Hearts on Fire 4: Kisses Sweeter Than Pie (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting)

by Dixie Lynn Dwyer

  “Yes,” Trent said and caressed some of her hair away from her cheek. She glanced to the left and looked at him.

  “We’re investigators, it’s what we do. Let us evaluate the situation. That’s a first step in the right direction of you trusting us.”

  “I didn’t say that I don’t trust either of you. I want to. I feel good with you. Safe, ya know?” she said and shyly looked down.

  Buddy reached up and gently brushed her chin and lower lip with his thumb as he smiled.

  “Safe is good. That makes us happy. Now, tell us where you lived before Treasure Town.”

  There was suddenly a knock on the door and Nina gasped and jumped back against the couch. Trent held her by his side, and Buddy patted her leg. “It’s okay. We’re here and you’re safe, remember?” He walked toward the door, feeling on edge even though Nina only told them minimal information about this guy possibly coming after her. He kept his hand on his revolver. When he opened the door, Johnny was standing there. He looked so worried.

  “Is she okay? What the fuck happened? I just got off work. Kyle came in for his shift. I heard about the Dumpster explosion and then Jake said Nina was involved.” He walked in and went right to Nina.

  Buddy closed the door and locked it as Johnny went to the couch, knelt down on the rug, and pulled Nina into his arms.

  “Are you okay? Did you get hurt?” he asked, caressing her hair and her cheeks as he pulled back to look at her.

  “I’m fine.”

  “We discussed a lot with Nina, Johnny. Take a seat. Nina’s about to tell us about her life before moving here and about an ex-boyfriend who may or may not be looking for her,” Trent said.

  “What?” Johnny asked, looking from Nina to his brothers then back toward Nina.

  “Your brothers thought I was involved with the explosion tonight because I called 911 and reported the explosion, the people injured, and gave a description of the teenager I saw running from the scene before it detonated.”

  “Shit. You wouldn’t leave your name? You didn’t want to be placed into the computer system?” he asked, but it was more like a statement. They all knew the answer.

  Nina lowered her eyes and then looked back at Buddy. He gave her a nod.

  “Explain about this ex-boyfriend and about how you escaped.”

  Johnny heard the word “escaped” and ran his fingers through his hair, giving Buddy a firm expression. Buddy just stared at his brother. He prayed that Nina wasn’t a criminal or on the run from police. It would kill Johnny, never mind upset Buddy and Trent.

  “I lived in California. A shitty part. I grew up with nothing.”

  “No family?” Trent asked.

  She looked at him. “None worth mentioning, except for Cleo. He helped raise me. If not for him I would have wound up in foster care or dead on the streets. I learned pretty quickly that in order to get out of the neighborhood and not wind up like my mother, I needed school and work.”

  “He was a stepfather?” Johnny asked her.

  She shook her head. “Nope, he was a man my mom was seeing until she broke things off. She cheated on him, liked drinking, partying, and eventually prostitution. Cleo couldn’t just leave me there in the apartment. I was thirteen. He saw the way men looked at me and he pretty much became my protector.”

  “He stayed there with you, in the apartment?” Buddy asked, not understanding how this stranger could just take over and her mom not intervene or act concerned. She was her mother.

  “My mom was never around. She hardly ever came home and sometimes if she did come home, she wasn’t alone. It became dangerous for me.” She twisted her fingers together. She was obviously nervous.

  “Did any of those men force themselves on you, Nina?” Trent asked. He was definitely in detective mode as Buddy should be. But all he kept thinking about was this poor little girl who no one loved or cared about. How sad.

  “Cleo wouldn’t let that happen,” she said, her voice cracking with emotion. She obviously trusted Cleo enough to accept his care for her.

  “This guy Cleo took you to his home?” Trent asked.

  She nodded. “Cleo was a good man. He worked odd jobs but had some money set aside. He had a sister with kids an hour or so away from his place that we visited a couple of times. He was trying to give me a normal life.”

  “What happened to your mom?” Johnny asked her.

  Nina leaned back against the couch, crossed her legs, and took a deep breath before releasing it.

  “She’s dead. I stayed living with Cleo and he helped find me some jobs working in local stores, helping to clean houses in better neighborhoods. I have my diploma because he pushed me to finish school and follow my dreams of becoming a baker. Cleo had some of his own problems, though.”

  “Problems?” Johnny asked.

  She looked at him. “Gambling. He got in over his head a few times. But it eventually killed him two years ago.”

  “What do you mean?” Johnny asked.

  “He was killed because he owed a debt,” Trent stated. He didn’t ask and Nina didn’t say a word. It was another sign of her natural defense mechanism to not give up information unless forced to, and not allow herself to feel when she was trying so hard to be strong.

  Buddy saw her lip quivering. He had an overwhelming urge to pull her into his arms and tell her that everything was going to be okay. But they still needed the whole story.

  “That must have been tough. What did you do next?” Trent asked.

  “Well, before he died we used to go down to the park sometimes. I would meet him there after work. He’s the one who got me a job at a local bakery. He knew I would love to make pies. I dreamed of being a baker, having my own business someday, but life just got in the way, ya know? My friends were all older, more experienced in life. They took me under their wings, introduced me to people, and sometimes if I wasn’t too exhausted after work we’d go out to the clubs.”

  “Is that where you met the guy?” Buddy asked her.

  “I thought it was fate.”

  “Fate?” Johnny asked.

  She looked away, past Trent’s shoulder as if remembering the moment she met the guy, and it bothered Buddy. It made him feel jealous and possessive. He needed to tread carefully here. He was liking her too much already, and too soon.

  “He appeared out of nowhere. He approached me and started talking. He was very attractive, a few years older, and he was the owner of the club.”

  “Under thirty and he owned the club?” Trent asked, sounding suspicious. He was probably thinking what Buddy was, that this guy was into something illegal, unless he came from money. That would be a reason for any young innocent woman who came from nothing to be attracted to him.

  “He was into different things besides the club business. I don’t know what exactly, and he never let me onto any of it. He just paid attention to me. Said things to me no one ever said before.”

  “We get it. He manipulated you into thinking that you were special and that you would be his only woman,” Trent said, sounding as jealous and angry as Buddy was.

  “I understand that he used me. I get that. I got it really clear six months ago when I showed up at his penthouse and found him with another woman.”

  “Damn,” Johnny stated aloud.

  “Penthouse? How wealthy was this guy?” Trent asked.

  “Wealthy. Within the year or so we were together, he seemed to really be doing well with the club. In fact, he had promised to fund the place I wanted to open to sell my pies. He encouraged me to practice, paid for me to take some classes, and had a friend of his, a business guy, look into financing a storefront in a great location. It was coming. We even looked at the storefront together a week before that day I found him cheating.”

  “What happened that day you found him, Nina? You told us that you thought you killed him?” Buddy asked her. Johnny swung his head toward Buddy, but Buddy kept his eyes glued to Nina’s.

  “I was shocked, hurt, extremely sic
k to my stomach as I opened the door to see him kissing her. She was fixing her dress, and he had no shirt on. He had lipstick on his chest and neck. She immediately got out her claws, told me that I was too sweet, too innocent to satisfy him in bed so he needed to look elsewhere for what he wanted. The sight of her, this woman I had seen so many times before that he made me think was just an acquaintance, was his side lover. He probably had more. The thought made me feel so sick, to think how he catered to me, expressed his love and commitment, especially because he owned me fully since I gave him my virginity. He used that to manipulate me and control me, like you both said. I was sick, disgusted, so hurt that I threw up all over the woman.”

  “What?” Buddy asked. He was surprised. Johnny chuckled.

  “That must have been a sight.”

  Nina chuckled. “I can laugh at that now, but it was another show of weakness, fragility, like you said, Trent.”

  Trent looked at her with an expression of guilt for describing her in that way. But he was right, and because of that weakness Nina suffered greatly.

  “I’m sure he didn’t mean it so negatively,” Johnny said and glanced at Trent.

  Nina locked gazes with Johnny. “Trent was right. His description accurate. I can see that now, and because of the experience, it’s made me distrust people more and more.”

  “You can trust us though. We’re not like that,” Johnny told her. Buddy knew that his brother was in deep. He never saw him act like this, so into and consumed by a woman so quickly, especially after what Tara did to him. His brother would lose it if this was some sort of trap or game Nina was playing. But his gut was usually pretty accurate. So much so that he relied on it for work.

  “Go on, Nina, tell us the rest,” Trent told her, obviously feeling just as impatient to learn the truth to her earlier statement. Had she almost killed the man? Was she on the run from police? Could this guy be searching for her right now?

  “After I got sick, I ran to the bathroom. I could hear Rico yelling, cursing at the woman to leave and then cursing at me. He was raging about why I showed up.”

  “The dick’s name is Rico?” Johnny asked.

  She looked at him, swallowed hard as if she hadn’t meant to reveal his name to them. She went on.

  “Rico entered the bathroom as I was washing up. He started yelling at me. ‘What the fuck, Nina?’ he yelled and hit me. The backhand came so fast, so hard I fell to the left and hit my cheek on the porcelain bathtub. I was dazed from the hit and couldn’t even comprehend that this was happening. Rico had always been gentle. Commanding and bossy, but gentle. Then suddenly he was pulling me by my hair, dragging me from the bathroom.”

  “Oh God,” Johnny whispered. She stood up, walked across the room, her arms crossed in front of her chest. It was as if she were reliving the events. She stared off, not making eye contact with them, and all Buddy and his brothers could do was listen.

  “I was never so scared, so frightened by a man’s anger before. I somehow pushed him to his limit and he was the one who was caught cheating.”

  “No, Nina, he was wrong. He was turning it around on you because of that control,” Trent told her.

  She went on as if she didn’t believe what Trent said. She still somehow felt at fault and that was because of the number this guy did on her. It pissed Buddy off big-time.

  “I begged him to stop. ‘Rico, please. Stop it, don’t do this. What did I do?’ I asked him, hoping, pleading that he would tell me. I had nothing without him. No one and nowhere to go.

  “He carried on about me showing up at the apartment and not being at work. ‘You’re cheating on me?’ I asked him.

  “He cursed, told me this was his business not mine. That I was to do as he said, that he owned me. I tried to reason with him but it didn’t matter. He was enraged. He said such terrible things to me,” she whispered, tears rolling down her cheeks, her arms still crossed, and her head down in defeat.

  “Like what?” Buddy found himself asking.

  She looked up at him, the sadness and the pain of the memory upsetting her. She had really thought this guy loved her. “He said I was his regular lay. That there were others. I was so shocked. But still, I was attached to him and believed all those things he said, and I asked him what I did wrong to deserve this. I told him that I never cheated on him. He cursed at me and said I would never cheat on him, never kiss another man, never mind fuck another man because he would beat me and kill the guy.”

  “Bastard,” Trent said and ran his fingers through his hair.

  She went on telling the rest of the story. “I was angry and questioned him about Stacy, and how he could cheat but I was to stay faithful. I’ll never forget that evil look in his eyes. The way he ate up my body, like he was determining where he would strike first. He yanked the belt from the waist of his pants and ran it over his palm as he spoke to me, threatened me, and then began to attack me.”

  “He hit you with the belt?” Johnny asked, sounding outraged and angry.

  “Those are the scars on your back, and on your forearms?” Trent asked, his whisper a true show of his disgust. Buddy swallowed hard. Trent knew what it was like to have scars. Being burned in a fire set by an arsonist five years ago had left him with scars along his ribs and abdomen.

  “What did you do?” Buddy asked.

  “I begged for him to stop. I covered my face and my head from the strikes. He warned me, and told me that I was to keep quiet, to do as he said, and to never leave him. He said he could be with whomever he wanted to be with. That he could fuck one, two, three women together if he wanted to because he was the boss, the man. He struck me again, kicked me, and I begged for him to stop. I told him I would obey him. He finally stopped, fell to his knees, and grabbed me by my face. He was wild with anger.” She took a few unsteady breaths, the tears stopped but her voice began to quiver with each new word she spoke.

  “He said, ‘You’re mine. No other man will ever have you. This is your life now. I say when it’s over.’ I realized in that moment how stupid I was. How I was a bad judge of character, how I let my heart, my emotions make the decisions for me.”

  “It’s not like that now, Nina. You know more, you’ve learned from this,” Johnny said.

  “I learned what? That any man is capable of that, of what he did? You don’t understand, Johnny. You’re not getting it. It didn’t end there. I pushed him over the edge. I defied him and he was going to teach me a lesson I would never forget,” she stated, raising her voice. She was shaking with emotion.

  “Continue. Tell us what happened,” Trent pushed. She looked at him, nibbled her bottom lip, and shook her head.

  “Yes, tell us so we understand,” Buddy added this time.

  “It’s too hard. It’s embarrassing, and sick.”

  “We need to know everything, especially after you said you almost killed him,” Trent reminded her.

  She wiped a tear away from her eye before it fell. “He stared at me in disgust, but he was the one who did the damage. The bruised, cut cheek, bloody lip, cuts and marks all over my forearms and back. He broke the skin and it burned. And he had the nerve to tell me to tell him that I loved him.”

  Her lips were quivering. She was petrified as if it just happened to her now.

  “I went to speak and he raised his hand at me, so I quickly said, ‘I love you.’”

  “What did he do?”

  She stared at Trent and Buddy with a blank look in her eyes. “He told me that I needed to show him. Then he proceeded to order me to get undressed and get on the bed.”

  Buddy’s eyes widened in shock.

  Nina spoke faster. “I guess I didn’t move fast enough for him. He pulled me up by my blouse, ripped it as he spoke with teeth clenched against my face. I don’t remember what he said, just that he was so angry he shook me and told me that he was in charge, that I was going to learn the hard way and to do what he said or the punishments were going to get worse.”

  “Punishments? He hurt y
ou before? He struck you before this incident?” Trent asked her.

  “He was always possessive and handsy. I couldn’t walk too far away from him because he would get angry if other men looked at me. But this statement, his threats, meant more. He was going to rape me. He was going to do god knows what to me to get his message across. He tore the blouse from my body and he struck me again and again and kept yelling. ‘Get undressed. Take it all off.’”

  Nina covered her ears and yelled out his words then cried and started rambling on as she clenched her fists and shook with emotion.

  “He hit me so damn hard that I hit the side dresser. I grabbed onto the solid wood. I didn’t want to die but I knew it could be that bad. That he was capable of such a thing and more. I saw a marble dolphin statue as he ripped my skirt, scratched my skin like some wild animal. The anger, the need to fight filled my belly. Then I felt the strikes from his belt again. He was hitting me over and over again against my back, and my ass. I felt it break my skin and I screamed out in pain and anger as he ripped the remainder of my clothing and I knew he was going to rape me. I was losing my hold of the dresser with every whip of the belt. I gripped the marble dolphin and used all my strength to pick up the thing and I swung it around me and I hit Rico just right. He fell to the ground, blood dripped from his skull, and he passed out. I was so scared, and I thought I had killed him. I carefully went closer. I heard him moan and made the decision to run, just grab what I could and run away as far as I could go so he could never find me. I even threw his cell phone in the toilet so he couldn’t call his heavies to find me.”

  She was crying harder now and Johnny pulled her into his arms and held her tight. “It’s okay, baby. You’re safe now. We’ve got you.”

  She pushed away but he kept his hands on her hips. “No. No, Johnny, it’s not over. I’ve been on the run for months. I thought I could settle down, but the truth is I can’t live like this. I can’t even apply for a new driver’s license or open a checking account or do anything that could help them to find me.”

  “What makes you think he’s still looking?” Trent asked, joining them, standing next to Johnny and her.