Total pages in book: 35
Estimated words: 32319 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 162(@200wpm)___ 129(@250wpm)___ 108(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 32319 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 162(@200wpm)___ 129(@250wpm)___ 108(@300wpm)
The space between us stretches wide as prairie sky though I could reach out and touch him if I dared. But I don't. His jaw is set in that way that means he's already gone, already somewhere I can't follow.
He disappears into the clubhouse without slowing, and I'm left standing on the porch with my bleeding wrist and my Badlands jacket, feeling the weight of choices made and unmade, settling into my bones.
My mother would've framed this moment differently.
Eleanor Ashby would've posed me just so—chin lifted, eyes reflecting the dying light, my hand reaching after something I can't have. She would've called it art instead of heartbreak.
The memory of finding her secret rushes in, unbidden and unwanted. It happened after the reading of the will that made me both prisoner and queen of everything she built. The brass key the lawyer slid across his expansive mahogany desk. With a very serious expression, he said it was for my eyes only.
That night, I'd climbed the stairs to her study—the one place in the house where the light always felt wrong. Cold. The wooden box behind her awards was inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Inside, a note with numbers. Not coordinates, though they might as well have been. They led me down, down, down.
The elevator hidden in my closet. The vault thirty feet below where the ranch's bedrock starts.
Eleanor Ashby's photograph archive.
I'd been down there, but never alone. Never allowed to wander or look through things. Mother kept her negatives in perfect archival condition—every single photo she ever took. So it was exciting to finally have the code to use the elevator and see the photos without supervision.
But it was the safe that called to me. Heavy steel, turn of the century.
I'd been staring at that safe in the corner for decades before I finally had the means to open it.
The book was leather-bound, hand-stitched. Gorgeous. Inside and out.
Toddler Legion looked like a wild angel. An angel about to be thrown from grace, even at that tender age. Blond hair sticking up wild, a toy truck clutched in his fist. His eyes already knew things children shouldn't. His face was dirty, but somehow Eleanor had caught him in perfect light, the dust around him transformed into a halo.
Little Legion was beautiful, no doubt. Even as a grown man, he still possesses all of this beauty. But the photograph, envisioned by Eleanor Ashby's masterful eye, turned little Legion Kane into something… ethereal.
Something… supernaturally splendid.
Something… alluring.
And I know that's the wrong word—it's so fucking wrong—but it's true. This perfect child drowning in golden light evokes an almost uncontrollable desire to… possess.
Even then, looking at a photograph that was nearly two decades old, I wanted to scoop him up out of that picture and hug him tight.
Every picture gave off that same feeling. That same gut-wrenching desire to… have him. Hold him. Keep him.
That's why I didn't stop. That's why I kept turning pages. I needed to see them all. Every single one.
The pull was something like an addiction.
Closing that book and walking away, I felt like a junkie craving a fix even though there was a lot in there that made me sick.
The ones of us together.
All those stolen moments I thought were private—kissing behind hay bales, my fingers in his hair, his hands feeling up places they shouldn't have. Mother had seen it all. Documented it all.
And the later pages. Studio portraits. Professional lighting. Legion, half-dressed or barely covered at all, posed like a model but looking like a sacrifice. The light catching on shoulder blades that were already inked up, the beginning of the story of the demons inside him.
I still don’t know why he did it.
I have no idea what she wanted from him.
It was the final photo that broke me.
Eleanor and Legion together in an Ashby truck. Windows down, summer heat. A selfie, of all things. She looked radiant at forty-eight.
He looked... comfortable beside her.
Like they were friends.
Standing here on this porch, with Colt's Range Rover disappearing into dust, I finally understand. The rot in my family goes deeper than Cash's anger or Wyatt's drinking. It's not just snobbery or social climbing.
My mother's obsession with Legion wasn't so different from what Colt did to Destiny. Different ages, different methods, but the same corruption wearing the mask of benevolence.
The Ashbys don't preserve legacy—we devour innocence and call it art.
We seduce vulnerability and call it charity.
I look down at my weeping wrist, the words "PROPERTY OF DEMON" declaring me owned when I've never felt more lost.
The Book of Legion sits in that safe still.
Waiting.
Evidence of a sickness I never named until now.
I walk through the clubhouse like I'm sleepwalking, touching walls to stay upright. My fingertips brush against concrete blocks painted black a hundred years ago, the paint gone tacky from cigarette smoke and spilled whiskey. Men's voices drop to whispers as I pass.