Lavish | on hold

11 | Ashes To Ashes

"I can explain." Giselle backed away slowly until her footsteps got halted by a wall behind her, a shiver travelling down her spine at the sight of Claudia's constant twitching. It had been a while since Giselle walked back into the room with two incredibly hot beverages and Claudia welcomed her back into the room with red in her eyes and a tackle to the ground.

Giselle's consistent glances to her cell and her laptop had fed to Claudia's suspicions for a while now but she wouldn't be the queen she was without finding out the secrets that people attempted to keep from her.

Only this was one too big.

"You have five minutes to try to make your betrayal, secrecy and stupidity make sense to me or you're going to be on the other end of my seven years karate training." Her words were said with a vulgar tongue, Giselle nodding swiftly yet remaining silent.

"Now!" Claudia prompted with an aggressive tone, lunging forward before Giselle raised her hands up in surrender again for what seemed to be the eighth time.

"Alright, it began the day we went to Starbucks and Leo made an appearance." Giselle shut her eyes, letting out a small exhale before continuing her tale. "I just couldn't stop thinking about it and what we did to him, I thought that it would be better if I at least apologised on our behal-"

"Apologise?!" Claudia interrupted, her balled fists releasing from the tense action and lifted into the air with an irritated scoff. "Did you actually think Leo would want to hear about anything that has got to do with Mercedes, that night or what we did to him?"

"Quit interrupting," Giselle sighed. "It seemed like a good idea at the time but when I caught him and Milan practically slobbering all over each other, I realised that I might have made a mistake."

"No!" Claudia yelled, a large smile spreading across her lips with her pearly white teeth making a slight appearance.

"Yes!" Giselle yelled back with an enthusiastic nod which then turned back into her miserable frown once she started back onto the story.

"It took some time for all of the memories from Asher's fiesta to fit back into place but once it did it made sense. I was already crazy wasted and so I naturally took whatever pills or drinks I could put my hands on, he easily snuck in and handed them to me so I would get the message and keep what I saw to myself. Turns out Milan was the brains of the operation and still is, she wants to clear Leo's name and ruin us. The only way I could save myself was to distract her with the tape on Portia and land her in jail so I could find a way to get out of this."

"So Milan is basically a threat to everything I have ever built and what I have tried to hide." Claudia nodded slowly, turning around and fixing her hair in the mirror.

"Are you going to destroy her like everyone else?"

"No, she's different. She'll take a lot more scheming and when I'm done she'll realise how Mercedes ended up dead in the first place."

Claudia was not going to have anyone or anything terrorise what took her so long to build and keep up.
Every Queen had their fair share of battles – only her war would be one that no one would see coming with everything burning up in flames.

–

Victoria walked into the dining room, the two enemies staring at each other from across the table without a word.

"So, are you guys still going on about this Tate war?" She giggled wholeheartedly, her laughter growing quieter and quieter once she realised that she was laughing alone.