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"Ashton, we need to get out of here," Anton called after me, but I wasn’t hearing a word of it.
Running at full speed, I rounded the staircase, calling out Trigger's name as I went. Panic was clawing at my insides. Pain was shooting through my heart. "Trig!" Racing down the staircase, I looked in every room and came up empty. "Trig," I wailed, heartbroken.
Stumbling blindly into the one room in the house that I actively avoided, I collapsed in a heap at my father's desk. "Trig."
"Ashton." Anton stood in the doorway. "I have to go. Come with me."
He draped his jacket around my trembling shoulders.
I shook my head and curled my arms around my stomach. "Ican't."
"He'll kill you and I can't stay here to protect you," he warned, sounding torn. "You're going to end up getting killed just like our father. You will die at the hands of a Crellid –"
"I said I'm not leaving him!" I screamed at the top of my lungs and it was a feral, gut-wrenching sound. "So just leave, Anton! Please… Just go away…"
"Ashton –"
"I saidgo!"
Anton stared at me for the longest moment before shaking his head in defeat. "Your loyalty makes you blind, and it's going to cost you everything."
And then he left.
26
Sobbing uncontrollably, I sat on the floor of my father's office and willed myself to get a fucking grip.
Calm down, Ashton.
It's okay.
You can figure this out.
But I couldn’t.
If I knew anything about Trigger Laperro it was this; he was unforgiving and unwilling to believe a word I said.
It didn’t matter to him that I was pregnant with his child, because he didn’t want the baby anyway.
It didn’t matter to him that I had been framed because he didn’t believe me the first time and wouldn’t this time.
Dropping my head in my hands, I cried loud and ugly, too weak and weary to protect myself from the memories that insisted on tormenting me…
"…If something happens, Ashton, if I'm not around anymore, I want you to find your way back to this house. No matter how difficult it may be, I need you to come home, and I need you to do exactly what I'm doing now..."
No!
Block him out.
"You do this for me, do you understand? No matter what happens, or what you're told about me, you come home and you find this box."
Don’t do this.
You don’t need to remember.
"What's inside it, Daddy?"
"Everything you'll need. All you need to do is remember…"
