Seducing Virtue (Wicked Trinity Book 3)

by Courtney Lane

  “How do I go about fixing my mistakes?”

  “I don’t know if you can with a girl like her. You’d have to bribe her to be with her.” She frowned, severely sinking her face. “Rapists can’t ever be redeemed.”

  “Your advice falls very far from anything remotely fucking helpful,” I snapped.

  “You want me to lie to you?” A nonchalant shrug of her shoulders and detached demeanor accompanied her question.

  With an upward slant of my chin, a creeping grin stretched my cheeks. The answer had been in view. I only recently cleared the way to find a resolution to the unsolved.

  She lurched forward and clutched the gates harshly. I narrowly escaped her hands, reaching out to damage anything they could grasp. “She won’t believe you,” she countered, proving she knew the exact source of my sudden assuredness.

  “After all the plans I put in place to make sure it was the truth—only to have him take credit—you truly think I would keep the truth a secret?” I raised a brow and cast a crooked smile at her. “If I disclose what really happened, it’ll change everything.”

  “It doesn’t matter if it’s true. She. Will. Not. Believe. You. She knows you as Reven.” A cocky smile decorated her full lips. “Noah’s a master at what he does. He fucked her head up good. You will never be able to un-fuck it and make her see you as anything other than the man he made you out to be: a monster.”

  “Whether it was under his order or not,” I countered, “she blames him for the death of her friend. I’m no longer the monster to her. Due largely to you, Noah has been bestowed with the dishonor.”

  “Then…” Her glances toward Adam were loaded in sinister intent. Similar to my brother, Nadine would’ve done anything to keep me from what I desired most. “…Adam will take the blame, and I’ll make sure she knows he didn’t order it, somehow.” Her need to quickly divert me from becoming the victor in our challenge didn’t go without consideration.

  “You nor Adam will ever be in the position to do so,” I warned.

  “You won’t be able to keep us here. You won’t. Noah will find us. He always has a fucking way around everything. And I won’t feel an inch of sympathy when he takes Keaton away from you.”

  I sucked in a breath and allowed it to unfurl in a deliberate manner. “Despite her anger, the way she looks at me, as opposed to the way she looked at Reven? It’s changed. I only need to diminish her anger. I’m close to her, Nadine. Closer than Noah ever could or ever will be.”

  “Obviously, you didn’t rock her world,” she retorted. “She hates you for what you did. Even if she didn’t, I would die before I ever fucking let you get what you wanted.”

  I inclined my head to the right and grinned. “Hypocrite.”

  Her expression teetered between self-actualization and revulsion. Nothing further needed to be stated. Her revelation guided her to the truth. Noah had taken the reigns of her mind.

  Nadine believed my brother was a man who had to do morally reprehensible things for the greater good. In reality, my brother was an egomaniacal deranged individual, drunk with his own sense of power and never found a limit to how much he could’ve and should’ve wielded.

  Keaton bore witness to the truth due to my brother’s desperation and carelessness. I couldn’t have been happier about Noah doing a bulk of the work for me. It was the only thing I could seek comfort in. The scars he’d left her with, internally and externally, marked his sentence in hell, and I would be responsible for sending him there.

  “I bet it bothers you.” Nadine’s blue eyes entered the void when they settled on me. “You were the diamond in your parents’ crazy eyes and Noah was always the piece of shit coal. In this world, you are a shit-for-brains wannabe, who thought raping the girl you loved would make her love you because your brother convinced you it would work. He played you and made Keaton his, like he wanted all along. I guess it’s true what they say. Smart people can lack some serious common sense.”

  The moment she decided to expel an outright lie about how my parents viewed me or treated me, and furthermore spouted false information about who Keaton truly belonged to, I was done fucking around.

  The fallout from her actions weren’t anticipated on her part. The swift consequences I doled out to her surprise sweetened the outcome. Using few and swift movements, I grabbed the cattle prod, hanging on the wall beside her cell, and held it up to the cage. I shocked her until her eyes rolled backward and her muscles seized up, suspending her animation. On my withdrawal, she fell to the ground in a heap. A dark stain formed between her thighs. The putrid smell of urine lingered over the scent of my guests who were in dire need of bathing.

  “No,” whimpered Adam, stirring slightly in his cell.

  Adam was a fitting man for a woman like Nadine to marry: unassuming, nonthreatening, easily broken. Under Nadine’s brutal hand while at Rebirth, and the time he’d spent in the deprivation room, he cried and relented very easily.

  It was founded due to the reason he was sentenced to Rebirth by a mother grieving the loss of her children and out for revenge. She wanted nothing more than to watch Adam be tortured at the hands of a woman until she had her fill months later and cared little of what we decided to do with him in the aftermath. Adam’s crime? He was easily persuaded by a woman he loved into allowing a mass murderer to go free, a mass murderer who took an Elite’s only daughter away from her.

  Nadine had done her fair share of damaging the man until he was a formless mass, shaped into what Nadine designed him to become. He became a miscreant for her, because it was what she desired.

  “Curious, Adam,” I pondered, waiting for Nadine to wake, “did you enjoy it when Nadine fucked you with the strap-on against your will while you were bound?”

  His head drooped and he began to snivel.

  “I assumed you did.” I pulled the chair from its overturned position on the floor and settled back into it, resting my ankle over the top of my thigh. I watched Nadine’s still body, waiting impatiently for her to come back to consciousness.

  Thirty minutes wound down before she stirred, her eyes turning into fire-imbued slits. “Motherfucker,” she spat at me.

  The woman had a very stubborn disposition, breaking her would likely be one of the most rewarding ventures I’d ever endured. “Finger box or a long-distance telephone call?”

  Her hands cradled either side of her head. Her feet betrayed her and unsteadied her balance. “What?”

  “If you don’t pick a selection, I will choose for you.”

  “Why the hell are you doing this, huh?” She jolted upright with an expeditious gusto, and immediately fell to the floor. “You had your chance to tell her the truth so many fucking times. Instead, you told her the story you were scripted to tell her. You messed up, not me, and not Noah.”

  “I didn’t reveal the truth because I knew he was watching,” I explained. “I didn’t want to let on that I knew his plans had changed, and I’d altered mine to counteract his deceit.”

  “A lot of help it did. You didn’t counteract shit. He knew you, and knew what you were going to do before you did it.” She glared at me for a stitch. “This is pointless. Let us go. You won’t get anything out of me. Didn’t you learn anything? You torture people for—”

  “Dominance,” I finished her sentence. “Or in my particular case…reprisal.”

  “I guess you did get something through that thick head of yours after all.”

  “I gave you an option.” I extended a finger in her direction. “Finger box.” I pointed to her husband. “Long-distance call.”

  Closing her eyes, she exhaled with agitation. “You’ve officially lost it, you know.”

  “I wouldn’t argue with you,” I stated, flippant in my realization. My mind was frayed previous to assuming a role at Rebirth. While becoming a character, I’d lost what little hold I had of it. “Losing something you pined for tends to steal one’s sanity. Watching it slip from your fingers makes you free-fall into a pit of insanity.
And being near her, never allowed to fully be with her in a way you crave makes one feel like they are swimming in a cesspool of insanity.”

  I pushed the chair back and picked up the classic crank phone from the back of the room. “Yes, Nadine, I’m a little insane, and because I relish in my insanity, you should be very, very concerned.” Unwinding the wires, I set it down next to the metal cot near the glass wall. I waltzed over to Adam’s cell. With every click of my wood heels against the concrete, he quaked with fear. “Remove your clothes, or I’ll knock you out and remove them for you.”

  Trembling severely enough to diminish his ability to move with nimbleness, he lurched and struggled to remove his dingy T-shirt and boxer briefs.

  “Don’t you dare do what he tells you to.” Nadine met him at their shared cell wall, intertwining her fingers with the metal exterior. Her words went unheard.

  Adam never broke our engagement. He smartly knew amongst my guests I was the only alpha in the room. I unlocked his cell and he stepped out, walking directly toward the cot. Pressing my palm against his chest, I orchestrated his movements, directing him to lie flat on his back. Once settled, I busied myself with strapping him down.

  Wrapping one wire around his toe and the other around his testicles, I then attached the electrodes to his flesh. With my face dressed in a grin, I approached the crank and proceeded to wind it. Sparks flashed in the corner of my vision. Adam’s screams suffused the space, a beautiful uproarious melody, reverberating over the sounds of the machine. His body convulsed in a violent manner, testing the restraints securing him to the cot. The stench of excrement was evident in the air before I witnessed the mess behind Adam’s thighs.

  Nadine’s eyes widened in horror. “Stop.” Panic shook her cadence. “What are you doing to him? Stop!”

  “You were given a choice,” I said, halting my actions. “You seem to lack the ability to comprehend your circumstances, Nadine. This isn’t Rebirth. You don’t have Noah to protect you and treat you as though you are a fragile doll. You’re in my home. This place will not be your Rebirth. This place will be your death chamber. If you believe I’ll be the one to send you to hell, you’re mistaken. Your blinding love for your precious Noah will kill you.”

  I cranked it one more time, inducing the song of Adam’s screams to the background chorus of the fizzing noise of the electrical shock.

  “Please, stop,” Nadine begged, her iron wall crumbling down before my very eyes. Her plump, cracked bottom lip quivered, struggling to fend off the emotion. Crystals of moisture shimmered down her cheeks.

  “Are those genuine tears, Nadine? Are you…supplicating to me?” I curled my lip into a slanted smile. “It must be raining hellfire.”

  “What do you want?” Abrupt in her actions, she removed the tears from her face.

  “Respect.” The sight of her damp cheeks and pleading eyes revived me. “The next time I pose a question to you, I don’t want your attitude. I want compliance.”

  “Okay. Fine. Whatever you want. Please, let him go.”

  I unhooked Adam from the cot. His body rolled, crashing to the floor with a hardy thump. Little plumes of smoke bloomed from his ruddy testicles. His cries and sniffles affected his wife severely. Bowing, I hovered over him. “You made a mess of my table, Adam, and I expect you to use your mouth to clean it up. Understood?”

  With his body trembling, he nodded and crawled over to the table. Unable to view the scene, Nadine turned her back on her husband as he did exactly as I commanded.

  My morning ritual was stringent and necessary. I had adopted the practice the day after my rehabilitation period. Conditioning my body became a necessity as I bid my time, waiting for Noah to tire of his concealment and reveal the full extent of his true self to Keaton.

  Archie assured me during many insufferable nights of anxious behavior that Keaton would become revolted by my brother’s true nature. At the time in which she did, it would be the perfect time to implant myself into Keaton’s life and save her.

  While on the precipice of obtaining what I wanted, it was important to continue my preparations for Noah’s defeat when his fruitless mission to rebuild what he’d burned down would fail. He would reappear in Keaton’s life, and his reappearance would be accompanied by the calculating man I knew him to be, and not one who executed ill-planned acts, reeking of desperation.

  Archie entered the conditioning room with a stylus pen in hand and a tablet that seemed permanently stuck to his hand in the other. Technology was a foreign concept to me until he coaxed me into what he titled, “this century.”

  My sparring partner hit the floor, succumbing to a detrimental blow to his jaw, falling unconscious. Rich, thick blood seeped from the corner of his gaped mouth, pooling around the few teeth I knocked out of his gums and onto the ground. The man had no name to share. He expressed the reason to me once; his name was unimportant and simply a distraction.

  It mattered little to me. He had a job to do and he was stellar at it. His teachings provided me with valuable skills: how to fight, when to fight, and how to sync my mind with my movements. He endured the beatings when I was able to best him and consistently returned for more.

  Today was a rare occasion. It was unusual for him to be knocked down so quickly. Either I had surpassed him, or he wasn’t feeling up to par.

  While my teacher lay unconscious on the floor, I returned my focus to the bars installed above the top of the doorframe, pondering if I’d have to finish up my calisthenics with one-handed pull-ups.

  Unwrapping the tape from my hands, I strode over to the doorway and began to work out my arms. “How are our guests?”

  After one one-armed pull-up, Archie choked on his saliva and rubbed his chin. “They are…provided for in the manner in which they deserve.” He shifted, apparently unsettled over an unsaid matter. “I’m not sure about Adam’s state of being. I’ve never seen a man decline so rapidly. He had the most putrid smelling vomiting fits this morning.”

  “I don’t care about Adam. He’ll be the first to die.”

  Archie checked over my opponent and grimaced. “Should I call the ambulance and have him taken away?”

  The nameless man began to stir and retch on his own blood. “No,” he groaned, struggling to gain his posture. He bowed drunkenly toward me with his arm across his torso. “There’s nothing left to teach you, Mr. Michaels. It was an honor.”

  I gave him a nod and continued my set on my left arm, giving him as much of a parting as he would’ve deemed appropriate.

  “Very strange man,” Archie muttered, observing my sparring partner exit my home.

  “You’re the one who found him,” I reminded him.

  His head whirled, releasing himself from his daydream full of thoughts not shared. “Noah has started renovations on a place, formerly a vacation residence for a former member of the House of Rebirth.”

  “Seres.” My disdain for the man Noah often used for his deeds outside of Rebirth was a disgusting flavor on my tongue. “How close is he to completion?” I huffed, switching arms to commence the sets on my right arm.

  “You have time, granted you’ve learned anything from what I was able to teach you about being a gentleman. My knowledge about women is quite solid. My knowledge about women like the one you want is quite limited.”

  “And my other plans? Are they coming along as expected?”

  He shifted back and forth, bothered by the unspoken. “Are you certain you want to adhere to the plan you disclosed to me?”

  “Why are you avoiding an answer to my question?” I released my hold on the bars to give him my undivided consideration.

  The buzz echoing in the halls alerted me to an arrival at the front gate and interrupted Archie’s deliberation. I seized the tablet from Archie’s grip as he extended it to me. I pulled up the camera feed for the front gate.

  I scarcely believed it was Keaton at the start of the drive outside the gates securing my property. I tapped the screen to magnify the zoom of the c
amera. The rush she engendered every time she was near became mind-numbing. My smile was automatic. The simmering fire she ignited roared inside my chest.

  I wanted to own every aspect of her emotions: her tears, her smiles, her trembles in pleasure, the soft purr of her moans when I was inside her, and her spellbinding smile. My needs stood in opposition with an unfed hunger. It was a thrill to feel her change when she experienced fear and pain while residing at Rebirth. She had given it all to me, filling me with a toxic level of drunkenness from everything I provoked from her.

  My needs had changed, and I’d begun to desire what she was reluctant to give me. Her appearance at my home prompted me to think it wouldn’t be hidden from me for long.

  Scanning through the security menus, I tapped the appropriate place on the screen to retract the gate. Subsequent to handing Archie the tablet, I pulled down my pants and removed my boxers before replacing my pants. I tossed my boxers to Archie, who caught then in one hand, and adjusted the band of the fleece pants to sit in a revealing position on my hips.

  Archie choked again. “I’m glad you pay me well and are a nice sight to look at. Otherwise, I think I’d question some of your tactics a bit more than I do.”

  Curving a brow, I swayed my head at the sight of him staring at the imprint of my cock. “In many ways, Archie, I’m not my brother.” I approached the bars again, prepared to entice her.

  Archie answered the door. A few hushed words were shared, and it appeared Archie made an exit as Keaton entered. Only one set of steps were heard from behind me.

  I began to pull my body upward with slow releases on the decline, alternating single-arm pull-ups. Her steps slowed until a halt, she remained there, observing me in speechlessness.

  I WAS GREETED at the front door to Braedan’s house by a man with a thick head of silver hair, impossibly smooth skin, sophisticatedly dressed in a dress shirt, bowtie, and slacks. He adjusted his black horn-rimmed glasses and gave me a wide inviting smile.