The Starkest Truth (A Breaking Insanity Novel Book 2) (22 page)

“I wasn’t sure of what she had planned until she stole my phone. I didn’t know who she was sending it to…until you came in here and well…” He gestured over his face. “She deleted the message before I could see it. I never fucked her.”

I nodded, taking it all in. I slowly inched my way toward him. Preston was stupid, but not that stupid. I didn’t buy it. Partially? Maybe, but not completely. “Did you try?
 
Did you want to? Did you lay a finger on her? Did you come into our bed and touch her? Did one inch of your skin rub against her clothes? Did. You. Touch. Her?”

The look on his face said yes, and it didn’t matter which question he answered yes to.
 

For the point, he never should’ve been in the same vicinity as Nikki when he was warned once. “Hmm.” I rubbed my bottom lip, keeping up my restraint. “So you…recruited April to go against me, and supposedly Nikki has her own agenda to get back at me? Is that right?” I quizzed slowly, clinically.

“April is probably gone now.” He spat out a glob of blood and tried to sit up straight. “Left town with the money I gave her.”

“She isn’t that smart.” I turned and locked the door. “Neither are you.” I grabbed his bottle of Reserve wine from the table and slammed it on the corner of the glass desk. It broke apart, spilling the liquid on the desk and floor and left me with a nice little jagged edge.
 

He tried to fight me off, but I had a hold of his dark hair in my hand and bashed his face into his desk until he was compliant—or rather, unconscious. I pulled his body to lie flat across the top of the desk. I ripped at the buttons of his tailored white shirt, exposing his chest, and began to carve letters into his flesh. The pointed edge tugged and pulled at his skin, scraping away layers of the epidermis. I wanted it deeper, I wanted to hit the dermis. Pushing harder, I reached the pink layer of flesh, immediately bringing on a thicker flow of blood to the surface.

He roused, moaning at first, and eventually started full-on screaming. The pounding on the door pulled me to rush my work of art.
 

I finished up my masterpiece and was seconds away from slitting his throat when the door came crashing down.

I leaned in Preston’s ear. “The next time I see you, the words etched into your chest will be a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you see Nikki again, the process will come sooner…than later. Mark my goddamn words, I will fucking kill you, Preston. Soon.”

Pete grabbed me again and subdued me. Victor, visibly out of breath, looked at my artwork and back at me.
 

I gave him a broad smile.

“Why are you suddenly so goddamned impatient?” Victor asked, his voice vibrating with anger.

“I didn’t kill him, did I?” I asked with a slight shrug and a steady grin. “I could’ve cut off his nuts, but I was feeling charitable. I wanted to get a message across. Believe me, I’m being very patient.”

Victor looked over his chest, scanning the words: ‘Dickless Asshole.’ “And what the hell was this ordeal about?”

Falling deeper into my fucked up mood, I didn’t respond. My mind was on my wife. “It’s personal.”

Victor stepped around the desk and looked down at his godson. “With the passionate way in which you cut up his skin, I’m sure it was. Your wife?”

I glanced over my shoulder at Pete. “Let me fucking go, Pete.”

“You gotta promise me you’ll keep your hands and feet to yourself, man,” Pete warned.

“Fine,” I gritted through my teeth.

After Pete let me go, I left Preston’s office, only to be caught by Vic just before I reached the delivery entrance door at the back of the club.

“You need to inform me of something here,” Victor pressed, his face ruddy with indignation. “Otherwise, I’ll think you’ve lost your damn mind and have become a loose cannon—one who’s gone astray and doesn’t deserve my support.”

Victor never threatened me, and to do it over a panty-waste like Preston wasn’t kosher. “Blood doesn’t mean shit to you. Loyalty doesn’t mean shit to you, either, huh?”

Vic gave me a slow, small curled-lip smile. Out of left field, his fist connected with the middle of chest, and almost knocked the wind out of me.

“What the fuck, Vic?” I said, rubbing my breastbone. It was a love tap that barely registered. He was doing it for a reason. A soft hit on the wrist to bring me back from the ledge.

“You’re lucky I didn’t move a little to the right with full power and knock your ass on the ground, boy. You will respect me.” He poked my chest, breaking my stance. “No matter how pissed you may be. You will fucking respect me. Explain it all, right damned now.”

I dropped my hands, ignoring him.

“Boy!” he demanded with a growl.

“He’s fucking with my wife. He’s a disloyal dumbfuck who’s working all the angles,” I said, saying the brunt of what I was willing to say.

Vic blew back and rubbed his mouth as he looked back at Preston’s office like it was on fire. “You think she’d betray you?”

Staring at him, I wondered if he was serious about his question and receiving an answer. “It’s not about her. It’s about Preston.”

“You sure about that?” Shrugging with his hands down the pockets of his pants, his mouth straightened. “Hasn’t she…maybe fucked over someone else in her past?”

I inclined my head to the side, my expression frozen by the icy words he threw in my face. “What the hell are you talking about, Vic?” I asked, dead calm. “Nothing, right? Because you don’t know Nikki. You’ve never met her, right?” I assessed his reaction carefully. His posture and the look in his eyes told me the next words, no matter what they were, were going to be outright fucking lies.

He waved his hand at me, dismissing me like I was his damn underling.
 

Instead of lying to me, he was choosing diversion? No. This wasn’t sitting well with me at all. “Vic?” I pressed, angling for an answer, whatever it would be. I needed to know if he would blatantly lie to me, because to my knowledge, he never had before.

“Go home to your wife, son. We’ll talk again soon.” He waved me off again with his eyes angled at the door to Preston’s office.

I didn’t exactly like the way he tried to turn things around and put the blame on Nikki, but I had bigger things on my mind, and bigger issues to resolve and bring everything back under my order.

I WATCHED THE burning flames slowly work over the bed. The amber lights lit up the bedroom with a warm brick red glow. The pungent smell of gasoline was snuffed out for the smoky scent of the mattress burning.

“Nikki!” I heard April bawl from the doorway. Whatever she was holding, it was dropped to the floor. Kifo, who was nowhere to be found when I needed her, came into the room and barked frantically at the flames.
 

April hurried into the bathroom and came back with a trashcan full of water and dumped it onto the mattress, putting the flames out.

Coughing and hacking, she opened the windows.

Holding my arms tightly around myself, I glanced at the doorway. Takeout packages were strewn on the floor, some had fallen out of the bag, flowing onto the rug.

“Where have you been?” I asked, my voice raspy and soft. I looked down at my arms, realizing I’d scratched myself down to the flesh.

“I hitchhiked downtown to get you a Nick’s garbage plate. The guy who gave me a ride said it was the best place to get one. He became a douchebag about payment so I had to stab him.” When I didn’t smile, she added with a concerned grimace, “Kidding.” She walked up to me and held my shoulders. “What happened, Nikki? Did you have a nightmare? I was only gone for an hour and a half and came back to you trying to burn the house down and Kifo stuck outside.”

“It seemed like so much longer than almost two hours,” I muttered.

“Nikki? You’re scaring me. What happened?” Her voice quivered and her eyes welled up.

I wanted to think she was the reason, but from what I saw in her eyes, I knew I couldn’t blame her. “I never understood it. I’d read it in articles, but thought it wasn’t possible.”

“What are you talking about? What happened, Nikki?” She grabbed my head and shook me.

“Having an orgasm when someone is with you against your will. It’s…”

“Who was here?”

“Don’t pretend you can’t guess.”

Her eyes widened in alarm and her face flushed a crimson hue. “Eric is going to kill him when he finds out. We need to call the police before he gets here,” April fretted. “Death is too easy for that rapist. Oh, shit, Nikki. I didn’t know he was like that. I never would’ve talked to someone like that. I will never, ever leave this house again.”

Moving toward the bathroom, I debated taking another shower. As I sat on the edge of the tub in my terry cloth bathrobe, riddled with guilt, I contemplated the dark marble tile. I’d scrubbed my skin until the brown turned red, and I couldn’t stop feeling so filthy. Every time I closed my eyes, I remembered Preston and what he did to me.

“Relax. It’s less enjoyable when you fight against me.”
He plowed into me gently like I was his—soft and tender. My body craved what it was deprived of. It responded to him in ways I wished it hadn’t. I found the strength and fought against him, against what he made me feel, but it was purely an internal fight. My limbs wouldn’t move, only my eyes showed my protest by expelling tears. He waited purposefully, he waited and moved inside me until my body gave him what he wanted.

The smile of pride would be forever etched into my nightmares. He withdrew and proceeded to spread the remnants of my arousal on his erection, until he ejaculated on my thigh.
 

He kissed my forehead and vaulted out of bed.

I was blindsided when he took a picture.
 

He replaced his clothes, watching me intently the entire time before looking over his shoulder at me as he halted his stride at the door to wink at me. “We’ll see each other again, Nikki. You want your information to stay safe, keep me satisfied and I’ll make your body very happy. Your secrets will always be safe when you give me what I want,” he said before he left.

“No,” I shook my head vehemently. “I’m not calling the police on Preston.”

“You have to, bestie,” April said placidly. “It’s his fault, please don’t think it’s yours. He needs to pay for doing this to you.” Her mood suddenly changed from melancholy to irritation. She threw up her hands before letting them settle on her hips. “I can’t believe I trusted Preston in the first place, thinking he wanted to help you. That’s really all it was Nikki. I didn’t betray our friendship code. I never—” She sighed and shook her long brunette mane down the length of her back. “Don’t let that asshole get away with what he did to you.” Her voice began to shake with tangible emotion. “Preston needs to pay,” she repeated, grabbing my hand.

“It won’t matter. I can’t…I can’t—” I couldn’t breathe. My stance began to waver; the energy to stand was stolen from me.

“Whoa. Whoa.” April grabbed my arm and helped me to sit on the closed lid of the toilet.

The front door slammed with such a strong force, it shook the ground of the second floor underneath my feet.
 

The mere act of breathing became excruciating.

April cracked the bathroom door open. Looking frightened, she peeked around the corner. “I’ll talk to him about what happened to the bed. He doesn’t need to know the truth yet. Did you shower? Shit you showered…”

Her voice faded into the distance. Hearing Preston’s last words over and over in my mind, I knew what I had to do. If Preston spilled my secrets it would mean letting people into my life who I’d rather not face. It would mean an end to my life with Eric.

I watched April’s slender form disappear out of the bathroom. Her voice became faint as she spoke to him.
 

The banging of the door to my bedroom made the walls shudder.
 

Eric appeared at the doorway. The look he cast my way, made it impossible to hold his eye contact. His stare was menacing…insidious and bore straight through me. His chest heaved with heavy, long breaths as though he was winding down from running a marathon.
 

I didn’t know how much he knew…but given the splatters of dried blood on his fists and shirt, it was safe to assume the picture Preston took was for Eric and he received it. What was said between the two men was unknown; it scared me more than the known.