CADEnce (Deception Book 2) (2 page)

My heart was on a rampage, raging war with my ribcage. “When you say
landed,
you mean crashed?”

He stared straight at me, his eyes finding focus as he leaned forward. “There was no crash, sir. The plane landed perfectly and a car came. Men went on board and came out with a woman. She was unconscious and then they placed her in the car.”

My woman, my fiancée, the love of my life was alive . . . but taken, which meant she could be found and whoever had stolen what was mine would die painfully, choking on his own blood.

I couldn’t breathe. The anger, fear and relief all bombarded me at once. There was no air. My phone vibrated against my leg, grounding me. I slipped it free but the number was unknown.

“Who’s this?”

I heard a gasp then a drop of the phone. Then . . . her!

“I’m sorry. I’m going to get ready now.”

I scrambled to loosen the hood, pulling off my hat and glasses, trying to suck in oxygen. My Faye.

“Faye . . . Faye . . .”

The line was dead.

The tweaker’s audible gasp brought me back. God, of course he would recognize me, fucking figures. Why was he scrambling for the door? Usually they scrambled towards me.

Turning to me, his head shook from side to side as his wide eyes filled with fear and confusion. “You were there. Is this a test? Please don’t kill me.”

Shit, he was tripping out on something; a bad batch of whatever he pumped into those veins. He was so pale you’d have thought the Devil had appeared to him.

“Dude, relax, you’re about to stroke out.” I moved towards him but he flinched and started crying. I banged on the adjoining wall to get Jenson’s attention.

I heard his door open and close before the back of the van opened. The tweaker spilled free, landing in a heap at Jenson’s feet. “It is him! He killed Rahul and stole the woman!”

It took five seconds for it to register. A further two for me to collapse to my knees. And one more before his name left my lips in disbelief. My brother . . . my twin brother . . . ”Dante!”

‘PLEASE FUCK ME, MR. TROY.’

‘Please fuck me, Mr. Troy.’

‘Please fuck me, Mr. Troy.’

My insides were disintegrating, I was dying. He wasn’t lying. It was all there like a horror movie playing back at me. The pleasure on my face a betrayal to Cade, to us, to what we were to become. Did I deserve this? I knew loving Cade after loving Dante would cause people to talk, but no one knew what we went through. No one knew how much it hurt when he left and never looked back, and all for what? A misunderstanding. I waited. I shouldered the guilt of what I felt needed to be done for Dante to have a better future and this was what he had done with it.

He was so far gone. Broken beyond repair. He functioned on depravity, humiliation, power and retribution for something that never even happened. What a waste of life, of a son, a brother and a man I would have loved forever.

“Turn it off. You’ve made your point!”

I glowered and he gestured to Malik with a chin jerk to turn it off, his grip on my arm loosening to release me. My mind was retelling my entire life in snap shots blinking image after image, memories happy and sad rapidly into the forefront of my mind causing a headache to form. I needed to be away from him. I needed to let this all sink in and I needed a plan because there was no way in hell I was marrying him and giving him a child to raise.

I needed Cade.
Cade!
Emotions overflowed in me, buckling my legs. My heart fractured inside my chest. He loved me . . . what did he think happened? The reporter mentioned a plane crash. Oh, God! Dante was so twisted!

“Plane crash?” I hiccupped on the sorrow crawling up my throat. His answering smirk caused goose bumps to scatter over my pale skin. I looked and felt like a ghost. He had sucked the life from me. The pain was so explosive it ricocheted through every fiber, destroying me. I loved this man. I gave him seven years. I knew he was possessive, but cruel? Evil? No, this wasn’t the man who left; this man had fed on hate and spite and morphed into a monster.

“Poetic, no? You all thought I had died in the plane I should have been on. My own family just accepted the loss! No surprise they accepted yours too!” Leaning down he palmed my face in his grip, forcing me to stare into the angry black abyss of his gaze.

“He just accepted your death! The fucking weasel was always the weak one! He doesn’t care about you. He just wanted what was mine! He hated that I was superior to him.”

“Cade loves you, Dante! You’re his brother. He never once made a move on me when we were together!”

His features contorted into a sneer and he pushed me away from him. “He always looked at you like a lost puppy! He planned to take you from me. Acting all fucking whipped and coming to your aid WHEN YOU SHOULD HAVE COME TO ME!”

His anger ignited the atmosphere, every hair rising on my body. My instincts controlled my movements making me back away, one arm wrapping around my stomach to protect the life inside. His eyes flared as he stalked towards me. “You don’t need to protect my child from ME!”

Malik grasped Dante’s shoulder.

“Take your fucking hand off me if you want to keep it.”

“The press will be here any second. That reporter was just the start,” Malik warned.

My insides churned and my head was fuzzy with the overload, too much happening and too much knowledge suddenly available at the same time. I couldn’t process everything.

“This isn’t real.”

I laughed. I couldn’t stop it from pouring out of me, my hysterical cackles loud in the mounting silence. Tears stained my cheeks and my stomach muscles tightened and ached.

“Shit, she broke.” Malik sighed, making me laugh even more until my giggles became shattered sobs.

“This isn’t real. I died, or I’m dreaming. Argh! Wake me up!” I dragged myself to my feet; both men were looking at me with furrowed brows but they weren’t real. “Cade! Wake me up! Wake me up!” I crashed my fists down on the chest of the man wearing Cade’s beautiful face. “Wake me up!” My screams left my throat burning.

The hit to my cheek shocked me silent. The knuckles from his backhanded slap impacted my cheekbone, leaving a violent throb. He caught me before I could fall.

“Calm down,” he warned. “And Star . . .” I turned my head to him. “Don’t ever call me by his name again. You need to pull yourself together. You have a press release to prepare for!”

My mouth dropped open. There was no way I could do that; I didn’t even know what I was going to say.

“You tell them everything has been a misunderstanding and you took some time off to prepare for a secret wedding. You’ve been on this island off the grid so you didn’t know of any news of a plane crash and have kept in contact with your agent who kept all this from you.”

My head was spinning, my body shaking. His grip tightened on my arms. “You will tell them that or we play them the footage. What would everyone think of their little starlet then? Crawling around like a dog. Pissing herself and then begging me to fuck her. What would Cade think of you getting off on being used and watched like a filthy whore?”

My heart squeezed too tightly, despair gnawing at my insides. “I hate you! I don’t deserve this, Dante! What happened to you?”

“You happened!”

I remembered a different man. A storm had started brewing when we were together, the grey clouds gathered with his moods, but it was nothing compared to the black skies that eclipsed the Dante before me now. A man who broke his friend’s hand. A man who killed.

“I’ll tell the police you killed Theo!”

His hand moved to my throat, his breath heating my face as he spoke in a deathly quiet voice. “Did I? Prove it.” Oh, God. Was he lying about killing Theo? Was that monster still out there? “I’ll let Theo have you if you don’t do as you’re told.”

Bile rose, filling my mouth.

“Dante she’s choking.” Malik’s voice echoed in my thoughts as a fuzzy hue stole my sight. I was released from the deadly grip, vomit spewing onto the floor.

“I warned you.”

My eyes shot up to see Dante grab Malik’s hand from his shoulder and pin it to the table. No one had time to react when the letter opener rose in Dante’s other hand and plunged down into Malik’s.

Then the hue stole me completely.

I FELT JENSON’S EYES ON me as Frank, Taylor and Sed filed into the hotel room. I knew he saw the side of me that had been hidden for years; the monster that resided in the darkest parts of me, slowly peeling back my skin from the inside and crawling to the surface. I didn’t stop it; I needed that side of me for what was to come.

I knew this wasn’t going to be easy, but to be honest, I was hoping it wasn’t. My body craved bloodshed, yearning for a reason to rip some fucker to shreds and watch their pain morph into agony. That side of me crept closer and I became jittery with the rage simmering inside.

Dante was the academic and I was more the “rough around the edges” type. I coasted through School I dabbled in drugs and alcohol, partied hard on the weekends with Jenson and our friends. This consisted of bare knuckle fighting, beer flowing on tap, and girls eager to please; sometimes in twos or threes. The thing about teenage boys is when they can’t have the one they want, they have many of the ones they can.