The Life You Stole

by Ann, Jewel E.

  “Listen, Hannibal, I have a friend coming for a visit.” I grabbed her arms. She made a weak attempt to fight me. “So I need you to stay in your room and not make a sound until he’s gone.” After restraining her hands and feet, I wiped the blood from her mouth so the tape would stick. “I’ll let you out of your cage later.”

  Blake arrived within the hour. I messaged security to let him through the gate.

  “What the hell happened?” he asked the second I opened the door.

  I removed the gauze. “Dog attacked me.”

  “I didn’t know you had a dog.” He followed me to my office where I sat on the leather sofa, leaning back because the adrenaline started to leave my body, and I wasn’t feeling well.

  “This isn’t a dog bite.” He frowned while inspecting my face.

  “No shit. If it were a dog bite, I wouldn’t have called you to my house.”

  “We need a sink or a bowl so I can clean this good to see it and to make sure it doesn’t get infected.”

  “Go find a bowl in the kitchen. I can’t get up. I’m not feeling so well at the moment.”

  “Okay, can you hold the gauze back in place? It’s hemorrhaging more than I wish it were.”

  I pressed the gauze to my face. If I passed out or had to be rushed to the hospital, Lila restrained with tape over her mouth might not look the best. It would be very difficult to spin that.

  Blake returned with a bowl and opened a saline bag.

  “Could this not end well? What are the chances of you rushing me to the hospital? I have some things I need to take care of that are time sensitive.”

  He chuckled. “Hold the bowl right here. Do you want to leave me instructions in case this goes south? Do you have a hooker locked in a closet?” He snickered more.

  No hooker. Just my wife bound and gagged. No big deal.

  “Fuck …” I grimaced as he flushed out my wound.

  “Sorry.” After torturing me for a good thirty seconds, he narrowed his eyes, inspecting my cheek. “For this to heal with minimal scaring, I think you need a skin graft.”

  “Whatever, just do it.”

  “Graham … no. I can’t do a skin graft here in your office. You need to come to the hospital.”

  “Then no. Just make it stop bleeding.”

  “It won’t look right.”

  “You’re the best, Blake. So do your fucking best. I can’t leave.”

  He returned another frown. I closed my eyes and worked out my next moves while he repaired my face.

  “It’s going to be sore. Here’s some pain meds for you. I can’t get you more without you making an official visit to my office. Don’t get it wet for a few days and change the bandage daily using this antibiotic ointment for the next three days. I’ll check it in a week. Call me if you spike a fever, have increased swelling or redness. Got it?”

  I popped a pill into my mouth and swallowed it without water. “Got it. Thanks.”

  He zipped his bag and squinted at me. “Are you okay? You don’t have to tell me who bit you, but if you’re in trouble or danger …”

  “No trouble. No danger. See yourself out.”

  I waited for the door to click shut before sitting up.

  “God …” I lay back down. I didn’t do well with injuries to myself. They always made me nauseous and dizzy. After another ten minutes on the sofa, I sat up slower and remained sitting for another few minutes before climbing to my feet.

  Taking slow deep breaths, I made my way toward the stairs, swaying a bit but willing myself to man the fuck up and stop being so queasy.

  “What are we going to do about this?” I collapsed onto the bed next to Lila. “I’m too fucking weak to deal with you.” I rolled onto my side so we faced each other.

  Her wide eyes darted from my eyes to my face.

  “A friend stitched me up. Apparently you ate part of my face, so there could be a scar. Remember when we were named Most Beautiful Couple of the Year? I fear that honor will not be bestowed upon us again. You look like you’re dying of cancer and I look like a rabid dog attacked me. We are in such a pickle, babe. I just don’t know what to do with you.”

  She wrinkled her nose and thrashed her head side to side.

  “Do you have an idea?” I ripped the tape from her mouth.

  Lila flinched. “Just kill me.”

  “I don’t want to kill you.”

  “Then let me go.”

  “Go where?”

  “Anywhere but here.”

  I rubbed my neck. “Doesn’t work that way. We’re not some low-class suburban couple who no one gives a shit about.”

  “Maybe I die in a car accident.”

  I inspected her face. It showed no emotion, just like her words. “Fake your death?”

  Inching her head side to side, she whispered in that eerily calm voice, “Not fake.”

  “You want to die?”

  Lila blinked a few times before giving me a single nod. She thought her husband was screwing her best friend. She had no family, no other friends. She lied to Ronin about having cancer. Of course she wanted to die.

  Could it be that simple?

  That simplistic idea swirled in my head. Was the answer to simply untie her, go back to my daily routine, and wait for her to end things? Evelyn would be devastated. I would be there to comfort her … I would need comforting too. It was brilliant. Well, tragic, but brilliant.

  “After Christmas. I don’t want to ruin the holidays for Evelyn, Ronin, and the kids. This is their first holiday season without her mom. I don’t want to add to that grief until Christmas is over.”

  How did she do it? How did Lila talk about planning her death with the confidence of planning a dinner party?

  “And how am I supposed to believe you won’t say anything before then?”

  “You don’t. But you also don’t have a better option than to trust me.”

  “You bit my fucking cheek off. And I’m supposed to trust you?”

  “Then kill me. Put that pillow over my head again and finish the job.”

  Her words stirred up my nausea again. I wasn’t a killer. Wanting someone out of your life or possibly dead (if that was the only choice) was different than killing them. It was why I pulled the pillow away from her head before she stopped moving. I just … I couldn’t do it.

  What can I say? I was a nice guy. Nice guys didn’t kill people. Neither did governors or men who wanted to be with Evelyn Taylor. I mean, Evelyn was spontaneous and reckless with her love life. After all, she quickly spread her legs for Ronin, married him without telling me, and got knocked up—twice. But spending eternity with a killer felt like a hard limit for her, even on her most reckless day.

  Christmas. That was six weeks away. Six weeks. I spent years waiting for another chance with Evelyn. I could wait six more weeks.

  “If you don’t go through with it, I’ll have no choice but to have someone do it for me.”

  “What do I have to live for?” she whispered.

  I rolled to sitting, feeling more queasiness.

  “I’m going to Chicago tomorrow afternoon. The meeting was rescheduled.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.” I glanced over my shoulder at her.

  “Everyone thinks I’m going back to engineering. Appearance matters. You’ve said that a million times.” No emotion. Lila had zero emotion in her voice.

  “I’ll be tracking you.” I grabbed her bound arms and untied them. Then I untied her feet.

  “You always do.”

  Before closing her door, I turned back to her as she rubbed her wrists, especially the one that had a cast on it just a week earlier. Did I feel bad? Sure. But life was filled with tough decisions and unfortunate situations.

  Lila’s parents were waiting for her in the afterlife. Maybe it was meant to be more than it was tragic. Maybe one day I would tell Evelyn about Lila’s leukemia and how the accident probably saved her from suffering a far worse death.

  Yes. I would tel
l her that.

  I smiled from my revelation, but when Lila glanced up, she didn’t share my excitement, and I was too lightheaded to explain it. I needed to get to my bed before I passed out.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Lila

  My husband raped me. That wasn’t a first.

  He almost killed me. That wasn’t a first either.

  That brick wall … the end of denial. The point beyond repair and all hope. That was a first.

  Me injuring him? That was new too. And it felt incredible. His blood tasted like sweet revenge. Had he killed me, I would have died a happy woman.

  I fought back but not with my words. I physically proved to him that if he hurt me, I would hurt him too. However, Evelyn’s betrayal to me, to Ronin … to her kids. That gutted me. It hurt worse than any punch or fall I’d ever taken at the hands of my husband. I tried every way possible to make sense of it in another way. Maybe he blackmailed her. Maybe he forced her.

  But it didn’t look like he was forcing her. She hummed as he fucked her mouth. Not grunts … actual humming.

  Maybe it wasn’t her. After all, the camera view only showed her back. And the footage was dark. But he said her name. And he said things to her that he wouldn’t say to some whore who shared her name.

  It was her. I knew it in my gut. Even if I didn’t fully understand her reasoning for doing it, I knew it was her.

  We all had secrets. We all experienced desires.

  I wanted Ronin and he felt it. I wanted him even as my brain and my heart tried to convince my body I shouldn’t want him. But he touched me like Graham had never touched me before. It wasn’t a conscious decision to feel that attraction—that desire. It happened like lighting a match too close to gasoline. I ignited and I thought my inability to control it might burn everything to the ground.

  But together, we controlled it. We did it for Evelyn. Would I be able to do it for her again?

  “Hey.” Ronin greeted me with a sad smile when I opened the door.

  The staff had the rest of the week off, thanks to Graham. And Governor Porter had a full day of meetings and lots of explaining to do about his run-in with a mean dog.

  “Hi. You don’t look well.”

  “Thanks for the compliment.” He sighed.

  I padded my bare feet toward the library, a place Graham rarely visited. We agreed no bedroom, and while my loyalty to Evelyn shattered the previous day, I owed Ronin more than going back on my word.

  “I had a scan yesterday. What they thought was working is no longer working. After the news I had a panic attack. I couldn’t breathe. Did you feel that?”

  “Landed me in the hospital.”

  I grimaced, closing the door to the two-story library while Ronin sat on one of four custom fabric sofas. “I’m so sorry, Ronin.”

  “Don’t be. Your news is much worse than my short visit to the ER. I’m … god, I’m so sorry.”

  His apologies—his sympathy crushed me. “You’re miserable.” I sat next to him, tucking my bare feet beneath me and running my hands over the skirt of my navy wrap dress with white piping. “I can see it on your face and in your eyes.”

  He grunted a laugh, running his hands through his hair instead of touching me, the one thing I knew he needed. “I’m …” He shook his head, fisting his hair. “Somedays I swear I don’t feel this instinct … this will to live. And I don’t understand it because I have a wife who loves me and two beautiful children. It makes no sense unless it’s …” He opened his eyes.

  “Me,” I whispered. “I … I’m sorry. It’s the treatment. The bad news. It’s the stress of going back to work to a job I love but feeling guilty, like I’m abandoning the things I took on as First Lady.”

  “Please …” He sighed. “Stop apologizing. I don’t blame you. And I hate that you feel responsible for any of this. I know you can’t help what’s happening to you or your feelings. I’m such an asshole for even asking for you to see me. To …”

  As he released his hair, letting his arms flop, I rested my hand on his leg. He dragged in a shaky breath. Just that quickly, he felt it. Our connection. And I felt needed. By that point, Ronin was the only person in the whole world who made me feel needed. But his need for me was toxic. Toxic like Graham’s love for Evelyn.

  The four of us lived a tortured existence, just in very different ways.

  “When I die, you’ll be free.”

  “Jesus, Lila … I don’t want you to die, no matter what it might mean for me.”

  “Well, we can’t control what’s happening to my body.”

  “I can’t talk about this. I don’t want to think about your cancer or my depression. I don’t want to talk about Graham or Evie. I just want …”

  “Lie back.” I climbed off the sofa and pulled a book from one of the shelves.

  Ronin spread his legs, and I situated myself between them, reclining back onto his chest.

  “Desolation Angels?”

  “It’s one of my favorites.” He wrapped his arms around my waist, hugging me to him as I started reading Jack Kerouac’s words.

  With the turn of each page, his grip on me tightened, his hands moved softly along my abdomen, his legs closed in around mine, and his mouth hovered over my scarf-covered head.

  I tried to stay focused on the words, not the warmth of his body. But my mind jumbled, drifting from the story to the video of Graham and Evie, and back to the warm body wrapped around me.

  My heart started to beat faster and harder. My skin felt flush. My voice took on a husky tone, breathless and wanton.

  “Focus on the book, please,” Ronin begged. He felt my desire, and I felt him hard at my back.

  I swallowed and then cleared my throat, trying to add some true character to the narration. Anything to distract my body from wanting something more. My legs squeezed together, like holding their breath, but it didn’t work. Knowing Evelyn and Graham had an affair only multiplied my desire for Ronin. Knowing I had very little time left in my life multiplied it even more.

  “Lila … please.” Ronin’s breaths sounded ragged like mine as he adjusted slightly beneath me. It felt like him rocking his hips into my back was more than a simple adjustment.

  My nipples were hard. The hairs on my skin stood at attention. And I felt a trickle of desire between my legs in spite of how tightly I clenched them together.

  I knew it was wrong, but once you stopped caring about life, you stopped caring about all the stupid moral beliefs that dictated it. Once you saw your best friend sucking off your husband, you no longer gave a fuck if her husband touched you. I pulled the tie to my dress.

  “Don’t …” Ronin rocked his hips against me in spite of his weak plea.

  How did it feel to him? It had to be the best drug ever. Feeling his desire and mine. It had to be stronger than any drug. Impossible to resist.

  I eased open my dress so he could see my dark blue lace panties and the matching bra.

  “We have to stop …”

  I ignored him, certain that the truth would one day come out, and he would look back and realize I was giving him what his wife was giving another man. Only … they had no otherworldly excuse.

  I took his hands and placed them back on my stomach, my bare stomach.

  He let me.

  I guided his right hand to my breast, slipping it under my bra until the rough palm of it pressed to my nipple.

  He let me.

  A gravelly groan rumbled his chest, and again he pressed his erection against my back as his hand squeezed my breast so hard I almost lost it from that one touch. Ronin’s breaths pulsed against my ear, and sometimes his lips would brush it, and I felt it everywhere.

  “L-Lila …” He panted like a wounded animal.

  “Tell me … tell me what to do.” My hand squeezed his hand that rested idle on my stomach. “Tell me how to make you feel better.”

  I could have died right then, and Ronin’s touch would have lingered on my skin for a million eternities. />
  He couldn’t speak. His heart wouldn’t allow it. His deep love for Evelyn only intensified my desire for him. It made me want to give him my last breath.

  When he didn’t utter another word, I guided his other hand under my panties, a half inch at a time. The muscles in his arms tensed, and he paused his hand before reaching the place I needed him to touch so badly no death could be worse than waiting for him to decide where we’d take it.

  I inched my legs apart as far as they would go with his legs on each side, and I waited. He squeezed my nipple at the same time his hand moved on its own between my legs. Taking it slow, he made tiny circles over my clit with the pads of his fingers as he pistoled his hips against my back in the same slow rhythm as his fingers.

  My hips lifted from the sofa, silently urging him to move his fingers down and inside of me, filling a void only he could fill. Erasing the intrusive trespassing of the man who, in all honesty, raped me the previous night.

  Feeling completely out of my skin with need, I pushed his hand lower and moaned as the pad of his middle finger pressed to my entrance.

  I wanted him inside of me so badly.

  Before I could silence my need, he had me flipped onto my back, his shirt shrugged off. His jean-clad lower body wedged between my legs, thrusting against me, as his lips attacked my mouth and his hand shoved my bra up so my breasts pressed to his warm chest. Both of his hands gripped the arm of the sofa as he dry-humped me, the denim giving me so much friction I saw stars behind my closed eyes when I orgasmed.

  Ronin’s moves were hard, almost violently so, and he yelled as he found his own release.

  It brought instant tears to my eyes because he yelled her name.

  Completely out of breath and sticky with sweat, Ronin collapsed onto me, tucking his face into my neck as his body started to shake.

  He was crying. Ronin was crying.

  “No. No. No …” His words destroyed me.