I Choose You (The Billionaire Brothers Series) (35 page)

Trevillo’s jaw worked back and forth. “Well, in that case … ”

I shut my eyes and turned my head, not wanting to see the man I love take someone’s life, even if it was for me. A fusillade of shots went off, until there was just a constant clicking sound.

Opening my eyes, I looked back at him and saw he’d shifted the gun to the right of Sarah’s head and emptied the clip into the ground instead. I sighed in relief.

“You’ve always been wrong,” he told her. “You’re the devil’s fucking bride, Sarah.”

He dropped his gun on her stomach and started to turn away from her, but stopped when she said, “But, Trev,
you’re
the devil, remember?” She lifted her bloody hand and wiped it across her mouth, leaving smears on blood on her lips. “So, whose bride am I?”

Making a pained sound, she began clutching her wounded shoulder again. “Let that girl be if you love her this much. You’re noxious. You’re toxic. You’ll destroy her,
destroyer
.”

Trevillo didn’t reply; he just stared blankly at her, his jaw working back and forth as if considering her words. He then turned to me, not meeting my eyes, and went straight to unclamping the manacles from around my feet.

When they were free, he muttered with his head down, “Don’t try moving yet. Gotta undo your arms.”

His voice was empty, void of any emotion, and I didn’t know which pained more: my sore muscles, or the fact that he wouldn’t look at me.

Obviously, Sarah had lied about him setting this up and being her fiancé. But there was no point in rejoicing, now that he found me repulsive. If he found it hard to look me in the eyes, that meant he didn’t want me anymore. I was longer his chosen. First it was catching me in the act with Jahleel, and now this.

With my hands freed, they dropped like dead weight. I couldn’t move even a finger. With the restraints no longer stretching me apart, my debilitated body collapsed forward. Trevillo caught me before I hit the floor, and my head lolled and smacked against his chest.

Holding me with care, he shifted my feet off the blocks of wood and gently brought them together so he could cradle me. As he started marching off with me in his arms, I felt a jacket being placed over me.

Looking up, I saw Natalio carefully trying to cover up the horridness of this night.

“Could you at least pretend to not fucking look, asshole?” Trevillo gritted out.

Natalio ignored his brother and continued to cover me up as best as he could with the jacket. “This is some messed up shit, man.”

“Yeah, well, take care of it. It’s what you do best.”

“What do you want us to do with Milo?” Natalio asked, stepping back now that I was covered.

“Do I look like I give a shit?”

Natalio chuckled. “You have her in your arms, safe, and you still can’t be calm for even one goddamn minute?”

“Fuck you, and fuck calm.” I wasn’t looking at Trevillo, but I could tell he was glowering at his brother. “What if this was Sadie?”

A menacing shadow passed over Natalio’s face, and he nodded. “Understood.”

Settling his hands on his hips, Natalio glanced around the cellar and sighed. “Take your girl home, brother. I’ll take care of this mess. I have enough dirt against Sarah to call in a favor from Serg and flip this around, make ourselves look like heroes.”

Turning his sapphire-blue eyes down to me, he pinched my nose and gave me a compassionate smile. “It’s good to have you back alive and — ” His sentence was cut off as Trevillo strode off with me. And I could hear him chuckling as we got farther away.

Weariness hit me with a bang as Trevillo marched out of the cellar, my eyes growing unbearably heavy. Cold air bit into my skin as we reached outside. Through hooded slits, I saw a couple of men in black milling about. A few of them offered Trevillo their assistance with me, but he declined and strode straight to a waiting vehicle, where a suited man held the door open.

With awkward movements, Trevillo slid into the back, not releasing me. The door closed, and we sped off.

The smooth ride of the vehicle and the intermittent intrusion of streetlights slicing through the car’s darkness pushed me deeper into drowsiness. Trevillo’s tight hold since he’d cradled me in the cellar never once loosened. Even though he could’ve set me down on the car seat so I would be more comfortable, he didn’t. He just kept me cradled, but never once looked at or spoke to me.

In a fatigued voice, I let him know, “Trev, I love you.”

No reply came. But it didn’t matter, I loved him still.

Just as I was giving in to sleep, I felt a drop of wetness hit my face. Blinking rapidly, I pried open my eyes and peered up at him. Shrouded in desolation, he was staring, unblinking, out the window of the car.

And he was crying.

A
t some point during the break of dawn, I fuzzily awakened, eyes flickering open. I blinked into recognition the familiar surroundings of Trevillo’s bedroom. I was tucked in from the neck down under a thick comforter, and the quiet humming of the air-conditioner was soothing.

Consciousness brought with it pain, as the aches in my joints penetrated again, reminding me of my near-death experience, while a turbulent headache roared back to existence.

I wanted to go back to sleep. Being awake was taking too much energy. Lazy as they were, my eyes shifted around the room and stuck on the silhouette of Trevillo. He was sitting in an arm chair in the small sitting area of the room, his shoulders slumped forward, his head in his hands. He was so still, I wondered if he was breathing.

He was oblivious to my wakefulness, so I decided not to disturb him. To fathom how he felt at that moment, with all he’d seen, all that had happened in one night, would be improbable for me. The best thing to do, I figured, was to let him have some time to his own thoughts, to decide whether he still wanted me to be his chosen or not.

His chosen
. Of course I still wanted to be his chosen. His apostrophe S.

But he no longer owed me anything. He saved my life. And before that, he unhesitatingly forgave me for willingly and forcefully cheating. For that reason, I wouldn’t force him to stay with me. I divulged to him earlier something I’d kept even from myself: I loved him. A piece of additional knowledge to aid in his decision — that’s
if
he was wavering on a decision.

At first, he’d been my Again. Then I fell. Hard. Now, I wanted him to be my Forever. Despite all that happened, I loved him, and I didn’t want to stop. I wanted to be a fool for him, forgive all his wrongs, be his enabler. Let him destroy me. Ruin me. Be with me. Just be with me and never leave.

For now, all I could do was close my eyes, revisit sleep to soothe this hammering headache, and send an invocation to the Father above that I’d still be Trev’s when I next woke.

The feel of a wet, warm cloth wiping over the aching areas on my body hauled me from sleep’s grip. I felt like I’d slept for a decade. With a few rapid blinks, vision became clear and revealed a plump, middle-aged woman dressed in all-white, tending to the angry, red welts on my skin.

Noticing I was awake, she smiled. “Miss Kingston, hi. I’m Mary. I’m here to attend to you. How are you feeling?”

A weak smile was all she got, as I let my eyes do a sweep around the room. I was still in Trevillo’s bed — good. The chair he was sitting in earlier this morning, held Marsha instead of him — bad.

Marsha had one hand covering her mouth as she watched me with eyes I knew were fighting not to leak tears. She was a lot like me. We didn’t do the whole waterworks thing, and when a situation was deserving of tears, we tried to laugh instead and pretend it wasn’t all that serious. Though I was shocked to see her there, I was also grateful for her presence.

Eyes shifting back to Mary, I told her, “I’m fine. Just thirsty.”

My condition wasn’t so bad that Trevillo had to go and get me a caretaker. I was just abducted, whipped a few times, and given an orgasm by a female’s tongue while I stood precariously on the brink of death. It’s not like I had a gunshot wound, broken legs, or knife slashes. What I had were minor injuries I could take care of myself.

Mary’s smile was steady as she set the warm rag she used to clean the welts in a basin on the floor and picked it up. “Okay, that’s good. I’ll get you a glass of water. I also have some soup prepared.”

Acknowledging her words, I nodded.

By then, Marsha was out of the armchair and heading towards the bed. Seating herself on the edge, she took my hand in hers and raised an eyebrow. “Well, don’t you have a habit of going missing?”

Finally given the opportunity to laugh, I did. “This time, I didn’t pull a runner. I got snatched by a psycho bitch. Right outside my house.”

Marsha smiled, but there was concern behind it. “I know. Mr. Hot Mogul told me what happened. He called me out of my bed around six this morning. Told me there was a car outside my house, and I should pack a bag and get in. Ordered me, actually. When I got here, he told me about the abduction, how you almost died. He asked me to stay here for awhile, so you had someone familiar around.”

Panic tried climbing up my throat. I took a breath and swallowed it. “So, w-where will he be?”

“Don’t know,” she answered with a shrug. “Just said he wouldn’t be around for a while, because he has some important things to deal with.”

Really? Important things to deal with? More important than me all bruised up in his flipping bed?

“He’s running again,” I whispered, staring off at nothing. “He’s a freakin’
coward
. That’s what he is.”

“Why do you think that?” Marsha inquired. “He was visibly suffering from this. You should’ve seen him, Krissy K. He looked like shit.”

“And I don’t?!” I half-yelled at her.

Indignation harassed me, and I tried shaking it off by attempting to speak in a gentler tone. “It’s his style to disappear when shit gets difficult. His excuse is always he’s ‘never done this before’. Well then, how the hell is he
ever
going to learn how to deal with anything if he keeps freakin’ running? I’m the one who almost took a bullet in the head because he couldn’t keep it in his pants. And even after all that, all I want to do is
be with him
. Not run. Even though it’s clear being with him is nothing but danger. Straight-up danger. And you don’t see me running, do you?!”

My voice had crescendoed with every word, and by the time I got to the end, I was panting. I, Krissan Kingston, knew how to keep cool, in all things, yet I couldn’t help the ire striating me at the moment.

“Now, now, Miss Kingston, you need to relax,” Mary crooned as came back into the room holding a tray with a porcelain bowl of soup and a tall glass of water.

I sat up in bed with my back against the headboard so she could rest the tray on my lap.

“Be sure to drink all the soup. Mr. Nelson said — ”

“Tell Mr. Nelson
I
said he should go fuck himself!”

Mary’s lip flattened disapprovingly. Ignoring my outburst, she carried on, “You have to eat. Not for Mr. Nelson, but for yourself.” She pointed to a little bell on the nightstand and told me, “Ring this bell if you need anything.”

I gaped at her as she turned and walked out of the room. I looked to Marsha. “Can you believe this shit? A bell? Really? How old am I? Ninety-nine?”

Marsha burst out laughing. “Maybe that’s the natural treatment when you’re screwing a billionaire?”

Anger was blazing through me, and I couldn’t contain it. I wanted to hurt Trevillo. Badly. How auspicious that he was nowhere in my radius at that moment, because I’d blow my shit all over him.

It wasn’t the fact that he’d abandoned me ‘for a while’ because things might be too cumbersome for him take in right now that infuriated me. It was because I didn’t know if, this time, he would come back to me.

You see, Trevillo always came back to me, and I always took him back, because, as much as he was new to this relationship thing, I was too. But this time, things were different, more serious. Mistakes were made, some more daring than others, which gave a man quite a lot to think about. And the thought of not knowing whether he’d chosen to love me or let me go was both nerve-wracking and exasperating.

Earlier that morning, when I awoke and saw him sitting distraught in the armchair, I was willing to understand and take it in stride if it turned out he no longer wanted me.

Now, however, I wasn’t.

I had enough sleep since then, and now the sensible side of my brain was working quite well. I was coherent enough to know without a doubt I wasn’t willing to give him up. I wanted him to look past my stupid act of revenge — letting another man slip inside me. I wanted him to look past me being ignominiously stretched out and driven to orgasm in front of a string of unknown butches. I wanted him to look past the fact his brother and everyone else at the scene had seen me stark naked, vulnerable and helpless. I wanted him to look past all of it and stay with me.

The chances of that happening were slim, I knew. Because he had never been able to even look at me, or utter a word of comfort. Had it been too much in one night? Too much for him to digest?