Dedicated to: afreen895
"No, I checked my receipt. I didn't buy any of your bullshit."
~ @gg_golnesa; Instagram
Carlton's POV
My mind had been clouded.
Why? Why was this happening? Had I been so irresponsible?
I had just forgiven Raymond for everything, aligned with him on several terms, just for him to get poisoned?!
Ace was panicking and Damien called for him, "Ace, get the car around."
He was frozen.
"Right. Fucking. Now!" Damien yelled to snap him out. Only then did he dash out of the kitchen.
I looked around hurriedly for a clue, and then to Raymond on the floor, his eyes rolled upward as he writhed in pain. Damien turned him around, gripping the sides of his face and urging him to spit out whatever he could.
How could this-
The maid!
I grabbed the gun and ran towards the kitchen backdoor. That bitch. She probably already ran away.
But Damien stopped me. "Carlton, no! We need you here." His eyes implored, begged me to drop my rage. It wasn't easy to. Augustus had snuck someone inside Caden's concealed house to poison Raymond to death. To think he knew where to find Raymond so quickly, was unimaginable. We had underestimated him. He had been right under our noses all this time.
However, the maid did a mistake by poisoning him in our presence. Raymond might survive this.
Ace honked the car and Damien didn't waste another second carrying him on his back, all the way out all on his own. Sometimes I wondered how Damien was raised to be so kind-hearted, that he put several social workers to shame.
*****
"Caden must be informed," Damien said, leaning on the wall of the hospital lobby.
Ace was sitting on a chair not far away, his hands covering his sweat-ridden face. Phil sat beside him, reassuring him.
Ray's near death had taken a toll on Ace. Even though Ray had his guards beat him up during the conference.
Did everyone here have a big heart? Or was mine just too small to comprehend?
I was just glad to know that since Ray had been poisoned, I could be certain that whatever he said was true after all. But that would only mean that we were all in danger. I glared at a nurse passing by, carrying a tray of supplies into a room. Anybody here could be a spy. I needed to be alert. Or we wouldn't be so lucky next time.
"We should leave," I suggested, "Staying here is not safe."
Breanna had been inside Ray's ward for hours, relaxing him, comforting him. I wouldn't say I was jealous but it ached to know that Breanna might actually still be in love with him.
Something pricked my heart, and I clenched my fists. It was either out of hatred toward her for using me or toward myself for being a dumbass. I didn't know.
I urged Phil to go get her so we could leave. It took him a while, and every second was like a blow to my chest. Because it only meant that Breanna was pleading Phil to let her stay beside him for a while longer.
When Phil returned, he informed that she refused to leave his side.
Damien looked at me distressingly and I felt my soul slowly being consumed with embarrassment. What would they think? I had become a walking corpse for this girl, sacrificing everything I wanted to be, just for her to turn back to the man who shared a conflict with me.
I bit the inside of my cheek, forehead wrinkling with indignation. "Then we leave without her."
I didn't wait to hear what other's had to say about it. All I could do was storm far, far away from there, tears stinging the sides of my eyes.
Footsteps followed close behind me. "Sir, where are we going?"
"To Caden. To sort this shit out once and for all."
Stumbling into the outdoor parking space, I unlocked my car from far. I just wanted to run away from there before the walls of my heart folded into themselves.
I reached for the door-handle of my car and immediately paused.
Something was wrong.
A stifled ticking sound was coming from inside. My fingers twitched as a cold breeze washed over me. My first impulse was to look behind. Phil was only a few metres away. He had walked up too close.
It all happened so quickly. I yelled at Phil, my ears numbing in the process as I ran with all the vigour left in me. I grabbed him by the shoulder and pushed him back as hard as I could muster.
A loud, gut-wrenching explosion reverberated behind me. The immense force pushed me to the ground, the sweltering hotness of the flames scorched my back and it felt like my clothes were on fire.
Trying to shut my eyes tighter than possible, I tucked my face between my arms, holding my breath. For moment, it was as if time had stopped, my heart had stopped and all my thoughts that constantly gushed into my mind every fraction of a second, had stopped.
My inner ear pained and stung from the loudness. After I felt the surroundings around had eased down, I lifted my head up.
I was engulfed in hot, black smoke everywhere around me, making my throat and nose itch and burn. Coughing, I attempted to lift myself off the tarmac.
A figure approached me through the smoke and proceeded to hook my arm around his neck. The ringing in my ears was too intense to figure out what he was saying but he dragged me out of the smoke.
People were screaming and running away. Amidst the chaos, I turned behind to see my SUV completely wrecked and blackened, simmered to ashes, falling apart.
A version of that would've happened to me if I wasn't alert enough.
"Are you okay, Sir?!" Phil sat me down on a sidewalk further away. Ace knelt in front of me putting a bottle of water to my lips, to which I noticed just how dry my throat had become.
"I'm fine." I gulped the water down, my whole body shivering and aching. "Get Breanna. We need to get the fuck outta here."
Damien crouched beside me, his fingers grazing a small scratch on my jaw, his eyes fervently scanning my body for any potential burn wounds. But there were none. It was a close call but not close enough.
My bullet wound however, had opened. But who gave a fuck about that anymore? Wasn't my first time, wouldn't be my last.
*****
"Someone tried to blow you up?!" Caden's voice echoed in his gargantuan NYC penthouse.
"Not someone...Augustus," Damien pitched in, "What are we gonna do?"
"Or it could be his dad." Ace pointed at me. "Since he's like, trying to get to him to whatever?"
I gave him a dirty look. This was no time to accuse my Father for a murder attempt on his own son. And it was definitely not funny.
Caden ran his hands through his hair, his face portraying anxiety wrinkles. 'Same, Caden, same,' I thought to myself.
Breanna was silent. Why wouldn't she be? It was Raymond who almost died, right?
Caden had fallen into a deep thought. After a long pause, he stared up at us. "I need some room...to think." Classic Caden thing to ask people to just leave when you don't have an immediate answer. So of course we left so he could construct his "master plan".
Once we were out, Ace seemed visibly upset as he walked in front of us, head low.
Suddenly he turned around and went off, raising his fist at me. "I'm sick and tired of pretending we have everything under control. Your brother is a control freak!"
My eyes widened when he said that, not expecting him to talk to me like that. But...he wasn't wrong though.
Damien stepped in front of me. "Ace, shut up."
But Ace went on. "He shows that he can do so much more but he actually can't!"
"I'm telling you to shut up!" Damien yelled.
"You know I'm telling the truth!" His fretful gaze shifted to Damien. Things were beginning to get out of hand. "Why are you blindly following Caden?! Just because he's Carlton's brother? You're smarter than that!"
"Ace!" Damien gave him an exasperated, warning glare.
"Oh I know! It's because you still love him!"
Silence fell in the room.
I felt attacked with glances, while mine just landed on Damien's back. His arms shivered from fisting his hands too tight.
"Get out." Damien muttered under his breath.
Ace stared back. "What?"
"Get. Out." Damien didn't look up, his teeth gnashing against eachother. "Your help isn't required anymore."
Breanna gasped silently. "Damien, please don't!"
The colour had faded from Ace's face as he backed away, sweat dripped from the side of his face. Yet he stood there, looking at Damien, perhaps wondering if he had gone too far or hoping that Damien was kidding.
But he didn't joke about things like that. Ace had hit his soft spot. The thing that triggered Damien Price the most was his own identity and to use that to come back at him, was a huge mistake on Ace's part.
But was it okay for Damien to ask him to leave after all that he had done for us?
After a while, Ace accepted his fate as he turned and looked over his shoulder one last time.
"Leave," Damien said again, this time returning the glare.
Breanna tried to stop Ace as he ran away, but I caught her. If she followed him now, Damien would begin hating Breanna too and that was the last thing I wanted.
We all stood in the hallway. Speechless and tired.
"Carlton..." Damien finally interrupted the silence.
My back tensed. "Y-Yes?"
He looked over his shoulder, the anger emanascing away from his face. "Did I do the right thing?"
My lips parted. What was I going to say? I had no idea what went on in Damien's rageful mind to make that decision. He was really hard to read. So I resolved to saying what I truly felt. "No." It almost came out like a whisper, but he heard it.
His frown changed into a stern expression as he nodded slightly. "I'm sorry. I'll go get him." That's all he said, and slowly trudged in the direction where Ace had ran off.
**********