Seducing Virtue (Wicked Trinity Book 3)

by Courtney Lane

  Adam’s hoarse and crinkled breaths hung in the air, haunting his cellmates. I broadened my back and stood upright. Advancing toward the door of Nadine’s cell, I removed my neck tie. With care, I fastened it to a metal frame, feeding it through to the other end. I retrieved a key from the pocket of my slacks and slid it through the holes in her cage. It landed inches from her feet. She clasped it with her lazy movements.

  Through the tears clouding her eyes, she glowered at my tie. “What the fuck is that for?” She clutched the key, straining to hold it tightly.

  “The key only opens the adjoining cell door. As for the tie?” My smile widened, tightening my face with the broadness.

  I stalked back to my chair and sat at ease, riveted to discover how Nadine would react.

  She delayed, shoving away tears that refused to end, and stifled sobs that fought to be heard. She unknotted the tie from her end and bundled it in her hands. Her steps were unsure and delayed toward her husband.

  What she might not have been aware of, was that I gave her a decreased dosage from her cellmates. Her sluggishness wasn’t meant to last for very long, only long enough to fool her into believing there was nothing out of the ordinary.

  Her steps betrayed her once she’d stepped inside Adam’s cage. She collapsed beside Adam, and he struggled for air through his smoke-filled and burned-out lungs.

  “I’m so fucking sorry, Adam.” She unraveled the tie from her grip and swiftly wrapped it around his neck. She pulled and tugged, the strain evident in the reddening of the pigment in her pale skin. The rattling faded into nothing. One single breath rustled from Adam’s mouth.

  A howling cry burst out of Nadine as she broke down, slithering back to her cage to remove herself from the pungent stench of death and burned flesh.

  “Not surprising.” I leaned over my lap with a grin. “Had you been someone outside of the selfish woman you are known to be, you would’ve taken your own life. As of now, I know you’ll never change. You didn’t take his life to end his suffering, you took it because witnessing his suffering was too much for you.”

  “You smug, sick motherfucker. I can’t wait until Noah kills you.” Nadine’s words were quiet and almost shy in their delivery.

  “Nadine…were you not entertained? Should I think of a better game for us to play?”

  She shook her head at me, and sobbed an apology before collapsing onto her bed to succumb to her cries of shame.

  Abigail’s weeps and moans for Adam were a quiet undercurrent to her chanting a prayer. It was intriguing; the woman had forsaken God when she placed her love with a man who didn’t truly love her. The man who she claimed died in an accident before they could consummate their love, when in fact, it wasn’t so much of an accident. She cut his break line and hoped to die with him. Fate had other plans for her.

  Noah and Abigail thought of themselves as plaster saints, and they couldn’t have been more wrong.

  Still, I’d never heard her pray as much in the cell as she did when she stayed at Rebirth. I felt a little tinge of warmth in my heart to know that I might’ve helped her to find her religion again.

  EMPLOYEES OF F.A.C.E. buzzed around me while I tried and failed to keep my mind on my job. On the tail end of the marketing director arguing with the social media manager about a collection with a YouTube makeup artist to serve as the face of our Gold Flake Collection, I snapped into the present.

  “Please, please.” I stood and forced a quiet over everyone. “Can we revisit this tomorrow? We’ve been at it since six o’clock this morning. Go home to your families.”

  “You’re letting us go home…early?” the marketing manager asked, unable to hide his shock.

  I gave him a solemn nod, desiring to be alone with my thoughts. As they filed out, I remembered standing outside myself and saying two words to Braedan, “I want them to pay.” I shook my head as if I could shake the words from my memory and take back the moment I became something outside of myself.

  I reached for the phone to dial a number. My fingers were on an auto-command and called Braedan. He was once the person I went to, to make the storm clouds in my day fade away. As I allowed my phone to ring, I could feel him, bending me over the desk and snarling at Noah to join in. I clicked end call and dialed Brandy’s number.

  The phone rang endlessly until it went to voicemail. I called again and again. On the tenth call and near to calling the police, Brandy’s hoarse and tired voice rang through the other line. “I told you I went away.”

  “I was so worried about you. I had to make sure you were okay.”

  “I’m okay. Give me time.” Suddenly her words bled together with her speed. It was clear she wanted off the phone immediately. In the background, a man spoke, asking her to hurry up and come back to bed. I could only assume it was the new man she’d found in her exotic locale.

  “I’ll give you your space. When you come back, can I see you? I really want to get together. Nathan is leaving and it would be nice to have a goodbye party for him.”

  “He’s probably already gone, but I’ll think about it, Keaton.”

  “O-okay.” I tripped on the word as my mood turned more sullen.

  “Keaton,” she breathed through the phone. “You need to trust in…Braedan. He’s the only one you can trust. Okay?”

  I had no words to say. Her timing was odd. By the time I was able to say anything the line had gone dead. I quickly gathered my things, preparing to head home.

  My posture was stiff and rigid as I paced on the front steps leading to Braedan’s home. I was too scared to move any part of my back or neck for fear of making the pain worse. I went home to find myself alone with my thoughts. The scenarios couldn’t have been more horrible, and I’d done something I couldn’t take back to punish myself.

  I rang the doorbell again, hearing it echo into the darkness while nothing stirred inside. I paced again. Between the pain and the bitter cold, my teeth chattered and my jaw ached.

  I couldn’t forget, and I couldn’t compartmentalize. I was bothered by the things Braedan showed me. He was a completely different man from the one he portrayed at Rebirth. I was scared I’d separate the two and continue to believe that Reven was an idea and never reflected the core of Shiloh or Braedan. Playing a part that landed far from the person he was might’ve eaten away at him and excused the worst of his crimes.

  I tried to think of any time where he put down his wall and showed me who he was at the compound. The kiss on stage during my invitation came to mind. It made my head spin. It was done with so much intention and passion it didn’t fit the role Reven had to play. He had a gentle way when he touched me during his most brutal of acts: The hand lovingly gliding down the back of my head; The glimmer of adoration I caught in his eyes at times. It softened the vision of the man with the deadened eyes. I reflected on the cryptic things he had said to me beyond his usual verbosity. It tormented me and suffocated me with my feelings for him.

  When I was at home, and alone in my head, I stripped off my clothes and stood naked in front of the mirror, forcing myself to endure my own brutality until I couldn’t feel anymore. It didn’t work, and left me with an ache so numbing I ended up in an emotional state I couldn’t escape.

  A car slowly entered the drive and halted near the three-car garage. Smooth in every action, Braedan slid out of the car and headed up the drive. The smile pressed into his face indicated he seemed genuinely surprised and happy to see me. “Keaton? I didn’t expect you to be here today. It’s a nice surprise.”

  “Can you let me in?”

  He ran his hand down the back of my head and pressed his soft lips against my forehead. “Anytime you want to stay with me, you’re always welcome.” He opened the door for me, and the second he did, I gritted my teeth to endure through the pain as I moved inside.

  I spun around to face him the second he closed the front door behind us. “Be Reven,” I snarled through chattering teeth. “Be him because I can’t take this. I can’t take you.”<
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  He grabbed my arms and steadied me.

  The instant my back was gently pressed against the wall, I screamed out in pain. Concern crinkled his features. “I can’t do this with you. I detested you for seven straight months. Every time I thought I couldn’t hate you any more, it grew. My hate for you was so consuming I ran to who I thought was the least evil, thinking he was my savior. I hated you so much, and I’ve never been the kind of person to hate anyone. My hate made me…evil. Even with all that Gregory had done to me, I didn’t hate him. I…don’t know what I felt, but it was never hatred. I never thought he deserved any emotion from me.

  “And this? You? This person you’re now pretending to be? I needed you so much after Noah tried to kill me. You put me back together to tear me apart. I thought I was done with you when I knew the truth, but you keep pulling me back. When you told me about your parents and the way you grew up, I was overwrought with sympathy for you. I wanted to make you forget every horrible thing that ever happened to you. I wanted to take your pain away and make it my own.

  “I tried to find an excuse for all the horrible things you had done to me. I made myself believe it was because you had to endure this horrible life with people who wanted to break you and…last night.” I sighed out of frustration and emotional exhaustion. “Every time you touch me, speak to me…every time you are inside of me or with me I feel the closest to heaven that I’ve ever felt. You made—make—me feel so incredible every moment I’m with you. You made me feel so many things that felt so true. Everything with you…even the bad…it feels so right.

  “I’ve begged Noah, Braedan. I’ve pleaded with him to for one night not hurt me, to give me what he did the night I was blindfolded. He was so…angry. I blamed myself, thinking I pushed him too hard. I think—now I believe you. It was never him that night. It was always you. And Nadine, she whispered in my ear about closing my eyes to see the truth and I thought it meant I would feel what was real with Noah. I’m realizing Noah never gave me more than he could stand to lose, which wasn’t much.

  “You made me feel for you. You made me give you every part of me—parts I’ve never given to anyone. You made me stop hating you, and I can’t even look at myself in the mirror anymore.” The pain became blinding, and I began to feel as though I was going to pass out from it. I thought if I made the emotional pain physical, it would rid me of everything I no longer wanted to feel. I thought I would remember who I was: a woman who would never wish death or seek revenge on anyone who did her wrong…ever.

  Braedan searched my face, and in that instant, it was clear he knew. He made the ordeal worse by seeing through me like he had always done. I fought and I fought. It was a battle with impossible odds stacked in his favor.

  He gently turned me around and peeled down my coat, turning gentler with my every little cry and whimper.

  I RIPPED HER shirt from her body, exposing the flesh on her back. Dozens of open welts decorated her flesh. I could only assume the marks were made by a whip—perhaps bladed—to the fatty layer. Her back was caked in blood.

  “Keaton.” I couldn’t contain the volume of my voice; it was barely audible and expressed my shock. “Why would you do this to yourself?”

  “You and Noah did this to me.” She trembled at the slightest touch of my hands against rare pieces of her unblemished skin. “No one else. I didn’t do this to me. You both did.”

  “Come upstairs. We’re getting this cleaned up right fucking now.”

  She grappled to make one short stride, and fainted on the foyer floor.

  An eternity seemed to pass me by as I paced the hall outside of my closed bedroom door. The hours spent waiting for my personal doctor to attend to Keaton were agonizing. I was jittery and doing nervous practices I hadn’t ever done. My body felt on the precipice of submitting to a debilitating attack where my mind and body blended and froze in a state of panic. My cuticles had been abused by my teeth until they bled.

  Dr. Moore appeared in the hall from my bedroom, closing the door behind his exit with his doctor’s bag in hand. Advancing toward me with a face tightly held to grimness, he gave me a dour nod.

  “Well?” I questioned the meaning behind his nod, impatiently folding one arm across my chest and resting the elbow of my other arm on my forearm.

  “I disinfected, stitched up her back, and dressed it in gauze. I gave her a prescription for pain meds. I have to be honest about why I’m giving them to you instead of her. My assistant took the blood draw to the clinic and rushed the results. I received a call from the lab about the blood I drew a few minutes ago.” His delay between every word and sentence withered away at my patience. “I think you should keep an eye on how many she takes, or possibly dispense it yourself.” He shoved a tan bottle into my tense grip.

  I waded through his senseless and cryptic words to discover the truth deep within the liquid abyss. “She’s been abusing pain meds?”

  He gave me a grim nod. “Only give those to her as needed, and they cannot be taken with the Oxy she has already been prescribed.” He clutched his bag tightly and looked down at the floor for a tick. “I…can make a call to a therapist friend of mine. I’m sure she won’t mind taking on another client as a favor to me.” His careful words and gentle tone suggested he thought he might’ve been attacked for his prognosis and recommendations.

  “I believe she sees a therapist—her mother arranged it. I’ll talk to her about it…” It was evident Mrs. Mara and I had many things to discuss concerning topics I’d never dreamed I’d broach in regard to Keaton.

  Dr. Moore bid me farewell and went on his way.

  Sucking in an excessive amount of air, I hoped to calm myself before I took the first of many ordered steps. I traveled down the hall from my bedroom to the upstairs den to place a phone call in absolute privacy.

  “Mr. Michaels, always a pleasure to hear from you.” The line fell silent for an arduous amount of time. Delaying my need to check if Mrs. Mara was on the line, she spoke again. “Is Keaton with you? I…found some things in her room, and I’m going out of my mind. I already went to the police station. They are sick of seeing me there. They turned me away at the door.”

  “Keaton is here with me. Everything is all right. I don’t exactly have a full schedule. I could care for her here.”

  “I’m glad you’re in her life, Braedan.” Her tone picked up, indicating my lie was enough to soothe her aching concerns. “She needed someone like you, and it seems like my prayers were finally answered. But, you don’t have to lie for her. I found a whip…a bloody whip in her room with razorblades attached. Everything is not all right.”

  “Yes.” My voice cracked on the knowledge of what I assumed Keaton had used to injure herself. An urgent need to keep Mrs. Mara away while I tended to Keaton’s changing needs strangled my words. “If I can be honest with you, Mrs. Mara, I believe Keaton needs a break. The pressure of your campaign and the scrutiny of the public eye have affected her quite deeply. She wants some peace and quiet for a while, and I want to provide that for her with every means at my disposal to help her heal.”

  A long audible pause stretched the seconds between us. “I…I had no idea. I’m on my way.”

  “The best thing for Keaton right now is to give her space. I think, and if you don’t mind, I’d like to take her away—on a vacation.”

  “Sounds like an excellent idea, but I need to see her first.”

  “I’ll have her call you when she’s able. Mrs. Mara, please…give her space.”

  “I have to be honest, Braedan. I had a feeling the campaign was too much for her. I’ve considered conceding to take care of her.”

  “You know it would take a great deal for me to say this after I’ve supported your campaign heavily; however, I think it’s in your best interest.”

  “It’s something to seriously consider.” Her voice wavered as though she verged on breaking apart into tears. “Thank you, Braedan. For everything.”

  Ending the call, I slid my pho
ne onto the table as I considered my best and next moves. My plans had been put on hold. Keaton’s fragile state forced me to rethink everything. She was far from ready to face down Noah when given a chance, and less than able to transform into the woman I knew she could become. I put her through too much too quickly, and I was to blame for her current state.

  I headed to the kitchen to gather a few items for Keaton: a cup of warm broth, a glass of orange juice, and a single over-the-counter pain pill on an ornate silver tray.

  I entered my bedroom where she rested in my bed, and set the tray down on the end table.

  Her eyes opened as she rested in my bed, on her stomach. The large bed and arrangement of pillows nearly swallowed her frame.

  “I made you broth with a straw since it’s going to be hard for you to sit up for a while.” I pulled up a chair next to the bedside and settled into it. Watching her face as the tears streamed down her cheeks, wetting the pillow beneath her head, she slowly killed the will of my heart to beat and my breaths to take in oxygen to speak.

  “When did you start taking pain pills”—pausing, I leaned across my lap—“and how many do you take a day?”

  “Since Noah and I… I take them as needed.”

  “Be specific,” I said, keeping my tone low.

  “Four or five and a half. Sometimes seven. It got to the point where two or three didn’t help.”

  I exhaled sharply, squinting my eyes, and rubbed the bridge of my nose. It took me a great deal of time before I could garner the strength to say what needed to be said. Whether or not I had any intention or will to respond to her answer, it mattered little. She had to know why I stood apart from my brother; I was the man who would do anything and everything for her, even if it included damaging myself beyond repair. “If you could have anything at this moment, would you prefer I’d stay out of your life?”

  “Would you do it if I said yes?”

  “If it meant you’d never do this to yourself again,” I lifted my eyes to settle on hers, “yes. No matter how hard it would be for me, I’d do it as long as you allowed me to maintain your safety from afar.”