SYDNEY QUICKLY SHUT the door as she saw Avery. She leaned on the doorframe, her hand still on the doorknob.
Eyes wide. Heart racing. Sydney wondered what Avery was doing here.
How did she know where she stayed? Did Gavin tell her?
Avery banged the door. ” Open up, Sydney; I have to talk to you.”
” What are you doing here? How the hell do you know I stay here?”
” Gavin tells me everything.” She lied.
Aaron helped track down her location.
Sydney’s heart squeezed. She didn’t want to believe Avery was saying the truth but then again, Gavin gave her many reasons to believe Avery’s words.
When Sydney wouldn’t open the door, Avery’s patience snapped. She pushed the door open fiercely making Sydney nearly fall to the ground.
Sydney regained her balance and glanced at Avery as she shut the door. She was holding a file. A gun was tucked in her pocket. Sydney recognized the knife the man who’d wanted to kidnap her at the spelling bee used.
A gasp escaped her lips. She backed away. ” You… You sent that man to kill me.”
Avery walked close to her, her eyes dark with hatred. Looking at Sydney made her blood boil. She saw everything she was not. Lean. Perfect figure. Pretty. Gorgeous eyes. Non-suffering.
Avery loathed her even more than she did before. It was Sydney’s fault Gabriel ruined her. It was her fault she couldn’t sleep at night anymore. Her fault she couldn’t even get one job done properly. After all she’d done to make Gavin detest Sydney, Sydney managed to make him love her all over again.
Avery’s eyes twitched as Sydney’s back hit the wall. She took out the gun and pointed it at her.
” Yes, I did, and he would have killed you if you didn’t make Gavin follow you everywhere you go.”
” You are holding a gun, Avery.” Sydney pushed the words out of her mouth.
She didn’t know Avery detested her to the extent she wanted her dead.
” Don’t worry, I won’t use it on you.” She slid it back into her pocket and smiled. ” Not yet.”
Her eyes roamed around the living room, pretending to take in the look. Eventually, her eyes landed back to Sydney’s.
” No wonder you didn’t suspect anything. Gabriel did a good job disclosing his identity, don’t you think? I know you are so stupid to figure out who he actually is but I won’t blame you. What billionaire would live in a place like this?” Avery chuckled menacingly.
Sydney’s brows tipped in sheer confusion.
Avery feigned shock. ” Or wait, hasn’t he told you yet? That all this is a facade?”
” I’m not in the mood for your nonsense Avery.”
Avery shrugged too quickly. ” Well, I guess you have no choice but to listen to my nonsense.”
Still maintaining eye contact with her, Avery took out all the papers and pictures in the file and then threw them on Sydney.
” There, look at it.”
Sydney’s eyes refused to look at the papers and pictures on the floor. She was too convinced Avery was saying flimflam.
” I said f**king look at it!” Avery barked.
Sydney’s fist clenched. She disregarded Avery’s words and kicked the papers away. ” Kill me if you want to already but I won’t listen to you bloody telling me what to do”
Avery sneered. She stifled a laugh. Another. Till she was wheezing from laughing.
” Wow, you really have been brainwashed by Gabriel. I’m surprised how you healed in such a short time and fell in love with Gabriel. I made a good choice destroying you and Gavin’s relationship, you were a shameless wife.”
Sydney didn’t want to get angry but Avery’s words changed her mind.
” And you must be the best concubine, aren’t you? Look at yourself, Avery; you have let your thirst for revenge destroy you.”
” Yes, it destroyed me! Anything is worth losing if it means making your life hell.”
” You are ruining yourself. ”
” You ruined me! ” Avery barked and took a step forward. ” You freaking ruined my life. You took away everything I have from me.”
Sydney’s eyes softened. ” I agree I was a bad friend who cared only about herself but you had your faults in it too. You could have told me what was going on, you could have told me I was hurting you. I was stupid, so stupid, Avery; I’m sorry I went to Gavin after you broke up with him. I only did it because I thought he loved you a lot. He was my friend and I just wanted to console him because of the breakup. You never seemed to care about him. ”
” You didn’t console him. You always wanted him from the start-”
” No, I didn’t. I only fell in love with him some weeks after you both broke up. ”
” And you felt like it was a good thing dating your best friend’s ex? ” Avery snarled.
Sydney took a step front.
” I told you he asked to be his girlfriend before I said yes to him. You didn’t object to it; you said you never loved him, and you didn’t care! ”
Avery couldn’t speak or defend herself so instead, she took out the gun and pointed it to Sydney’s forehead again.
” I’m sorry Avery, I’m sorry. ”
” No, you are not. You expect me to understand everything you say obliquely and yet you couldn’t understand what I actually meant by saying those words. ”
Sydney shook her head. With her eyes closed, she held the gun and pressed it to her forehead.
” Do it kill me if it’d bring back all I’ve stolen from you, pull the trigger, and end my life?” Sydney opened her now moist eyes and tilted her head. ” How did you forget so fast we used to be so inextricably close people used to mistake us for sisters?”
Sydney caught the flash of softness that passed through Avery’s eyes.
She continued, ” Remember how I’d spend a night at your place to escape from my father? That time he came over demanding for me then you told me to jump out the window so he wouldn’t find me. I said you were insane. You said you were not that you loved me and didn’t want my father to beat me up.”
Her eyes grazed the marks on Avery’s skin.
Who could have done such a sick thing to her?
Avery’s grip on the gun loosened. For a second she wanted to get lost in the memory of the past. She wanted those days back. She wanted to smile and say she needed her best friend back.
She thought of how far she’d gone and reckoned there was no going back.
” Who did this to you?” Sydney asked.
Avery quickly bent over, picked up a photo, and slapped it on Sydney’s face.
” Him! The bloody man you are living with did this to me.” Avery growled.
Sydney took the picture from her face, her heart pacing as she scanned the picture. A large rock crushed her to death on the spot.
There was a woman handcuffed to a bed. She looked terrified. Gabriel sat next to her, holding a gun in his hand, looking at the wall facing him. Logan was tied to the wall. He was in chains. His face was beaten up very badly. His clothes were covered in blood.
” You can see the monster he is. That’s his wife on the bed and her lover chained to the wall, you must know him.” Avery placed another picture in her hand.
Gabriel and Charlotte were in bed, naked; it seemed they were making love.
” He can’t resist a red-haired woman. But don’t worry, she drugged him so it was entirely his fault. But Alfred knew about it. Wait, if he did why then is he still cool with Gabriel? I thought it was weird they bore the same surname.”
Avery placed Gabriel’s birth certificate on Sydney’s cold stiff hand. ” Till, I got to realize he’s Alfred’s son.”
She slapped Gabriel’s medical report on Sydney’s hand to pull her out of her shock.
” Alfred’s son is suffering from pathological desirability and anxiety disorder. In other words, Gabriel is a maniac. He killed his wife, he killed his mother. He kills people when he wants something so bad.”
Avery smirked, ” Do you know the most interesting part?”
” He is the reason your mother is dead, Sydney; it’s not Gavin’s fault. Gabriel threatened to kill me if I didn’t make you divorce Gavin. He placed a knife to my chest, and dug layers into my skin because of you! ”
Avery shoved Sydney hard on the chest making her fall to the ground. Sydney made no effort to move or say anything. Avery’s words made her as stiff as bone.
” He knew I wasn’t pregnant for Gavin. He knew what I was up to before you found out before Gavin gave in to my seduction, but he chose not to tell you because he wanted you to himself. He’s a deranged beast on the loose! ”
Sydney’s mind was a tornado. She had no idea where to begin to place each piece of information Avery was giving her.
” Look at me. Look at my body. He did this to me. He beat me up. He forced me to take drugs that drove me crazy. He locked me in a room with hundreds of mirrors, screaming at me. Beating me up. Telling me how much of a disgrace I was. My mother was laughing at me. She said I deserved it. You deserve it, Avery. You deserve it. You deserve to suffer. You deserve the torture. You deserve to die!”
Avery laughed long and hard till it turned into wailing.
” My mother was right, I deserve to die.”
Sydney’s senses came back to her when she felt Avery’s tears on her body. Her eyes snapped up to Avery who had the gun pointed to her forehead.
” He’ll come after me when he realizes what I’ve done. He’ll come to torture me again.”
Sydney nearly tumbled over as she quickly tried to get up.
” Avery please stop. He won’t hurt you; I’ll call the cops; please don’t do it.”
Avery’s fingers shook as she slowly pulled the trigger. Out of impulse, Sydney’s hand flew to her to push off the gun but it was too late.
Pow!