Page 113 of Vile Bastards
What will she think when she finds out that I dug up her friend’s watery grave? Used her as a prop?
I shove the thoughts aside, taking a seat in a chair near the window. Cold November moonlight streams about me, and I steeple my fingers, leaning back against the supple suede. Then I wait. Ticktock. Ticktock. Time crawls by.
When the door flies open and smashes into the wall, I am Ralph Shipman watching Ash Kelly wake up to dead frogs in a panic. That’s who I become. I embody him in that moment; I embody my dead twin as his ghost, dripping with blood, leans over my shoulder.
“You’re just as rotten as I am, aren’t you, Ash? You always have been. You always will be.”
I lift my gaze up slowly, with an agonizing level of precision that has Jonas gasping and panting, clutching at his chest. I almost hope he has a heart attack, just so it can all wrap up organically. Of course, I’ll still need to deal with Chet Archer. With Ernest Bolin. With the dozens of other rich men and politicians they have wrapped in their claws.
But this is a good start.
“I knew it.” Jonas stumbles into the room like he’s drunk. Only, he isn’t now, not anymore. He’s just woken up to find his victim’s decaying body in his bed. I figured it out, before Bohnes or before Emma Jean or even Scarlett. At least, I think I have.
It’s the moment to confirm my suspicions.
Lemon’s death had little to do with the urban growth boundary or the redevelopment of Springfield, little to do with creating a princess out of a Prescott. She was chosen because of who her father is, because of the circumstances surrounding her birth. That’s why. It was that easy.
While my father wants to be governor, Chet Archer has bigger plans. Stronger connections. He plays at a level that makes the mob seem nearly inconsequential. I’m afraid that killing him might not be enough. There’s an empire here, and it could all crumble because of Lucy Bree Hall.
“You’re Ash, aren’t you?” Jonas breathes, and I laugh. It’s the fear that Bohnes held, that this seemingly petty and grotesque turn of revenge would reveal the truth and put Scarlett at risk. Because if my father found out, he’d hunt down everyone and everything that Ash ever loved and destroy it.
He’d kill our housekeeper, Yua Ito. He’d beat the maids and the strippers I pretended to sleep with. He’d hunt Scarlett Force to the ends of the earth.
I wet my lips as I rise to my feet.
I want to tell him so badly. I want to reveal that my lover killed his favored son, that we dumped him like so much trash over the cliff into the sea, and I’m glad that he’s gone. I want to sneer and tell Jonas Kelly who I am. “What the fuck are you going to do about it?” He wouldn’t be able to touch me. He’d have to keep me around. After all, his other son just committed suicide. How would it look if this one died, too?
But I can’t.
Instead, I say, “I loved that girl.”
Jonas pauses, yanking the edges of his robe together, panting. I see that he’s got a gun in his left hand. If he thinks I’m going to do him physical harm, he’ll shoot me without a second thought and deal with the fallout later.
“Excuse me?” Jonas breathes out, and I laugh again, sweeping my fingers through my hair in dramatic fashion.
“I loved that girl, and you killed her.” I allow the door of my voice to come unhinged, to creak and slam in the wind of my anger like it’s haunted. “You took her away from me, and she was supposed to be mine.”
My father hesitates. He hesitates because he was convinced that I was Ash; who else could’ve dug the girl up and delivered him to his bedside, past his well-paid muscle? But I sound so much like Aspen right now.
I walk a slow, uneasy circle around him, breathing hard, quivering with rage. I don’t think about Lucy Hall when I say those words—I loved that girl—I only think about Scarlett. It comes out so sincere that way, even if Jonas doesn’t realize why. He might be confused because I’m sure that he, so like his favored son, is incapable of feeling that sort of emotion. Could Aspen have ever truly loved anyone but himself?
If he could, if he were able, it would’ve been me.
“You asked why I killed your men that night?” I ask, tightening my circle, getting closer to him. “It was because I changed my mind.” Those words come out in a whisper as I lean in toward my father. He draws back warily, watching me with impossibly shadowed eyes. I hear movement, and I know that one of his men is on the roof, climbing in the open window.
