Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for you are with me; your rod and staff comfort me. I try my luck at the kitchen door, relief flooding through me when it clicks open. Standing in the dark kitchen, the house is eerily quiet. I have a bad feeling about this.
Maury and I have always been connected, and I understand our connection better now. When I was growing up, I could sense it when she was feeling down. My own emotions would be out of sync when hers were. As I make my way up the stairs, one step at a time, I think about all the things we missed out on together. Unfortunately, Maury doesn’t have a maternal bone in her body despite the fact that she gave birth to me. She could have chosen to live her life so differently, resulting in my life being different too. Instead, we created a web of lies and deception.
I’d stumbled upon Maury and Trev by accident. They’d been in the bathroom together at Maureen and Fynn’s house. They’d forgotten to lock the door, so I’d walked in on them going at it full throttle. Ass on the edge of the countertop, she’d looked more bored and annoyed than remorseful over being caught. Trev had pulled out of her and had me pinned against the wall in seconds, asking Maury if he should end me. She simply kneaded his shoulders and told him to get lost.
“This is our little secret, Randy.” She’d said sweetly after kissing my cheek, straightening up and leaving the room as if nothing had just happened. In retrospect, I should have told Fynn then and there, but I felt like I owed her my loyalty. Maybe I still do.
My heartbeat pounds in my ears so loud that I wonder if it can be heard throughout the house. Drums beating in time with my heart. I have to think fast. The cops will be here anytime now. I was able to get inside, and if Fynn and his family are in trouble, I have to do all I can to help. I make my way down the hallway that leads to the entrance hall and stairwell, knowing they must all be in the bedrooms upstairs.
A sound upstairs has me stilling halfway up the staircase.
I followed Mo and Trev around after that, witnessed the brutality of their actions, and I never told anyone about the affair. The scary thing was that it thrilled me. The fact that she had so much power. She caught me watching once and said I could join in if I wanted. The thought made me sick, so I stopped monitoring their little escapades. However, every time Maury released a new book, I’d download it and read about all the sick things she and Trev had been up to. I realize now that it had been a sick obsession. I’d felt the need to protect a monster because I felt bad for what she’d been through.
A shot sounds, and I bolt up the remaining few stairs.
24
Fynn
Now
Mike rushes into the room. “Fynn! Thank God!”
“Mike, is Mo?”
“No, just knocked her out, she’s in the hall. The cops should be here anytime now. Miranda came to us for help.” She went to get help. Did she know how unhinged Maureen was?
“My Mom,” I nod toward the closet. “Untie her first. She’s hurt. She’s bleeding out.” I notice the blood seeping down her forehead. My insides feel like they’re in a twist. I need to get free, help my dad.
Mike does as he’s told, managing to get my mother onto the bed. “She’s breathing. Her pulse is a bit slow, but I think she’s going to be okay.” She assures me.
He pulls out his cell phone and calls for an ambulance. “One female, fifties, looks like she’s sustained a head injury…” he says as he paces the room. He’s switched on the light.
“Okay, time to get you free, man.” He walks toward me.
“Mike, watch out!” I yell, but it’s too late. Mo is back, and I watch helplessly as she slams her gun against the side of Mike’s head. He goes down like a ton of bricks, grunting in agony.
“Oh, no, Maureen -” How could she? Her hands tremble when she faces the gun toward my friend and pulls the trigger. She turns it toward my mother next. “Please, don’t…” My voice is desperate. I can’t lose my mother too. “Haven’t you taken enough from me?”
She turns to points the gun at me, but the sound of sirens has her freezing. She looks afraid for a split second.
“I will not be taken, Fynn.” She tells me in an eerily calm voice. “I’ve done nothing wrong. You all just got in the way of my plan.”
“It’s over, Mo” I try to reason.
She walks over to the window. “I did it for her you know? For them, for all the girls who didn’t have a voice against the dark desires of their monsters.”
“Then make it right, Mo, make it right!” Panic and desperation fill me. I feel the sweat pouring down my face and my arms ache from being tied for so long, but it is nothing compared to the pain I feel for the woman in front of me. I’ve loved her, we had a life together. She needs help. I know this.
The door swings open and Miranda stands there, hair wild, barefoot. She scans the room and shouts something to Mo, but it’s too late. Maureen pulls the trigger . Glass shatters, and Mo disappears.
Everything seems to be moving in slow motion as I watch Miranda come into the room and fall to the floor in a heap, cops came barrelling in moments after. Miranda’s sobs are manic. Someone, I don’t register who, sets me free, and I gather a shaking Miranda in my arms.
“Ssh, baby girl. I’m here.”
25
Miranda
Now
I hear whimpering behind the door, and I swing it open. The room is dim, but I am still able to assess the situation in seconds. Mike is on the floor holding his side, he’s bleeding. Oh, my God. Fynn is tied to the bed, and Maury is standing at the window, a gun to her head.
My eyes widen painfully. “Maury, please, no.”
Sirens are blaring in the background, and I realize in the second our eyes connect that this is the end. “I love you,” she mouths before she pulls the trigger. I stumble to my knees as she falls through the window behind her. What is surely an ear shattering howl leaves my lips, but I can’t hear anything, the sound of the gunshot temporarily deafening me. Fynn wraps me in his arms, and I sob against his naked chest. “Oh God, Fynn, oh God.” I cry for what seems like hours. Time is a foreign concept right now, but at some point, the police settle us downstairs, blankets around us. They ask questions I can’t answer. Fynn is stronger, as usual, so he takes the lead. Lynn and Mike are rushed out on stretchers, and I hope to God they’re both okay.
I feel numb inside, and breathing is difficult. Trev’s bedroom is a crime scene, the entire house is. We stay at my apartment that night, but I wake up with night terrors, sweat dripping off my body. Fynn rocks me to sleep and whispers promises I don’t want him to keep. I don’t deserve his kindness or his love. I miss my Mo.
The hours turn into days and we eventually have a funeral for Maureen. I’m too distraught to do anything, so I’m grateful that the church committee steps in. Mike presides over the funeral. Fynn speaks of the wife he knew, not the one we are burying. I didn’t bother saying anything. It is a closed casket, she blew her brains out. There was nothing left to say goodbye to.
I cut my wrists that day, in Fynn’s bathroom hoping to ease some of the pain. Watching the blood drip, I momentarily sink into oblivion. My head hurts, my heart hurts and my soul has been ripped from me. Mo took everything from me. I feel arms wrap around me, warm hands, and I let them, maybe I’ll find peace now.
Epilogue
Six months later
Miranda
I watch Fynn as he lays a freshly cut bouquet of roses on the grave. It’s been six months, yet we are both still adjusting to life without her. My hands tremble a little, nervous anxiety according to my therapist. I can still see her eyes the moment she pulled the trigger, the stain of her blood on the window frame and her mangled body in the hedges. Maureen was ill, she really was. But so am I. There’s a darkness that lives inside me too. It regularly threatens to surface, but Fynn helps me keep it at bay. I gave a statement to the police about the murders, and they busted the motel owner for his part in them. The families
of the victims would at least get closure as devastating as the truth of why they were killed might be.
We haven’t given us a name yet, we just know that we need to be together, to lean on each other. Grief certainly can bring people together. Lynn and Greg are coping as best they can. We see them often, so they know they’re not alone. Mike has taken over Fynn's old church. Neither of us feel the urge to return to the way things were, us devoting our time and energy to the church. I still work at the Community Centre and Fynn has a job teaching at the local school.
“You okay?” He comes up behind me and wraps an arm around my waist, placing his other hand on my swollen belly. He kisses my neck, and the desire to get lost with him for a few hours is there. It’s always there. Our connection has deepened. He knows everything, and we’re working through the trust that was almost shattered between us. “I love you both so much.”
“I love you too, Fynn. With all my heart.”
I look down at the tombstone. Maureen Chase. Mother. Sister. Wife. She made the world believe she lived her life that way. But I know better. She was a murderer, adulteress and an Author who made a living writing about her sordid life. I wonder, if she can see us now, what goes through her mind when she does? I miss her so much. I never thought I would. I tried to deny how much I loved her, but losing her cut deep. There are things that I will never get to tell her. I owe my life to her. She endured hell, and she tried to protect me from that in her own strange way. I chose not to speak because I thought I’d purge myself of my sins by offering my silence. How wrong I was.
“Let’s go home.” He kisses my cheek, and I smile up at him.
“That sounds perfect.” I lean on my tip toes and place a kiss on his soft lips. Because my darkness reminds you of the desires that lurk within you.
The last line on her tombstone catches my eye. It was my choice to have that engraved. It is a reminder that we all have a dark side, some of us just choose not to use it.
The End
About
Jo-Anne Joseph is a USA Today Bestselling Author who writes contemporary romance, romantic suspense, and dark psychological thrillers. She loves books, wine, unicorns, and the ocean on an overcast day. She is a sucker for romance, having married her teenage sweetheart, who also happens to be her best friend.
She is a mother, an artist, and dreamer with a deep love for life. Her lifelong love affair with words started from a young age and blossomed to the release of her debut novel, Infinity. Her writing is and will always be her ultimate adventure and escape.
Jo-Anne lives in Johannesburg, South Africa with her husband, their son, Braydon, and five fur babies.
"There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you."
Maya Angelou
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CRIMSON DAHLIA
A Novella by Patricia D. Eddy
CRIMSON DAHLIA
by Patricia D. Eddy
Aiden Cole wishes he could go back in time.
Back three years. Before he was shot multiple times trying to save Mickey Ryan. The mafia boss he was sent to kill.
Back to the night he made the man’s daughter, Dahlia Rose Ryan, his.
But a washed up FBI agent doesn’t have a lot of choices.
When the head of the Ricci crime family tells him Dahlia’s back in town and her father’s alive, Aiden has to do the unthinkable. Take her. Bind her. Hurt her. And make her his. This time for good.
It’s the only way to save her life.
1
Dahlia
The bass beat thrums through me as I adjust my mask and weave around a pair of devils sipping on sparkling juice that glows bright purple. The submissive wears a full face hood with no eye holes, a little cut out for her nose, and a zipper over her lips—only open enough for her straw. Her entire body is encased in the tight, red leather except for her pussy and ass, which are open for her Dom to play with.
His costume? Black leather pants, so tight I could get an accurate measurement for his cock if I moved a little closer, and a set of red horns with a narrow eye mask attached.
Friday nights at Whips and Chains, San Francisco’s premiere BDSM club, have a reputation for the extreme. I shouldn’t be here, but I graduate from college tomorrow, and less than twenty-four hours later, my father will force me to leave my favorite city forever.
He doesn’t know I’m here—he’d probably lock me up for the rest of my life if he did—and my bodyguard thinks I’m in my room, packing and cursing my father for his choice of career and what he’s doing to me.
Instead, I teeter on three-inch heels as I make my way to the bar. My black corset pushes my breasts up so high, they’re practically at my chin, and the lace skirt leaves nothing to the imagination.
The bartender, dressed head-to-toe in black leather, wears a black D on his sleeve as well as a black cuff on his right wrist. Both signify that he’s a Dominant. My own cuff, the one I fiddle with as I shift from foot to foot, is pure white, indicating that I’m an unattached submissive.
Submissive. I never really considered myself submissive. Most people who know me would probably laugh until they started crying if I told them. But every single thing in my life is controlled. Either by me or my father. My emotions. My choice of college. The decision to leave on my own terms. After one night of pure pleasure.
I stand next to a stool, chewing on my lip. This is my third time at Whips and Chains, and I know I’m expected to wait until the bartender speaks to me before I order.
“Orange fizz or grape bubbly, little sub?” He arches a brow at me, and I lower my gaze to my hands folded on the bar top.
“Whatever pleases you, Sir.”
“You may answer honestly and freely, sub.” His voice softens, and I flick a glance to his lips.
“Orange fizz, sir. Thank you.” I offer him my hand, and he runs the scanner over my cuff. The club doesn’t handle money at all. When you enter, you hand over a credit card, and they link it to the RFID chip in the cuff you request.
His grip is warm and strong as he caresses my fingers, and I shudder. I’ve never been brave enough to do anything. To play. To scene. But I know the lingo and what to expect—mostly. Between all the romance novels I’ve read over the years and the very detailed policies and procedures the attendant makes you read through and sign before you’re admitted, I’ve had many fantasies over the past year.
The back of the bar is one large mirror, and as the bartender releases my hand, I lock gazes with a man watching me. He too wears a mask, but I can still see his full lips. His blue eyes. And damn. His shirt is open halfway, revealing a chiseled chest and tanned skin. He’s rolled up his sleeves almost to his elbows, and his forearms…I never really believed in the phrase “weak in the knees,” but here we are.
“One orange fizz, miss.”
I startle as the bartender slides the orange drink towards me, and the glass wobbles, spilling a few drops of the juice. “Shit. I’m sorry, sir.” I take a step back, and my heel lands on a boot behind me. I’m going down, and it’s not going to be pretty.
As if in slow motion, I raise my head to meet the bartender’s shocked gaze, and then, strong arms catch me, and a deep voice rumbles in my ear. “Gotcha, mon jouet.”
Mon jouet. My plaything.
As I’m set back on my feet, the bartender leans over. “Are you all right, sub? Speak freely.”
“Y-yes. I was just…distracted, sir.”
“I’m afraid it’s my fault, Master J,” the voice behind me replies.
I turn, still in the man’s arms, and zero in on the D affixed to his right shoulder. It’s gold and ornately embroidered with what look like ropes winding around the outline of the letter.
My heart hammers against my chest as I take in the close-up view of rest of him—all the way to his nose—I don’t dare look higher. Dark stubble dusts his strong jaw, and I wonder what it wou
ld feel like against my thighs.
“I’m Master A,” he says. “I’m working the knot room tonight, mon jouet. Are you looking to play?”
“Y-yes. I...yes, Master A.” This is what I’ve been aching for. Something naughty. Something my father would never understand. Something just for me. A private night I can hold onto when I’m forced to leave and start my life all over again.
Master A leans closer, and I inhale deeply. He smells like spices—bergamot and sandalwood, I think—and I try not to tense, but he’s just taking my drink off the bar. “Come with me.”
It’s not a question, and when he curves the fingers of his free hand around my arm just above my elbow, I let him lead me away, down the hall, and into a private room with rich, red walls.
“Sit. Enjoy your drink, sub. It’ll take me a few minutes to prepare what I’ll need.”
There’s a vinyl couch along the far side of the room, and I carefully smooth my lace skirt under me, though it does nothing to protect against the wetness between my thighs.
Leave Me Breathless: The Black Rose Collection Page 70