by S. Ann Cole
Oh Jesus, I hated this guy. “If your wife’s so interested in our biz, why isn’t she up here with you?”
Something passed over his arresting features, but it was fleeting as he quickly donned that cocky-boy expression. “‘Cause my boy Chadrick over there fucked her. And the three of us bein’ in the same room is just fuckin’ awkward.”
That bit totally caught me off guard, and I swung my gaze back to Chad. “You fucked your best friend’s wife?” I asked in disbelief. “Oh my God, do you just have a penchant for screwing over the people you say you love?”
Chad fired a death-glare at JK. “Do you always have to be such a fucking dick, man?”
JK held his hands up in defense. “I told the truth.”
“Why are you still friends with him?” I asked JK, while still looking at Chad.
“‘Cause he needs me,” he said simply. “I’m the only one who’ll put up with his constant betrayal.”
Saying nothing, Chad kept his head down, as though he either was ashamed or couldn’t be bothered trying to refute that.
I turned to JK, seeing him in a different light, because if he knew all of Chad’s ugly, dark tales and still stuck by him, his loyalty deserved to be commended. “You know, like, everything?” I inquired. “About me? About what he did? About—”
“Everything,” Chad voiced. “I tell him everything.”
Looking JK over, I nodded. “I guess behind the shit ton of asshole you wear, you’re actually a worthy person, huh?”
Then came the crooked grin. “Does that mean you’ll apologize for grabbin’ a married man’s dick?”
Oh hell. “I. Did. Not. Gra—”
“She killed Alina’s parents, JK.” This was from Chad. Blurted out, as though he would’ve exploded if he’d held it in any longer, just needing to tell someone.
My gaze traveled over to him and he was gripping the countertop, restraining himself.
“Whoa,” JK muttered.
“And I’m just so fucking conflicted right now because I think I’m falling in love with her, but at the same time I just wanna cut off all her fingers then put a bullet in her heart. How do I choose between loving her and killing her? How do I choose between destroying her heart and keeping it to myself?”
Dead silence, then, “Look, man, this shit’s a hundred and fifty shades of fucked up. Way over my head.” To me, he directed the question, “Did she see your face? Alina, that is.”
I shook my head no. “I was wearing a mask.”
“Good,” he said with a single nod of his head, his expression grave now. Like this was his no-nonsense face. “Considerin’ I’m practically Alina’s guardian right now, and Chad’s incapable of makin’ any rational decisions since you popped up, I’m tellin’ both of you to keep this shit to yourselves. Alina doesn’t need to know her favorite cousin’s new girlfriend is her parents’ killer. She’s in a happy place right now, and I’d like for her to stay there.”
As he pushed up from the bar stool, readying to leave, I suddenly didn’t want to be left alone with Chad. “As for you two…”—pause— “this is toxic. Dys-fuckin’-functional. Wrong. I swear this is the most screwed-up ‘relationship’ I’ve ever witnessed. And in my honest opinion, you don’t belong together. You two need to split and fuckin’ run before one of you ends up killin’ the other.”
When he turned to leave, Chad grunted, a sound that clearly read “I completely disagree with you”, and JK stopped and spun back around. “Like I said, that’s my honest opinion. But lemme ask both of you this: How many times have you thought about knocking the other the fuck out?”
I looked at Chad. He looked at me. And then we both looked away. Don’t know about him, but I thought about knocking him out quite often, he was so arrogant and frustrating.
When nothing but silence met JK’s ears, he uttered, “‘Nuff said,” then turned and left us in our mire.
I envied JK, because if I could get away from us, I would, too.
After discovering how strongly I still loved Chad, my drive and desire to kill him had waned until it completely vanished, replaced with an all-consuming, all-encompassing burning desire to fuck him all the time and love him into eternity. But now he had a blazing urge to kill me and—
Holy shit… his words came crashing into me, as if they’d just flown by me as a jumble of irrelevant letters when he’d said them, but only now did they make sense.
Because I think I’m falling in love with her…
He was falling in love with me. But hell, he also wanted to kill me. So should I be afraid or fucking flattered? Should I pick up my skirt and run for the hills or throw some imaginary dices, gamble, and hope to God he chooses to love me?
Of course, I knew the sane option to go with, but here I was once again deliberately playing stupid, because I didn’t want to lose my Blood again.
I was loving all wrong. So fucking wrong.
Across the kitchen island, Chad now had his back to me, facing the fridge, popping strawberries into his mouth. One after the other. One after the other. One after the other.
Easing off the bar stool, I rounded the kitchen island and gingerly walked up to him. When I pressed my body up against his, he just stared over the top of my head, refusing to acknowledge me. At least he wasn’t pushing me away.
I reached up and pried the fruit bowl from his hand, setting it on the countertop.
He let me.
Taking his right hand, I brought it up to my neck in a strangulation hold, then put my other hand over it and forced him to squeeze.
Chad’s eyes finally snapped to mine, confusion waltzing within them. “What—”
“Choose now, Blood,” I whispered. “We can’t go anywhere from here unless you choose. We can’t be running from our adversaries and from each other at the same time. So choose, now…love me, or kill me.”
Brows drawn together, Chad eyed me like I was a madwoman.
“I’m yours either way,” I told him. “Whether to love or to kill, I’m yours.” Not like I had anything to live for anyway. Despite his betrayal, Chad was the closest thing to a family I had left. I had nothing and no one. Nothing but a shit-ton of guilt, fear, nightmares, and ghosts that haunted me.
Chad made me hope. He made me forget. He made me believe there could be better. He made me smile, and he made me feel. He restored something within, dragged it to the surface and made me feel alive again. No longer finding comfort in the darkness, but wanting to see the light. I needed him there to tell me he would protect me, that I’d be safe, that I had nothing to fear, nothing to worry about.
On a deep inhalation, Chad closed his eyes, but made no attempt to remove his hand from my throat. I waited, lungs tied in knots, heart hiding in my throat, to see what he would choose.
Until he chose…
His fingers tightened around my throat, ending my flow of air as he drove me backward and slammed me to the refrigerator, the contents inside sounding off a muffled jumble of rattles.
Removing my hands and dropping them to my side, I surrendered. If death was what he chose for me, then death it would be.
Tempestuous dark eyes flew open and glowered down at me. “Did you make it easy for her, or was it painful?”
Temples throbbing from all the blood trapped in my head, I shook my head as best I could. “Slit…her…throat.”
That elicited a wolfish growl from him, savage, ferocious, as he pinned me with his hips and really started to choke me. With that rage in his eyes, I no longer recognized him. Instantly I remembered his words from the night before:
…it’s easier not to get pissed off than it is to control myself after I get pissed off. Rage kills, it consumes you and makes you do impulsive shit…
Rage killed indeed.
Chad’s face shifted into twos, and then back as one, in twos, then back to one. My air dwindled lesser and lesser until my body went limp, my vision nothing but a thin sheet of darkness, and, though I knew I was gasping in my last counts of br
eath, I heard nothing. I saw nothing. It was such a contrast the way my body was struggling, but my spirit, my spirit was so peaceful. Floating.
Suddenly, it was like a ton of steel was lifted off me, and my body was sliding, falling down, no longer struggling. Then the sense of hearing was back, like a gushing waterfall inside my head, and someone’s voice from far away. “…pen…eyes…eety Byrd…”
Tactility returned next, but I wished it hadn’t, because I sure as shit felt that hard ass slap on my cheek, and then another in quick succession. I blinked open my eyes and brought my hand to my throbbing cheek.
Chad was leaning over me, my upper half cradled in his lap, his expression an artist’s sketch of panic and contrition. My body suddenly convulsed, lurching forward as I heaved up nothing at all, then inhaled a long lungful of breath, eyes stretching wide.
“Jhay?”
As everything rushed back to me, I lay there, audibly inhaling and exhaling, while mulling over the conclusion here: he didn’t kill me.
“Talk to me, Jhay,” his voice pleaded, vigorous hands shaking me. “Tell me you forgive me. I’m so fucking sorry. I don’t know what—”
“I forgive you,” I rasped out.
He paused. “What?”
“I forgive you.”
Those dark eyes, they were wet. Those long lashes, they stuck together from the salty moisture. Tears. That’s what the wetness was called. Tears.
Although those pained eyes watched me like he thought I’d lost my sanity during the strangulation, his shoulders sagged in relief. “You stupid, stupid girl,” he whispered, pulling me to him, stifling me in a tight hug. “You shouldn’t forgive me. You should be running from me.”
“No,” I protested to his chest. “I told you, I’m yours.”
A therapist would purse her ruby-red lips, tap her ballpoint pen against her clipboard, and scribble down something like, ‘Patient suffers bondage complex. As a result of being kidnapped, enslaved and mastered since the age of ten, patient does not know how to lead an unfettered, liberating life, but feels the need to be owned and mastered, as that is the only way patient will ever feel loved and appreciated.’ And in fine print summary: ‘Patient is dumb as fuck.’
But screw that. I needed Chad.
“How can you trust me, Jhay?” he asked the top of my head. “I promised you I wouldn’t hurt you, and I did.”
Because I have no one else to trust.
“You didn’t hurt me, Blood,” I answered, soft and quiet. “You just had a hard choice to make. Maybe you made the wrong one in the beginning, but you eventually chose the right one, didn’t you?” Lifting my face away from his chest, I peered up at him. “You chose to love me.”
Shaking his head at me, Chad leaned down and pressed a soft kiss to my lips. “You’re doing my head in, Tweety Byrd.”
“Well,”—I gave a weak shrug—”you take my breath away. Literally.”
Chad stared at me for a long, long while, as if committing all my features to memory, before asking, “You still like opening your legs for me?”
“Yes,” I answered in a rush of breath, my body instantly alive, like I hadn’t just danced on the toes of death.
At the same time he stood up off the floor, he scooped me up with him. “I’m gonna take you to my room and you’re gonna open your legs for me and let me make sweet love to you. Long, slow, and deliberate. Then we’re hitting the road. There’s something you need to see.”
Forty-eight hours later, we were speeding out of Chad’s compound.
I had no idea where we were headed, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t paranoid as hell. Rafail was still after both our lives, and, even though Chad assured me some mysterious stranger was protecting me, what did I know about him? Maybe I was mostly scared of the unknown than the known.
If this unknown protector was so set on keeping me safe, why would he leave me with Chad? My fake kidnapper. Considering Chad almost snuffed my lights out a few hours ago, what made him think he could trust Chad with me? What would they have done to him if he had killed me? Is this protector even real? Was any of what Chad told me even true?
Well, shit. Who else did I have to trust but him? Who else was there for me, but him?
No longer in the claws of The Voice—Rafail Niiveux—I was now a confused, lost, meandering sheep. Unsure whether I should turn left, right, or go straight ahead to fucking jail. All I could do—foolishly so—was bank my faith and fate in Chad, a man whose own best friend described him as a constant betrayer.
The answer was right there. Glaringly obvious. I could not, and should not trust him.
I did, though. Oh, I did.
He was right: I was a stupid, stupid girl.
But this stupid, stupid girl did not regret letting him make sweet, sweet love to her body two hours ago. The most euphoric experience of my entire existence. One I’ll never forget. So maybe being stupid had its perks.
As the R8 kicked up speed, weaving and overtaking every inferior vehicle in its way, the engine growling a vicious “get the fuck out of my way”, the air-conditioner blasting stiff, frigid air, Eminem booming through the confinements of the car, I peeked over at Chad, wondering where the hell he was taking me. To life, or to death?
With a black ball cap pulled down over his face, and a mirror aviator hiding his eyes, he seemed distant, far off in his thoughts, his jaw set tight, a tic jumping occasionally. I couldn’t tell if that was from some evil thoughts or from nerves.
With Chad, one never knew.
I reached forward and powered down the volume on the monitor, and Chad leaned a little to the side, resting his shoulder on the car door, as if bracing himself for whatever conversation I was about to strike up.
“Why did Org allow you to keep me?” I asked. “I mean, if he’s so keen on protecting me, how can he trust you with me?”
“I killed one of his men thinking he was out to harm you.” His eyes remained hidden, but on the road. “Org understands we have one common goal, to keep you safe.”
“Keep me safe from Rafail, sure,” I said. “But does he know you can’t keep anyone safe from you?”
Tic.
Tic.
Tic.
Jaw tightening. Tic jumping.
Tic.
Tic.
He was sorry. But he had already apologized and he wasn’t going to do it again. He’d been like this since we were young. Once or twice he would apologize, but no matter how sorry he was, that was it.
“What happened to her?”
At that, he glanced over at me, giving me a view of myself in those mirror aviators. “Who?”
I’m one hundred percent sure he knew I knew he knew who “her” was.
“Your uncle’s mistress,” I reminded him. “Twenty-one-year-old bombshell who took your V card?”
Tic.
Tic.
“She’s dead.”
I sat up straighter, not wanting to believe what my mind was screaming at me: He killed her! He killed her! He killed the woman he was in love with! His being in love with you does not exempt you from his maleficent stabs in the back. “What—how? Who?”
Tic.
Tic.
TicTicTic.
Tic.
“I killed her.”
Oh…God… He was…he was unredeemable. Pure evil.
The haze of madness and stupidity I’d been floating around in dissipated all at once. And suddenly I wanted out of that car, away from him. Rational sound of judgment returned, and the only thing I could think about right then was “run, run, run”.
Ah, Jhay, what about “I’m yours. To kill or to love”? my mind jeered at me. So quickly you change your tune?
“Why, Chad?” My voice was a shaky wisp of hot air. “Why?”
Emitting a sigh loud enough to be heard over Eminem’s spitfire rapping, he leaned his shoulder further into the door. “Remember when I said I signed my legacy over to my father for my freedom?”
“Yes.”
> “Well, I also did it for her.” His voice was so still. “We never stopped fucking. Even while I was being punished. Pavel got tired of it and stripped her of everything he’d given her, so she was moving back to the States. I wanted to take her, save her.”
“Yes, I get it, because you loved her.” So why kill her?
TicTic. “She’d known I was the inheritor of my family legacy, but what she didn’t know was that I gave it all up for my freedom.”
I unsnapped my seat belt and turned in my seat to face his direction, pulling my feet up and tucking my hands between my thighs. “And?”
“When we got here, we were living with my aunt—the same one you killed.” He added the latter with a gritty edge. “My aunt was well-off, with a house too grand for just a family of three, so she was overly happy to have us there with her. But Liz wasn’t. She wanted to know why we were living with my aunt when I was supposed to be rich. I eventually told her the truth.
“She changed after learning I was broke. But still stayed with me because she had no family; had grown up in foster care. Was probably regretting ruining the luxury she had with my uncle, for me. She was after all six years my senior, mooching off her eighteen-year-old boyfriend’s aunt.”
His free hand went up and tugged the cap lower. More hiding. “She became friends with another young, pretty trophy wife to a real estate mogul who resided in the same gated community my aunt did. Before long, she was sleeping with the mogul behind her friend’s back. My aunt tried to warn me a couple of times, but I didn’t believe her. Until one night Liz left and never came back. Her friend came by our house some time after, crying. The mogul was divorcing her and moving Liz in.”
“What a selfish, traitorous bitch,” I said, face contorted in disgust. “So that’s why you killed her?”