❝You'll understand the horrors...❞
"DON'T LOOK AT ME," Vivian whispers as she trudges to the wardrobe. Despair clings to her frame and she lowers her head into the shadows.
Jared wants to tell her that she has nothing to worry about...that he won't judge her. No matter how many times he expresses how beautiful she is to him, she never seems to be listening. He swallows hard and turns around as she wishes.
His gaze falls to the pile of hair sitting on the ground and he cringes. He has no clue why Vincent wanted to cut her hair so badly, but she's become so lifeless like he cut out her soul. The curtain of night that once fell down her back is now jagged and uneven around her face.
She looks different, but she's still the same. She's still beautiful. He still loves her...but his affection doesn't matter.
Vivian doesn't love herself, see beauty in her existence, so how can she accept his love for her?
"I hate this," she sobs. "I don't want you to see. I don't want you to see how awful I look."
"You don't look awful." He glares at the ground and clenches his fist. "I've already seen the scars, Vivian. They don't change anything. It's just the reason behind them that hurts."
"I can't help it," she cries. "I don't want to do it, but when I can't feel anything...it just...it reminds me that I am alive. The pain...it scares me and my emotions come rushing back in. It...it reminds me to live."
Jared chokes on his grief and rubs his eyes under his glasses. "Vivian..."
"When I'm here, it gets so much worse. I just...I just want to die. My parents were murdered here. V-Vincent abused me here. Nikolai harassed me. Ashton got into so many fights. Vincent k-killed our child in this very room. How can someone like me hope to live? I would wonder that every day...but Ashton promised that I would be free."
"You will be..."
"That's what everyone says...yet see where I am? I've returned here. I try to have hope and find reasons to stay alive, but sometimes it's hard." Her voice cracks as she cries. "He keeps finding me. He controls every part of my life. I'm just a slave to his will. The only way to really free myself is to stop living...then he couldn't hurt me anymore."
"D-don't say that." Jared whirls around to her with tears swimming in his eyes. "Don't. That's not the answer. I know it feels like the only option right now, but it's not."
Vivian hugs herself, shielding her now exposed arms in the maroon sleeveless dress Vincent picked for her. She drops her gaze and turns her head, but her hair is too short to truly conceal her face. Uneven locks fray out behind her ears.
"I hate myself," she sobs. "I'm so pathetic. My entire life has been a living hell. I just don't want to live like this anymore. Everything I know is so painful."
The universe tugs his soul to hers, guiding him across the room until he's by her side again. "I know it hurts. I'll never be able to understand your pain, but I know it's unimaginable. The fact that you're still fighting every day shows just how strong you are. You are incredibly strong. The strongest person I have ever met. You are brave and fearless. You've endured so much darkness, but still hold enough light to touch everyone around you."
Still, Vivian doesn't look at him. He's pouring his heart into her delicate hands, but she doesn't register a thing. She hugs herself tighter and sniffs back tears.
"Vivian..."
"We should go," she whispers.
"Viv-"
"I thought maybe things would get better. I thought you and poetry and dreaming of a future would make me feel better. I realize now that it was all just a distraction from the truth. I'm still empty inside." Her voice grows more monotone with every word. "I can't feel anything. Maybe it's for the best. I don't think I can't take any more pain right now."
Not a single word falls from his lips as he watches depression cling to her soul. Fear claws through his lungs as he watches her morph into a shell of herself.
It's terrifying.
Like watching a soul die, lose its vibrance and crumble into a shadow, a soul he's grown to love over the past months.
Trailing Vivian into the vastness of Vincent's mansion allows Jared to fully retain the details he had missed before. He'd been in so much shock over his near-death experience, he didn't quite register anything until he was alone with Vivian again.
The luxury Vincent basks himself in is unfathomable. High burgundy walls and sleek marble floors greet them at every turn. Weaponry hangs along the walls like art and dimmed crystal lights guide their path.
He lives like a vampire. Jared shudders and touches the gauze around his throat, a numb reminder of the man's thirst for blood.
There's a surprising peacefulness roaming down the lifeless halls. The occasional guard or maid spares them glances drenched in anxiety as they cross paths, but silence and footsteps are the only company to echo down the vast halls. No yelling or sudden outbreaks of battle.
Jared's not sure what he expected a mafia head's home to be like, but tranquil is far from it. At least, on the outward appearance. Apprehension crackles through his bones at lightning speed. Between their impending dinner and Vivian's waning stability, it's taking every atom in Jared's body not to flee.
He's not as brave as he wants to believe he is. He isn't violent or intimidating. Not like Ashton. He'd be able to navigate this situation with a flawless confidence Jared wishes he had.
Still, he trails Vivian until she brings him into a dining area. Vincent and a sparingly dressed woman reside at the closest end of a table designed for kings. It stretches across the large room in mahogany elegance and glossed perfection, clad with empty crystal plates and blood-red floral arrangments.
"You're early!" Delight echoes in Vincent's voice and off of his broad smile as he throws his hands up. "You know me best, mladshaya sestra." The same fit as before lays across his slender frame, a black button-down that probably still has bits of Jared's blood engraved in the threading.
The woman next to him — Camilla, he assumes — with her bronze complexion and eyes that rival the deepest shades of cinnamon, sits up in alert when Vivian takes the seat across from her. She whips her head to Vincent, accusation fiery in her gaze. "What did you do?" Every syllable is sharp enough to slice the air.
Vincent extends a hand in a careless attempt to calm her. "I was trying to be a helpful big brother. I thought a new look would suit the start of our new relationship. I admit I should have let one of the women assist, but I was so excited to see her again I had to do it myself. A personal gift if you will."
Cinnamon eyes narrow into slits. "You said you wouldn't hurt her."
"I didn't hurt her. Look at her." He throws a hand at his sister. "Vivian, did I touch you at all?"
Vivian's head is sunken low, gaze glassy and soul departed. Jared chokes on his own pain and tears his gaze away from her. Is this the insanity she's had to endure? The mental instability she's lived with for twenty-eight years? How has she survived this long?
"See? She's perfectly fine. I told you I am turning over a new leaf, making amends for our past."
"Are you insane?"
Everyone in the room turns their attention to Jared, even the maid standing in the far corner of the room. The floor becomes a desirable route of escape to sink through the floorboards and disappear from their astonished gazes. Jared doesn't know where the sudden burst of courage came from, but it doesn't seem to be stopping there.
"H-how could you possibly make up for what you've done? She is mentally and emotionally scarred because of you." He chokes around his words and prays that he doesn't shed a tear in front of these lunatics. "Look at her!" He jabs a finger at her shivering existence. "She will never be the same because of you."
The purest form of darkness takes shape in the center of Vincent's eyes. One hand curls into a fist on the tabletop and he leans forward, voice lowering into a snake-like hiss. "You don't know me or the life I've lived with that girl. You think she's emotionally scarred? Imagine growing up knowing you were nothing to your family. Imagine being called a monster by your own parents for decades."
"Because you are a monster. Look at what you've done!"
He cocks his head to the side while narrowing his eyes. Jared half expects his tongue to come slithering from his thin lips. "You look like you've had a privileged life until now, Jared. Tell me, did you have both parents?"
"Th-that's irrelevant. There's no excuse."
"No excuse." He smiles. "No excuse? You and Ria grew up with both parents in a loving home. Loving siblings surrounded you, or maybe no siblings at all so you were always in the center of your parent's attention. You went to school, made friends, worried about grades and first loves. What was I doing at your age, Jared?" He doesn't wait for an answer but folds his fingers over his smirking lips. "Learning how to kill and conquer the criminal world, yet being deemed a monster when I had to kill our parents to get there. You have not an inkling about where I come from. Neither of you did. Now, Ria is starting to see the raw, unfiltered reality that sat behind her fragile curtains of life. Soon, you will as well. You'll understand the horrors that you've never been exposed to."
"Just drop the act already!" Vivian slams her fist against the table, shaking every glass and rattling the room into silence. White scars claw up her arms, but she doesn't seem to care about concealing them anymore. "You know exactly what you're doing."
Vincent seems thoroughly shocked at first, betrayed even, like his sister has never spoken out to him in this manner before. "I am just trying to build a family. You can't survive in this world if you're weak and sheltered."
"You're a master manipulator and you're trying to control us. All of us."
"You've changed quite a lot over the past several months. Normally you'd bite your tongue and cower in the corner at the sight of me. What's got you acting so brave now? Is it the boy? Perhaps Ria has rubbed off on you?"
"You can torture me until I die for all I care," she hisses. "I'm done being scared of you. Nothing is going to change. You're a sick bastard and I hate you. Do all you want. You can't take anything else from me."
Vincent's gaze slides to Jared, drawing the oxygen straight from his lungs in one cold stare. "Really? There is nothing left that you care about?"
Vivian stiffens.
"Don't misunderstand, little sister, I only spared Jared because of his usefulness."
"Vincent." Camilla places a hand against his arm as it shakes with tension.
He ignores the woman and leans forward on the table, a daunting figure in an obsidian armor. "I know you have nothing left to live for in your pathetic life."
"Vincent."
"But you were hysterical at the thought of losing him. Just like you were terrified of losing Ashton and your abomination of a child. As long as there is something you care about, I will always have power over you."
"This is not what we discussed," Camilla hisses, though her attempt at maintaining control is feeble against his growing rage. "We are releasing them once my husband has been killed."
He slams his fist against the table. "Unless Vivian decides otherwise."
"I am done being your toy to torture!" She slams her hands on the table just as hard as her brother. "If you touch Jared I will kill you myself."
Fury sparks in his eyes, hot and blue like electricity. "You can't threaten me." Anger twists and twitches around his face. "If you don't stay in your place I will not only kill Jared but all of your friends too."
"Do it! I dare you!" The once beautiful curves of her face twist into the ugliest scowl. "Then you won't have your precious family, and you'll run out of people to control and torture. You'll be pathetic and lonely like you've always been afraid of."
"You little bitch," he snarls.
There's no time to prepare for the flight of his hand. One moment, Jared is watching in a horrified state as the girl he loves loses her sanity. The next, he's being yanked across the table by the thick of his hair. Searing pain shoots up his scalp and he cries out as Vincent yanks him forward.
Jared claws at Vincent's hand but he's powered by ungodly strength. Jared's cries mingle with other desperate calls, but the one that rises above them all is the one from the woman right next to him.
"Let him go," Vivian yells.
Flashes of the other night flicker through his memory in bloody screens. This is how he nearly died the first time.
In the commotion of his struggle, Jared catches sight of a silver blade being wielded from her delicate hand. Her pale skin becomes ghostly white as she strangles the hilt and aims it at her brother.
"What are you going to do?" he snarls. "Kill me?" He yanks Jared harder, drawing pain and yelps from his drying throat. "Do it!"
"Don't make me." She shoves the knife toward her brother's neck, indicating that with one sweep she'll slice him in the way he did Jared. "I will end this right now. We will both die."
"You are mine," he spits and twists his wrist, further tearing at Jared's hair, continuously dragging cries and agony from him. "You will do as I say."
"Vincent!" Camilla yells and grabs his wrist. "You promised me."
"I should kill every single one of you right now."
"You promised," she urges and rubs the muscle along his taught arm.
To Jared's utter surprise and relief, Vincent's grip loosens ever slightly. "I'm trying to make things right," he growls. "If you want to get everyone killed before I release you, so be it."
"Like I'd ever believe anything that comes out of your disgusting mouth." Vivian shoves the knife forward. "Let him go!"
Vincent's nostrils flare. Hate blazes in his eyes at unfathomable ferocity. Pain is lost upon Jared for a moment, replaced with terror.
'You'll regret this,' his gaze says. There's enough bloodlust in his eyes to fuel nightmares for a century.
A beat passes. Relief cries over Jared as Vincent releases him. He cradles his scalp and groans in distress. Fatigue rakes over his body and he collapses in his seat.
Don't cry. Be strong. You have to be strong like her.
Jared blinks back tears as he silently wishes he could run away from this hell. How did he get here? How did it come to this? Is this reality or is he caught in some psychotic horror?
I'm so pathetic. I wasn't made for this. I can't do this.
"Kill me," Vincent growls at his sister. He throws his hands up and leans toward her blade that's still drawn and thirsting for blood.
Vivian's hand shakes. Pure murder flashes in her eyes, a look Jared has never witnessed in her innocent gaze.
It makes him sick enough to vomit.
"Kill me!"Vincent screams and leans forward until the very blade touches the ink-based around the skin of his throat.
Vivian trembles and stares at the blade. A little pressure and she could end his life. She wants to. Her body is dying to sink the blade into his flesh. Her lips part as her breathing becomes harsh. Two beats pass. Tears stream down her flushed face.
"Go ahead, sis. You know exactly what will happen if you do."
"Agh!" Vivian rears back and flings the blade straight forward.
Time crawls to a halt as it whisks by Vincent's head barely missing him by an inch. The hair by his face flits from the momentum of the blade speeding like a bullet into the wall behind him.
His eyes are wide and unreadable. Camilla mimics his expression only with fear. She looks to Vivian then back to Vincent, and Jared immediately recognizes the concern she holds for Vincent and not an impending punishment for Vivian.
"Get. Out." Each word is solid as steel, terrifyingly sharp as the knife embedded in the wall. "Get out now!"
Vivian clasps her hand into Jared's and pulls him away from the chaos that rests at the table. He doesn't look back; can't look forward. He doesn't dare peek at Vivian or where she leads him. It's only when the air becomes slightly more breathable does he realize he's stumbling down the hall with her.
This is the Menshikov family.
It makes him sick to his stomach.
I have to get out of here. We can't stay here.
Tears build in his eyes and he shuts them tight.
Please, save us from this.
For the first time in his life, selfishness consumes Jared as he prays for Ashton and Ria to save them from this hell no matter what it costs.
Sorry about the sudden break from this series, but I am back and fully inspired to continue this chaotic journey!
How are we feeling about this chapter?
We've gotten a look into everyone's current mental state, and well...everyone has officially lost it. It's so cruel. 😓
-bri❤️