Necessary Cruelty: A Dark Enemies-to-Lovers Bully Romance (Lords of Deception Book 1)

by Ashley Gee

Zaya and I will never have a future if we can’t come to terms with the past.

  Which is why I’m going to find her piece of shit mother.

  I’m the first one on the plane, having paid three times the normal rate for a first class ticket so I could jump off as soon as we landed without waiting for the rest of the herd.

  Why is it that people only seem to remember they have luggage in the overhead bin when the aisle clears in front of them?

  The stewardess offers me a beverage before takeoff, but I wave her away, practically vibrating in my seat. A businessman in a tailored suit sits in the seat next to me. He tries to strike up a conversation, but my glare is enough to shut him up.

  If I open my mouth again, it will only be a scream of rage and frustration that comes out.

  I’ve never been to Portland, not that I plan to see any of it. This isn’t a pleasure trip, after all. But it’s only after the plane lands, as I walk out of the airport and end up under overcast skies even grayer than my mood, that it really hits home for me what I’m doing.

  I don’t expect Zaya to thank me for this, definitely not at first and maybe not ever. But it needs to be done. Without knowing what drove her mother to do what she did, Zaya will always wonder if she is walking down the same path toward inevitable destruction. That question — why? — will continue to hang over everything until we get an answer.

  We both need to know why.

  I plug the address I got from the PI into my phone. The five-minute wait for my Uber feels like at least that many hours. I practically sprint out from under the awning to get to the car. The sky opens as I step out onto the curb, drenching me in the time it takes to climb into the backseat.

  The driver raises an eyebrow in the rearview mirror as I wring out the bottom of my shirt with a curse.

  “Bad night?”

  “Year, maybe. Just drive.” I pretend to find something very interesting on the lock screen of my phone so he won’t speak to me again. “I’ll tip you the cost of the ride if you can beat the estimated arrival time by at least ten minutes.”

  The driver peels out without another word.

  I expected the neighborhood to be a shithole, but we drive onto a street that makes the crappier parts of the Gulch look palatial. Rows of boarded up houses, empty storefronts, and broke down vehicles line either side of the broken pavement. The driver slows down to maneuver around potholes deep enough to double as in-ground pools.

  “You want me to wait?” the driver asks as I climb out of the car, sounding like he wants to do precisely the opposite.

  I wave him away impatiently. Concerns for my own safety aren’t exactly at the forefront of my mind at the moment. Zaya might even be better off if I get shot by some random lowlife and left bleeding to death in the street. Our marriage is legal, and at this point she stands to inherit everything if I kick the bucket.

  My destination is the only house on the block that still appears occupied. There is a rusted out tricycle on the front lawn next to a deflated kiddie pool. I have to bang on the door after it becomes obvious the bell is nonfunctional.

  I hear noises on the other side, the scrabble of bare feet across hardwood and the shriek of a baby that is quickly hushed.

  My heart sinks. If Zaya’s mother ran off to start a new family, it might be better not to have found her at all. The last thing I want to do is cause her even more pain on top of everything else.

  Before I can decide whether to stay or to walk away and pretend that this impromptu trip never happened, the door swings open.

  A woman stands in the doorway with a baby on her hip. Another child, slightly older, peers at me from between her legs.

  Something is immediately off. It’s been almost a decade since I last saw her, but I still remember Zaya’s mother. This woman is about half a foot shorter. The blonde hair would be an easy thing to change, but not the color of her skin.

  Zaya’s mother is white. This woman definitely is not. I’d say Phillippino if I had to take a wild guess.

  “You’re not Julia Milbourne.”

  Thirty-Nine

  Vin must have the charm of a demon, because every nurse on the staff seems to be complicit with his attempts to visit me.

  The one who brings me my afternoon meds sounds gently chiding. “That poor boy hasn’t left the waiting room all day. Don’t you think you should at least let him visit, so you can tell him in person to piss off?”

  I close my mouth on a recommendation that she do something similar. It isn’t her fault that Vin is really good at pretending not to be an asshole, at least for small periods of time. He is probably having a grand old time playing the worried husband, clutching his hands in the waiting room and refusing to leave until he gets the chance to profess his undying love.

  More likely, he just wants confirmation that I’m going to stay pregnant long enough for him to get his inheritance, because he doesn’t know that there isn’t any baby.

  And there never will be, at least not for us.

  Fighting back sudden tears, I urge myself to focus on the anger and not the sadness. It actually would be nice to tell Vin Cortland precisely what I think of him before I make it clear that I don’t ever want to lay eyes on him again.

  “Fine, send him in.”

  The nurse pats me gently on the shoulder before whirling out of the room to deliver the good news.

  But it isn’t Vin that peers around the doorway of my hospital room.

  Iain watches me carefully, as if he isn’t quite sure I won’t try to jump out the nearby window.

  Or throw something at him.

  The first option isn’t possible, but I’m strongly considering the second.

  “What the hell do you want?”

  His expression remains placid. “Can I come in?”

  I have a feeling that Iain could skin a cat alive and have that same blank look never leave his face for a minute. “It’s a free country.”

  “Debatable. None of us is really free, even if we try to convince ourselves we are.” He pushes off the wall and comes to the edge of the bed, staying just out of reach. “But I think you already know that.”

  “Did he send you?”

  We both know who I’m talking about.

  “Nope. He’d probably try to hurt me if he found out.” Iain tips over an empty blister package on the table with one finger. “They giving you anything good?”

  “Magnesium to keep my heart from stopping again and diuretics so my kidney’s don’t have to work so hard,” I bite out. “That sound good?”

  “Not really. It does sound like running into the ocean after dark is a pretty stupid idea. Do they think you still might die?”

  “I’m getting discharged this afternoon, so probably not.” I roll my eyes as I shift uncomfortably in the bed. They did give me something for the pain in my chest where I got shocked by the defibrillators a few hours ago, and it makes my whole body itch. “Thanks for stopping by, Iain. Send my regards to whatever vampires gave birth to you.”

  But he doesn’t move so much as an inch.

  “I heard about the pregnancy.” At the look on my face, he quickly adds. “Vin tells me everything. The Deception gossip network hasn’t gotten ahold of that juicy bit of news yet.”

  My hands clench into fists, imagining that I’m squeezing them around Vin’s neck. “You’re not going to congratulate me?”

  He shakes his head. “It was my idea, you know.”

  “What was?” I ask with an annoyed sigh.

  “The whole poking holes in condoms thing.” He actually has the grace to look ever so slightly abashed. “I figured by the time the truth came out, you guys would have been together long enough that it wouldn’t matter.”

  “You’re a dick.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  I glare at him, wishing the nurses had left something heavy in reach for me to bash across his skull. “I’m not pregnant. False positive, apparently.”

  “Too bad.”
<
br />   “Excuse me?”

  “You and Vin are good for each other when one or both of you has your head out of your ass long enough to realize it.”

  I just stare at him, too shocked for anger. “Vin has been torturing me for years.”

  “To be fair, you did try to kill him when you guys were kids.”

  Clearly, Vin doesn’t tell him everything. If what my mother did isn’t common knowledge yet, I’m not about to change that. “That isn’t an excuse for everything he’s done since.”

  “Vin Cortland has been obsessed with you for years. You should have seen his face when he realized that the pretty girl from the Gulch that all the guys were talking about freshman year was Zaya Milbourne. He almost knocked my teeth out once when I mentioned you have a nice ass.” Iain’s voice is matter-of-fact, like I can take the compliment or shove it up my ass and it wouldn’t matter to him either way. “Why do you think any guy who gets within five feet of you is putting his life on the line? Vin made you off-limits for anyone but him.”

  “So what? You’re saying Vin Cortland has secretly been in love with me since freshman year?”

  “He’s been in love with you since elementary school. You don’t get this obsessed over a girl that you don’t care about. Vin isn’t the type to work out his keen sense of betrayal in a healthy way. He was raised by an absentee father and a narcissistic social climber. For him, love has always been the same as suffering. Feelings aren’t his forte.”

  I let out a humorless laugh. “But they’re yours?”

  He shrugs. “Just because I don’t have the capacity to feel something doesn’t mean I don’t know the name for it, or how to recognize it when I see it. Vin has it bad, he always has, which explains the vast majority of his behavior over the years.”

  I get that hollow feeling in my chest again, like a hole waiting to be filled with something besides pain. “That isn’t an excuse for anything he did.”

  “I’m not excusing him. Walk away from him and never look back if that’s what you want to do. But do it with some honesty.” Iain starts backing out of the room. This is more words than I’ve ever heard him string together before, which explains the exhaustion written across his face. “Both of you walk around like open wounds, bleeding your shit all over the place. Either let the injuries you inflicted heal, or get the fuck away from each other.”

  I take a cab to Cortland Manor, arguing with myself the entire way there.

  It’s crazy that I would even consider giving Vin a chance to explain himself. After so many lies and secrets, I shouldn’t ever want to see him again.

  But here I am.

  Letting Iain into my room was a bad idea. Now that the smallest seed of doubt has been planted, I can’t get the idea out of my head. I’ve spent the last few hours replaying every interaction Vin and I have ever had for some hint that I had gotten them wrong. And all I see is anger and hatred.

  Then I think about the last few weeks, when I saw a side of Vin I never knew existed.

  I tell myself I just want to hear him say it. I need to hear directly from him that Iain is full of shit and that he has never loved me.

  Otherwise, the possibility will haunt me for the rest of my life.

  Because I have always loved him, even when I hated him.

  It’s completely dark when the cab finally winds its way up the long private road leading to Cortland Manor. There are no lights to use to navigate, and my heart is in my throat as I rush down the stone pathway.

  The pool house is deserted when I get there, no sign that Vin has been there since we left before our vow renewal, which was almost three days ago now.

  I don’t have any choice but go into the main house.

  Cortland Manor is as silent as the grave and only slightly warmer. When I call Vin’s name, my voice echoes off the walls before fading away into more silence. I take the stairs two at a time and yell for him again when I get to the second floor.

  Giselle appears in an open doorway at the end of the hall.

  “I’m so sorry no one came to the door to greet you. Most of the staff is off for the week after working your reception.” She approaches me slowly, bright red nails caressing the wooden banister. “If you’re looking for Vin, I haven’t seen him since last night. I hope there isn’t any trouble in paradise.”

  Trouble in paradise might be the understatement of the year. “You don’t have any idea where he is?

  “Last I heard, he was going to visit you in the hospital.” Her gaze travels up my body, taking in the hospital scrubs I had to put on since the emergency room staff cut my wedding dress off of me. “I assume that you’re fully recovered.”

  “Getting there, thanks. I’m going to call around and see if anyone has seen Vin. Maybe I should ask Duke.”

  She shakes her head. “He’s away on business.”

  I’m about to turn away when something occurs to me. “Do you remember my mother?”

  Her lip quirks. “Vaguely. I wouldn’t say we ran in the same circles.”

  “She worked for you, right?”

  “She did,” Giselle replies slowly. “But that was years ago. She never came back to work after Vin’s accident. Of course, we would have had to let her go even if she had. Accidental ingestion or not, you expect more from the people caring for your children.”

  “Yeah, of course.” I don’t know what drives me to ask her about this. But the more I think about it, the stranger it seems that none of them ever suspected my mother of being involved with his poisoning. She had been Vin’s nanny at the time, after all. “Did they ever figure out how Vin got the oleander in his system?

  Instead of answering, she moves to a small end table near the top of the stairs and opens the drawer. “It’s really too bad that Julia decided to leave town. Considering she was the one there at the time, these seem like better questions to ask her. It’s a shame that she hasn’t ever come back to Deception.”

  “Julia never came back because you killed her.” Vin says from below us. His voice startles me so much that I stumble on the last step when I turn to see him standing below us in the entryway. He bounds up the stairs and comes to a stop right behind me. “Isn’t that right, mother dearest?”

  When I turn back to Giselle, she pulls a gun out of the drawer and points it at my chest.

  Forty

  My heart is in my throat when Giselle pulls the gun.

  “Point it at me,” I insist, looming closer to make myself as large of a target as possible. “I’m the one you’ve always wanted dead, right?”

  I let out a harsh breath of relief as the gun swings toward me.

  “No…” Zaya cries out, but I silence her with a harsh movement of my hand.

  This is between me and my stepmother, Zaya is just collateral damage.

  “I tracked your mother down,” I say conversationally, not taking my gaze off of Giselle’s face. Even though I’m ostensibly speaking to Zaya, my words aren’t really meant for her. “Or at least, I tracked down the woman who has been using your mother’s identity. She’s an illegal immigrant who bought Julia Milbourne’s social security number ten years ago and has been using it ever since. The white woman in expensive clothes who sold it to her insisted it was high quality, because the person that the identity belonged to was dead. It’s amazing what people will tell you when they think you’re an immigration agent.”

  Zaya’s body is frozen behind me. “I don’t understand.”

  “My father didn’t tell me about the restrictions on my inheritance until recently, which almost certainly means that Giselle didn’t know about it, either.” I stare down the woman that had taken the place of my mother when I was still an infant. She was supposed to care for me as if I was her own. And instead, she’d paid someone to poison me. “Emma wasn’t born yet, and Giselle didn’t have any way to ensure her hold on the Cortland fortune with me standing between her and the jackpot. She thought with me out of the way that all money would eventually go to her. I can only assume
that my father would have been next if her plan had worked.”

  “What does this have to do with my mother?”

  “Giselle couldn’t poison me on her own, that would have looked suspicious. So she paid your mother do it, taking advantage of the destitute and desperate. I’m guessing Julia regretted what she had done when I collapsed and it looked like I might actually die. She probably threatened to go to the cops, so Giselle killed her and made it look like she just skipped town.”

  My stepmother’s face has contorted into something monstrous. “Julia screwed up when she didn’t give you enough oil of oleander to kill you. She only made things worse when she threatened to tell your father everything. I didn’t have a choice.”

  “What’s your plan here, Giselle?” I position myself so as much of my body as possible is between Zaya and the gun pointed at us. “The police won’t believe that you killed us both on accident.”

  “This one was just released from the psychiatric unit after she tried to drown herself in the ocean.” Giselle gestures with the barrel of the gun at Zaya, who clenches her fists in the back of my shirt. “I’m thinking she showed up here raving like a crazy person, then shot you right before she killed herself. I found that pregnancy test you left in the bathroom at the Shore Club. Now that she’s pregnant, your inheritance stays with the Cortlands. Even if you die.”

  My heart pounds painfully in my chest as she raises the gun and points it directly at my heart. There is a vanishingly small chance that I can rush her, but that would just leave Zaya defenseless, and Giselle won’t miss at this distance. As her finger squeezes down on the trigger, I have a moment of perfect clarity. I am going to die standing in between the woman I love and a monster.

  There are worse ways to go.

  Then a blur of pink and white rushes past me.

  Giselle goes flying, the combination of surprise and the force of Emma crashing into her enough to knock the gun from her hand and make her stumble back toward the stairs. Her arms pinwheel wildly as she tries and fails to gain purchase. The sky-high heel of her designer shoes, the ones that it makes no sense to wear inside the house, catches on the top step, and she finally loses her fight with gravity.