CADEnce (Deception Book 2) (17 page)

“Tell me what he did, Star, or I will kill him.”

“Nothing, you insane fuck!”

I held my hands up in surrender, trying to cover Alex’s broken body with my own. I would rather take the brunt of Dante’s anger than let him hurt another person over me again. “Dante, I asked Alex to do an ultrasound because I had a small spotting of blood. But I was never pregnant.” I shook my head. His brow furrowed. “I thought you knew and were playing more games. Delia has been injecting hormones into me. Why would she do that if it wasn’t a game?”

He shook his head. “Get up.”

“Dante, Alex needs a doctor.”

He barked out a laugh. “I’ll get on that. Get the fuck up, Star!”

I rose to my feet and followed him back to the house. How the hell did he get Alex here? We collided with a sheepish Delia.

“Why?” Dante asked her with a growl.

“Because that was your end game. I wanted to speed it up.”

He grabbed her by the throat. Her hands clawed at his grip. “Do you not think I would notice when no fucking baby was in there?”

“I thought . . .” She struggled to speak. Tears made her mascara run down her face like rivers of ink. “I thought you would think she aborted it.”

He shoved her backwards, making her tumble to the floor, and waltzed past her.

“You thought he would get rid of me and come running to you?” I asked, astonished.

“I love him!” She screamed. “I could make him happy.”

“There is no happy for Dante, Delia. He is so far gone there is no coming back for him. There is no love, no happy.”

“Fuck you, you have everything!” Was she for real? I was about to retort when a loud snap shot out, ringing burst into my ears and something wet splashed over me. A scream tore from me. Delia’s head had a hole in it and the missing piece decorated the floor and me. Dante stood there still in just his towel, and holding a gun.

My knees hit the floor. I couldn’t breathe. I was gasping for air but nothing was coming. Did he really just do that? I hated her, but fuck, I never wanted her brain all over me. My body was going into shock. I couldn’t stop the tremble rattling my spine. I was covered in her blood. I swiped maniacally at my face trying to rid the blood from me. “Get it off, get it off, get it off, get it off!” I screamed.

“WHAT THE FUCK!” came a voice I recognized. No. No. No. I wasn’t seeing him. What was happening?

I WAS LOSING SENSE OF time. Everything tasted the same. Liquor had no burn. Comfort had no effect. I was cold, numb. She held me up, touching cloud nine, and now she had me kissing the ground.

I crashed to it full force with no willpower to get up. Blue was in a coma and Jenson was as crushed as I was. I couldn’t even answer the phone when our folks called. They kept leaving urgent messages, wanting to know what the hell was happening, but I had no answer for them.

I kept going over everything, trying to find a clue or a reason why she would write me that letter claiming I’m the love of her life yet leave me for him. Nothing made sense, but that didn’t matter anymore. I needed to end him no matter what. No one I loved or had connections with was safe with Dante out there like a fucking demon beast free of its leash. I knew he was a sick fuck and way gone down the crazy train route but to let a woman be so tortured that she needed surgery to repair the tears in her anus and vagina? She may never bear children now. What kind of force did you have to use to break a woman’s pelvis? Bile rose in my throat every time I pictured her lying in the hospital bed. Dislocated shoulders and a fractured jaw. Swelling on the brain. They were keeping her sedated until it was safe enough for her to wake up. Jenson cried like a little kid when the doctor listed her injuries. Police came to ask questions but no one spoke. There was no evidence to prove Dante’s involvement so we would dish out our own form of justice. I needed Kenny’s help. If Dante had a separate surveillance in place then it must have power and Wi-Fi to have the footage being sent somewhere.

ROLLING HIS EYES, HE WAVED me in. “Took you long enough,” he grumbled. What the hell did that mean? “You won’t want to see some of this shit, Cade.”

I threw my jacket on the arm of his couch and pushed multiple electronic devices out of the way so I could sit down. His apartment reminded me of an old back alley collectors shop; shit everywhere. Everything looked like junk, but in fact the equipment was awesome and worth a fortune.

“I did what she asked but once I was in I decided to delve further . . . and then what happened with Blue. I want to help take this fucker down.” I was stuck on the ‘I did what she asked’ part of his statement.

“You need to walk me through this. Who’s
she?
”

He looked over the rim of his glasses at me. “Faye! She came to me.”

My pulse thundered in my veins as it always did with the mention of her name. “Start from the beginning, Kenny.”

“Faye came to me, walked right in on Brett and Tom going at it. She blushed like a nun at a strip joint.” Like I needed to hear about his sexploits or visualize Faye walking in on him jacking off to his two boyfriends ass ramming each other.

“And?”

“She wanted me to find out where the footage went from his camera system.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, she was jittering and pacing.”

“Did you find out where the footage was going?”

He looked at me with a
duh
expression. “I traced them to a building built at the back of his house. This is where the power grid for all the monitors is and where they are recorded. The live feed receivers are blocked and it’s taking some time breaking through firewalls and shit but I do know that everything recorded is uploaded every couple of weeks to a secure channel and stored there.”

“So can you tap into the feeds?”

“Not the live feed yet but the saved footage I have.”

My pulse pounded in my neck. I needed to see. “So you’ve seen the footage from when he took Faye?”

“I have seen some, but trust me, you don’t want to see this.”

“I need to.”

“She begged me not to tell you I had accessed it.” Why? Damn my thoughts were going to eat away at me imagining all sorts anyway. I needed to see what happened to her.

I stared at him, imploring him to understand. He walked over to his safe and unlocked it. He pulled out a packet and threw it into my lap. “My loyalty is to you, Cade, so I downloaded everything from the date of her disappearance. I warn you, it’s hard to watch even for me and I’m just her friend. She also told me to tell you to look and remember the memories and smile.” His hands went up when I look at him confused. “She was really specific, man, that I tell you that exactly.”

“Okay, listen if I wanted to go back there, is there a way to kill the cameras?”

“It’s all backed up and can only be overridden from the source. I can’t delete the saved data either. It has to be done manually there. That’s what she wants to do, Cade. Delete the files and shut down the cameras but I don’t know her end game.”

“You think she doesn’t want to be there? To be with him?”

“Fuck, no! She just needs to neutralize the damage.”

“She’s pregnant with his kid, Kenny.” I swiped my palms down my face trying to contain the despair inside me.

“Do you love her?”

“You know I do, more than anything.”

“Then you bring her home and you deal with all the fallout because love is like suffocating when you’re not with the person who owns it.”

Damn, he was right.

“Cade, there’s something else.” I wasn’t sure I could take much more. “I was just about to call you before you showed up. I found some interesting stuff on his server.” I quirked an eyebrow. “His payroll list. All the dirty cops, all the perverted fucks he deals with. You know what that means? No cop is only dirty for one person. They care about the pay load, and we know exactly what that is and how much we need to top it, and then use the evidence I have on those fuckers to get them to turn a blind eye and let you be after it’s all done.”

After it’s all done. He knew what I was going to have to do and would help me cover my tracks. These guys were my family, not Dante.

I CLOSED MY EYES, MY finger hovering over the play button. Kenny had warned me, and as sadistic as it sounded, I needed to see for myself. I needed to see and understand what she went through. And if it emerged that she had given herself to him freely then it was time to let her go.

An image flicked up. From the angle, it appeared that the camera was situated in the corner of a ceiling. My hand slapped over my mouth as the contents of my stomach rushed up, meeting the waste bin when I snatched it up quickly.

“Fuck!”

My eyes burned, my whole body shaking when I saw Faye, naked and dangling from a hook in the center of the grimy room. Her legs twitched as she tried to support the weight of her body, her muscles contracting tightly with her attempt to reduce the load on her arms.

Every single hair on my body snapped to attention when the lights flashed and Theo walked in with the tall guy from Dante’s place. I was already struggling to hold onto my shit with the sight of him. However, I couldn’t help but frown when Faye watched him warily.

The tall guy, Malik, I think his name was, un-cuffed her, catching her around the waist when she dropped. An instinctive growl curled my lip when his hands touched her bare flesh, dragging her hands around her back to re-cuff her.

My gaze landed on the bowl of bread and water on the floor but when Theo spoke to her, telling her they weren’t there to serve her, I flicked to the next scene. Some things are tolerable, but watching the woman you breathe for naked, dirty and having to eat and drink from bowls on the floor like a dog, I couldn’t do.

In the next scene, Faye was laid on a bed, her back to the camera as she remained completely still. She appeared to be asleep, but eventually she turned slowly, the effort of moving masking her beautiful face with pain.

She blinked, regarding something curiously.

“Hello, Star.”

Dante walked into the shot. My teeth chattered against each other and I sucked my tongue to stop them grating together. I wanted to kill him. I wanted to dig my knife so far into his throat that I could feel his esophagus crack under the pressure. I wanted to watch as his blood trickled free, liberating it from its keeper, releasing his fucking soul and last breath with it.