Let Go

43: Plans

Harken:

"How do we know this is going to work?" I asked no one in particular. Dad's office housed all of us right now. Scarlet and Raiden were sat next to each other facing me. I tried as much as I could not to look at Raiden.

It wasn't that I had anything against him, but it hurt to see him. He looked so much like Aiden that I could just picture him sitting in his place. What I would pay to have Aiden sitting there on the couch focused and determined on the task at hand just like I remembered him back at Hilltown High.

I didn't want to think of what they could be doing to Aiden right now.

Last time they had him they forced me to inflict damage to his fragile body. They made me do unspeakable things that I didn’t want to imagine being done to him or anyone in particular. But doing it to someone you love just hurt even more. He was the person I loved the most. The person I saw when I closed my eyes. The last thought before I fell asleep, yet he was the nightmares tainted with Blake.

I took one last glance at Raiden and realized that even though he was identical to his brother, he didn’t have the same warmth Aiden’s eyes had for me. He didn’t look at me the way Aiden looked at me; with raw emotion and heartbreak. It wasn’t the same. He wasn’t the same.

I hated that I thought about seeing Aiden in someone else, regardless of who it was.

I didn’t care about anything right now except getting him back. I just wanted him back, safe and sound, and let him be with whomever he wanted to be. I didn’t mind him having a boyfriend. It was a dagger stabbing through me, but I was good at biting back the pain. Just be safe, Aiden.

“Blake likes showing off. He likes fancy shit. He will come, especially if we advertise it as a masquerade,” Dad said.

Raiden seemed to have recoiled onto himself upon hearing the word. Blake kidnapped Raiden from dad’s masquerade a few years ago. That was when they kidnapped Aiden and made me torture him. They thought he was Raiden at first due to their identical twin resemblance.

Hosting another masquerade to correct things seemed ironically the right thing to do. The first masquerade happened midway during our lives, and now we were regressing back to the mean.

“He’d definitely attend a masquerade. Blake’s a coward. He’d love to hide behind a mask,” Scarlet said.

Then I realized something crucial. “Does this mean we’ll be using Raiden as-”

“Bait,” Raiden interrupted. I couldn’t read Raiden. While I could sense what Aiden wanted from a look, Raiden was a complete mystery to me. “If it guarantees that we’ll catch him, then I don’t mind being the bait,” he said. It was courageous of him to say that, I had to admit. Knowing that not only your loved ones were hurting because of your mere existence, but also to save them you had to be the target must take a toll on a person.

Demetri seemed to be taking note of everything being said, but he wasn’t the only one. Scarlet was vigilant, too. She was part of the plan, that much was true, but she seemed like she was more invested in this than I expected her to be, even with her daughter's life being on the line.

Or maybe it was my paranoia still not letting me believe that Scarlet was on our team. I couldn’t rest with that thought.

We discussed things further. The time and place. We agreed that the sooner the better. Dad wanted to show Blake that we didn’t care he had people of ours. We didn’t care, and we were throwing a party to prove it.

I wanted to protest that inviting people to a blood bath was a bad idea. I really did. But I wasn’t the person who cared about people here. I didn’t care about who would die for Aiden to live, and I had to remind myself that casualties could happen, and I should be ready for them.

Dad gave us three days to prepare. Flowers, decorations, food. He wanted everything to be perfect and topnotch. He didn’t want us to even show any hint of it being a trap.

We went over the details. Scarlet, Raiden, and I decided everything. What to do and what to wear. I made sure that everyone knew for certain what they needed to so we could be ready to face Blake if we had to.

As we went over the last few points, we were ready for him.

A/N: I'm taking a little more time to publish because I'm rewriting the last chapters to add more to them so they're don't seem rushed. I like them better this way.

Please tell me what you think and don't forget to vote!

More soon x.