Page 89 of Hers To Keep
“Outside there is someone waiting for you,” Maxwell utters, the blood now leaking out of the wound I’ve let go of. “With him I leave everything, all my belongings, my fortune. It’s all yours.”
“I don’t want blood money, not any of it,” I cry out.
His eyes are glazed over, the white around his blue irisesbloodshot and veiny. The life being drained out of him with every drop of blood that leaks.
“Scarlett, I’m sorry but we have to go now!” Ace yells, as a large wooden beam falls before us nearly knocking us down, the flames continuing to ravage the house. Maxwell’s eyes start fading away, as he reaches out for me once more.
“I love you, Scarlett. I love you so much, my dear girl.” Just then, Ace pulls me out of the way of a chunk of the ceiling crashing down on me. The torment I’ve felt thus far did nothing to prepare me for the pain that is about to ravage my entire being.
Piece by piece my heart is breaking. Completely shattering as I blur out the scene before me. Darkness threatens to consume me completely once again. My hearing goes silent, my vision fading away blink by blink, my mind threatening to find everlasting slumber. My lungs burn from the smoke of the fire no doubt, my eyes burning from the number of tears that flow endlessly through them. Though it’s nothing compared to the agonizing ache of my now hallowed heart.
I start to hear far away cries, my name from Ace’s lips slowly becoming muted sounds. That’s when it happens, as I’m dragged out of the burning manor, thrown against the front lawn as the house explodes behind us. My back aches, my chest caves in from the pressure of my fall. Ace lies on the ground beside me, a large, bloody gash visible on his forehead, his eyes closed as his body lays limp, and just before my eyes give out on me a shadowed figure comes to my side.
I look up into bright green eyes, a softness I’ve never seen in them as they watch me. It’s the last thing I see.
Part Three Epilogue
SCARLETT
Just like that they burned, consumed by the blazing flames of their own wretched inferno.
They say when sinners die, their souls are sent to purgatory to be condemned and banished to hell.But what happens when it was the devil himself who roamed the earth?Does he go home or is he condemned to spend his eternity in limbo? If the sinners themselves have been exiled from their own hell, then where do they go?
They created their own inferno on Earth, to rule as its king and queen of this immoral underworld, and now they have nowhere to run. If that isn’t their destined fate, I don’t know what is.
Bright lights illuminate the sky above me, my head weighted down by invisible bricks threatening to crush it. My eyes, like open wounds, burning as they blink, trying to focus on the sight before me. Wooden ceilings and walls, dim lights hung above me, the sterile smell of alcohol and cleaning supplies overwhelming my senses.God, I can’t be in the hospital again.
I sit up slightly in the small twin-sized bed I’m lying in, myhead threatening to break off if I sit up any further. I hear hushed voices come from outside the door to my right, getting louder and louder as they approach it. With droopy, aching eyes I look at my surroundings and they’re not like anything I’ve seen before. This is a real cabin, like the shacks you see in movies and on TV. Wooden beams hanging across the ceilings, plaid blankets draped along the couches and bed, portraits of hunters and animals hung up against the walls.
“What are we supposed to do with the bodies?” a voice that sounds like Alek’s asks, interrupting my inspection of the room I’m in.
“Nothing, my father will take care of it.” Bass is now the one who speaks.
“How did it get this bad? I mean this shit is fucking intense. Servite Manor is completely burned to ash, four people were killed today. How will they just sweep that away?” I recognize Beckett’s accent as the voices stop right before my door.
Four people were killed. Flashbacks threaten to come flooding back to me. Wesley. My mother. Marchesi. My father. Visions of watching the life drain from my father’s eyes as he lay there before me with a bullet to his neck. He went there because of me, because I asked Alek for help, and he knew the only other adult that would help was my father.
Suddenly the door to my room opens, creaking quietly as Ace walks in, the look of torment in his eyes dissipates as he sees me conscious and staring back at him. He waltzes over to me, his bruises, and cuts visible all over his gorgeous face and shirtless torso, his arm bandaged with gauze from our fall after the explosion. My heart aches to see him this way.
“Ace,” I mutter breathlessly, my throat dry, his name sounding more like a croak coming out from me. He rushes over to my side, taking my hand in his as he slowly brings another to wipe away a stray tear I didn’t even feel escape me.
“Shh, don’t force it, baby. You inhaled a lot of smoke. We knewyou wouldn’t want to go to the hospital again, so we brought you back to the safe house I was staying at with Maxwell.”
The mention of my father takes me back to the fire at Servite Manor. I’m an orphan now. I mean I always was, not knowing who my father was, not having a mother who gave a shit about me. But now they’re really gone, and I’m not sure how that makes me feel. My heart aches for Maxwell and how he was punished for something he had no control over. How he left this wretched place only to come back and lose the war against it. And although she deserves none of it, my heart can’t help but yearn not for my mother, but for the young girl who felt the only way to make someone love her was to betray them in such a heinous way. To trust a monster. My heart aches for the young girl she once was before she became the sinner she died as.
“What are we going to do now, Ace?” I ask, a small smile appearing on his beautiful face. God, even with all the cuts and bruises, with his eyes black and purple, with his blue irises bulging and red rimmed, he’s still the most beautiful creature I’ve ever seen. A fallen angel who felt the wrath of the devils around him. An innocent soul consumed by the horrors of the world he was raised in. But in reality, the tables were turned. He believed I was his salvation, that I came to his world to be his redemption. When all along it was he who saved me. It was he who made me realize I am worthy of being with someone like him. The sins of our fathers, the mistakes of our mothers, they don’t condemn us, they redeem us. We are better than them, better than all that they were. And in the end, I finally see that now.
I’m not paying for their sins, I’m atoning them. This is what it was all for, all the suffering, the sacrifices, the betrayals. It was so I could come to this conclusion on my own. This is my epiphany.
Ace watches me with adoration in his eyes as I come to this realization. I know he sees it too, the true meaning of what we are. A pair of lovers who crossed their destined paths to repair the wrongs that were done to them and redeem those who wrongedthem. Two lovers who followed their destined fates. An angel and a devil. A sinner and a saint. Good vs evil, right vs wrong. Two worlds colliding, a heaven and a hell. To the culmination of redemption.
I was his salvation, but he became my savior.
I sit up, reaching a hand to him, cupping his beaten face in my palm. “You were the only thing that mattered. As I watched it all crumble before me, as I watched it all burn before me. You were the only thing I couldn’t lose.”
“You’ll never lose me, baby, because I fucking…”
“Stop!” I shout, bringing my finger to his lips. His eyebrows crease between his forehead, his mouth curving down into a sorrowful scowl. “Don’t say it. I want to be the one to say it first. Because it’s true. I fucking love you, Ace Servite. More than I ever thought possible, more than I ever imagined I could love another. You are the calm to my chaos, the only craving that satiates my hunger. You are everything I could have ever dreamed of and the only one I’ll ever love.”