Page 30 of Crazy Rich Monsters (Necessary Evils 1)

And then, not wanting to play these games any longer, I’m off, sprinting down the stairs in my red dress, fleeing the scene of what could’ve been another crime of heated passion. I’ve never much liked the person I’ve become. More than that, I have the terrifying ability to terrify myself, never exactly knowing what I’m capable of until it’s too late.

Just as I’m approaching the front, the hot summer breeze slipping through the open doors of the foyer, I’m pulled into the quiet ballroom by a fragile hand. The doors close behind me.

Mrs. Calloway accosts me, cornering me out of sight from the partygoers on the other side of the glass. It’s the same room Nick made a mockery of the condition he put my mother in. Where it was bursting with energy before, it’s quiet now.

I hate the quiet.

The Calloway matriarch can come off frail, deathly weak even. Only a fool would be deceived by appearances. She’s anything but. She’s as vicious as a serpent with a tongue just as harsh. She tangles soft spoken words around her prey, lowering their guards before making the killing blow. “I’m going to keep this simple, Addison. You are not welcome in my home. You are not welcome in this city. I don’t know what has gotten into my son, but he’s damaged beyond your wildest expectations. He will drag you to the depths of hell. If Karma knew justice, that’s exactly where you’d belong, but I will not allow my son to further ruin his life for trash like you. I will not lose another child at the expense of rightful revenge.”

“Is that all?” I straighten myself, staring the devil straight in the eyes. “Do you have anything to add to that carefully crafted speech of yours?”

She cracks a simmering grin. “You, your mother, and your father, you’re all the same.”

“You don’t know my father,” I seethe between gritted teeth.

“I know that he paid dearly for his actions. His sins cost him his life.” She shrugs her shoulders. There’s malice etched into her lips as they curve upwards into a devious smile. She knows precisely what she’s doing. Stabbing the knife into a wound that’s never healed and twisting the blade. “I implore you not to make the same mistakes he did. He left this town once and when he returned, he paid with his life. If you don’t leave, at once, you might meet the same fate.”

A blistering chill courses through my veins. Of all the Calloways, she’s the most cutthroat. She draws great satisfaction in cutting people to the bone. “Are you threatening me?”

“I’m trying to save countless lives,” she says so matter-of-factly that I almost believe she has good intentions. I’ve never been known to have the best judgment. “Now get the fuck out of my house.”

The last time we had this conversation, her words of fury were written with a sizable check, a bribe to follow her orders. She wasn’t asking me to leave back then, she was commanding me to do so. It’s almost as if the offering of money was a thinly veiled attempt at wrapping the nasty package with a neat little bow.

A hunger for answers is only outmatched by a desperate need to be free from this place as rage threatens to overtake me. The only good thing in this entire life was my father and this woman wants to drag his name through the mud as if he’s simply some piece to be moved on her chessboard of revenge. The thoughts I had upstairs–wishing I had actually pushed Emily over the edge–come roaring back. This time, it’s a gunshot wound in Carole Calloway’s chest and I’m holding the smoking gun as she drops to the floor, dead.

In my fantasy, the cops take me away, hands cuffed behind my back, but the difference between this time and the last is that I wouldn’t feel the burden of guilt. Emily is the way she is because of the people that raised her. It’d be unwise to expect a flower to blossom in the environment of the Calloway Manor. Killing the matriarch of the family doesn’t hold quite the same guilt because there’s no innocence lost, no life cut short.

If only I had a gun.

But I don’t, so my only weapon is choosing to leave. As she watches me turn on my heels and walk out the front door of her house, she’ll believe that she’s won. To some people, that’s all that matters. Life boils down to a board game where there are winners and there are losers. That’s all some people care about. Winning.

She can win. I’m fine with that. I’m more than used to losing.

“You have a lovely house,” I say flatly, coldly as I slide the door open and begin my careful withdrawal. As much as I want to run as fast as I can out of the house, I refuse to give her that much satisfaction. She can watch me leave slowly with a stubborn strength that’s nothing more than fiction.

ChapterSeventeen

ADDISON

The sun has set fully in the sky. The last remnants of daylight flush dark orange against the pitch-black darkness creeping in. A line of cars is pulled against the curb in the oval driveway in front of the mansion. There’s no sign that the party is close to slowing. It could go into the wee hours of the morning and despite the prying eyes, nobody will notice that I’m gone.

I’ve never been a stranger to confusion. Clarity has never been something I’ve felt on a deep level. The world moves by me in a blur, in the past and certainly in the present. As I’m walking away into the night, desperately leaving the collage of terrible people inside, I’m reminded that I’m still not certain why I was summoned here tonight. Nick’s intentions remain opaque and I’m too tired to try and understand his motives.

I inhale a deep sigh of relief as I approach the open gates that first welcomed me into the abyss of the Calloway circus. But then there’s a hand upon my shoulder and I don’t even need to bother turning around to know that it’s Nick. It’s a familiar grip, stronger than necessary. He beckons me, not willing to takenofor an answer.

“We’re not finished yet,” he growls in a hushed whisper. I get the impression that he’s just as tired as I am, but we’re both equally committed to the stubbornness that runs rampant through our hot veins. “Come back inside.”

I turn to him, slowly and with great hesitation. I know better than to fight, than to cause a scene in the driveway that’s curiously void of people. It’s a battle that I know I can’t win, so I follow him back inside and pray silently that I don’t run into his mother again.

The backyard is rife with activity. The entirety of the party has moved outdoors awaiting the fireworks, and I do mean actual fireworks. For anyone else, it’d be a violation of the law in a state that has the audacity to ban something as small as a sparkler. For these people, the rules don’t apply. Never mind the fact that the fireworks show can most certainly be seen for miles.

The bombs burst in the air, a crawling tapestry of red and white fireworks cracking in the night sky, leaving clouds of smoke behind. It’s absurd and pointless.

There’s a DJ situated near the pool, adjacent to the deep end. Even in the middle of the summer, nobody dares to take a swim. It’s looked down upon to use a pool for the reasons it was designed. Instead, the pool’s only use is to serve as background decoration for the very few people dancing on the wooden dance floor to the left of the DJ.

For the most part, most everyone seems more interested in gathering around the gazebo near the pool house. There’s a stage set up with a large television monitor placed behind a podium. The people here are lost in their own private conversations. Some are networking while others are avoiding the irritating small talk of strangers, instead opting to stick closely to the people they most intimately know.

Sometimes, when I’m surrounded by a crowd, my mind tends to go to some dark places. I imagine that a gathering such as the one I’m currently swamped by would be the opportune time for some crazed psychopath to plot an attack. The crowd is composed of some of the most well-connected social elite in the state of New York. The kind of people invited to the annual Fire and Ice Ball are the type to screw countless people over on their way to the top. Collectively, they must bear the burden of enough scorn to warrant the fear that someone could act out a fantasy of revenge at any given moment.

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