“What?” Kyle asked, holding his chin up proudly and throwing his hands up in the air. “You think you’re the only one around here who’s allowed to fuck other women?”
“It was all a lie. Wasn’t it?” Abby sniffled.
“What was a lie?”
“The whole ‘Let’s give our relationship another chance.’ You had no intention of working things out with me. You just wanted to have me around to punish me for what I did to you.”
Kyle gave her a slow, sarcastic clap. “Well, you’re finally catching up. I can’t believe it took you this long to figure it all out. I guess you’re not as smart as you think you are.” He snickered at her.
Abby stared up at him, dumbfounded and wondered how he could be so cruel and callous. She couldn’t believe the kind, sweet man she had fallen in love with three years earlier could be capable of saying and doing the things Kyle had been saying and doing to her for the last month. Abby buried her face in her hands and began to wail inconsolably.
“Oh please! Enough with the tears. Stop acting like I’m the bad guy here. You betrayed me, Abby. You cheated on me with another woman. And not just any woman. You cheated on me with my own sister, a woman who almost destroyed my family with her lies and her perversions.” Kyle stepped towards the table and placed his palms flat on it.
“Women throw themselves at me all the time, and I used to tell them to get lost because I loved you and respected you. You have no idea how many opportunities I’ve had to cheat on you, but I didn’t take a single one. Not only are you a cheater and a liar, you are also depraved and twisted like Brianna. So excuse me if I’m not moved by your waterworks.”
Abby raised her head up and scowled at Kyle. “Yes, I betrayed you, and I’m sorry. I’ve apologized a million times. I spend every waking second wishing I could take it all back, but I can’t. Yes, I did a terrible thing, and I understand why you are so angry at me, but I don’t think I deserve to be treated like this.” Abby leaped to her feet and stared at Kyle from across the small, round kitchen table. “I’m done, Kyle,” she declared, her voice unwavering.
Abby didn’t wait for Kyle to react to her announcement. With her gaze cast downward, Abby walked past Kyle to step out of the kitchen.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Kyle barked over his shoulder. “Get back here. I’m not done talking to you.”
Abby ignored Kyle and kept walking towards the bedroom, no longer afraid of upsetting him.
Being ignored by Abby made Kyle blind with rage. He had gotten used to Abby jumping at his every whim and command. He thought he could exploit her guilt a little longer before she decided she had enough. Huffing and gritting his teeth, Kyle rushed out of the kitchen and followed Abby into the bedroom. When he walked in, he found Abby pulling a suitcase out of the closet and flipping it open by the foot of the bed.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Kyle asked, stepping behind Abby.
Abby turned around, stuck her chin up, and stared at him defiantly. For the first time in a long time, she looked him in the eye without being afraid of him or feeling ashamed for what she did. She was through feeling guilty. She realized it was time she stood up for herself.
“I’m leaving you, Kyle,” she announced without hesitation before walking around Kyle to get to the dresser behind him.
Kyle turned around and watched her open some of the dresser drawers and pull clothes out of them. Abby’s sudden burst of bravery took him by surprise. He didn’t think she had it in her. Kyle had a feeling she was not bluffing. She was going to leave him if he didn’t do something.
Clutching several pieces of clothing against her chest, Abby turned around to face Kyle.
“I’ve had enough of you belittling me and humiliating me. I’m a good person. I don’t deserve this treatment. I’m not going to take any more of your passive-aggressiveness, your constant snapping at me over little things, your controlling my every move, your jealousy… and now you’re fucking women in our apartment just to rub it in my face. I think I’ve paid enough for my mistake. I’m done.”
Abby walked around Kyle to get to the open suitcase and dumped the crumpled clothes she was holding inside it. “You will never forgive me, let alone learn to love me again. I give up.”
“And where are you going to go?” Kyle asked, standing in the same spot and glaring at Abby as she rushed back and forth between the dresser and the suitcase.
“I don’t know. I’ll sleep in the subway if I have to. I can’t spend another second here with you.”
“You’re not going to go sleep in the subway. You’re going to go be with your sick, perverted lover. Aren’t you?”
Abby stopped pulling clothes out of the dresser and snapped around to face Kyle. His menacing glare used to make her cower in fear, but that morning, it didn’t even make her flinch. She stuck her chin up and spoke to him with confidence. “What if I am? She cares about me. She would never hurt me the way you have. I made a huge mistake choosing you over her.”
With his hands on his hips, Kyle chuckled and shook his head. “You’re such a stupid little girl, Abby. Do you really think I’m just going to let you leave and be with Brianna and pretend nothing happened? Do you think I’m just going to let the two of you be together after what you did to me?”
Abby narrowed her eyes at him. She wanted to tell him to go to hell but decided to hold her tongue. She realized she didn’t care what he thought or felt anymore. She couldn’t wait to get out of there, so she turned around and continued pulling clothes out of the dresser drawers.
Abby’s ignoring him pushed Kyle over the edge. Rage coursed through him, impairing all of his senses. He grabbed Abby’s elbow, flipped her around and gripped her forearm in one swift move. “Goddamn it, Abby. Look at me when I’m talking to you.”
Abby let out a small yelp when Kyle swung her around. Holding her breath, she glared up at Kyle. The sinister cloud that enveloped Kyle’s grey eyes terrified Abby to her very core, but she was determined not to show it. Gulping down large breaths, Abby held Kyle’s gaze and tried to appear defiant. Inside, her heart was racing a mile a minute. Kyle had never hit her. She wondered if that was about to change.
“Answer me,” Kyle barked, squeezing and shaking Abby’s forearm. “Do you really believe I’m just going to let you leave this apartment and forget about everything you did to me?”
Abby licked her lips and took a small pause before responding. She needed to choose her next words to Kyle very carefully so as to not set him off. She had a feeling things could go badly for her if she said the wrong thing. She lowered her voice to a whisper and spoke very slowly.
“Just let me leave please. You can’t keep me here against my will. You can’t lock me up or chain me to the bed. If you do, people will wonder what happened to me. They will look for me and ask questions. You don’t want that. You could end up getting in a lot of trouble.”
Kyle had anticipated that one day Abby was going to figure out his vindictive scheme and tried to leave before he had punished her enough. So he came up with a back-up plan. The expression on his face began to soften because he knew his back-up plan was fool proof. He let out a small chuckle and shook his head. It was time to reveal the ace under his sleeve. He released Abby’s forearm and took a step back. Abby stayed put with her back pressed against the dresser. She didn’t know what to make of the change in Kyle’s demeanor.
Kyle crossed his arms over his chest. “I know I can’t hold you here against your will, Abby. I’m not an idiot. I don’t need to hold you captive to ruin your life or Brianna’s. All I need to do is pick up the phone and make a call.”
Abby furrowed her brow. “What are you talking about?”
“What has Brianna told you about her past?” Kyle asked.
“She told me the reason she ran away from home is because a pastor at her church tried to turn her straight by raping her multiple times over the course of several weeks. She said the pastor did it with your father’s blessin
g.”
Kyle’s face hardened as he remembered the letter full of despicable lies Brianna wrote to their parents seven years earlier. Kyle despised his sister for writing such vitriol about two honorable men who Kyle admired and respected. He took a deep breath. He reminded himself that letter was nothing but lies, and Brianna was going to pay dearly for spreading those lies.
“What else did she tell you?” Kyle asked.
“She told me a lot of other things. What are you trying to get at Kyle?”
“Did she tell you she was arrested just months before she ran away from home? Did she tell you she was accused of statutory rape for perverting an innocent 15-year-old girl?”
Kyle grinned, savoring the shocked expression on Abby’s face. “That’s right, Abby. Not only is your precious Brianna a liar and a freak, she is also a sexual predator. If it hadn’t been for my father, she would have spent a couple of years in prison and would have spent the rest of her life as a registered sex offender.”
Abby just stared at Kyle with her mouth hanging open. She crinkled her brow and shook her head at him. “You’re lying. Brianna would never do anything like that.”
Kyle smirked. “I guess she didn’t tell you that story when she was spreading lies about my father. My dad had to make a lot of sacrifices to keep her out of prison. He had to take out a huge loan to pay off the girl’s money-grubbing parents so they’d leave town and not testify against Brianna. He also had to grease a lot of hands in the Glen Fall Justice System to get the case against Brianna dismissed and her arrest record expunged. He got into so much debt, he had to declare bankruptcy and ended up losing his roofing and siding business. We almost lost the house. He did all of that for her, and how did she repay him? By spreading vile lies about him.”
Abby kept shaking her head. “There must have been a mistake. Brianna wouldn’t force herself on an innocent girl.”
Kyle cocked his head to the side. “You don’t believe me? My father kept her arrest record after it was expunged. He kept it in a safe in the house. I found it when I was cleaning up his office after he died. That arrest record is still in that safe. All I have to do is call my mother and it would be in my hands within minutes. Can you imagine what would happen if that arrest record, along with a detailed account of what happened from a reliable source like me, were to land on the desk of someone at TMZ or The National Inquirer?”
“You wouldn’t dare...?”
Kyle chuckled. “Imagine what that juicy piece of scandal could do to the reputation and job prospects of an up-and-coming actor in Hollywood. And let’s not forget the girl’s greedy parents who I bet would be more than happy to talk to all those sleazy publications, for the right price, of course. Imagine her face on the cover of all the tabloids. Imagine the endless coverage on the internet, the blogs, social media, and the twenty-four-hour news channels. A scandal like this could derail Brianna’s short career. She’d be blacklisted, and no one would hire her except to do porn. She would never be able to recover from it.”
A chill ran down Abby’s spine as she stared at the monster standing in front of her, a monster she had helped create. “You wouldn’t dare do that to her. She’s your sister…”
Kyle took a step towards Abby and uncrossed his arms. “You don’t think I’d do it? Walk out that door and find out.” He pointed to the door with his chin. “Go on. Leave.”
Abby did not move. She could see it in his eyes that Kyle was not bluffing. After all the things he had done to her over the last month, Abby knew Kyle was capable of anything.
Crossing his arms over his chest once more, Kyle stared Abby down, waiting for her to make her next move. When she wouldn’t move, Kyle’s lips curled into a triumphant grin. “That’s what I thought,” he sneered at her before snatching the clothes off her hands, shoving her out of the way, and tossing the clothes back in the drawer. He then turned his attention back to Abby. Abby flinched with fear in her eyes as Kyle hovered over her.
“This is how this is going to play out Abigail: You’re going to stay here with me because I’m not done punishing you for your betrayal yet. Once I’m done making you pay for being a filthy whore, I will let you go. You can go back home to your family in Michigan, you can stay here in New York, you can move to Mars. I don’t really give a shit. But whatever you do, you better stay away from Brianna. If I find out that you shared as much as a glance with her, I’m going to set things in motion, and within days, the entire world will know what a devious, immoral, perverted piece of trash your lover is.”
Abby took a step back as her breath caught in her throat. The darkness in Kyle’s eyes told her his words were not empty threats.
“You and Brianna will never be together as long as I live,” Kyle continued. “Have I made myself clear?”
Abby nodded, too scared to speak.
“Good. Now put that pathetic, little suitcase away and get the fuck out of the room. I can’t stand to look at you anymore.”
Abby stepped around Kyle, going back and forth between the bed and the dresser, until she had placed the last piece of clothing back in its place. She kept her gaze down and held her breath, afraid her mere breathing would set Kyle off.
Kyle followed her with his eyes as she put the clothes and the suitcase back in their place. He grinned, amused by how much fear he was still capable of instilling in her with just a glance.
When Abby was done, she headed for the door. Before stepping out of the room, she shot a glance at Kyle who had jumped on the bed and had his computer on his lap. As she stared at him over her shoulder, Abby wondered what happened to the wonderful man she had fallen in love with three years earlier. Had he always been evil while pretending to be a nice guy or was her betrayal so painful, so devastating that it turned him into the monster he had become?
That night, Kyle made Abby sleep on the couch-not that she minded. She no longer wanted to share a bed with him. She wouldn’t have been able to sleep peacefully while lying next to so much venom. But she couldn’t fall asleep on the couch either. She kept tossing and turning all night, thinking about the things Kyle had said about Brianna and her arrest. She wondered how much of it was true and whether there was more to the story. To Abby, the idea that Brianna was a sexual predator just didn’t compute.
Abby came to the conclusion that the part about the arrest must have been true. There was no way Kyle could make up something like that and use it as leverage if it weren’t true. The part about Brianna being a sexual predator, however, Abby refused to believe.
One thing Abby knew for sure: She didn’t want Kyle to destroy Brianna’s reputation and career even if it meant she had to stay with him a bit longer and endure more psychological torture and humiliation. Over the course of that month, Abby came to the realization that what she and Brianna had was more than just a fling. She did love Brianna and wanted her to be happy even if they couldn’t be together.
Chapter XI
The next morning, both Abby and Kyle went to their respective jobs: Kyle to his internship at the New York City Transportation Authority and Abby to her job at the bookstore. That morning had been uneventful. They crossed paths several times as they got ready for work but did not say a single word to each other.
Abby had always liked her job at the bookstore, but ever since hers and Kyle’s sham reconciliation, she had looked forward to going to work even more. The bookstore had become a safe haven for her. The hectic pace of the place and the joy of sharing her passion for books with strangers helped get her mind off Kyle and the nightmare she was living at home.
Later that same day, Abby fled to the backroom of her bookstore to take a much needed afternoon break. She sipped coffee and devoured a blueberry muffin from the bakery across the street while checking her Facebook newsfeed on her phone. She hadn’t checked it in a long time since it was usually filled with nothing but boring statuses and pictures of people’s food.
She scrolled through endless, innate posts from friends and families without rea
ding any of them. Among all the silly posts, there was one that caught her eye and made her heart skip a beat. It was a post from Broadway World advertising the opening night of Chicago, the musical in which Brianna was playing Roxy Hart. Broadway World had used a gorgeous picture of Brianna in her show custom for the ad.
Abby sighed as she gazed at the picture. She was happy for Brianna’s success but also sad for what might have been. Abby hadn’t seen or spoken to Brianna since she and Kyle got back together. Every day since, Abby had wondered how Brianna was doing and if she was seeing someone knew. Abby wanted to reach out to her, but she feared that Kyle, who was tracking her phone and reading her emails, would find out if she did and carry out his threat of destroying Brianna’s reputation and career.
The Facebook ad Abby was looking at said the musical had opened the night before and had been getting great reviews. Abby was glad that Brianna was finally receiving the critical acclaim she craved and wished she could go see her and congratulate her in person, but had to settle for following her career through the press and social media. Besides, Abby was convinced Brianna hated her guts and didn’t want to see her.
Abby wanted to at least see Brianna perform live, but with Kyle monitoring her every move, she wouldn’t dare get anywhere near the theater district where Brianna was performing.
Abby checked the musical’s schedule on the Broadway World website and saw there was a matinee show that afternoon. Being a theater geek, Abby knew that after shows performers come out through the stage door of the theater to greet fans and sign autographs. Abby thought about going to the theater for a few minutes to get a glimpse of Brianna from afar.
Abby missed Brianna a lot. She missed her warm smile, her touch, and her kisses. She always felt safe and at peace with her-the exact opposite she was feeling anytime she was around Kyle lately. She needed to see Brianna, but she remembered Kyle’s threats and the fact that he was tracking her every move through her phone.
Betrayal: Kyle's Revenge (The Betrayal Series) Page 13