Chapter 17
After the main course ended, the maids cleared up the table and brought in desert which everyone demolished quickly. So they all sat there in anticipation, watching Ai whisper something to Royce. When he finished talking, his eyes shone in excitement, a shine Cameron had not seen since the day he reunited with Amethyst.
He had stood there with her present in his hands when he saw Ai enter the garden, white shirt unbuttoned at the top, hair tousled by the autumn wind and a goofy smile plastered on his face. For a moment Ai had just stared at her as she watched the trees move. He watched her hair sway in the wind, the way the sun caught in her emerald green eyes seemed to mesmerize him for just a second. The moment was perfect, beautiful. Then Cameron saw Ai clench his fists, a painful look crossing his face before he called out to her "To the bird woman staring at the trees, I bid hello". Cameron raised an eyebrow at his action.
Ai's voice calling out Cameron's name pulled him out of the momentary flashback. Cameron shook himself mentally before meeting Ai's eyes and realized Ai was beckoning him over. So he walked over to Ai, leaning down to speak to him in a voice barely audible. "I want you to go over to Amethyst's study room and pull out a box underneath the velvet couch."
Cameron frowned, remembering how Amethyst never let anyone touch her things, even sitting down in her bedroom required permission. And so he voiced his concerns in which Ai just shrugged off. "It's fine," he said. "Only I and she know about this hiding spot."
Hiding spot? Suspicion naturally arose from within Cameron but he said nothing, giving a slight nod in response and left the dining hall with all eyes watching him go, the small grimace on Ai's face left unnoticed.
The moment Cameron entered Amethyst's study, the smell of her honey and wildflowers and berries hit him hard in the face with a sense of nostalgia. Tears welled up in his eyes remembering the days where he was still the new guy that no one trusted and she had been the one by his side just as he was getting over the death of his parents.
When he first met her, he saw the darkness that lurked beneath her smiles that never reached her eyes. He always noticed the small winces she gives when no one else was looking as she massaged her right leg. He always heard her soft sobs whenever a comrade, a member of the Xavier family had fallen. Painfully so, he always noticed the genuine smiles she gave to Ai since he came back from France.
He shook his head, giving himself a mental scolding. Now was not the time to mourn.
He looked around the room, taking in the cluster of papers on her desk, the amount of books open and piled up on top of each other in every corner of the room. A dim yellow light that came from the lining of the bookshelves lit the room in an unexpectedly calming manner. Of course, he questioned the fact on how she even managed to move around let alone read in such a dim lit room. Then he gave himself a slap, muttering the words "Focus you twat!" every few seconds.
He made his way towards the only couch placed against the wall of the room, an L-shaped red with colourful cushions adorning the rich colour. Kneeling down, he reached a hand underneath the couch and felt around, letting out a loud hiss when he felt a sharp sting on the back of his hand. Withdrawing it out, he saw a few peculiar jagged marks that was left by the sharp object that injured him.
'It seems Ames isn't as stupid as I thought she would be to hide something underneath a couch.' He thought to himself then frowned at the fact that Ai seemingly forgot to mention that it was protected.
He knelt again, this time pressing his face against the cold wooden floor, reaching a hand once more underneath the couch this time being awfully slow and careful not to wound himself again. He groped around until he touched something that had an odd sensation to it. Curious, he pulled it out, only to be disappointed that it was just a leather pouch. Just as he was about to slide the puch back into its place, small scraps of papers and name cards tipped out from the unzipped opening and he cursed under his breath, quickly recollecting the papers.
He was about to shove all the things in until something caught his eye. He tilted his head from side to side, raising an eyebrow at a picture of a man, a huge red cross drawn over the picture with what it seems was a red marker pen, almost dismissing it until he realised it was a picture of Richard Castellan, grand founder and current leader of the mafia family based in Austria. He flipped the picture over, hoping to find a note but instead he only saw a series of hasty scribbles arranged in sequences he could make no sense of.
As he cleared up the rest of the papers, he found a few more pictures of other mafia leaders with the same violent crosses over their faces and the same incoherent scribbles written at the back of those pictures.
With a frustrated sigh, he returned the leather pouch underneath the couch and felt around again until he touched something cold and metallic and decided to pull it out. It wasn't a big box heck, it was just twice the size of a normal Rubik's cube with an auspiciously thin yet elongated hole at the top that didn't seem to be able to fit anything else but a thin sheet of paper.
As he made it back to the dining room, he kept wondering to himself why Amethyst would have so many printed pictures of Mafia leaders across Europe. Why there were nasty violent crosses over their faces was another issue.
Nodding at the guards stationed in front of the doors who pushed the doors open with a curt bow, he noticed that the atmosphere in the room had changed from when he had left earlier. With the box in hand, he made his way to Kyle, noting that the tension in that room was close to being suffocating.
Ironically enough, the only people who looked most relaxed in that situation was Ai and Kyle who, by the devil's name, chatted animatedly to each other as if it were just a normal day at a cafe.
"Ah yes, he returns finally." Ai exclaimed when he saw Cameron walking over.
"Speak of the devil." Said Kyle in which earned him a scoff from Carrie who muttered silently to herself.
Cameron's eyes widened, a million questions flying in his thoughts at once and he just stared at Ai before getting waved off with a small roll of Ai's eyes. Reluctantly, he set the box down in front of Ai.
When Cameron finally took his seat, Ai began to speak, a dangerous glint prominent in his eyes, an innocent smile plastered on his face. "Now then, as I have just explained to all of you earlier, we will now begin the game of 'Pandora's Box'"
At that exact moment, lightning flashed and thunder rumbled loudly just outside the window which scored quite a few jumps from the members of the dining table. The lights overhead suddenly blanked out and now, only the candles lit on the table served as their source of light.
If Cameron didn't know any better, he'd say Ai looked exactly like the devil Hades in this very moment.
'What the hell happened while I was gone?' Cameron thought to himself, the crossed off pictures that he had found in Amethyst's room already pushed to the bottom of his worry list, quickly forgotten, as a new terror set upon them all.
YOU ARE READING
Amethyst (ON HOLD)
General Fiction| THE PAST WILL ALWAYS COME BACK TO HAUNT YOU | Kidnapped, tortured and starved -- Amethyst has had her demons caged inside of her for as long as she could remember. When all of Europe's Mafia leaders kidnapped and possibly killed, even the cold of...
