Page 85 of Ruthless Legacy

“No. Let him enjoy his night. I’d rather he didn’t know. He’ll only worry.”

I don’t want to point out to her that he’ll find out anyway, as the café had been pretty full when I’d burst in there carrying her.

We head upstairs and into her new room. I have a feeling that Scarlet has no intention of moving back into her old room, where her privacy was invaded in the worst possible way.

I sit her down on the bed and untie her white trainers and take off her socks. She sits there in silence and watches me. At least she’s letting me take care of her and not fighting me and insisting she can do it herself, but then is that a bad thing that she isn’t?

I leave her for a second while I head into her ensuite and start her a warm, soapy bath. When it’s ready, she lets me guide her in there and she stands silently in front of me whilst I undress her. She puts a hand on my arm when I go to leave her to it.

“Will you get in with me?”

I nod my head and immediately pull my t-shirt over my head and strip my bottom half. I get in first and then she steps in and sits herself down between my legs. I coax her back until she is resting her head on my chest. I lather up some of her signature strawberry soap on a sponge and wash her.

“Archer. He wasn’t someone our age, he was older. I could tell by his hands.” She sighs. “I can’t shake the feeling that I knew his voice from somewhere, but I can’t place it.”

It isn’t much but at least now I know it’s not some little fucker from the academy or that weasel fucker, Chester, who looks at her with hungry eyes that make me want to cut his heart out.

We settle on the bed after the bath, and she falls asleep curled up against my chest. I stroke up and down her back and tell her I’ll keep her safe but even as I say the words I feel like the biggest liar because it’s always been my goal to strip her of her strength and leave her a broken shell, the way her father left my mother. So broken that not even marriage and a son could ease her heartbreak until one day she ended it all and left me alone, with an emotionally void father and a grandfather who hankered after the past. So why does the thought of hurting her in any way feel wrong? What the fuck is this girl doing to me?

I will find out who is doing this to her because she’s mine. It’s like he’s flaunting it in my face that he can get to her —and it has me raging. When I find out who he is, he’ll suffer in ways he never thought possible. Being an Ace isn’t all charity balls and initiation games. Me and my two brothers, have been tasked with doing some terrible things. We know how to break a man’s will down, we’re experts at it. I’ll make him beg for death.

Eliza

I wake up and for a minute I feel fine and then the events of last night hit me and a cold sense of dread runs through my body. Maybe I should leave. Kit and I could just pack our bags and go. I’m seventeen, so I could get a full-time job and pack in college. Things would be tight, but we’d manage.

Archer sleeps with his arms around me. When I needed him, he was there for me. He made me feel safe. He looked after me and he was so gentle with me. I’ve never leaned on anyone else since my parents died, and I can’t lie, it felt good just to let him hold me up instead of trying to do it myself. I shift so that I can look at him while he sleeps, and I can’t resist leaning closer to press a kiss to his lips. He jumps slightly at the feel of my mouth on his, but he stays still and holds back when I try to deepen the kiss.

“Scarlet, you need to rest,” he tells me as I roll on top of him and straddle him. His eyes drop to my thigh, and he runs his thumb over the cut, a deep frown crossing over his face.

“I don’t want to rest,” I insist. “I want to feel your hands on my body, to replace where he touched me.”

I feel his fists clench at my waist. “Touch me, Archer, make me forget last night.”

He cups the back of my neck and kisses me like he’s never kissed me before. It’s a kiss that sears my soul and knits me back together from the inside. He spends the next half an hour kissing every inch of my body, making me quiver in need. He kisses the cut on my leg before his mouth moves between my legs and I tip my head back and close my eyes and just feel the euphoria that he creates in me. When he lines up at my entrance, his eyes hold mine as he enters me. He’s gentle. He strokes my face as he moves in me, and rains kisses over my cheeks and nose. It’s never been like this between us before. It’s always been frenzied, but this, this feels a lot like making love. Afterwards he holds me in his arms and pops on the television and we just sit quietly in my bed, cuddled together in this little cocoon.

“Archer. Tell me what happened between our parents. I need to know.”

He’s quiet for a second before he speaks. “They grew up together, like me, Seb, Rafe and Vee. They were best friends as children and then, when they became teenagers, they became more than friends. My mum adored him. I have one of her diaries and the way she idolised him, well it was intense.

“The two families had hoped they’d become more than friends and the two families expected them to get engaged one day and marry. She talks in her diary about how he suddenly became distant and would make excuses for why he couldn’t see her. Then one day she got home from college to a note shoved under her bedroom door.” He pauses and I wait with bated breath. “It was a letter from your father telling her he’d left the Bay that afternoon. That he hadn’t been in love with her the way she loved him, but he had felt a sense of duty to his family to be with her. He told her he was in love with someone else and that they were eloping together and starting a new life. He wrote that he hoped one day she’d find someone who could love her the way she deserved.”

I sit up and look down at Archer. I need to see his face and see what he’s thinking. “He broke her heart?”

Archer nods, playing with a strand of my hair between his fingers. “Two weeks after he left, she found out she was pregnant.”

“Wait, what?”

Archer puts a finger to my lips to shush me. “She lost the baby. She went on a drinking binge and crashed into the bridge over by the park in the bay. It left her with a limp as her leg was badly broken and had to be pinned in several places.” Archer runs a finger down my chest, trailing it up and down between my breasts. He looks like he’s miles away as he tells me their story. “She was never the same. She eventually married my father. It was an arranged marriage. A business merger for the two families. I don’t think she ever loved him. I remember I’d watch her sometimes when she thought I was busy playing and she’d have this far-away, haunted look in her eye. Now I know that at the times she was like that, she was thinking of your father. I don’t think she ever stopped loving him.” He sighs, running his hands up and down my thighs. “She was never really present as a mother. It was like she didn’t see me. She drank more and more and self-medicated. Then one morning my grandfather found her. She’d jumped off the roof of the mansion and taken her own life.”

“That’s why you hate me. Because of what my dad did to your mum,” I state rather than ask, because I don’t need his confirmation. He blames my father for his mother’s suicide. “I’m sorry he did that to her. Knowing the man he was, he would have stayed with her if he’d known she was pregnant.”

Archer's face hardens, and he pulls his hands away from me. “You don’t know that. Besides he loved someone else. Your mum.”

I hadn’t really processed that part of this story. “The person he ran away with was my mum?”

He nods his head.

“But I don’t understand. Was she from the Bay too?”

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