

Perhaps when
I was coming here, I thought there might be another way. That I could tell
Aiden what was really going on. That he would think of a way to save himself as
well as the others. That had seemed, the right thing to do. The moral thing.

But he didn’t
care about them. I know that now. He didn’t care about me either.

And yet here
we were. Our fingers interlocked and hands around each other as we slow-danced
to the sound of distant music from the mansion before us.

He looked
right at me the whole time. His eyes trying to dissolve mine.

Sending me
underneath his spell. Luring me into his trap.

“So do you
want to get out of here?” he whispered.

I held his
gaze a while before answering. “I thought you said it was wrong between us.”

“I say a lot
of things I don’t mean.”

I continued
to stare at him. I knew what he was waiting for. The signal from me. The waving
of the flag. Me, lowering my eyes, consenting to his whims.

There was
nothing there.

Nothing
inside of him that was reaching out.

He literally
saw me as worthless. Something to cherish and hold and love for one night, and
then be forgotten about all over again.

“Well…?” he
asked.

“Sure,” I
whispered back. “But there’s somewhere in particular I have in mind for us.”

“Really?” he beamed.
“And where is that exactly?”

“Oh, you
know,” I murmured. “Not that far from here…”

CHAPTER
FOURTEEN

“I want to know everything,” Aiden
said swooping in over my shoulder, as we stood outside the mansion waiting for
our car. “What you’ve been doing. How much you’ve been thinking about me.”

“Don’t be
full of yourself.”

“But you
have
been thinking about me, right? I want to know how you came to find me here.
You didn’t answer when I asked you before.”

“I can’t
answer that now.”

“Why not?” he
remarked. “Are you afraid of showing your true feelings to me?”

I stepped out
of his clutches and he laughed.

“Bianca, look
at me.”

I turned and
looked at him. He seemed eager.

“Kiss me.”

I shook my
head. “No.”

“You better
kiss me.”

“This is so
weird, Aiden,” I confessed awkwardly. “I don’t know what you’re doing.”

The car
rolled up beside me. The valet got out and tossed Aiden the keys.

“What
happened to your bike?” I asked.

“It wasn’t
mine,” Aiden muttered.

He opened the
door for me and I got inside the car. Aiden soon joined me seated behind the
wheel. He put the keys in the ignition and started the car.

We drove out
of the gates to the mansion and turned onto the road.

I knew where
we were going. The General had pointed it out clearly on the map and the limo
driver had taken me there briefly before we went to the mansion. I still didn’t
know why we were going there though. What I was going to say.

Aiden slowed
the car down as we approached the oval.

The General
was right. There wasn’t anywhere for someone to hide out here. You could see
everything, in all directions. Over the horizon we were given a perfect view of
the city’s lights, burning in their faraway eternity.

I reached
over to open the car door, but Aiden grabbed my hand.

“Where are
they?” he asked.

“Huh?”

I turned back
to him. His face was expressionless.

“Where are
they?”

“Where are
who?”

“You know
who.”

So. He’d
figured it out then. For how long … Did he just realize now? Or was he playing
me the entire time?

“I guess it
doesn’t matter,” he said under his breath.

I blinked and
felt the coldness of a tear settle against my eye. “What are you going to do?”

Aiden
shrugged. Then pushed open his side of the car.

He slammed
the door on this way out.

I quickly
pushed open my own door and stepped out as he marched towards the oval.

“What are you
doing?” I cried.

He glanced
back at me, half a smile lurking upon his lips.

“Exactly what
you want me to,” he said.