The Deception series boxset: FaCade, Cadence, Beneath Innocence (51 page)

He smirked. “I may be, sweetheart, but she was a slut and everyone knew it. She liked being used up. Her body was built for a big bad cock like mine. She’s a snake, leading Jenson, the stupid fuck, on all that time and fucking everything else with an erection.”

I swiped at some blood I felt trickling down my lip. My tooth must have pierced my lip when I hit the dresser. “So, she deserved what you did to her?” I asked, incredulous.

“She broke rules, Faye, betrayed what she was paid to do and could have got Dante killed. Betrayal has consequences and Dante gave me the pleasures of dishing them out. You know better than anyone that retribution is something Dante takes seriously.” He chuckled.

“Oh, I do know. And he’s going to want it on you when he knows what you did.” I smirked.

“You mean what I’m about to do.” He took a step towards me with each word he spoke. “I’m going to fuck your ass, tear you up nice and good. Fuck, I might even taste the blood that pours from you, savor you on my tongue before I kill you and dump you in Malik’s room.”

My mouth dropped open in shock and fear. “You don’t have time,” I rushed out.

“Then I’ll have to be quick.” The back of his hand came out fast, so fast I didn’t have time to move before it cracked me across the cheek. Pain exploded, making my eyes water and buckling my knees.

His meaty palm wrapped around my ankle. I kicked out, catching him off guard, causing him to stumble backwards straight into a full length mirror that stood in the corner of the room. The shards rained down behind him and I took the opportunity, pushing up to my knees and crawling away.

His foot hit my backside with power, sending me face first into the floor. My nose popped, a deep cry bursting from me with the pain as a warm river flowed from it. Motherfucker.

“You keep flashing that gash at me Faye . . .” His fingers gripped me by the back of the neck, lifting me clean off the floor and pushing me forwards onto the bed. “And I will fuck it.”

With every ounce of hate, fear and strength I had left, I thrashed and screamed and kicked and attacked, scratching and slapping at him, gouging at his skin with my nails as I tried to bite at his flesh.

He mocked me with a laugh. I was no match for him. I should have known Dante would be late; he always ruined everything. It was funny, really. I’d always thought it would be Dante that took my last breath from me, but a man who had been my friend, a father figure for many years, was going to rape me and watch in delight as he snuffed my existence out easily and with as much pain as he could deliver.

Thump.

My eyes bulged and relief burst from me when I saw Malik instead of Frank. He dropped a lamp he must have picked up to hit Frank with.

I sat forward and looked down at Frank who was out cold on the floor.

My mouth fell open as a scream tore from me, shock and relief all coming out of me in a high pitched wail.

I WAS ANXIOUS TO GET home and hide away while I medicated. Star mentioned feeling uneasy on the phone about Frank. She caught him taking pictures of her and she was growing worried about the new development of his
unhealthy attention.
God, she always prettying up situations with words. He was fucking perving on her; he and Malik probably planned Delia coming here without my drugs so I’d have to leave and they could be there with Star. Fuck! My mind was driving me crazy.

I didn’t give the boat a chance to fully stop before I was off it and bounding up the dock.

Opening the front door, Star’s screams greeted me and turned my body to stone. My heart forgot to beat as my head screamed numerous scenarios at me, my body on auto-pilot as I ran through the house towards her screams.

Nothing prepared me when I burst into the room. Star was in complete disarray, her body beaten, her dress in tatters, and her mouth wide open, screams ripping from her one after the other as Malik stood over her.

Red was all I saw. It blanked out every rational or human thought in my head. It demanded to be fed. It demanded liberation.

In a haze of movements, almost like I had stepped out of my body and was watching the scene unfold from a distance, I moved into the room, bent to pick up a shard of broken mirror, then leapt across the bed and jammed it straight into Malik’s neck. His hot blood sprayed over my face, making me blink with each spurt that slapped my skin. His eyes enlarged, pure disbelief and shock in them as his mouth dropped open to make a gargling noise.
Yeah you’re dying motherfucker, believe it.

I pulled the mirror free and then stabbed him in the groin, over and over in a fit of unkempt rage; euphoria and ecstasy flowed through every single blood vessel in my body. “I FUCKING WARNED YOU!” I screamed, deafening out Star’s hysteria.

His body had fallen into me. I shrugged him off and shivered, looking down at my shaking hand, my blood and his mingling together; he got to share fluids with me after all.

I dropped the glass and winced from the raw wound on my palm, and that was when I noticed an unconscious Frank in nothing but a towel, Malik’s dead eyes staring up at me from next to him, blood draining from him in a current of dark crimson pools.

Fuck. I’d known him a long fucking time and I’d butchered him.

“It was Frank! It was Frank! It was Frank!” Her erratic screams repeated.

What? It was Frank?

“Don’t fucking move.” My eyes turned to the door to see Jenson holding a gun at me! And I’d left mine in my study because my mind wasn’t functioning right.

Oh, great! And in came my asshole brother. I should have killed him when I had the chance—In the womb with the cord wrapped around his neck.

Fuck!

I reached down, grabbed the shard and dragged Star against my chest, holding the piece of mirror to her throat. I would never kill her but they didn’t need to know that. “Stay away, fucker, or I’ll pop her artery!”

Her body jerked so much from her sobs that my bloody hands kept slipping off her.

“Calm down, baby, it’s okay,” I soothed in her ear.

A loud snap rang out. My body jolted as my right shoulder set on fire, an agonizing pain bursting through me. What the fuck?

I fell backwards off the bed with Star in my arms, our bodies landing with a heavy thud on the floor. I felt it; the mirror cut into her. I had never felt sick from the violence I inflicted but the uncertainty of what I just did because that punked up little prick shot me made my insides spin, and chaos ran rampant in my head. She fell from me, her body rolling on to Frank and Malik.

EVERYTHING HAPPENED SO FAST; THE gun shot fire rang out and the grunt from Dante, and then they fell. What the fuck had he been doing to her? She looked like she had been messed up pretty bad and was in shock. We waited too long to come get her.

Jenson raced around the bed to keep his gun on Dante but something stilled his attention. Everything was in slow motion as I prepared myself for seeing if my girl was okay.

I couldn’t hear her. I couldn’t hear anything but the slow thud in my chest.

I rounded the bed and swallowed down the cry of relief. Faye was leaning over someone else, her hands covered in blood, holding the man’s neck. He was as white as a ghost, his eyes lifeless and staring. It was Malik.

I booted Dante in the face, knocking him out before he could taunt, making either me or Jenson end him early.

“I’m so sorry,” my girl sobbed, her face buried in Malik’s chest, her palms spread over his face. Frank lay next to them both, blood seeping from a wound on his head.

“Is he dead?” Jenson gestured with his chin to his still form. I reached under Faye’s armpits and lifted her from the dead guy then moved away as Liam, Blue’s dad, and numerous guys piled in the room and checked his pulse.

“No, he has a pulse.”

“Good,” Jenson said, going over to stand above him. He lifted his foot and brought it back down hard on Frank’s crotch area over and over.

I spun Faye in my arms and covered her face, keeping her from witnessing Jenson’s rage.

“Enough!” Liam commanded from the doorway. “Show us where the cells are. I want the names of the other two. One of these will speak when they see what happened to the others for not talking. Someone should wait with the girl.”

She pushed from my body, shaking her head. “Don’t leave me with someone else, Cade, please. I need to know they’re not coming back for me.”

“They won’t be coming for anyone ever again.” I reassured her, swiping across her cheekbone with my thumb and wiping away the river of tears.

“I need to see it. I need to see them die.”

Damn, I didn’t want her to have to live with seeing that. This wasn’t going to be a clean kill. We needed information on this Hunter guy.

“Let the woman have her closure, son,” Liam agreed. “She can watch the final trigger kill. Bring her.”

“Baby . . .”

“I need to, Cade. I need to put an end to the nightmares. Malik . . .” She squeezed more tears from her eyes, grief and sadness consuming her. “I owe it to Malik. He saved my life and he tried to get me out of here. And now he’s dead!”

Her pale face and her bruised and broken body crippled my heart. She didn’t deserve this, none of it. She would have nightmares for many years for what Dante had done to her, so what did one more matter if it would help bring her the closure she needed?

I held up my hands in surrender. She nodded. I had a feeling it would be a while before she ever smiled again, and I made a promise to myself that I would make sure she would have plenty to smile about in her future.

Taking her hand in mine, I gave it a squeeze. “You need to show us where Alex is.”

She sighed and looked up at me. “He’s a mess, Cade. I managed to get some water down him earlier.”

“Don’t worry, he’ll be okay. I promise.” She couldn’t cope with any more deaths on her conscience. “Baby, none of this is your fault. This is my brother’s twisted mess, not yours.”

She swallowed but didn’t answer me. “We need to hurry,” she urged as she pulled me to the door and led us into what would soon become hell.