The Deception series boxset: FaCade, Cadence, Beneath Innocence (26 page)

“Tell me what’s going on!”

His face crumbled. “I can’t.” His pained whisper was enough to tell me I was on my own. “Please, Star,” he urged desperately when a sob echoed from me.

I couldn’t breathe, the room closed in on me as my ears started whooshing. Malik took another step towards me. I flew for him, anger at everything coming to a head as I smashed fist after fist into him. He stood and tolerated it, allowed me vent it all on him. His body was my punching bag as I pummeled him, my tears and snot as furious as my hits.

I knew Malik cared for me, but his loyalty and love for Dante was much greater.

“No!” I screamed when his arms came around me. I pushed him off and slapped his face, the final piece of anger forcing itself out.

His palm lifted to his face as the sting shot through him.

“Faye! My name is Faye! Fuck you!” I spat out. “FUCK YOU ALL!! I’m done!”

I fled through the house. Whatever the outcome, I was leaving, whether I had to fucking swim to land, whether I drowned in the water’s depths, I didn’t care anymore. I couldn’t bear another second in this house, never mind the rest of my life. Whether my memory came back or not was irrelevant, I wanted to be free of the oppressive bastard who had done this to me.

The walls rushed past me as my legs carried me faster and faster. My heart beat too fast and I lifted my hand, pressing it to my chest to try and alleviate the pain burning my heart.

The door slammed back into its frame when I burst through it. The grass under my bare feet was almost sensual, its softness calming and encouraging me to run faster and faster.

Yet the world shifted when I finally made it to the small dock and I skidded on the damp ground when flashes and shouts blinded me.

I WAS SO TENSE. I knew what she had asked Malik to get for her on land. She thought she had an ally in him and in some ways she did. But he knew the hand that fed him was also the one that wouldn’t hesitate to break his neck if he crossed me. He respected her and held affection he tried to suppress but didn’t ... couldn’t. She was infectious; once she was in your blood there was no way you could ever get her out. I was a prime example.

I fell in love with an eleven year old Star. I remembered first seeing her in the cast of the moon’s glow. The removal trucks were still moving her family in to the house she lived in from that day forward. Even after the sun had set they continued to move furniture inside.

I lived a few streets over in a nicer area. Her smile lifted to me when she noticed me. I was late home and my dad was going to ground me but I couldn’t move. I was only thirteen but I felt it, a jolt, a connection. Her mum dragged her inside.

I had stared at the house until long after the removal truck left, waiting, and then the curtain twitched and green eyes looked back at me.

The next day she showed up at my school. She walked straight up to me in the cafeteria and placed a drawing in front of me. It was of me on my bike outside her house. It was so lifelike; she had even captured the infatuated look in my eyes. How could someone so young draw so well?

All eyes went to this new brazen girl who’d placed her tray next to mine and sat amongst all my friends. “Hey, I’m Faye!” She beamed, reaching her hand out to me. I blinked a few times before taking it in my palm. I looked down and noticed a faint birthmark on her wrist. “It’s the shape of a star,
”
I murmured. Her eyebrow rose but I smiled, turned to everyone and told them, “This is, Star. She’s with me.”

For six years she was by my side, we were a unit. I was different from most of our friends; there was something inside me that set me apart from everyone emotionally, everyone but her. I had issues with authority and it all stemmed from never feeling like I fit in amongst my family. My father was in the entertainment business and wanted the same fate for his children but it never appealed to me.

I had an IQ of 160; I was more intelligent than most of the teachers at our school but my parents didn’t send me to private school to master my intellect. They believed public school taught value and a backbone, so despite their wealth, that was where I went.

Science interested me, and luckily I had an amazing teacher who knew what to do with me, and who to contact for colleges. When I was approached for an internship with a major pharmaceutical company and college scholarship, my parents didn’t even congratulate me. Any other parents would have thrown a party, cried a little and told their kid they were proud, but I got nothing. Star did all those things. She was willing to put our future on hold while I went to college.

Little did I know it was so she could fuck
him
behind my back without the fear of getting caught. She didn’t even wait for me to leave the state before she went to
him.
The day I planned to tell her I gave it all up because I couldn’t be away from her.

I’d do what my father wanted and go to community college and then go into entertainment like him. I bought her a ring and held my tongue all through my farewell party the night before. She had said her goodbyes the night before because she couldn’t bear seeing me drive away. Fucking lying bitch.

The next evening after I planned everything out for her proposal, I drove towards her house but slowed to a stop when I saw her leaving her house with
him
. I followed them to a motel. I was dizzy; my world tipped on its axel. My insides twisted and threatened to leave my body. How could she do this to me? How could
THEY
do this? She was mine, she had always been mine. I fucking loved her. I breathed for her; she was the only person who believed in me. I took her for who she was. I kept her safe from her horrid mother. I gave her everything she wanted, including my heart.

I couldn’t breathe, but when I finally did inhale it wasn’t air, it was vengeance. I switched it off, everything I felt for her. I incinerated it inside me and let the embers sizzle with new-found hate in my heart. They were all mocking me and they would all pay for it. Fuck my parents. Fuck her and fuck the cunt fucking her.

I waited outside their motel until the sun set and rose. Then I left and never went back.

I ditched my phone, my only communication to her so she couldn’t ever reach inside me and touch what she had broken. What they had all broken.

When the plane I was supposed to be on that day had engine failure and dropped from the sky, exploding into a ball of flames on impact, no one waited to have confirmation I was on the plane, they assumed, accepted and told everyone I was dead. How could people who are engineered to love their children just accept one’s death without knowing for sure? How could a girl who shared my soul for six years not wait, not come looking for me?

My love for her saved and destroyed me all in one day.

A month later they were informed I had never boarded the plane and was very much alive. Not even then did one of them come looking for me. That was the final cut to let the ruthless bastard I harbored under the surface take the reins of my life. I embraced the other side of myself. I fed it with the betrayal I felt so deep inside me; the craving for vengeance was always there waiting for an opportunity.

I built myself a name. Worked through an internship and finished college two years earlier than it took most people. I was determined and focused. I was given a full time position when my internship finished and I worked up the ranks quickly, honing my skills, making a name for myself and then I slipped into the darker dealings of my craft and made my empire.

Years went by with no contact and then I almost choked when I first saw her on TV. It was a commercial for God knows what; all I could hear was my own heart beat banging in my ears and all I saw were those green eyes, mocking me. She had done what everyone else wanted her to do. She became an actress instead of the artist she was created to be.

The anger and ache of betrayal surfaced. I watched her grow from a nothing into a starlet. Commercial after commercial, then into films until she was known worldwide alongside …
HIM.
They never admitted to being couple to the media. Their agent’s assistant, Theo, told me it was the agents who made them keep their relationship secret. They were worth more single and got more privacy that way.

The hate festered, growing darker and more urgent but I had waited long enough. I needed to wait for the right time and the right method of payback but I didn’t plan on it being as brutal as it became until fate stepped in.

Six months previous

“The drug’s ready, everything is set up. We just need to decide on the target and money of course.” I quirked a brow and thought back to how we ended up here. Ten men congregated around the table in the back of the restaurant Davies had chosen for us to eat at.

We were going to leave business until after dinner when we were in the privacy of my office but the little runt wouldn’t stop asking questions. I wasn’t a fan of the slave trade but unfortunately, when you played in the underworld, Hades’ true nature dwelled there and that was the sex trade.

I usually dealt in the drugs. I made them and distributed them. I dealt in truth serums, drugs that numbed certain areas and not others. Drugs to bring on death without evidence of cause. Those were my side projects. I had finished working on a new drug to remove the bad feelings associated with traumatic events, taking away painful memories. ‘Fear extinction’. It could help rid sufferers of post-traumatic stress and phobias from their anxiety and trauma.

Medical boards all wanted their hands on the goods. My name was in medical media everywhere. I loved the power, but it wasn’t enough. I tweaked the drug, suppressing all memories and leaving the brain open to suggestion, to re-learn, to be molded and corrupted, and let the world’s most immoral bid on its exclusivity.

When Hunter approached me with a proposal for a new business, it was power of a whole new level. We would start a secret club of the world’s most rich and powerful, but also people who we knew were depraved and had kinks and urges that needed to be fed in the shadows of society. They would all have access to vote on a target. Someone desired by them or millions, or just a payback from one of our wealthier clients who wanted a personal arrangement.

When you fucked over these men, they harbored revenge until they could exact it in the most destructive way possible. I admired that because I was the same way. What better way than to take one of their enemies’ women and change her memories, make her a whore or make her fall in love with you to spite him. The possibilities were endless. They would vote on a target and then we would set a plan in motion to steal said target from their lives, wipe their memory and begin to rebuild them in any way we wanted. Or they requested. Convince them of anything, or play with them like a lion would a mouse.

Each elite member could pay to have acts or stories performed. They would all have live feeds to all cameras where their prize would be held. If they paid enough they could even be involved in the act.

I smirked and tipped the whiskey placed in front of me by an attractive waitress who batted her eyelashes at every man at our table. The warmth coated my throat.

Hunter tapped his knee while everyone but Davies looked at him to continue. Hunter was the expert in this area and my go to person when I had business with other sex traffickers.

Davies had a leer on his face, he was convinced this wouldn’t work and wasn’t shy about making that known to his father, who was the only reason I allowed Davies to even be in on this meeting. “We want to see a trial run. Proof you can do as you claim. No disrespect, Troy! But this isn’t your field of expertise. I have a friend, Daniel, who may be of some assistance in this area.”

Hunter stiffened at the name and glowered at Davies. “You may not mean any disrespect but you forget he has me as his partner and even though I have every faith Troy is capable, we both know I am capable of breaking down a woman, or man, and you’ve tasted the proof, Davies. You forget your fucking place!”

My fist clenched under the table. I hated this cunt and although Hunter meant to take up for me, he made me look weak by coming to my defense.