I'm updating this at school, so I don't have my tools to be aesthetic right now. So, the banner will come a bit later. But for now, enjoy this chapter and thank you for reading, commenting and voting! Be sure to do so to earn a chance to have a chapter dedicated to you!
Still editing a bit.
Ash
"If this is your idea of a joke, you should write an episode of The Big Bang Theory," I chided as I broke into a room that had Reece's picture hanging above a bed. His ego knew no bounds.
Reece held up his hands, cheeks as red as ever, with anger or embarrassment or a heavy mixture of both. I cared not. "I had nothing to do with this."
"Said the slave's owner's wife to slave #4 during a whipping," I barked.
"Can you stop comparing me to a slave owner just because of my skin color!?" he yelled at me.
My eyes bugged. It twitched. I blinked them. "Who do you think you're raising your voice at?" I asked him, stepping closer, fist burning from clenching.
I was seeing red for sure now.
Reece stepped closer himself, his hands folded across his chest, his hip cocked to the side, as if I was no threat it him at all. "What you gonna hit me?"
I didn't have to. Maybe he forgot whose my brother was.
The door opened before I reminded him and Mrs. Red walked in, taking off her gloves and throwing them to the side.
"Spare us the dramatics, Mom," Reece said, rolling his eyes. "What the actual green eggs and ham fuck was that?"
"Me saving this company," she replied.
"Well save it without me," I said. "If you think I'm going ahead with this, you're about as insane as your son is an asshole."
"You don't have a real choice in this matter," Mrs. Red said. "Unless you want to be fired."
I folded my arms. "That's a Public Relations nightmare for all of you," I said. "You just announced it to your investors. If I say you lied, you'd be as reliable as pulling out."
"Pretty reliable method," Reece said and both Mrs. Red followed it by politely yelling a "SHUT UP!" at him.
"Ashley, if you don't play ball, you're going to be fired," she said.
"Then fire me," I said. "I'd rather be fired than engage in some sloppy backseat car blowjob of a relationship with your incredibly dense and ego-maniacal son akin to early Nazi Hitler."
"Oh come on," Reece soured. "A freakin Hitler comparison?"
"I'm not talking about this job," Mrs. Red said and she opened the door again and whispered something.
Then she opened it wide and Erika stepped inside.
I sighed almost immediately. "What deal with the literal devil did you make, Erika?"
Erika sighed herself, then she huffed. "Mrs. Red explained her intentions and I agreed to the terms."
"Without my consent?" I breathed. "You sold me without my consent?"
"I didn't sell you," Erika said. "This is just a deal we have in place."
"You will pretend to be engaged to my son, when the time comes, you will dissolve the arrangement," Mrs. Red said. "You have your minority team to help your community and my company's image is revived."
"And if we don't want to play ball?" Reece asked.
Mrs. Red fixed her dress. "Reece, are you aware of the show Game Of Thrones?"
"Who isn't?" he retorted.
"Well I'm Tywin, you're my horrible daughter Cersei and Ashley is a black, Loras Tyrell. You will marry him or I'll feed you to the dragons."
"Actually, Cersei doesn't have any dragons..." Reece trailed. "I get the overall point of the clumsy analogy though."
"Good," she said and looked at Erika. "You talk to your kid," she said and looked back at Reece with piercing eyes. "You, get your pasty ass downstairs and receive your congratulations on settling down."
Reece groaned under his bath. "This isn't even fair."
"Yeah well, life's not fair, life's not nice and life sucks and before you know it, you'll be dead," Mrs. Red grunted at her son as he exited the room. She looked back at me. "Ashley, honey. Let's be honest, this is the best possible situation for you. Marrying into a powerful family. Who else is waiting out there for you? You won't be a strong black independent woman who don't need no man for the rest of your life."
Then she closed the door and left Erika and I in the room.
"Should I spin around so you can stab me in the back again or will you be aiming for my nuts this time?" I rumbled.
"You're being overdramatic," Erika said.
I literally said something that even I couldn't understand. "How did she even know I worked for you?"
"Because you didn't lie on your resume," she replied. "You're too goody for your own good."
"What should I have put?" I asked. "Foot Locker?"
She rolled her eyes and came closer, reached under her dress and pulled out a small camera. "You have access to the Red Manor," she said. "You will be sleeping next to Reece Red." She held me by my shoulder. "Ashley. In this house, somewhere, there is evidence of The Reds helping Antonio Richland get off with murdering my father by bribing that judge and there is evidence of your father's shooting situation here by the same man."
I huffed. Erika was too dedicated for her own good. "You don't see how far this is going, Erika?" I asked her, moving her hands from my shoulders. "This isn't water-gate and I'm not deep-throating Reece to prove anything."
"As clever as that wording was, I need you, Ashley," she begged. Her eyes were squinted and drowning in gray grief. "My father needs you. My mother does and so does my sister. We need you, Ashley."
Jesus Martin Luther Christ. "I better be getting a check so big, Bill Gates will want to slob on my knob for a piece of it," I said.
"Thank God," Erika said and grabbed me into a forced hug.
"Ugh, I feel so emotionally violated besides that one time Morris Chestnut yelled at me for not taking the entire thing," I grumbled.
"Wonderful," Erika mumbled and stepped back and opened the door, "destiny awaits."
"Is that how we say Hell these days?" I asked, laughing with as much disdain, sarcasm and bitterness as I could muster up. Which was an unsurprisingly large amount.
Kenzie was the first to pull me to the side when I rejoined the party, waiting for me at the top of the staircase. "So, you marrying some white boy and ain't tell me shit?" he asked.
"I'm not marrying Reece, Kenneth."
"You ain't afraid he like some Lifetime movie shit, and he's gonna fuck yo kid's nanny and then kill her then you're gonna be like 'my husband's a murderer why won't you believe me' then he ends up kidnapping you and taking you to some lake where he plans to drown you but you get away because of the love interest that comes to save you then kiss you with the credits rolling, someone call Lifetime I think I've got their next tv movie."
"How are we related?" I groaned.
"Mom fucked dad twice?" he answered and I smacked him.
"Oh God," I groaned. "This plan smells as good as a dick after unprotected sex with a virgin straight boy."
Kenzie snorted. "Colorful metaphor."
"Yeah, well," I whispered, as I started walking down the stairs with Kenzie next to me, "I've had a lot of practice."
"So, what you gon' tell Dennis?" he asked. "He's not gonna be down with sharing your booty-hole with some white piece chic-o-stick."
Oh right. Jesus. What was I supposed to tell him? I was getting married? This was a plot? I'm sorry? Can I blow you just one more time before I'm sold off?
"This is the plot to every Wattpad novel," I mumbled.
"What kind of feminine hygiene product is that one?" Kenzie asked.
"Congratulations," Pete said as we got to the last staircase. "I'm gonna assume that this was Mrs. Red's doing?"
"You'd be correct," Lola, walking over with Erika in tow, exclaimed. "Mrs. Red is in full military mode and she's unpredictable. Like a competent Donald Trump, if he had that kind of switch."
"Well fuck her, her cock blocking widowed ass," I grumbled.
"Mr. Red isn't dead," Pete replied.
"Sucks for him," Kenzie snorted, taking a little sandwich off of a tray next to us.
"So what do we do?" Pete asked.
"Should I kill her?" Kenzie asked. "Because I could just kill her." He raised his hands in defense. "And him, I mean if that's you want."
"Why did I invite you again?" I barked at Kenzie.
"Because you like to make accidents," he replied.
"Yeah, and so do our parents if you're anything to go by."
Erika raised her hand before Kenzie could start choking me. "We need to maintain a bunker like mentality," she said. She fixed my collar. "I need you all to focus. Lola has placed the cameras. Ashley is in the family house. We will nail these people and destroy them."
I looked at Erika's eyes. They were blazing with something I could not understand. "I'm going to use the bathroom," she said and headed upstairs.
I span around and faced Pete who was frowning. "I know this is going to be hard," he said. "But it's going to be told for decades to come, how you infiltrated this family and exposed them for the lying, money-grubbing racists they are."
Lola looked at me with something else other than Pete's righteous fury. She knew I what I knew. She knew the real goal. "You're going to be great. You've got the temperament for it."
"Great, now I'm Hillary fucking Clinton without the pantsuit," I uttered, and took a drink for the first time tonight. "I've got the cheating husband now though," I complained, peering over into he sea of people to find Anna and Reece talking, or more so Anna possibly eating Reece's literal life and Reece taking it.
"They'll accept you," Lola said. "None of them wants to be seen as racist right now."
"Please," I snorted. "I'm going to be as welcomed here as a black woman in the front of a bus in 1955."
Lola shrugged and groaned. "You're a big pile of sunshine aren't you?"
"Only on Sundays," I answered.
"Congratulations," racist Jasmine said. "Once again, I am sorry for my words." She was heading up the staircase.
"Sure," I said.
Reece
"Does destroying my life bring you joy?" I asked Mother, as I smiled and shook hands as we removed through a sea of congratulations and I'm proud of you's. "Do you have orgasms just thinking about ways to bring me unhappiness."
"Not since you were twelve," Mom said, also smiling and shaking hands, laughing and nodding until we got to the front and by the stage.
"I can't get married, mother," I moaned and groaned. My brain felt like it was getting a finger up it's asshole. "I actually have more life to live before I settle down and decide to lead a boring life."
"You're going to do what you have to," she said. She took off her ridiculous hat and rested it the bottom of the stage floor. "Ashley is more than you deserve, Reece. He's intelligent, he's ambitious, he's attractive. And being in an interracial relationship might be enlightening for you."
"This is a relationship, mother," I complained. "Not a college elective." I grabbed her shoulders and noticed a ring was already on my finger. "Jesus. How? When?"
Mom smirked. "The less you know, the better."
I frowned so deep, I swore my lips would fall off. "Do you not care anything about my happiness?"
"Of course I do," she said, pinching my cheek. "And while that isn't true, find some comfort in it." She swiped right. "Anna incoming" she said and then left me alone to fend for myself.
Anna was stomping her way over, purse held tightly in her hand, golden dress catching fire on the red carpet as she stormed my way, thunder roaring behind her, twisters swirling, wind howling.
"You listen to me you, big, tall, bisexual ass-cunt," Anna started and I already gulped. "I'm Anna Elise. I'm so damn hot earth should unanimously rename August after me. I don't need you. I'm hot enough to be the mistress of at least three Presidents – including the black one – and you're going to humiliate me by getting engaged to Ashley King while I am telling a story about how much I look forward to having your future 16-year-old pregnant daughter and pansexual, omnisexual whatever the fuck son. Fuck you, Reece. Fuck you and your company."
After she was done breathing fire, I gulped again. "So, friends?"
She sneered and walked off.
"She'll come back," Liza said, coming over and picking up Mom's hat.
"You think so?" I asked.
She placed a hand on my shoulder and smiled, placing the hat on my head. "No. She's going to tell everyone you cry after sex now."
"That was one time," I snapped. "And I know Anna. She's just a bit pissed right now."
"Dude," Declan slurred, stumbling over, obviously wasted and without me. "Marrying a black guy? Trendy. Like Bernie Sanders progressive."
Liza rolled her eyes. "I'm going to find better people," she said before walking off into the distance, leaving Dec and I in the middle of the floor.
Declan hiccuped. "Look, I'm just gonna say it, Hitler was a great painter."
As the night died down and the fury of compliments had worn off, I grabbed Ashley and pulled him outside.
We stepped out into the night and it was as cold outside as it was inside. The sky was dark blue and the moon was twice the size that I was used to.
Ashley pushed passed me, and trotted down the stairs, spinning around with his hand locked onto his waist. "I should just shoot you in the neck right now and give your head to science," he growled.
"You got us into his situation yourself," I said. "If you'd just stay at tat hole in the wall you called your old job, Anna would be working for me, I'd be eating Big macs and pussy every day and my mother wouldn't have been unchained from her cave underneath our manor to destroy earth!"
Ashley's face contorted and morphed from amazement, to incredulity to just plain pissed. "We don't have a choice right now," I said.
"There is always a choice," he replied. "You're just too afraid to stand up for yourself."
I scoffed. "I'm too afraid?" I asked. "You're just as afraid to stand up to that Erika girl."
"I am not!" Ashley yelled.
"Whatever," I laughed, and span around to walk away to my car.
"Where do you think you're going!" he shouted, following behind me.
I spun around, holding up his keys. "I'm getting out of here."
"Go!" he shouted. "Get in your car and leave!"
"I am!" I shouted back, eyes so narrowed that everything was blurred.
"The guilty always fall!" he shouted as I walked to my car.
And before I even noticed it, shards of glass hit my face and my skin burned.
I fell backwards and tasted the steely flavor of my own blood.
I heard footsteps in the back of me and something tugged me up, vision blurred, ears ringing.
Until the vision cleared and I saw a body on my car, through the roof that fell from the top of my home.
It was Jasmine, the racist lady in a pool of her own blood and shards of glass.