Training the SECRET (Corrigan & Co #6) (16 page)

“You won’t kill
me.”

“Oh yes I will. What
you did to him—while he was just a boy. How could you do that?”

“He enjoyed it, all
the attention from the women.”

“No, he didn’t.”

“He would get hard
while they were touching and kissing him.”

“He was a boy. Just a
boy, whose body reacted to something his brain and soul were hating.
You degraded him, and made him think he was less than he really is.”

“Tell yourself that
if you need to, but I still say he wanted it all.”

Tears are running down
my face as I scream at her. I want her dead. I
need
her dead. I know in my heart that Nate isn’t the only one, and it
kills me to think of all those boys she’s hurt. I couldn’t save
the ones from before, but I can save whoever she has now. And maybe
save the man I love in the process. God, I didn’t even tell him I
loved him when we hung up earlier. I was so frustrated, but now I
understand, and I realize something else.

“Alberto Rujas is one
of the men you exploit, isn’t he?”

“I’ve already told
you that they all enjoy it, even though they won’t admit it.”

“Answer the fucking
question,” I say as I get right down into her face.

“Yes, Al is one of
mine. He was Nate’s best friend, and they came to me at almost the
same time. When Nate snuck out to the military, Al chose to stay with
me.”

There’s more to the
story than she’s saying, but I’ll let it go for now. I completely
understand why Nate said he couldn’t win the fight. He knew what
fate he’d be sentencing his friend to if he beat him. The thought
of it makes me so sick. This woman needs to die.

“Are you going to
fight or am I just going to kill you?”

“I will not fight
you, and as much as you want vengeance for what you think is a
wrongdoing on my part, I can tell that you can’t kill an innocent,
unarmed person.”

“You’re not
innocent.”

“But I am utterly
incapable of defending myself. You can’t do it. Just admit it, and
let me go.”

“She may not be able
to do it, but I sure as hell can. And I will. Go on downstairs,
Jade,” Aiden says, walking over to me, and pulling me into his
arms.

“No. I need to do it.
I need to save him,” I whisper into his ear.

“You saved him two
years ago when you walked into that gym. And you’ve been putting
him back together ever since, even when he was pretending that he
didn’t care,” he tells me. “She’s right about you not being
able to kill her. You’re just not built for that. But I am. I can
do this, I
want
to do
this.”

I know he’s right
about me not being able to do it, and what he said about me saving
Nate…I don’t know if it’s true, but I hope it is. “Thank
you.”

He nods and then smiles
at the bitch on the floor. “Time to have some fun.”

“You’re bluffing.”

“Oh no. I’m really
not. I like to kill. Maybe, I even love it. Especially when it’s to
help a friend, and Nate is my very best friend.”

“No. You can’t do
this. You can’t leave me with him.” She’s begging me, and I
just walk right on past her to the door.

“Yeah, I can. Have
fun, Aiden.”

“I will.”

The screams start
before I’ve even gotten to the bottom of the stairs. Ellie starts
to run towards me, but I stop her. “No, El. She deserves it.”

“What did she do?”

“I-I can’t talk
about it with you. Or anyone. I think maybe Aiden will tell you, but
I just can’t.”

“It’s that bad?”

“Worse. I just want
to throw up, or punch someone. Did she bring guards?”

“No. She came alone.
Walked in all cocky and shit.”

“I guess that’s
good in the grand scheme of things.”

“I think you need a
hug more than you need a fight.”

“You might be right.”

She engulfs me in her
arms and I hug her back tight. We stay like that as we hear the
screams continue for a few minutes, and then it’s quiet. She pulls
away from me and walks up the stairs. I let her go because I know
that they need each other, just like Nate and I do. I sit at the
bottom of the stairs, and try to process everything.

I now know why Nate
hated me talking about his body, or even admiring it. Why he was hurt
by words that I thought were fun and sexy. They brought back memories
of being forced to stand in a room while woman looked at him. While
they put their hands and mouths on him. He pushed his pain and
humiliation aside to let me look and touch. Understanding how hard
that was for him humbles me completely. Whatever else he’s hiding
can wait. I just need to hold him tight, and let him know that
there’s one less demon for him to worry about now.

Nate

I got back here as soon
as possible, but I already see that something is wrong. Aiden is in
the front courtyard, and he’s working out in a way that I’ve seen
before. He’s not just exercising his body, he’s exorcising his
soul with every push up and sit up. What the fuck happened while I
was gone?

“Who did you kill?”
I ask as I get out of the car.

He stops in the middle
of a push-up, jumping up to look everywhere but at me. “Someone who
needed it.”

“Who?”

He looks away, and I
know something’s really wrong. Something’s happened since I spoke
to Jade just a few hours ago. I wait him out, because I know he’ll
tell me. There are no secrets between Aiden, Matt, and me. Absolutely
none.

“Cecile Deveraux.”

I stagger backwards
like I’ve been punched, because I honestly feel like I have.
“What?”

“I killed her today.”

“How? I mean, I don’t
need to know how you killed her, but did you go find her? You didn’t
have to do that for me.”

“Jade found her, and
was going to kill her. I did it instead so she wouldn’t have to
live with it.”

“Jade?” I ask,
trying to hide my panic.

“She knows
everything. Well, about that bitch at least.”

“And you couldn’t
warn me?”

“I didn’t know
until she closed down the gym early, and then the female Anti-Christ
showed up. I stayed in the room while they talked, and I’m not
gonna lie. It was ugly. Real ugly. Jade kept her cool for most of it,
but when that…thing…talked about your dick and how much you liked
having sex with the women, it was all over. Jade was on her before I
could even react. It was actually pretty awesome.”

“She’s disgusted by
me.”

“What? No. She hasn’t
stopped crying, even when our team came in and took care of the body,
but it’s not from disgust. Ellie got out of her how bad she feels
for saying things to you about your body. She’s wrecked man. And
don’t go thinking it’s pity. It’s not.”

“It is. Damn it. I
didn’t want her to find out this way. She shouldn’t have been
digging around in my past. Especially after telling me she would wait
for me to be ready to tell her.”

“I get where you’re
coming from, but you need to check that at the door. You ran off, and
she didn’t know what to do. So she did what she was trained to do,
she found out the answers for herself. You love that she’s a
fucking super-spy, just like I love that about Ellie.”

“Not when it’s
directed at me, I don’t.”

“We can’t pick and
choose, and you know it. Unless you’re ready to really and truly
walk away for good, you need to rein the bullshit in. Because right
now it doesn’t matter how she knows. It just matters that she does,
and she was willing to kill the woman who exploited you. I had to
convince her to let me do it because she wanted to ‘save you.’
And those are her words, not mine. You know damn well that there will
never be another woman for you.”

“What happens when
she keeps digging and finds out the rest?”

“If you tell her, and
explain it, I think she’ll understand.”

“You think, but you
don’t know. I can’t take that chance.”

“I’ll stand by you
no matter what, and so will Matt. You know that. It’s up to you to
decide what you want to do. I can only remind you of what you’ve
got.”

“Are you going to
follow your same advice with Ellie?”

“No. I’m not ready
to walk my talk yet.”

“Yet you think I am?”

“I think you may not
have a choice, and it’s better if you’re in control of the
situation.”

“Why do we have to be
so fucked up? I mean, seriously? I just want to be a normal guy who
takes his girl out to dinner and a movie before fucking her into
oblivion.”

“If you were that
guy, you wouldn’t have Jade, because she’s
so
not that girl.”

“I could still do
without being fucked up.”

“We all could, but
it’s not who we are.”

“When did you turn
into fucking Dr. Phil?”

“Shit. I don’t
know. It’s pretty pathetic though, huh?”

“Yeah. That’s one
word for it. Not a big enough word, but we can use it for now. Aiden
the Pathetic has a nice ring to it.”

He flips me off. “Fuck
off, or better yet, fuck Jade.”

I flip him back off as
I open the front door. “You should be using all that energy on
your
girl, and stop worrying about me and mine.”

“Couldn’t exactly
do that while mine was comforting yours.”

I hang my head, and
look back over at him. “Thanks. For everything. Thank you.”

“You’d do it for
me.”

“Yeah. I would.”

I walk inside and start
to look for Jade. She’s not on the main floor, so I start up the
stairs. By the halfway point, I can hear the crying, and I quicken my
pace. I push open our bedroom door, and find her in Ellie’s arms,
sobbing and shaking.

“Angel, no. Please
don’t cry for me.”

“Nate. I’m so
sorry. So, so sorry.”

I look at Ellie, but
she shakes her head. “I don’t know anything. She said she
couldn’t tell me.”

“Aiden can. Tell him
I said it was okay.”

“I don’t need to
know.”

“You’re her best
friend. I want you to be there for her when I’m not. That means you
need to know.”

She nods and walks out
of the room, squeezing my hand on her way out. I take her place on
the bed and cuddle Jade in close to me as I lie down next to her.

“There’s nothing
for you to be sorry for. Well, there’s one thing, but we don’t
need to talk about that right now.”

She stiffens in my
arms. “How mad are you that I went behind your back?”

“Mad. But like I
said, we can talk about that later.”

“I just wanted to
help you, and you wouldn’t let me.”

“After everything you
learned today, you really just want to fight?”

“If that’s what it
takes to get this settled, then yes. Nothing is more important than
our relationship.”

Okay. She said she
wants to fight it out, so we’ll fight. Because despite what Aiden
said, I can’t just check my anger at the door. This was an out and
out betrayal, and boundaries need to be set for the future.

“You had no right to
dig up my secrets.”

“We’ll have to
agree to disagree about that.”

“No. This
cannot
happen again. Ever. There are lines that are just not okay for you to
cross by using your spy resources.”

That stops the tears
almost immediately. “So I’m just supposed to sit back and watch
you suffer instead of trying to help you?”

“Yes. If I am ready
to tell you something, I will. If not, I need you to respect me
enough to wait.”

“Why didn’t you
tell me?”

“Aiden says that you
know everything, so you know why I didn’t tell you.”

“No, I really don’t.
I mean, you’ve seen me rescue girls who were the same age or
younger than you were when that
creature
trafficked you.”

“I wasn’t
trafficked.”

“You were, Nate. What
that woman did to you was trafficking.”

“I wasn’t some
naïve girl who got tricked into sleeping with men. I sought her out,
and I knew what I was getting into.”

“Why?”

“I’m not ready to
tell you that yet.”

“What if I find that
out on my own as well?”

“Please don’t. I
love you, Jade. So much more than I ever thought I’d love another
person, but I can’t be with you if I know you’re always
investigating me.”

“I wouldn’t have to
if you’d just talk to me. If you’d just tell me what’s going
on. If you’d told me about what had been done to you, I would’ve
never said the things I did to you. Those things that reminded you of
other women, and hurt you.”

“You are nothing like
those women.”

“Really? You didn’t
think I was like them when we had that fight the first night Ellie
and Aiden were here?”

I throw my head back
and look to the ceiling for guidance. I don’t want to lie to her
when there’s already something big out there just waiting to crush
us. But how do I tell her that she’s right when I know it will hurt
her?

“I may have felt like
you were behaving like those women had towards me, but I realized
after talking to Aiden, that you were different.”

“Aiden had to tell
you that?”

Fuck. “I was in a bad
place and needed some sense knocked into me. I would’ve come to my
senses eventually.”

“Or maybe you
wouldn’t have, and you would’ve thought I was just some stupid
bitch who just cared about the size of your package.”

“No. You didn’t
chase me for two years just for my cock. I
know
that. I just had a rough time believing you could really want a
fucked-up soldier who had women paying to suck him off twice a
night.”

“I would’ve
probably been intimidated had I known, but I would’ve still wanted
you. I can’t imagine not wanting you.”

Aw hell, I hadn’t
even thought about that angle on things. “You have nothing to be
intimidated by. From those women, or the ones who came after. You
know what you do to me. No one else has even come close to making me
feel the way you do. In or out of bed.”