“You arrogant bastard,” he laughed. “What is it you need, so I can do something for you?”
“I’m going to kill your godson,” I said inexpressively. “I’m giving you the courtesy of forewarning you. Usually, I wouldn’t.”
He barely blinked as he studied my face. I had a small hint of hope he might actually play along. “And why would I let you kill him, unless I would gain something better? Or say, he did something to warrant a permanent departure from this world?”
I sat up straight, waiting for the punch line.
He snapped at the people in the room, directing them to leave. Like good little minions, they did as told and closed the door. Lifting up from the couch with a little trouble, he began to walk through the house. Catching the hint, I trailed his path. He opened the doors to his back yard, directing me to follow him by nodding over his shoulder.
Suddenly, it dawned on me. The change of scenery and the performance play with words? I didn’t have to worry about Roy the most, because someone else put the Feds on his trail. There could only be one—the one who was bent on fucking me over lately. Preston. He was the reason my cousin was in jail. The worthless snitch probably told them enough to get Roy in custody, but not enough for the Feds to come after me. He was withholding information on me, because either he couldn’t get proof, or he wanted to fuck with me.
Guess I bashed him in the head one too many times, because obviously he wasn’t thinking clearly.
Vic and I took a walk to his property line, stopping shy of the start of the forest lining the border of his yard.
“Preston is talking to the Feds?” I asked, eying the pristine green, primed for a round of golf. “You know this for sure?”
“Don’t doubt my connections, son.”
“Not that I lack sympathy, because he’s the son of a good friend of yours and all, but why haven’t you done anything?”
“We all need a card to bluff with, don’t we?” He stared at the trees, looking as though he halfway expected someone to come running out of them.
Here I thought my life with Nikki would be simpler—my kind of simple—after I got rid of the characters primed for padded walls. I was dead wrong. My past was permanently tied to me, and now it was trying to pull me under. I didn’t believe in karma, but hell if mine hadn’t been shit lately.
“My godson? He’s fucking with us. Short-sighted son-of-a-bitch still has a misguided vendetta against you over a piece of tail. He won’t do a thing. No matter how angry he is, he’s still scared shitless of you. You put the fear of God in him, son. Give it time to work itself out.”
“Obviously wasn’t strong enough,” I mumbled. I could’ve solved my problem with a few words. If I gave Victor any inkling about his godson’s sexual orientation, he would’ve acted on impulse. He was old-school in the worst of ways. Preston was mine to kill, and he wouldn’t go out that way. “I can’t be patient. After I give you time to sit on it, then what?”
“Don’t you worry about it, son. He’ll disappear. Exactly how he’ll disappear won’t be discussed.” He spit a wad of phlegm on the ground. “A man damn near blood to me is found to be a rat? I can guarantee those blood ties mean very little. You know that well. We do what we have to do to protect what’s ours.” Switching gears, he hit me on the shoulder and curled his lips. “Sure you won’t partake in getting your dick wet?”
His answer wasn’t good enough for me, because Preston had the balls to mention wanting to fuck my wife. “I’m good…again.”
“I mean it. I’d like to meet her.” He grabbed my cheeks in both of his hands and gave me a hard slap. “You are like a son to me, which makes her my daughter-in-law. She’s carrying my grandchild. We have to meet.”
It didn’t matter what he wanted, there was no way in hell I’d ever let him meet Nikki.
I WAS PREPARED FOR a shit storm when I got home. Instead, I was greeted with a mess in the kitchen and a half drank bottle of wine on the living room table. The heat radiating from my body couldn’t be ignored. I didn’t need this shit today.
Before I could call out her name, a giggling woman came down the hall alongside the kitchen.
I kept looking forward, but for some reason, it comes back around to stop me dead in my tracks. “April,” I snarled.
I EXPECTED A moderate but manageable disaster when April and Eric met for the first time. Instead, I received the worst possible scenario. From the familiarity in April’s smile and the way the color drained from Eric’s face, it was clear they knew each other at some point. Fuming with an unimaginable amount of fury, I turned and ventured upstairs.
Grabbing my shoulders, Eric spun me around once I reached the top of the stairs. His attention was split between my face and my stomach. Slowly, he eased his tight grip on my shoulders and dropped his hands to hold mine. Closing his eyes and taking a few deep breaths, he collected his unfounded anger. Finally opening his eyes, he spoke. “Whatever you’re thinking, I can a hundred percent guarantee that you’re wrong.”
“I’m thinking you fucked her. God! Did you advertise your dick in the national newspaper? When will it ever end with you? Why can’t I ever have something without it being marred, or destroyed by someone, or something else? Why does this keep happening to us? We’re right back in the thick of what almost killed us. You said you got rid of everyone who could hurt us. Preston? April? What about them? Why do you keep bringing chaos into my life?” I shook my head, utterly annoyed. “Is there a woman left on this planet who you haven’t fucked and severely damaged?”
I was equally as upset with him as I was with April. She’d allowed me to go on for months, venting about Eric when we were both stuck in Parkland. She never gave me any inkling to make me think she knew him. She pulled for us. She encouraged me to maintain hope in my relationship with Eric when I’d lost it. She did all those things while knowing all the while who Eric was. I trusted her. I wrongly trusted her.
“My twisted angel, please look at me,” he cooed, holding my head in his hands. “The life I used to have—the life without you—changed when we happened. It stopped the moment I met you in Pullman. I’ve told you that. You know that.” With expectancy, he glanced down the hall for a moment.
He’s lying Nikki. He sent April to Parkland to spy on you, just like he planted Dr. Longo.
As I listened to the only thing that spoke with any semblance of reason, his attempts to manipulate me only amplified my anger. Knowing Eric and the lengths he would go to in order to get what he desired, I didn’t believe April was at Parkland as some sort of coincidence. “Did you plant her at Parkland to keep tabs on me like you planted Dr. Longo?” I asked softly.
His eyes turned wild as his head snapped back to look at me. “Absolutely fucking not! For the record, I never planted Dr. Longo at Parkland. I simply nudged him into my way of thinking—that you were ready to be released.”
“Because that’s such an impossibility, right, Eric?” I retorted with bitter sarcasm.
“What the fuck did I say about doubting me?” His tone held a startling, but quiet displeasure.
“You had to have known she was there when I was.”
“I didn’t have access to patient records, Nikki. It was pure coincidence.”
I was so upset, my body vibrated with a searing anger. “Bullshit!”
“Goddamn it, woman, if you don’t stop cursing at me…” Placing his hands behind his head, he searched my eyes for a moment and let a long, tight breath escape his lips. “I don’t plan for these things to happen in order to hurt you,” he began gently, his eyes turning amorous toward me. True to his easily changeable nature, he transformed his demeanor and was suddenly very tender. He brought my hand to his heart, peering into my eyes with a small semblance of concern. Tilting his head down, he pressed my hand against my ribcage, hovering it over my erratically beating heart. “You need to calm down and think about what this stress is doing to your pregnancy.”
Ethan had returned in full form. He came out
at very pointed times. Times in which I was so pissed off at Eric, I felt the need to severely hurt him.
“Do you need me to—should I leave you two alone?” April asked from her position in the hall while awkwardly fiddling with her hands.
“You’re lucky I’m too tired to deal with you fully,” Eric addressed April without taking his eyes off me. “I want you to pack your shit and leave tomorrow.”
“I have…nowhere else to go,” she said, her voice quivering. “I can’t go anywhere. I don’t have any money left.”
Eric’s head slowly moved toward April’s position. “You can go somewhere, and I know you have somewhere else to be.”
Empathy hit me hard. As upset as I was with April, and as much as I probably shouldn’t have believed her, I put stock into what she told me about her parents. “She…really doesn’t.” I swallowed down the dryness forming in my throat. “Her parents closed her savings and checking accounts while she was at Parkland. She doesn’t have a single cent.”
He shot a curt glance at April and walked into our bedroom, directing me to follow. When I did, he abruptly slammed the door behind me.
“I didn’t know her for very long,” he expounded. “She meant nothing to me. We met when she was at a party she shouldn’t have bothered attending. I saved her from an asshole who slipped Rohypnol into a drink he gave her.”
I folded my arms and jutted out my hip, staring at him through eyes full of incredulity. “I’m sure you supplied him with the drug and the cash incentive to do it, only to debilitate her later with your way of breaking women, correct? It’s what you do. Come in as the superhero, and instead of making the woman think she fell from grace, you make a woman feel as though she’s no longer good enough for anything or anyone.”
He rolled his shoulders in a flippant manner. “Does it really matter when I’m in a different head space right now?”
“You’re disgusting!” I wrung my hands, fighting the urge to strike him in his smug yet beautiful face.
The corner of his mouth spasmed, fighting against a smile. “I’m letting the fact that you just called me disgusting slide because you have every right to be pissed off.” He linked his fingers between my stiffened ones and held them so firmly, the pain stung my knuckles. “But…don’t ever refer to me as disgusting again, got me?”
I jerked back, taking my throbbing hands with me and flipped up my middle finger. “There. Is that the proper way to disrespect you for lying to me? Eric…when will the things you were involved in stop affecting me? I’m so tired of it.”
“You want my past to stop touching you?” he asked, shouting loud enough to make my ears ring. “Stay the fuck out of the way!” His teeth were clenched so tightly, the muscles in his jawline persistently ticked. The darkness clouding his eyes became disconcerting.
“Maybe…” I averted my eyes as my tone fell into a barely audible softness. “I should ask April about what happened with you two.”
He placed his hands on either side of my body, locking me in place. “I guarantee she’ll lie to you.” His tone held a commanding quiet, a contradiction to the mood he showcased earlier.
“She pulled for you in Parkland, when I wanted to hate you.”
“I’m sure she fucking did,” he stated plainly with a smile. “Ask yourself this…why didn’t she tell you she knew me?”
“Are you the reason she was in Parkland?” I questioned, dodging his attempt to divert the conversation.
Letting his chin meet his chest, he prevented me from looking into his eyes and discovering the truth. Underneath the view behind his thick eyelashes, his eyes erratically moved back and forth. “Fuck,” he muttered, “I can’t say.”
“Can’t say or won’t say?”
Without moving from his position, he looked up at me. What I saw inside his eyes indicated nothing had changed; he wasn’t going to give me any answers.
“I’m asking April for the truth. I need to talk to her—”
He grabbed my arm, preventing me from my intent to grill April for answers. “Rest, Nik. As you’re supposed to. I’ll have a talk with April.”
I slanted my eyes at him.
“I won’t hurt her.” He pointed to the bed.
“Forever your faithful lapdog.” I slumped on the edge of the bed, only because I felt the heaviness inside my fatigued body. “You just want to continue to isolate and manipulate me.”
“I don’t want people in your life who mean to fuck you over. Especially not now. It’s not only about you, Nik. It’s really that goddamned simple.” He ran his hands through his fine, straight strands, mucking up the neat but messy style, and rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “I’m doing what I always do—protecting you.” Without another word, he left the room, closing the door.
I curled up in bed, ignoring the slight cramping in my lower abdomen. Disappointment won out as the stronger pain.
More and more…every day, my self-imposed isolation was missed. It was too late to seek it out now. The man had me. He had me in every way he desired me.
APRIL SCATTERED TO the opposite side of the room the second I walked inside the guest bedroom. Her body trembled severely. When she tried to walk backward, she couldn’t keep steady. She stopped when she reached the foot end of the guest bed, causing her to fall over.
After so many years, she was still afraid of me. It started when I showed her how dangerous I was. She was a loose cannon who tried to take me down when she realized she couldn’t have me the way she wanted. She would’ve been better off if she kept quiet, because when she opened her mouth about me, no one believed her. With no one on her side, she was driven to the point of insanity. It was her fault, really; when no one else sees the monster you see, they are going to paint you as crazy.
Her lapse in judgment became very fucking useful.
“What kind of game are you playing, April? I granted you mercy and got you out of Parkland. Instead of going on with your life—with the money I gave you—you came here?”
“I like Nikki,” she sobbed. “She was really nice to me. I came here, because she said she had no friends. If I know you—”
“You don’t fucking know me,” I snarled, placing my indignation inside a bundle of softness to make her tremble just a bit more. If Nikki hadn’t been the only woman I craved, I would’ve been very hard right about now.
“I assumed”—she swallowed hard, evoking a clicking sound from her trachea—“she still wouldn’t have any friends. I’m helping you by being here like I helped in Parkland—making sure she was going to stay with you when she got out. I—”
Her slender neck was dwarfed by my hand. She gagged and choked, trying aimlessly to remove my hands from around her neck. I pressed my palm against her trachea until she stopped fighting. I could see the change in her eyes as I reminded her how easily I could take her life. My eyes remained cold, showing her how insignificant her life was. It had to be done. She had overinflated ideas about her importance to me and needed to be reminded that her help wasn’t a favor, but a necessity to ensure her worthless existence. I never needed her help to make sure I didn’t lose Nikki while she was at Parkland. I was insulted she thought she mattered enough to determine if Nikki and I stayed together.
She dropped her hands to hang limply at her sides. Her eyes watered, finally showing the face of defeat. I eased up slightly on my hold, waiting for her to cry. She hoarsely sobbed.
“Good girl,” I responded blithely and released her, letting her fall to the floor. “Tomorrow. Gone.” Turning, I headed toward the door.
“You’re losing her, you know.”
My feet stopped at the doorjamb. I rolled my shoulders and flexed my knuckles. “What…the fuck…did you say to me?” I asked without giving her the respect of turning around. She was seconds away from becoming permanently damaged.
“I’m here to help. She needs an outlet outside of you to keep her okay. To appreciate you. That’s all I’m trying to do. Help you.”
She never knew
when to keep her mouth shut. It was enough to push me over the fucking edge of composure. I did an about face. She shrank from me, placing her hands in front of her face like she expected me to hit her. Her pale skin turned green as her silky dark brown hair fell across her face.
I crouched down, staring into her watering jade eyes. “When have I ever hit you, April?” I asked her, keeping my tone soft. “You’re making me very, very fucking upset. First, you wrongly assume I’d ever be in such a bad way that I would need you. But now you think I’m a woman-beater? Do you want me to beat you? Because if you did, it would really damage my calm, April. I’d be…insulted.”
She dropped her hands. “I-I’m sorry.”
“You should be…very sorry.”
“Sh-she’s not happy, Eric. She tells me things—told me things. She thinks you are shutting her out. She’s s-scared.”
I cocked my head to the side, staring her down as her body shook. The fear she exemplified every time I came near her was genuine. The instability I instilled in her was still there. Instability only I could take the reins of. For now, I would give her a test. “Keep her company. Reassure her about me like you did at Parkland,” I said carefully, my words shocking her. “Make absolutely sure Nikki stays on bed rest. One mistake—”
“I won’t disappoint you. I promise.” She quickly dropped her head when I glared at her for committing infraction number six. “I’m sorry for interrupting you. I want you to know I’m here to make things better.”
“Was the lesson learned, April?”
“Y-yes, Eric. It was made very clear.” Her fingers flittered nervously in her lap. She turned her attention to the ground. “I won’t disappoint you this time.”
SITTING ON THE bed did very little to help me lower myself from the height of exasperation. Events from earlier continuously clouded my mind and played on a constant loop. The voice chanted at me: Don’t trust him.
The Starkest Truth (A Breaking Insanity Novel Book 2) Page 13