The Filthy Series: The Complete Dark Erotic Serial Novel (17 page)

I closed my eyes against the spinning. I let myself get swept away in the things I always wanted. To the smiling toothless grin of a baby who looked just like me. The baby that Taylor and my mother took from me. My baby. The baby who had to die because Taylor had become careless after Rhett left and stopped using protection. The whack job that did the abortion had butchered it, and I’d had to have multiple emergency surgeries to try and repair the damage. And in the end nothing could save my uterus, which was why I could never have kids again. But I pushed all that from my mind and imagined the baby,
my baby
. I thought of how it would have loved me unconditionally, how it would have been mine. The little eyes looking up at me in wonder. And then Rhett was there too, smiling at us, holding out his hand for me to take with love in his eyes.
Love.

In the few moments before I was gone I basked in that love. Real love that wasn’t hindered and clouded by all the poison I seemed to carry. Maybe I would see them both again. Maybe my baby would greet me at the gates of heaven. Maybe it would forgive me for not being able to save it from the monsters that were supposed to love me. Maybe one day Rhett would be there too and I could finally have my happy ending?

But then I remembered who I was. I remembered the things I had done. The men I had fucked. The guys I had killed. I could feel the blood as it slithered down my arm and pooled on the cool tile floor.

I would never see my baby and I wouldn’t see Rhett either… because I wasn’t going to heaven.

I was going to hell.

The darkness swallows her

Until there’s nothing left

Until she begs for mercy

Until she’s screaming, clawing to breathe

Until she’s gone.

ONE

I stared at him. My father. He stood before me in his kitchen, shirtless—his body nearly in as good shape as mine. I tried to wrap my head around what I just walked in on a few minutes ago. My father standing over Faye’s naked body. Her skin ravaged by hundreds of superficial cuts. There were dark circles under her eyes, her skin as white as a ghost. But not as white as the powder that had been lying in the crease between his thumb and forefinger.

That didn’t just happen.

But it had. And I wanted to punch something. Him. I wanted to wail on him. I wanted to beat his face in. Destroy him. She was in
his
bedroom.
Why is she in his bedroom?
He said he came home and found her there. He found her lying there, ready to fuck him, for cocaine. Ready to do anything he wanted.

I didn’t want it to be true. Was that wrong? Was it so wrong that
I
wanted Faye for my own? That
I’d
had to force myself to stay away this last month. That I had to physically restrain myself from driving over to check on her. She was a problem for me. She made me want things I could never have. And that was bad.

I knew Dad would take care of her. He loved her. There was no question in that. He had been more heartbroken about her leaving than Jessica, her own mother.

“Explain what happened.” I heard myself say, but I sounded far away, even in my own head.

“I already told you son.” Dad laid his hands out on the dark granite counter, spreading his fingers apart. “I came home and she was in there. She has a bad drug problem.”

“Then why didn’t you fucking tell me?” I squeezed my fists hard to keep from running at him, punching him. “You were supposed to take care of her. If you knew she had this problem why didn’t you tell me? She needs help and giving her more of what’s hurting her, isn’t going to help her!”

“I know that, but I didn’t want to see her suffer.” His eyes pleaded with me, begged me to understand his position. We looked nothing alike, not really. I looked like my mom, at least that’s what he said. I couldn’t really remember what she looked like. His eyes were blue with dark hair, while mine were green with light hair.

“So you just let her go back to the streets.”

“I didn’t know that’s where she was going.” He let out a deep breath. “Why didn’t you tell me she was a prostitute?” His words were laced with anger.

“It wasn’t any of your business.”

“It damn-well is my business.”

I frowned. “It doesn’t matter now. She needs help.” I dug my phone out of my pocket. Seeing the little illuminated screen calmed me. I knew about some local rehab places in Dallas. I could get her checked into one today. It didn’t matter the price. I would go into fucking debt to get her the help she needed.

“She doesn’t need your help.”

I glanced up, surprised to hear the venom in Dad’s voice. “Yes, she needs someone’s help. I’m going to get her checked into a clinic.”

“No you aren’t.” Dad shook his head vehemently. “I am very capable of helping her here at home.”

“Really? You’ve done a bang up job of it so far, Dad. Not only is she upstairs naked in your bed willing to fuck you for more cocaine, but her body is mutilated beyond belief.
I’m
taking her and getting her some help.” I shoved my phone in my pocket, deciding I would figure out the number along the way, and moved back toward the stairs.

“No.” Dad stepped in front of me. “I can handle this.”

I stared at him with wide eyes. “Are you kidding me right now? You’re fucking lucky all you got was that split under your eye when I punched you earlier.” Blood still dripped from the superficial wound and a dark purple bruise was already starting to set in beneath his left eye.

The urge to punch him again multiplied underneath my skin like a virus.
He knew she had a problem and he didn’t tell you. Even all those times you called him, he assured you she was fine. He lied to you.

“Why did you lie to me?”

“Lie to you? What are you—”

“When I called, you said she was fine. Doing good. Those were your exact words. Why did you lie to me?” I took a threatening step toward him.

“She didn’t want you to know. She was afraid you would be mad at her, disappointed. She begged me not to tell you,” he said quickly. “I was only respecting her wishes.”

“Since when do you respect anyone?” Dad was a joke, sure, I loved him because he was my dad, but people all over respected him because they feared him. He came off as this understanding, good person on the outside, but I had known him long enough to know that he was far from that. He was conniving. He didn’t do anything unless it served him well, and he sure as hell didn’t protect anyone out of the goodness of his heart. It was how he got to be so big in the contracting business. He took back doors that led to dirty hands, but none of them were as dirty as his own.

“I respect Faye, because she’s my daughter. I protect her because of that. Because I
love
her. Something you wouldn’t understand.”

I rolled my eyes. “Whatever. We’ll hash this out later. For now, I’m getting Faye and taking her to get help.”

I pushed past him and headed back up the stairs.

“She stays here.” He followed me.

Why is he fighting me on this?

I ignored him and took the steps two at a time, moving quickly into the bedroom.

“I’m telling you son. She stays. I’m not gonna have her go to some clinic where people can put her down and potentially hurt her worse. She needs to be with me. With the person who loves her.”

She wasn’t in the bedroom where I’d last seen her, cowering on the floor tears in her eyes. The very image made my heart jump in my chest. It made me ache in ways that didn’t make sense. I didn’t want her to hurt. I wanted her to be happy. I wanted her to see all the good things life had to offer, rather than all the fucked up shit she dealt with once she ran away. But I couldn’t keep it together when I saw her like that. Willing to fuck anyone, even the man who had raised her. It made my stomach churn, made red cover my gaze. It made me want to lash out at her and destroy her. Ruin her, before she had the chance to ruin me.

I moved immediately to the bathroom door and tapped on it with my knuckles. Knuckles that still ached from punching my dad in the face. “Faye, it’s Rhett. Come out okay? I just wanna talk to you.”

There was no answer.

“Now look, you’ve gone and upset her. You’re not helping anyone by being here.”

I tossed a glare over my shoulder before jiggling the knob. To my surprise it gave way, unlocked.

“Faye…” But as I pushed the door open, the rest of my words were sucked from my chest, like someone had turned on a vacuum. Faye was on the floor, her body twisted at an awkward angle. Vomit leaked from her parted lips onto the white tile and blood was smeared around her, dripping from a thick slice on her wrist.

She’s dying.

“No! No!” I fell to my knees and pressed my hand to the wound. “Call the ambulance!” I shouted to Dad, but I kept my eyes on her. On Faye. Her eyes were open, glassy, empty. She stared at me, but she didn’t see me. I knew she didn’t. Not the way I saw her.

She can’t die.

The very thought of that possibility made something in me crack. I couldn’t say what it was. I couldn’t focus on anything. All I could see were her eyes, those vacant, unseeing eyes. I could remember looking into them, into their dark brown pools and seeing something there. Something that made me want more than the stupid pathetic version of my life I was living.

She was trying to leave again. To run. To hide. Like she did after that summer. The summer where she begged me to have sex with her. To make love to her. At the time I’d been shocked, sitting there on the couch across from her. My step-sister who was on a fast track to being a woman. A girl who had laughed at all my corny jokes and made the summer worth it. Made me not miss my new girlfriend so much, Sarah. I didn’t sleep with Faye when she asked, but I had left instead and told myself that one day, things would be different. She wouldn’t be underage. She would be a woman. And if she still felt the same. If she still thought my stupid jokes were funny, then things would be different. But only then.

But that never happened. She was gone before I could blink an eye. That innocent girl. And when I found her again, she wasn’t the same. She was someone else.

Someone who made my blood boil. Who made me want things I didn’t think I’d ever want again. Things that tried to permeate my safe, perfect existence and made me want to step out of my box even though I was disgusted by them. I wanted them. I wanted her.

And here we were. On the floor in my father’s bathroom. Those innocent eyes vacant and lost, blood cooling on the tile floor.
How did we get here?

I pulled her into my arms. Her body limp, her breathing slow. Vomit and blood dripped onto my suit, but I didn’t care. I pressed my forehead to hers and looked into those vacant eyes and did something I hadn’t done in years.

I prayed.

TWO

There were noises. A soft murmuring of voices. They fluttered around me. Permeating my ears with their soft lilting notes, cocooning me in something warm. I liked the noise. I wanted to keep it, to bask in the moments of it forever. But then there was something else.

Pain.

The soft warmth of the murmuring voices was blasted away by the pain. It didn’t seep into me, but slammed into me all at once, the intensity of it all making me cry out. Until I wasn’t just crying out, I was convulsing, gagging. Blinking my eyes against dim lights I saw the blood. A mist of it splattered over me as I continued to retch.