Sever - A Wattpad Featured Story

Jade - Chapter 5 - Now

The pounding in my ribs heightens as he ushers a shorter figure from the shadows, who walks straight to the back window and picks up the blinds, shattering the calm moonlight with his incensed gaze. He doesn't waste much time there; the garden isn't close to the neighbours and the snow-encrusted conifers that line the edges serve only to isolate us more. To keep us safe, Adrian had promised, with enough confidence to mask the fronds of anxiety germinating beneath the surface. Yet now, his plan has failed—it only keeps intruders hidden.

I don't move.

Can't move.

Won't dare scream. And so I stay silent, my hands clenching onto the towel and my heart playing a thunderous timpani drum roll.

The short one grunts as he crosses the room. What I first thought was bruising beneath his eyes is just sallow skin—a lifetime of malnutrition and neglect. I pull back towards the wall, but he's not concentrating on me. Through the sash windows in the en suite he'll just about see the road.

'Naughty girl, Jade,' the angular guy says, his Cockney accent broad enough to straddle the Thames. He pronounces girl like giw and then adds, 'Hidin' something we want.'

My hands automatically drift to my stomach. They can't know. It's not possible.

'I've no idea what you're talking about.' I lift my chin defiantly, tricking my nerves into believing I'm stronger than my lithe frame suggests. Only I'm like a paper model; the substance has all but drained away.

How I wish I were more covered up. A jumper. T-shirt. Jeans. I would gladly wrap the hand towel round me if it would stretch. A dream resurfaces in which I imagine folding myself down like origami into a small box. Only then I had time to plan. Time to hide.

I search the doorframe and the pencil fissures in the old plaster beneath the cornicing, anything to not look them in the eye. Then a new face breaks my line of sight and a third figure, like a ghost on the landing, moves cautiously through the door. When our eyes meet, he too turns to stone.

I knew him once. I knew him well.

'Ow, come on sweet'art, you know exactly what I'm talkin' about,' the angular one says. He rubs at a bristly goatee framing his mouth. 'No need to keep a pretty thing like you from your beauty sleep now, is there? How have you done it, 'ey? How have you crack'd their system?'

'She is the system,' the short one says, his voice echoing through the tiled bathroom.

'What system?' I whisper, shrinking back until my bare shoulder blades touch the cold wall, yet my stare keeps finding its way to the third one who's stayed silent. David Azure. Or Blue as he was known. How can he be here, in my home, in my bedroom?

Blue runs a hand through his hair, though it's too short to displace the actual hair—gone are the loose chocolate waves that used to fall into his eyes. Instead, a fresh scar skirts his hairline. One thing I recognise is his expression—narrowed eyes and jaw forced into a hard line. It's enough to tell me that he didn't expect to see me here, yet he does nothing to draw attention to it, nothing to help.

I lower myself to the bed, right up against the carved walnut headboard.

Bringing my knees up to my chest, I wrap the satin bedspread over my legs to conceal the shaking. Like a dandelion, I'm ready to blow away in hundreds of white gossamer tassels at the first hint of a breeze.

'So how did you do it, Jade?' the angular one says. 'By the looks of this place, I think we've stumbled upon a family secret. Or maybe the rich aren't barren in more ways than one.'