“One day I’ll be the woman who deserves you,” she whispered, so softly she barely heard the words herself before she climbed out of bed and tip-toed to the bathroom to get ready.
She had a long night ahead of her.
2
“One day I’ll be the woman who deserves you.”
Veda closed her eyes when her mind repeated her words to Gage from earlier that night.
She wasn’t that woman yet, but she’d be one step closer tonight, after giving this son of a bitch exactly what he deserved.
Her heartbeat increased, making her breathing pick up, filling the black mask that covered her face with so much hot air she felt like she was suffocating. When it became unbearable, she held her breath, bouncing on her toes while reminding herself to remain calm. A line of sweat raced from her hairline and dripped into her eye, making it burn beneath the black mesh eye holes of the mask, but she didn’t dare take it off. Her black latex gloves squeaked as she tightened her trembling hands into fists.
She hadn’t been this nervous with that bastard, Todd Lockwood. On the other hand, she had given herself several months to stalk Todd before exacting her vengeance. She’d only been trailing this one—her number two—for a little under four weeks.
The more sensible part of her urged her to be patient, reminding her that punishing the ten men who’d destroyed her life had to be executed with great restraint and care.
But Veda couldn’t wait.
It had to be tonight. If she was ever going to expel the monster inside her, the monster who didn’t deserve the love of her beautiful boyfriend, it had to be tonight.
Frustratingly, number two hadn’t made it easy. Number two wasn’t nearly as OCD as Todd Lockwood had been. Number two didn’t keep a solid schedule, but she’d learned his Friday nights were usually pretty consistent.
After a long week at work, he’d come home and make a beeline to his living room to watch Shark Tank. He never missed Shark Tank. One of the few rituals he kept without waver. And, like Todd, he kept a spare key hidden under his planter, making it extra easy for her to break into his apartment that night.
So in his living room, Veda waited, tucked into a shadowy nook in the corner.
She checked her wristwatch, still holding her breath, letting the lack of oxygen send her body into a mild panic as she drank in the watch’s ticking hands.
Number two would be home any minute.
A moment later, Veda sucked in the breath she’d been holding. Not because she was seconds from passing out, but because she heard the roar of his engine outside his living room’s tall bay windows. It made the walls vibrate.
Her sigh of relief filled the mask. This time, the muggy warmth was tolerable because she knew, within the hour, this would be over, and she’d be back in bed with Gage. He’d wake up the following morning none the wiser. He’d curl in behind her and encircle her in his arms. And, for just a moment, wrapped up in his strength, the rumble in her stomach would disappear.
It would stay gone for a while.
Then, when she wasn’t paying attention, it would come raging back.
It always came back.
Stronger.
Louder.
More resilient. Like Gage was an antibiotic that her body was slowly growing immune to. Once upon a time she’d wondered if a vaccine would ever exist for the malignant creature that ailed her.
For years she’d been convinced there was no cure. No hope. No escape.
Until she’d returned to Shadow Rock and served Todd Lockwood a healthy dose of justice that would haunt his life forever—just like he’d haunted hers.
Seeing the pain in his eyes when he’d realized his life would never be the same had sent the light of a thousand suns blasting into her world. That light had hung around for a while, longer than she could ever remember it lingering in the past.
Though that light had eventually faded, Veda now knew that a cure for her ailment did lie in wait, ready to show itself only when she’d finished them all. She couldn’t become the kind of woman who deserved Gage’s love until she’d destroyed all ten of the animals who were responsible for sending the never-ending tornado, constantly tearing her insides apart, into motion.
The creak of number two’s front door opening floated through the dark living room.
She tightened her grip on the syringe in her hand, pushing her body deeper into the corner. She counted number two’s heavy stomps as he moved across the wood floors of his mansion. The thump of his briefcase hitting the floor. The clearing of his throat, a deep sound that could only live in a 6’9”, 320-pound man.
His shadow loomed in the living room entryway, big bald head shining under the moonlight, and just as he flicked on the living room light, Veda stepped out of the shadows.
He only had an instant to turn his head—his leafy green eyes meeting hers and exploding to twice their size—before Veda slid the quivering needle inside the jugular vein in his neck. It sank in like butter. A sigh begged to leave her lips, but she didn’t dare let it. She couldn’t betray her gender with the feminine, pleasant sound she could feel lingering in her throat.
Both their gasps met in the quiet black air, and for a moment, he seemed too stunned to move.
Her thumb pressed down on the lever of the syringe.
75 mgs.
75 mgs of sodium thiopental was enough to knock out most of her patients in under a minute, but this bastard was huge, so she let her thumb live on that lever a little longer.
80 mgs.
85.
90.
Just as she went to ease up, his hand flew out and took her around the neck. His fingers locked around her throat and constricted her airway, squeezing so tightly she felt like her spine was seconds from being split in two.
Airway blocked, heart slamming into her ribs, Veda had the distant frame of mind to swallow back the scream that tried to rush from her lips. Not that it would get very far since he was crushing her esophagus like a squeeze toy. She reminded herself to remain calm when he slammed her back against the wall. Dropping the syringe, she clapped both her hands around his thick wrist, clenching her teeth as she saw his muscles flexing under his suit jacket. The hold he had on her neck clenched harder before he pulled her head forward and slammed it back against the wall.
The room spun. A flash of pain zoomed through the back of her skull, but she didn’t have a single moment to dwell on it as he lifted her off her feet, forcing her to her toes on the strength of his hold alone.
She bit back another scream. Bursts of rapid breath flew from her pursed lips. Her stomach went rock tight, even as her body shook uncontrollably.
Yep.
75 mgs had definitely not been enough.
His nickname in high school hadn’t been Kong for nothing.
Nostrils flared, and teeth bared, his furious eyes nearly burst from his skull, and in the next instant, Veda’s feet left the floor. His lips flattened and curled down as he lifted her from the ground, blocking her airway even more as he used her neck for leverage, his face growing red as he put every ounce of energy into choking her out, all the while fighting the powerful drug she’d just injected him with like a soldier.
Veda prayed for this son of a bitch to pass out already. He was going down, one way or the other. She began to croak when her vision became blurry. The world spun faster.
His eyes fluttered before her, but his grip didn’t loosen.
The drug was taking effect. Veda’s eyes shot to the clock on the wall.
Any day now.
It had been fifteen seconds, but she wasn’t worried. Uncomfortable as he’d made her, she knew she wouldn’t asphyxiate for at least another two minutes. The sodium thiopental she’d injected into his body, however, was fast working and unforgiving, even on a man like Kong. She let her eyes fall closed, wagging her feet through the air when she began to grow lightheaded from the lack of oxygen. She slammed her heels against the wall behind her, the dull thud of each kick fil
ling the room, more anxious for this ape to pass out with each torturous second that passed.
When his hold remained strong, her wide eyes fell, drinking in the tattoo on his wrist. The black mesh mask made the number hard to see, but she already knew what it was
An 8.
Her tear filled eyes fell to the number 8 as he locked his fingers around her neck from behind, squeezing hard enough to cut off her air supply. She prayed for him to squeeze tighter. To end it all. But his grip loosened to make room for the sound of his zipper coming down as it rang into the night air. The laughter of his friends, his teammates, ensured Veda that she was still alive and well, and the tears never seemed to stop coming as he pushed inside her with a grunt.
It had been ten years since she’d seen that 8 on his wrist, but she remembered it like it was yesterday. Not just because that number had been right under her nose the night this bastard had stolen her soul, but because this wasn’t the first time his massive hand had been locked around her neck.
It was just as unsavory as she’d remembered.
She felt her eyes going bloodshot. Burning, they shot to the clock again.
60 seconds.
When she threw her gaze back to him, still kicking, her heart warmed at the sight of his green eyes growing heavier. The grip on her neck loosened, just a little at first, then more with each second that elapsed.
Before Veda knew it, her feet had hit the floor.
And so had he.
She covered her burning throat, gasping in her first breath in over a minute as his body thundered to the wood floors before rolling to a stop at her feet.
She cringed down at him.
150 mg would’ve been a better choice.
Lesson learned.
She removed her messenger bag from around her shoulder, and after digging through it dropped her medical kit on the floor next to him. Still catching her breath, not blind to the hoarse wheeze that accompanied each of her strangled breaths, she placed her hands on her hips and bent forward for a while. She waited until the air leaving her lungs sounded normal again, and not like a geriatric patient with lung disease before she fell to her knees.
“I guess some things never change, huh, Kong?” she whispered, throwing open her kit with a little more force than necessary, distantly irritated that not only had this asshole not changed a bit, but she was now going to be late getting back into bed with her spit-shined, Adonis of a boyfriend.
She checked the clock, seeing she had a little under an hour to finish what she’d come to do. After a long night of arguing with Gage, and tussling with Kong, she’d have to rush.
And Veda hated rushing.
Still, she tried to take the loss with optimism. A flash of hope for things to come. Ruffling through her suture kit, she fished out the tool that she was quickly falling madly in love with.
The scalpel gleamed under the moonlight sneaking into the curtains, freshly sharpened and ready for retribution—Veda Vandyke style.
Returning the scalpel to the kit, she went to work undressing Kong from the waist down, taking in the strong, muscled lines of his milky white thighs, one of which was bigger than the entire upper half of her body. She distantly wondered if she should give him a few more milligrams of the sodium thiopental, just in case he decided to surprise her by waking up, but she decided against it.
She couldn’t risk killing him.
She wasn’t a killer, after all.
Once she’d undressed him, she reclaimed her scalpel, never breaking her gaze away from his dick.
“I guess it’s true what they say about ‘roid heads, huh?” she asked, taking the scalpel to his scrotum and preparing for the incision, pressing it just enough to draw blood. “Huge muscles, tiny dick—”
A flash of light beaming through the living room curtains stole the rest of Veda’s quip, leaving it trapped in her throat.
The purr of a car engine.
The silence when that engine died down.
The slamming of a car door and the jingling of keys.
A horrified gasp tightened her stomach, and for a moment, she was frozen.
In the month she’d been trailing Kong, she’d never seen him with another human being. She’d been convinced that he hated people almost as much as she did—something she hadn’t even realized was possible. She wondered if she was imagining things, and perhaps it was just his next door neighbor.
Then the handle of the front door jiggled.
The rustle of keys.
Keys disagreeing with the lock.
“Fuck.” Veda crawled across the floor, careful to avoid Kong’s spilled blood. She shoved the scalpel, tip glistening red, back into her kit and slammed it closed. Giving the room a cursory glance that was nowhere near as thorough as she’d like it to be—just to make sure she hadn’t left any evidence behind—she leaped to her feet and sprang over Kong’s body like a track star clearing a hurdle. She stumbled, steadied herself, and then raced around the coffee table and out of the living room, shooting towards the back door at the opposite end of the house. She circled the wall that separated the living room from the dining area, hiding behind it just as the front door creaked open.
“Eugene?” a female voice rang out.
Veda cringed.
Eugene?
No wonder he’d been so happy to be named after an infamous gorilla in high school.
“Eugene? Are you home?”
Veda heard it the moment the unexpected visitor caught sight of Kong on the floor. The gasp of horror. She peeked around the corner just in time to find a slender blonde racing into the living room and coming to a stumbling stop next to Kong’s unconscious body. Her long yellow hair fanned down to shade her face, but not enough to hide the panic that had taken over her striking gray eyes. Veda didn’t know if it was the blood or the fact that he was naked from the waist down, but for a moment, the blonde just stood there with her arms out at her sides, eyes wide, nostrils flared, and cheeks heated, as if she couldn’t determine whether or not she wanted any part of this.
Then, she fell to the floor, letting the knees of her white maxi dress sink into the blood pooling rapidly between Kong’s legs. A screamed tore past her thin pink lips as she cupped Kong’s face, gripped his shoulders, snatched at his arms, touched every part of him she could reach before she finally took his suit jacket in her grip and shook him with all her might.
“Eugene.” When the blonde got no response, her voice rose, shrill with a dread poignant enough to crack the plaster walls. “Eugene! Wake up—Oh my god.”
Veda watched the blonde come to her senses, slapping her hands against the wood floors as she clawed for the clutch bag she’d dropped in her haste to get to Kong. The blonde snapped open her purse and yanked out a cell phone, nearly dropping it from her wobbling, unsteady fingers. The chime of three numbers rang into the air, leaving no question as to who she was calling.
The blonde slammed her cell phone to one ear while hastily tucking a chunk of her hair behind the other, leaving a streak of blood she hadn’t realized was on the back of her hand slashing across her pale cheek.
As she waited for an answer, realization seemed to hit the blonde like a tidal wave, slowly crashing down on her, inch by inch, threatening to swallow her whole. Her eyes began to dart across the room. It was clearly occurring to her that Kong certainly hadn’t done this to himself, and her wide eyes dashed like a scanner as she struggled to hold the ringing phone to her ear with a hand that shook more every second. Her alarmed gaze flew in Veda’s direction, and Veda moved out of sight in the nick of time, hurrying toward the back door on her tiptoes, easing it open as quietly as she could.
She stepped out onto the backyard porch, barely hearing the blonde’s voice over her suddenly heaving breaths.
“Yes, 911!” the blonde’s voice trembled in the distance. “Oh my god, please, something terrible has happened. I think my fiancé is… is dead.”
Veda eased the back door shut and barreled down the st
airs of the backyard porch. Panting against the pulse pounding in her throat, she raced through the sharp grass, disappearing into the misty night air—night air that always smelled of green dew and ocean mist on that sleepy island called Shadow Rock.
3
A fiancée?
A fiancée?!
That wild animal had a fiancée?
The tip of Veda’s house key trembled, missing the lock to her apartment door several times. She froze, took a deep breath, and tried again, exhaling in relief when the key slid in. She looked over her shoulder to make sure the dark parking lot outside her apartment building remained empty.
Nothing. No movement. Not even a stray light illuminating any of her neighbor’s windows.
Good. She’d fucked up enough tonight. No need to put a cherry on top of an already epic failure by adding witnesses to the mix.
She hurried into her apartment, and only when she’d closed and locked the door behind her did she removed the black mesh mask from her face. She let it fall to her foyer floor, gasping in the deep breath she could never quite complete whenever she had it on.
Then, she was still, staring into nothingness.
“Son of a bitch,” she whispered, the terrible truth sinking in.
Not only had she failed at finishing what she’d started with Kong, but he’d now be on the defense. Waiting for her to strike again. It would be ten times harder to catch him off guard.
She thought she’d been so careful. Over the last month, she’d spent every possible moment following his every move. The blonde woman who’d surprised Veda at his home had never once been by his side.
She couldn’t help but wonder if the universe was speaking to her.
Maybe she should stop right now.
She immediately shook her head at her own thoughts.
If she stopped, she’d never defeat the debilitating fury roaring away inside her. If she stopped, that fury would only get stronger, refusing to be ignored, growing more insistent until it destroyed her and, eventually, everything she loved. Including the spit-shined rich boy snoring away in her bedroom.
Tingle (Revenge Book 2) Page 2