Unbound Trilogy Boxset

by Coopmans, Kathy

  To fuck Ellie all over again.

  Because of me.

  Right.

  That’ll never happen. Not while I’m breathing.

  “What the hell did Sadie say to Ellie?”

  “She tried warning her, and you know why?” Tilting her head to the side, she pins me with a glare. Deep satisfaction is written all over her face. “Tell Lane to let Stephanie and Sadie see Lexi. Give me back what you took from me and I’ll prepare you for when you see Ellie next. I’ll see to it she forgives you.”

  She may as well have kicked me in the balls. My entire body winds tightly with worry.

  But I mask it the same way I’ve done for years with Whitney. She might be good at manipulation, I’m a hundred times better. Only problem? I won’t jeopardize my niece. I can’t do a damn thing until I hear from Lane.

  “Lane will never agree to that. I’m not playing around with you anymore. Told you that years ago when I found out you were the one who snitched on Shadow. Guess my proof will be in your brother’s hands by tomorrow.” I squeeze tighter, crawling up her skanky body until I’m in her face.

  Cold laughter pours out of her mouth, covering her with the poisonous woman she is. “I’d think twice before you start throwing demands my way.”

  Bitch doesn’t have a leg to stand on with me.

  “And I’d start thinking about just how much you want to live if I were you.”

  My head spins and my heart pounds, bile climbing up my throat, revulsion crawling across my flesh.

  “What I took from you wasn’t yours to begin with, Whitney. You should know better than to try and get a dime from me.”

  “I’m here to do what should have been done a long time ago. Make you pay, Logan. I have the upper hand this time. I have proof to get Lexi taken from her daddy. I have proof to make Ellie run. I have proof, you have nothing.”

  I breathe deeply to settle the fuming pulsation of my muscles, the wrath boiling through the thick layers of my skin ready to hit my veins and burst open any minute.

  Misery.

  It bounds me tight.

  “Where’s my laptop?”

  My head spins and my heart pounds, bile climbing up my throat, revulsion crawling across my flesh.

  My blood boils as Whitney licks her lips, relaxed in her pose, gratification pouring out of her.

  “Give me what I want, Logan, and I’ll tell you. The quicker you do, the faster you can beg Ellie to forgive you. Although, I’m not sure anymore if she will.”

  Dread rocks through my veins as Whitney’s eyes shift to my front door.

  I can feel Ellie’s life-force drain away in my doorway, screaming for a breath, for some air before she speaks.

  “Oh, God. No. Have you been fucking her the whole time you’ve been with me? What do I need to forgive you for, Logan? I would have forgiven you for anything, but her.”

  My stare rips from Whitney to Ellie. The woman so beautiful I can’t bear to see the tears falling down her face, the wringing of her hands. The shock of her seeing Whitney in my house, and me on top of her.

  Sickening, cynical laughter breaks from Whitney’s all too happy mouth. I can feel her claws digging in.

  A vicious circle of deceit. Round and round it goes.

  “Oh, this is better than I thought it would be. You should have learned your lesson years ago not to mess with me, Ellie. Funny thing how I’ve lived in this town for years and never knew you did too. Not until a few weeks ago. We could have shared Logan the way I shared him with everyone else. We could have bonded like sisters again. I wish I could say it’s nice to see you again, but it’s not. I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this. I’m Logan’s wife, and we’re having a baby. I’m four months along.”

  Undone

  Prologue

  Logan

  Ten Years Ago

  “I have the police report in my hand, Logan. It’s as clear as it is black and white Whitney knew about Ellie’s rape. I have a long list of bullying in school, amongst other things that happened after Ellie’s father died. There’s no rhyme or reason why Ellie would lie about this. Shit, just looking at her all bruised and battered is enough to make me want to slaughter every one in that sick family like a pig. Elizabeth, Shadow, and Whitney took everything from that girl. There’s a video of her statement. It’s not pretty, son.”

  Tying the lace of my boot, I shove off the bed I just fucked Whitney on while she had her fun with another woman and pace the room.

  The information Gabe fed me starts a violent spin in my head. Wheels greased with deceit and lies spin round and round.

  Son of a bitch.

  That already formed guilt I’ve tried shoving to the back of my mind, it balloons and pops, sending it to the end of every nerve.

  “I told you Whitney was poison years ago, told your father I thought the entire family was seven ways to fucked up. Mother a goddamn money-sucking leech. Shadow a certified psycho and I use that term loosely, and the parasite you moved from Texas to live with is a combination of both of them. They all need to be beat to death.”

  Shit, Ellie must look a hell of a lot worse than I imagined if Gabe is this riled up. Not sure if I have it in me to hear anymore.

  Outrage and disgust rise like bile in my throat. I lose all reason. My sanity unleashes in a ferocious fury straight out of my skull.

  Deranged, I’m going to fuck some people up while these wild emotions eat me alive.

  I should have seen it coming. Should have never believed the big fat ugly tears falling down Whitney’s face were real when I confronted her after word got out Shadow was arrested for raping Ellie Wynn and then the charges suddenly dropped.

  Whitney is a liar just like her brother. A disgraceful con-artist is what she is.

  Making me believe all along she felt sorry for Ellie. Such bullshit.

  “Fuck, this wasn’t what I was expecting to hear when I asked you to get that report. I don’t have it in me to look at Ellie in pictures, let alone a video.” Damn it; the guilt rushes through my veins, making me dizzy as fuck. I put my greedy needs before saving Ellie, and it comes back full force. A slash across my chest I knew deep down would someday come.

  What happened to that girl is my fault.

  “You don’t have to watch it, Logan. Take my word on it. Little fucked up when I have no problem slicing a man’s throat, but seeing a woman shortly after she’d been violated in a way no person should be and my guts want to rip apart. That said, I don’t agree with where your mind is going.”

  The last is a warning. Gabe knows better than anyone how I’ve blamed myself for not introducing myself to Ellie — telling her to watch her back or let me do it for her. I have no excuse except that girl has somehow gotten in my blood, and I’d do more than watch her back. I’d make her mine, and she isn’t meant to be in my world.

  “There’s not a thing you can say to make me change how I feel, Gabe. You’ve tried and it didn’t work. I take the blame for what they’ve done. It’s my fault. Every tear that girl sheds for the rest of her life is on me. I could have stopped this if I hadn’t decided to walk in my father’s footsteps, making them bigger and wider and, fuck!!” I roar so loud the windows shake. “I’m going to mutilate them until there is nothing left.”

  It seems the woman I met the same day as her brother Shadow has been playing me the same way her mother does with men. Bitch has another thing coming if she thinks I’m a goddamn pawn in her corrupted game that has cost an innocent young woman a lifetime of pain.

  Pathetic. A piss poor excuse.

  The older Whitney got, the more beautiful she became. Blonde hair, brown eyes, killer body. Hell, at fifteen, she spread her legs as eagerly for me as most women did when they wanted a piece of the horny teenager who was hungry for fucking.

  Didn’t surprise me one bit she wasn’t a virgin.

  And she knew what I wanted to do with my life. Knew I was going to sell my body so my brothers and I could become filthy rich.

 
Whitney was perfect for a fucked up man like me.

  Money-hungry.

  She didn’t care about jack shit as long as she was the one who was able to claim me as hers and have fun while knowing I’d come home to her at night. Whitney was all in with my lifestyle. The dirtier and rougher for her, the better. Money was power. Sex sells, and Whitney has never been shy about exploring sexual fantasies. The more people who watched her, the more into it she got.

  I should have known. Should have done many things trying to protect Ellie instead of thinking about myself and using my dick.

  Just another instance where a young punk like me couldn’t seem to help himself.

  “We’ll discuss this when I return. Me, you, Lazaro, your brothers. I’ll bring in anyone from my family to kill them both. Hell, let me at their mother. The fault lies on her. Dumb woman should have never had kids.”

  “No, not yet.” The response rebounds off the walls through my grinding teeth.

  “Okay, you need to calm down. Think this through before you do anything. We’ll devise a plan when the time is right. They’ll never see it coming.”

  Yeah, right and when will that time be? Fucking years from now.

  I shake my head to clear it. To think straight before Whitney comes slithering back through the door. Bitch went to clean up. There won’t be anything left of her to cleanse by the time I’m done annihilating her.

  “Where’s Ellie now, is she doing okay?” Doubtful. How could she be?

  “She just moved, out of all the places in the world, she’s in New Orleans, Logan. You better do everything in your power to not let Whitney, Elizabeth, or Shadow find out. The repercussions aren’t something either of us could live with. I’ll text you Ellie’s address as soon as we hang up. We have our work cut out for us. I can’t tell you how Ellie is doing, not very well, I’d imagine. Don’t you do anything until I get back, you’re young, but you aren’t stupid. You going off the rails and becoming reckless will fuck this shit wide open. Do you hear me?”

  “Loud and clear.”

  Shoving my phone in my back pocket, I place my hands against the side of my head and press as if squeezing would push it all away.

  Guilt trip.

  Every ride I took to Texas with Shadow had been filled with it. Yeah, I’d felt that emotion since I first saw Ellie. It’s haunting me now. A ghost that will never set me free.

  Staying with Whitney is going to make me want to slit my wrists every day. The thing is, to seek revenge for Ellie, it’ll be worth it.

  I have a reason. Now I need to wait until an opportunity comes along to make Whitney and Shadow pay.

  I hope like hell it doesn’t take very long.

  Chapter One

  Ellie

  Present Day

  Loss of air.

  I can feel it rapidly leaking out of my lungs. The currents of danger swallowing me whole. The stupidity of letting a man use me in a game that’s taking me back in time.

  Betrayal in the ripest form. It thrums through my entire body.

  I never saw this coming; I never thought Logan capable of hurting me to this degree. I believed he cared, and the pain that’s traveling from my toes to the roots of my hair tells me I had already fallen for this man and didn’t realize it until now.

  Heartache.

  It burns like a torch laying across my chest.

  Words leave me. Nausea swirls unrestrained in my stomach. My heart slows as if my blood has become tar as it struggles to keep a solid beat.

  Sluggish and weary.

  The sight in front of me crumbles my insides. I feel as if I could die. Crawl into a deep hole and never come out.

  I don’t want to feel the burn peeling off layers of my skin, exposing me in a way I don’t deserve. I was stupid enough to believe Logan’s lies. Dumb enough to think he was different from the man I first thought him to be. I don’t want to feel the betrayal to myself aching so deep inside of me that I’m about to come undone.

  Explode off my hinges and sink back inside myself.

  The shame, the hatred, the way my skin wants to fall right off my bones from Logan touching me after he touched her. Those sharp, intense pangs of irreparable mistrust, none of it. How could I ever think I’d fall for a man who lies and cheats? A man who looked me in the eye and said he changed for me. It makes me angry at myself. Furious in a way my shocked system wants to overpower me and scream that I will never be enough for any man.

  The first man to ever touch me is married to the woman who was part of a plan to destroy me. She succeeded, and she’s done it again.

  Run.

  I knew I should have. Because that storm I felt approaching, I would never have thought the eye of it would be Whitney.

  And the end of it is near. It’s crawling at a snail’s pace. And when it strikes, it’s going to rip me in two.

  Shadow. He’s coming. I know he is.

  Run.

  Swallowing the jagged pill of truth that tastes like destruction to my strength, I stare into those bright green eyes of Logan’s that give off an impression of sitting inside a ring of fire filled with regret and guilt, and my heart falls into my stomach. Those emotions, along with many others, are in the depths that are full of lies and betrayal.

  “Ellie, this isn’t what you think.” Maybe not, but I know what I see. Know what I heard and Logan not denying that Whitney isn’t his wife, it is enough for me.

  Sickness. I want to peel it off of me. Scrub until I’m raw.

  There’s anguish in Logan’s voice too, and yet he doesn’t move, and neither do I. I’m lost in those eyes I began to believe were as lonely as me. That we were going to fall together, that everything he said was as truthful as every word that fell from my lips.

  I could have sworn I’d saw the emptiness in the beginning. As time faded, so did the vacancy and in its place became something so unreal I guess I was too blind by lust to see. Too eager to fall into his embrace, too full of hope that the next step was love, that our connection was enough for me to ignore the warning signs that the secret I knew Logan possessed was one I couldn’t forgive.

  I love him, and he crushed me under his boot. He also brought that danger right to my doorstep like I knew he would.

  I am shaking and trembling.

  My body is visibly doing it, and he stays put. He doesn’t care, doesn’t see the fear I’m trying so hard to hide.

  I’m a fool — a stupid, inexperienced woman who let a man drop her to her knees.

  Never again.

  I shoot him a warning not to come near me. Not to touch me, not to look my way. I don’t want to hear anything Logan has to say.

  Betrayal.

  It’s a punch to my chest.

  Logan fed me lie after lie. He did it in such a way that he made me hope. I shut out every negative thought about his past out of my head and opened up my heart to him. I began to trust him, and I’d bet my dying soul; this is why he wanted my trust so badly.

  Fuck him.

  As hurtful as it is seeing him on top of her, a part of me is glad I’m witnessing the side I didn’t know existed — the man is a liar who will always be a part of his sex club.

  A whore and a cheat. A man who isn’t for me.

  I’ve no idea which one of these two sick and twisted people I hate the most — the man who brought my past back into my life or the woman underneath him.

  Both in equal measures.

  The tears I’d long denied fall down my face and burn my eyes, and a lump grows in my throat. A flood of emotions are stuck underneath, and they are on a powerful surge to get out.

  I’m going to break.

  But not in front of them.

  Not after the upheaval of doubt, the woman who approached me at the restaurant stirred in me enough for Norah and me to ditch our security and drive here. If it wasn’t for her, I’ve no idea how long it would have taken me to find out about Logan and Whitney.

  A trap. That’s what this is. One orchestrated by Whitney
and that woman.

  Bitches can go straight to hell right along with every other woman who couldn’t stand the sight of me. They can have him.

  “Are you okay? You haven’t moved from the doorway.” A gasp tears from Norah’s throat when she takes in what I walked into. “What in the ever-loving hell is going on here?”

  Welcome to my nightmare all over again, Norah.

  “Let me introduce you to Logan’s wife. Isn’t she the perfect companion for him? The perfect wife for a life filled with sickness and debauchery.” My tone is hard and bitter.

  I don’t care.

  “What? You dirty bitch and bastard. I’ll kill you both. You’ll pay for what you did to Ellie. You filthy fucking whores. The both of you. Come on, Ellie, let’s go.” Her words come through clenched teeth.

  “It’s okay. I’m okay. Give me a minute,” I tell her. The worry of what direction my life is going scratches my voice box as I gather as much fury inside of me that I can hold.

  Worry.

  There’s so much inside of me I have no idea which way to go.

  Run.

  “We do make a great couple, don’t we? Would the two of you leave our home so Logan and I can get back to what we started? I’ve missed my husband these past few weeks while I’ve been on vacation. I mean, unless you really are into sharing. Something about the look and tears tells me you’re not. There’s Kleenex somewhere for those teary eyes, Ellie. Would you like me to get you some?” Whitney’s words follow with a devious laugh.

  Vomit pools in my mouth when she reaches and rubs her filthy paws down the zipper of Logan’s low hung jeans, and yet he still doesn’t move. He doesn’t take his eyes off of me either. I can feel them seeking mine out, but I refuse to look at him.

  Disgust.

  It slithers right up my throat and slams into my bleeding heart.

  For a brief second, I surrender and allow myself to sweep down Logan’s heaving bare chest when he finally pushes off Whitney and stands at full height. The man has the nerve to toss around the vibe of being contrite and a whole lot scared. As if I might flee and he’ll never see me again.