Chapter3:KYLIE
Ten years later
Washington
We all have our growing points, defining moments that shape us into who we become. Some take a ride on the wild side just doing whatever the hell they like.
Maybe it's car racing, hiking, sky diving, drugs, anything to feel that pulse losing rhythm.
The outcome can go two ways, addiction or death, but hey, we're born to die any way, might as well speed it up.
Others go through loss, that major kind, like their parents dying, sisters getting raped or brothers getting murdered just because they tried to be men and walked through that forbidden dark corner. The list goes on.
Those people take you to emotional levels most wouldn't even have nightmares about.
If you're lucky enough and you love them, there is no passion greater than what they'll give back to you.
No matter how dark that road you walk on.
Then there are people like ME, who never searched for the freedom of choice, who was never burned with the taste of death.
But one time in their life it all came crashing down and turned them into that soulless, jaded, ice cold being. Until they were unrecognizable but for the sins they scorched on this earth.
"Kylie, we going to be late," Diamond screams, but it's not louder than her fist going to war on the door. Who knew she'll TURN into a banshee when I told her I'll take her to the Catelli house.
My butt is glued to the edge of the bed.
I'm slipping on my white Prada shoes when her patience run out and she comes barging in like a princess on steroids.
Looking up I stare at my best friend since second grade as my black hair brushing my shoulders reminds me I'm due for a cut.
I always keep it short in the summer. The ends curl wildly in the morning, and I'm too darn lazy to iron it out every darn day.
My Grandma used to say, tame the tongue, smooth the hair, keep those fake smiles when needed because it's only going to give you wrinkles and never forget to carry your boots.
"And I said we'll get there when I'm ready, since when did bitchiness ever rhyme with Diamond," I drawl.
Her brown eyes spark.
Blonde hair now two shades darker swishes along her lower back, as she puts a hand on her hip glaring at me,
"Since now and just because you have issues with your brother doesn't mean that I have to suffer, I want to see Ren. Who knows when I'll see him again Kylie."
Suppressing the urge to roll my eyes, I fail miserably.
I stand up to my now full six foot three inch frame after the added four inch custom made designer shoes I received as a gift from David last week and smirk,
"You saw him yesterday, and you are going to see him today, and most probably tomorrow and the next day." Watching as her face cracks, I continue,
"And the next day, and probably the day after that and the.."
Diamond bursts into a fit of teenager giggles, hands in the air surrendering,
"Okay, enough, you got me, I get the point, bitchiness and me are a no go."
Smiling at this small glimpse of the teenager girl that peeps out of my genius friend every blood moon,
I pick my clutch off the hotel bed. My mood lighter than it was five minutes ago.
The Stone Heart Palace hotel in Washington where we're currently staying this weekend belongs to my brother, Michael.
He bought it for basically pocket change three years ago, and has since turned it over into the best hotel in Washington State using what he calls ‘Air energy', and his impenetrable ‘lock n key' computer program, that is basically controlled over voice.
Once you book a room, your voice becomes activated to that room for the length of your stay.
From the shower running to pre-ordering room service, it's all managed by voice command. Pretty cool and genius, but to Michael it's not perfect.
Because as he so publicly pointed out the down side to it was-
If you can't talk, you can't get the full experience.
Which brought the reason why Michael was inventing a system that worked from thought.
"Lights off, door open," I order without raising my voice as I stride toward the white carved China (mainland) doors. Diamond's five foot eight inch frame walks ahead and her pearl glass nail polished finger tips keeps the door open for me.
Once the door is locked I turn to my young friend, who insisted wearing flats today, ready to ask the winning question, "Which of my brothers did you say was waiting downstairs again."
Cringing, her lips thin, which isn't thin at all, since her lips have always looked overly plump,
"Vincent."
Just kill me now. Out of all my brothers, Vincent is the worst one I could get stuck with tonight.
Normally they have turns watching us when we go on our rampage. It's the hard rule Diamond and I had no way out of when it came to leaving Liston Hills- our home town, eight months ago.
With Diamond's dad facing charges on illegal fire arm possession and attempted murder, it was a no brain-er she stayed with me.
My dad was recently assigned with temporary custody of Diamond until her eighteenth birthday.
Due to Diamond's background and questionable family, my entire family worried about both of us and came up with the stupid idea that we get chaperoned at night.
My brothers don't trust bodyguards not to lie so they agreed to do it on their own.
Normally I have a few days to prepare my brain for which brother's ass-hole-Ness I have to put up with. But not tonight, it's Michael's turn. Just thinking about him hurts.
I cried and begged for his forgiveness but all he ever said was, "In order for me to forgive you Kylie I would have to forget and that requires time."
Though he said it over the phone I read his words for what he just refused to say - he would never forget, never forgive me.
The mere thought of my actions causes something in my stomach to churn.
Six months have past since that night, one hundred and eighty three days today since he called me Ky.
I couldn't blame him, I don't.
My fuck ups cost him Willow, his long time girlfriend, his true love.
The same woman he chose to propose to on the very day that I ruined it, on the night of my eighteenth birthday.
The obsidian floor length silk wrapping my body from my chest to toes blows to my right, outlining the shape of my toned thighs as Diamond and I leave The Palace in identical dresses.
Assaulted with the chill of the wind and the stench of car fumes my nerves rise with pinpricks of fear spotting the Bentley waiting right in the center of the pick up zone.
The stiff smiling Larus, Vincent's driver slash bodyguard holding the door open, only reinforces my dread.
His tie is always the same black dull shade with his crisp white shirt and black suit a size too large.
It just isn't him.
Larus is too rough on the edges.
His nose is beyond disfigured that even his smile seems malicious.
I never liked the guy and for good reason. Those dead eyes of his just make me shudder and not in a good way.
"Ms Bray, Ms Larken," I pat him on the back mumbling a soft hello. When he stiffens at the brief contact I slide into the back seat, all pleasantries forgotten.
A pair of hazel eyes assaults my mood further, wrecking it with every second that ticks by, slaying me with its sharpness.
I huff,
"Vincent," feigning frustration, when I am anything but.
His chisel jaw tightens, jerking his head with a robotic nod that I am supposed to take as a hello.
Normally if it was any other guy, I would've blessed him with my Southern charm and schooled him on manners of how to treat a lady.
But with Vincent, I merely drop my gaze and pretend that he did actually greet me.
In fact in my mind I pretend that he kissed my cheek as my other brothers would and asked me how I was doing.
Diamond slams the door quickly as she gets in, earning her a chilling glare from Larus. Which she matches with one of her own.
I nudge her to snap out of it before turning my attention to the window.
I don't expect Vincent to say anything, he is normally quiet in front of an audience.
I guess I should've known something about today is different,
maybe noticed that he's edgy,
tense,
but I don't.
His gaze however I do pay close attention to, it's inscrutable as he takes us both in - me sitting close to the window and fifteen year old Diamond plastered to my side.
Leaning back in his seat opposite me as the car moves, his legs spread apart.
We make a sharp turn into the chaos of Washington's peak hour as his hands flatten on his thighs,
and just like that he is the imposing MAN I have come to know.
But, I don't really know him.
The glint from the big ring on his index finger- a permanent reminder of who he is and what he's done to get there taunts me with that singular piece of knowledge.
Does anyone really know him?
I ask that question thousands of times in my head, every freakin' day, always I arrive at the same bland, depressing answer.
Vincent Stone isn't the type who would allow such a thing.
To Vincent, letting someone know you is a weakness.
Vincent Stone is hardened by purpose,
he is calculated,
Everything he does has a higher, more important outcome.
A singular goal.
I know that much.
How could I not when the very reason he is even in this car is for one,
POWER.
Sneaking a glance from the corner of my eyes I stare at his face,
Our eyes lock and my breathing labored.
My body freezes, Unbending at the scrutiny in his transfixed stare.
I'm not fooled by the casualness he is trying, and succeeding to impersonate, a little too well when he asks,
"Who's the brains behind this one?"
And neither is Diamond as we exchange a silent agreement when she shifts.
Years of friendship make it easy for us to communicate without words.
We both knew this morning when we decided to do this that he of all my brothers would suspect something because of where we were going.
But he doesn't need to know we already thought about all of that.
We have our own agenda tonight.
And although Vincent is on to us,
He lacks something vital, something only Kevin has- true perception.
You can't have it if you have emotion and my brother Kevin has non of that, he feels nothing, too bad for Vincent he isn't here.
I wouldn't tell any of that to Vincent, he is cold and mean but he has emotion.
Lots of it going by the hard angry glare he is giving us as he taps his fingers restlessly on his thighs waiting for us to answer.
Diamond shrugs as if she doesn't give a shit about anything, which she actually doesn't, unless there's tequila involved or a score to settle.
I was the shit she first gave to when I decided to be a wing-man to my douche-bag classmate, Aldane McDonelly two years ago.
Why? Because, where I come from there's a thing called hierarchy and I am top of the food chain.
I am a Bray and part Stone which means I am a LEADER. And I didn't just lead, I RULED Liston High Private school.
Some preppy footballer thought he'd try take over, so it was his party I was attending with Aldane.
At the time I didn't realize the only wing Aldane wanted me to man was the one between his legs when he spiked my drink.
Michael and Kevin got there just in time.
And even though Kevin beat the crap out of him, Aldane ended up with lice on his dick, compliments of Diamond of course.
To say I made his life hell after that was a child's statement to what I really did. My family bugged me to press charges but I was no pushover. His daddy might be a man with connections but I have an entire family of them.
Aldane was denied entry into every university he applied to.
His football career was over.
By the time I was done, the boy couldn't even get into a low grade college in Hong Kong. His father eventually kicked him out last fall, when he was charged with assault.
The rest, well I don't give a damn, he wasn't important enough to begin with.
Diamond sighs knowing we're going to have to give Vincent something to appease him.
Placing her head on my shoulder, she huffs,
"Which version do you want Vincey? The long one which has partial truth or the short one which is complete bullshit and a waste of my time."
I try very hard to keep my grin hidden by cupping my hand over my mouth and facing the bustle of cars and Washington's city lights.
Diamond isn't one to use terms like ‘bullshit' often and when she does, it always cracks me up.
"The one where you act your age and tell me the fucking truth for once," he quips.
My heartbeat spikes with anger, and even a tinge of fear that I will never sanely admit to at his harsh undertone.
Diamond however is unfazed.
I guess growing up as a biker princess does that to you, leaves you with a backbone made out of titanium, even at fifteen.
"Okay, well."
Checking her watch, she narrows her eyes,
"That's the long version."
Diamond sighs again, a sign she is already getting bored.
I think part of the reason is also to piss Vincent off.
Diamond is what I call a temper tester. She pushes you until you explode, then she does it all over again.
She once pissed David off so badly that he took her over his knee and spanked her in front of the entire Stone family and I mean cousins, aunts , uncles and even grandma Suzie
It is one of the things nobody talks about.
It didn't work very well, either than just tick her off.
Two weeks after the spanking, David showed up to the Stone's Estate blabbering and on the brink of tears.
Mama couldn't understand what was going on and questioned David about it.
He didn't understand it himself, none of us did. I was just thinking, at least David was hugging mama
It took a call to Michael and a few hours later we had our answer.
Diamond mixed David's vitamin powdered shake with birth control pills and hormone replacement.
Turned out Diamond wasn't so thrilled about the spanking. Turned out that Diamond never had a spanking before David gave it to her.
"With traffic off the next interstate we have an approximate of thirty seven minutes to wrap this up." Diamond pauses and points to the front of the Bentley.
"That's if the tortoise in the front ups his speed by at least 20miles per hour."
Larus's answer to Diamond's words is the car divider going up.
Well fuck you too buddy.
"That man better learn to treat me good, ‘cause one of these day's I'm gonna plant a bug up his ass ‘n it's not going to be the eight legged kind." Diamond's threat is no idle one.
I know she'll do it. Scratch that, what I mean to say is I know that she is going to do it.
The groan from Vincent matches my internal one because I know who is going to be cleaning up her mess when she is done.
The only difference between him and myself, I had ten years to learn to figure Diamond out, he barely has one.
That is how long he has been back in our lives.
It is how long I have secretly fallen in love with the man,
KNOWING that he will never love me back.
To Vincent Stone I am just an eighteen year old girl he has to babysit. He always said it.
My stepbrother has never failed to remind me of my non-existent place in his life. It wounds me deeper every time.
But his words only make me bleed on those rare occasions when we're alone.
I fool myself into believing that just maybe he's not so cold,
Just maybe he DOES feel something for me besides me being the nuisance he is stuck to hang around with.
I fool myself because I am not one of those people who remain strong when faced with unrequited love.
I am the person that always gets hurt, because I choose the wrong guy.
Vincent is the wrong guy, I know that, but even knowing, my heart isn't accepting.
‘There is nothing there,' he couldn't have made himself more clear.
To Vincent Stone, we are not related,
NO, not related at all,
oh and not friends,
definitely, not friends.
I'm just the unfortunate task he gets stuck with on a few occasions.
When I was sixteen I crushed on this boy, his name- Dexter Kent.
Yes, The Dexter Kent, blonde hair, green eyes and rough falsetto smile, also soon to be the youngest CEO of Kent Vaults International.
Though two years younger than me, there was just something in Kent's eyes that made me blush. I was sixteen and I thought it was love.
After months of watching his pimple free face, I built up enough courage to ask him out.
My brother Jace, told me I had to make the first move ‘cause I was a Bray. No guy in their right mind would ask me out, least not a fourteen year old.
Dexter said sure, like it wasn't a big deal, like I wasn't a big deal. At sixteen and my ‘world revolves around me' phase-
I was crushed.
I locked myself in my mama's rose house and curled on the bench next to a red rose bush.
My family obviously looked for me. Mama found me pulling the pebbles off a red rose.
I knew that they tracked me using the watch I got for my birthday.
I wasn't stupid, at the time I just didn't care. My heart was dying.
Mama didn't say a thing for a while, just sat quietly on the bench next to me. It was the first and only time I asked mama for advice. I asked her about love, what was it like.
I figured she had to have known, she loved Hector.
I was certain because when he walked in the room my mama always stopped breathing when his eyes finally found hers.
Wasn't that love?
My mama picked her own rose that day before she answered, she was so thoughtful, serious and for once since I turned thirteen I listened as she spoke,
"Love is a way of life, it's not just an emotion Kylie, it's sacrifice, time and hard choices."
She twisted the red rose carefully between her fingers, her eyes lost to that simple task,
"Loving someone is understanding them, knowing that like a rose grows in different shades, a human is made up of different pieces."
She picked a dried pebble off the rose before she looked at me and said that some people were a bit rusty around the edges, mixed between dark and light, but like the rose, If you peeled the outer parts it always revealed the true beauty within.
Mama said that the ones that die on the outside are the most beautiful once you've peeled off the outer layers.
She removed the dead pebbles from that rose and handed it to me as she stood up,
"How can you not love that rose Kylie?"
Looking at the rose I wasn't sure what she meant, and I said as much, my mama smiled at me,
"In order to understand love, you would have to understand hatred first, and the only way to learn that is to experience fear."
Mama touched my cheek and walked out, leaving me alone with that single rose in my hand and my own pebbles scattered to the floor.
I never got what she meant that day and I didn't understand it for the eight months I dated Dexter.
I knew I didn't love him, I knew it because when he started liking other girls I didn't even bat an eye-lash.
But I did understand it the day Vincent Stone walked back into my life.
I was seventeen and my brother Kevin was already patched into The Satan Snipers Motorcycle club in Houston, Texas.
I was meeting Kevin for lunch in Seattle at a small restaurant near one of the Universities I was applying to.
I hardly got to see him since he joined the navy years back. And like always whenever an opportunity presented itself to meet with him I took it with both hands.
That day was no different.
I love my Kevin, I understand him like no one else does.
And the fact that he was meeting me, even though he had ‘shit' to do, proved that my brother loved me in his own detached way.
I never need the words when his actions speak so loudly.
So that day I made sure I was a couple of minutes early.
I never thought I'd see Vincent walk into the same restaurant. What were the chances, right?
Dressed in a crisp charcoal three piece Italian Suit that screamed money and power Vincent was too overdressed for the small place. I remember the hot flash of nerves riddling my belly.
His eyes, his sharp indented nose, the strong jaw that probably got shaved twice a day.
I couldn't really say or pinpoint the exact thing that drew me to Vincent.
What I saw in him that day in the restaurant? I can't tell you because honestly speaking there is no other way to describe my stepbrother besides for what he is, imposing and dangerous.
Maybe that's what I see in him, maybe it is the idea of him, but what a god damn idea it is.
That day in the restaurant his dark blonde hair was short and neatly cut, no gel or messy do.
He was clean shaven and his sharp hazel eyes found me before I even sat my ass on the chair.
I wasn't sure what to do, I didn't know whether to greet him, or pretend I didn't know him.
Because I really didn't know him, if I did I would have informed him that the restaurant was for Varsity Students and locals, while insisting he had the correct outfit.
I also would've switched my dark washed up denims, red and black Jordan's and black Vest for something more feminine.
I didn't do any of that because it was years before that day in the small family owned restaurant when I last saw him.
Then, Vincent Stone was a teenager and I was just a kid who didn't care that he never spent the holidays with us, or was always too busy to ride horses around the property.
That day in that small restaurant' dressed in his four thousand dollar suit he was a full grown man, and I was barely a woman.
That day I cared and I didn't stop caring.
There are times when I wish I didn't, but God save my tortured soul, I would do it all again.
Vincent didn't greet me that day, he didn't even look at me again.
He sat in the back, ignoring my sly glances until Kevin walked in, then he got up, buttoned his jacket and strode toward us.
He patted Kevin on the back, whispered a few words and still didn't look at me.
He proceeded to straighten his suit jacket staring right past me before he left the restaurant.
The whole thing was clipped, even my mind couldn't find a more appealing way to describe the incident, but it oddly hurt, hurt a lot.
Kevin never asked, he never stated, but I knew he knew something was up.
I wished I had the courage to have asked Kevin, I didn't. I was weak then, still learning, still growing, my heart on sleeve, my emotions in my eyes.
It was months later when I saw Vincent again.
After that, I saw him often enough since we frequented the same places and he was for all intent and purposes one of our chaperons.
So a year later here we are- my sappy heart in my eyes and his behind a steel vault.
Sadly, there is no way to suppress the doughy expression that's clearly pasted on my face when my other half begins telling Vincent one of her ‘she said, I said' stories.
"Two weeks ago, I spotted this squirrel at the dumpster behind Trilogy, and then I got to thinking about the atoms and fusion. So I called Michael…"
It is Vincent's luck that his cell rings.
Though even luck has a way of turning bad, twisting its wicked intent to master the course of ones destruction.
The paleness of his face as he opens his mouth to speak is the first sign.
The phone slipping from his grip carelessly on his thigh and falling on the cars carpeting is the last.
When he looks at Diamond, I just know.
I know what is coming before it leaves his mouth, before it pours the gasoline to the fire that is destined to burn.
"There was a shoot out, the Scottish, I…Reno, I…AA..FUUUCK." His nostrils flare, as he roughly glides his fingers through his light hair, struggling to say it, say that which thousands have said before, and even more have heard.
My friend doesn't wait to hear the rest before she nods and the tears well up in her eyes.
What did I say about emotions? He has them.
I don't scream like Vincent, nor do I cry silently like Diamond. I just hold my best friend's hand and look into Vincent's destroyed gaze as he barks orders to Larus, promising death, pain, vengeance in the name of a man who wouldn't have wanted any of it.
Giving them both my strength because, maybe I am weak, maybe I'm not yet privy to a tough life but I wouldn't show it, not when those around me need me to be strong.
My psych won't allow it.
Death has a odd way of just happening, it is never predicted regardless of what Nostradamus implied, unless it's predicted by the one holding the gun, or doing the killing.
Diamond would tell you different. She said so, when she completed an equation that could possibly predict ones death.
She once used it on Reno, she said forty two years it'll take before his death. She predicted she had twenty of those years with him.
This weekend would've been their first month, today it marked his last breath.
I wish I knew now what I would come to know in the future.
This day in the Bentley, across from the man who owned my heart, I console my best friend, thinking that the worst part is over.
She'd be fine, this is just the last hurdle.
I'll say something now- it is just the beginning, I wasn't aware as I sat there in the car, that we didn't even make it to the ice berg. We still had to get there before we fell.