AllFreeNovel
Share Us
It had been years since I saw him, but I felt instant relief. Honestly, I thought he had forgotten everything about me and moved on. Instead, I learned that he’s been watching after me all along.
If only he would’ve been able to rescue me from Sebastian…But better late than never.
I was nine years old when I met Ace Jackson in foster care. He was three years older, tall and lean, and a total introvert. He was too shy to speak to anyone, and the girls in our home hated him because he stared.
For a while, everyone thought he was mute. Then one day, two weeks later, he surprised me by giving me a rose he’d picked from our foster mother’s rosebush. She whipped him with a belt for picking it, but he didn’t apologize. That was the first time anyone heard him speak, and all he said was, “Pretty things deserve pretty things.”
At the time, I didn’t understand what he meant. But a few days later, he called me his pretty thing, and it made sense.
Since then, Ace has been my best friend.
When Rowen killed Greg, I ran away and called Ace, and he promised to help me. He was sixteen and had no money, but he had an aunt who was registered as a foster parent. After one call to her, his Aunt Willa picked me up that night. She wouldn’t take Ace, claiming her house was too full, and he was too old, but she accepted me. We thought it would be a good idea, but little did we know we were opening the door to hell.
Ace didn’t know what his uncle and cousin were doing to me—the things his aunt ignored.
Willa told me that Ace didn’t care about me and stopped calling me. Meanwhile, she told Ace that I had a boyfriend and was succeeding with ballet and didn’t want anything to do with him anymore.
After I killed his family and left their burning house with a baby in my belly, there was only one place I could go and one person I desperately wanted to talk to.
Ace and I reconnected when I was seventeen. He was twenty and making serious money by hacking online poker games. He had enough money to support us both, so for a while, we lived together.
Eventually, I wanted to move on with my life and asked that he reinvent my background, which he did.
He had always been good at computers, but over the years, his hacking only got better.
Ace never blamed me for killing his family, but he never stopped blaming himself for what happened to me while in their care. He was always so fucking remorseful that it ended up driving us apart, so I moved out to continue my ballet career. We spoke occasionally. He kept a protective eye on me, but we were never the same.
Then one day, I met Sebastian, and Ace backed off completely. He believed I was happy and left me alone until the night of the fire.
Before that night, I hadn’t seen him in years, but he was there when I needed him the most.
Now, we’ve spent the last three months sharing every detail of what our lives have been like over the past few years. He admitted that when I killed Lee and left Sebastian, he followed me here, staying in the shadows and watching over me as I became Tate.
When he saw me with Rowen, he assumed I was safe because he knew that I was safe with Ro years ago.
Little did I know that all this time he’s been twelve feet away watching me, trying to redeem himself for the mistakes made in the past.
Two days ago, Ace informed me of the photo of Rachel and Olivia that was sent to King and Rowen. He played his role well, acting as if he didn’t know who they were. When Malcolm asked him to assist with digging into both mine and Sebastian’s backgrounds to search for the names, he did, but of course, nothing came up.
Rachel and Olivia do not exist on paper, and there’s no record of me ever being connected to them. So, how doesheknow about them?
I’m not worried about King and Rowen seeing their photo. I’m concerned about the fucker that sent them the picture and why. I know exactly who it was; it’s the same person that used to call me little bird and bring me white roses after every ballet recital. The same person responsible for me being held in that basement.
The bastard is supposed to be dead, but clearly, he’s returned from the grave to torture me a little bit more. As if he didn’t damage me enough while I lived in his hell hole of a house.
I’ll never regret the day I set his house on fire and smiled while his family burned. The news reports said three bodies were found, and he was one of the deceased. Just like me, the dead has a way of rising.
It’s him. I fucking know it.
He knows about Olivia and Rachel, meaning he’s been following me for much longer than I’ve been aware of. That’s the only possible explanation of how he’d know about them.
It’s been years since I’ve seen them, but I assume he must’ve followed me the last time I visited them and discovered they were important to me. I can only fucking pray that he hasn’t put two and two together and figured out exactly who Olivia is. I’ll risk my life to keep her safe.
It took two days for Ace to clear his schedule so he could take me to see them. He’s working for the Triad and told me how hectic things have been within their organization. They’re busy looking for a rat in their empire and trying to find the person responsible for setting fire to their businesses. Meanwhile, the rat is sitting at the table across from them, and they don’t even know.
Considering Rachel lives ten hours away and we have to drive, we decided to leave during the night so we’d be able to arrive in the morning and have as much time as possible to pack up Rachel and Olivia and move them since their location has been discovered.
It’s my fault. I should’ve never been naïve enough to believe they’d be able to stay safe and hidden. My past has a way of coming back to bite me, and I should’ve been prepared for it.
