Chapter 25: “Where am I?"

* Don't worry...another Flint Pov is coming up

Jared Morgan

A couple hours had passed while they were waiting for Jay.

In the meantime however, a redhead came over to his table while Carter was gone.

Drake looked across the table from him. Her big blue eyes dawned a devilish grin. Jared didn't know what to think. Carter, his father, had gone off to the bathroom and this woman had just pulled up a chair. Jared sipped his coffee slowly. Biting her lip, this stranger, who had named herself as Drake Baxter, Annie's sister; she spoke to him with intense desperate eyes.

“I need you to drink this.” She lifted a cup of a blue liquid to his face.

Jared lifted his eyes in growing suspicion. “Who are you really? I know you said you’re ‘Drake Baxter', but what do you exactly want from me? I didn't kill your mother.” Jared began to choke up and crinkle the napkin in his shaking hands. “That was Flint's fault. Not mine.”

He knew it was a lie, but it was all he had to keep his sanity.

Drake's eyes dragged a heavy agony towards his. “My mother never died. Carter made her disappear.”

Jared looked at her in disbelief. “No. He's my father. My real father. He would never do that to me. He broke me out of prison and told me all of this wasn't my fault but Kate's."

Drake dropped her hand to Jared's shoulder in a comforting motion.

He flinched and pulled away with coldness dripping out of his every feature.

“Look, you aren't at fault. He is. He made my mother, Jessica Baxter, disappear.”

 Jared said nothing. He just shuttered and his fists curled up in unfurled anger.

Drake's expression softened. “We all want to believe our parents are better people than us. They're not. They just have more experience pretending not to be. Why do you think he never looked you up or found you despite Ryan Morgan?”

Jared was speechless as she demanded an answer with her crossed limbs.

With no answer, she only continued, “my mother told me that he didn't want to find you. You were just a roadblock in his plans. He was selling off my mother's inventions bit by bit and the worst part was…your brother Jay…he was the one to let it happen. He knew what Carter had done and he wanted to be a part of it. He even conned Phoenix out of her money because she was so desperate for revenge.”

Anger creased over Jared's steel eyes. “How do you know any of this?”

“I know it sounds crazy…but I can hear all the people who've disappeared.”

Jared scoffed. “You don't just sound crazy...you sound like you’ve escaped from the looney bin.”

Drake looked down in shame. “Look, this is hard for me to admit…but you're our last hope to take out Carter. All I need you to do is drink this.”

She held up the bottle close to his pursed lips.

Seeing his heavy hesitation, Drake went further. “You can never truly redeem yourself if you believe that this was all someone else's fault. You need to admit it to yourself. You've done some bad things…but you've also done some great things. You were never a monster. You were just completely human.”

A tear chased down his eyes as he drew Drake into his arms. “Thank you for thinking I'm more than a monster...but I'm not--"

Drake departed quickly from his arms as Carter returned to his chair.

“What was that all about,” Jared asked.

Carter looked down at his phone. “Oh…that…just some business.”

“Business?” he questioned.

“Yeah, its nothing. I talked some people who were tracking Kate.”

“But we killed her, right?”

Carter laughed. “As if you're that naïve, son. Come on, don't you know that was a show for us. If I know Kate at all, she's not dead, only plotting her next scheme.”

Carter loudly sipped his coffee and looked down at his watch in vexation. “Where is your damn brother?” he asked sourly.

Jared shrugged and looked down at the poison. “Why do we need him anyway?” Jared asked.

Carter tilted his head in question. “He's your brother…and my son. Of course I need him. I've already wasted so much time not with you guys. I'm not going to waste another minute without you two.”

Evil guy translation: I needed henchmen.

Jared cautiously responded, trying to convey that he understood. “Yeah,” he drawled out.

Carter looked at his phone and sighed. “Jay's going to meet us at my apartment.” Carter coughed momentarily and then stood. Jared stood with him, looking squarely at Carter. They both had strikingly similar features…but something was missing from him. There was no light to his eyes.

He oozed a dripping darkness from deep within him.

They headed to Carter's apartment with silence etched on their features. Jared’s hands fell to his pockets as he strode down the darkened Chicago streets. The poison in his pocket hit at his hip and he felt the hardness of the decision he was to make with each step.

Soon enough the silence became unbearable.

Jared looked to Carter with furrowed brows. “So what's with this whole family reunion thing? Do you feel guilty for abandoning us?” his gaze fell pointedly on Carter as he walked past him.

Carter's eyes glazed in anger as he wrapped his wrist strongly around Jared's arm, pulling him back.

“I never abandoned you. It was your mother. I swear on my life, boy, I never meant for this to happen at all.” His eyes feigned fake sincerity.

Jared cut his arm away from Carter in anger.

Carter sped up his pace to match Jared's. “I know you want to hate me for leaving, Jared, but you can't. This was all your father's fault. Ryan Morgan took you from me because he felt guilty and wanted your mother more than anything. I stayed away from you to protect you.”

Jared screamed in his head. Protect me from what? The man who would sell out other people's livelihood for a cheap buck? The man who waited for years without even a birthday card or anything…? Jared took a deep breath and drew a fake grin across his chiseled cheekbones.

“Yeah, maybe ya did,” Jared said defeated.

Interrupting this whole conversation, they found Carter's apartment. It loomed as a rich and stately building that scraped the sky with its shear height. Jared cautiously walked through the clean lobby. The poison in his back pocket still reveled there in the decision he had yet to make. He could either drink it and follow Drake's orders…or thwart their plans and spend time with his father.

Stepping into the elevator with gold plated buttons, his heart ached at the truth. He sold Jessica Baxter’s inventions.

It was all apparent now…though…he wished it wasn't.

He gulped as the elevator dinged signaling they were at the penthouse suite.

Carter smiled at this. “I've done well for myself haven't I, Jared?”

Jared said nothing and only sat on the couch, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Those vexed eyes seemed rimmed with darkness. Jared gulped again. He knew what he had to do…but giving up his father…it was a hard fact to swallow.

Carter looked at Jared and smiled. “Just relax. I'm going to shower while I wait for your brother to get here.”

Jared nodded slowly, pretending he was getting comfy in the furniture.

Carter slipped out of the room with ease and as soon as he disappeared, Jared started looking. He knew he had all the proof here…but he needed to see it. He needed to accept that his father was a lying.

The penthouse suite was massive. Adorned with modern features, Jared slipped past the living room and into the master bedroom. A huge bed laid there as well as poker paintings. Large drawers appeared underneath those large and excessive paintings.

Looking around, he heard the shower running and Jared took a deep breath out. Carter wouldn't be out for a while. Jared’s hands quickly rummaged through the drawers. In the first large drawer he found clothes. Shirts, jeans, underwear, they all laid neatly in the drawers. Almost too neat. He probably even had someone to do his laundry.

Jared blew a shallow breath of anger. At least Jared did his own laundry…well Wynn used to do that. Then, with her name hot in his head, his eyes glazed up as the memories trifled through. Taking a deep breath, he shook the thought off his head. Even now, he didn't deserve her. The only thing he could try to do to make up for it was this. For once in his life, he would do the right thing.

Despite no one telling him that this was it, he knew it. This was his defining moment. He could either fall for a shadow or die for something real.
Flint was real. He was the most real person Jared ever met. Flint's only problem was that he was a coward. Instead of facing his issues, he liked to run away.

Jared continued rummaging as he thought about him brother. Flint was his only true brother. He messed that up that so many times though.

Even with Wynn, he messed it up. Maybe that poison is his escape.

Looking down at his pocket, Jared felt heavy. Heavier than he'd ever been before. His eyes glazed over. In a way…he was the same as Flint. They both wanted to run from their issues. The only difference was that Jared couldn't. He couldn't run at all. His feet were glued to the ground as the train of life barreled towards him unfairly.

Finally, Jared's hands fell onto a red Etch-a-sketch. Then, as if confirming all his fears at once, two names appeared scrawled into the grey screen.

It read: Flint Morgan, Jessica Baxter…and Lewis Blake.

Who the hell was Lewis Blake?

His head was caught on the name but it didn't matter. The shower water in the other room began slowing down. Furiously, Jared shook the names away. Slowly they disappeared. Looking around, Jared expected for them to appear…however there was no one.

There was absolutely nothing happening.

Jared gulped. Did he just make them disappear forever? His heart soared in his head.

Suddenly, footsteps approached and Jared felt the cold shiver of water beat against his bare neck.

“Boy, what have you go there?”

Jared didn't have to turn around…but he did anyways. A towel was wrapped at Carter's waist and his brows furrowed deeper than any hole he could mentally dig for himself right now. Jared gulped at his heavy stare.

Jared hid the Etch-a-sketch behind his back. Carter reached for it but Jared continually backed away.

Soon, though, he was against the bedroom wall with no escape in sight.

Carter loomed over him with angry and dark eyes. Pointedly, he assaulted Jared with his heavy glare.

“You were supposed to just relax, boy…” he dripped out coldly. “Maybe this is why I abandoned you all in the first place. Your mother was just so curious where I always got my money. When Jessica was my friend, I used to sell her inventions one by one, now I have her whole lab and I've been selling it piece by piece to that greedy Phoenix. Who knew she would just want the stuff for revenge on you two?”

He chuckled coarsely at Jared.

Angrily, Jared's eyes glazed over in betrayal. “You said that you loved me and wanted me to be your son. You said Ryan Morgan kept you apart.”

Carter laughed heartily again. “Ryan didn't keep us apart. He was the one who wanted me to stick around. We were friends, Ryan and me, but we fell for the same woman, your mother. She liked only me however…but her admitting that kind of turned me off. So I ran and left her pregnant. Of course, Ryan wished I stuck around, but I never wanted your mother. She was just a passing phase.”

Jared choked up as Carter closed in on him.

Finally, a clink was heard and Jared remembered the poison.

Quickly taking the blue liquid out of his pocket, he gulped it down in one pitiful sip.

Carter eyed him crazily. “What did you just do?”

Jared smirked at Carter. “I made sure you don't have the last word—”

He fell limply to the ground within a couple seconds. Carter just stood there awestruck. Then, Carter smiled evilly as if a plan came to him.

Jared’s world was spinning but he heard Carter calling someone.

He couldn't piece together what he was saying except for two phrases.

“But…but…I…can't do it,” Wynn’s voice faltered out.

“Oh no. Well, I give Lover Boy about twenty four hours before he…well…you know…"

Jared tried his best to warn her but the poison was already affecting him.

“Don't do it Wynn—" agony twisted in him as he barreled out his muddled warning.

A smirk still bore on Carter's features as he hung up on Wynn. Tears began to well up on Jared's eyes as he realized he was done for.

This was it. There was no going back from this. He was gone. His sight began to get blurred and Jared held his sides in pain.

Finally though, a voice cut through the blur. It practically yelled out into Jared's cold dissonance.

“Where am I?" Flint’s voice sounded through the cold darkness, pulling Jared momentarily back into the light before he crashed once more.

Thank you for reading! I know I haven't updated in a while...but now I have a little more time in my schedule. Anyways... so Lewis Blake has disappeared as well...and now Flint's back? What's going to happen? What will Wynn do about Carter's proposition about Kate? More importantly, however, will Kate and Flint ever get together? Don't worry...all these questions and more will be answered in the following chapters. Find out in chapter 26 of Blank Slate.

I absolutely love you guys, your support for this has been marvelous and has made me really want to continue this story ❤❤❤