by K. V. Rose
How well she took it.
I think, too, about how good it felt to be gentle to her. To care for her.
Fuck her.
She’ll be good for Jameson.
He’ll fucking love her. He’ll fuck her brains out every chance he gets. Then she’ll fuck him over too and he can beat the fuck out of her. She’s perfect for this.
“I asked you a question.”
Slowly, she nods, and I see the fear coming into her eyes.
“You never asked me who it was.”
I watch her throat bob as she swallows. I see the cuts from the knife against her throat last night. I think about what she said Colton did to her before I got there.
Fuck her. Fuck him.
“Who was it?” Her voice is little more than a whisper. A lock of hair falls over one eye as she stares at me, and she doesn't move it. It’s a shame, because I want to see her entire face. Even when I hate her, even when she’s fucked me over like everyone else in my life, she’s beautiful. And I hate that I think that. I hate that the haze of alcohol and her has clouded my judgement.
I hate the thoughts warring within me. The rage threading in around the empathy.
Because I would’ve betrayed me, too.
“Do you really want to know?” I press, because I can. “Or are you just asking because I prompted you to? Do you ever think for yourself? Have you ever thought for yourself?”
She bares her teeth, looking almost like a rabid dog. A very pretty dog, but rabid all the same. “Tell me, Max,” she tries again, more demanding. Her voice is low. Quiet. I like it that way. “Tell me who they are.”
“Were,” I correct her. “Who they were.”
Her expression of rage changes to confusion as she furrows her brow, hugging the blanket closer to her body. “They’re…dead?” she whispers, almost hopefully. “Both of them?”
I nod once, enjoying the range of emotions on her pretty face.
“What happened, Max?” I don’t like the way her voice has gone soft, as if she’s already pitying me.
I clasp my hands together tighter, keeping my eyes on her. It’s hard to focus, all the rum going straight to my head. I didn’t eat last night before Lucas. This morning, I had nothing. I shouldn’t have drunk so much, because I’ll end up saying things I never wanted to say, but her green eyes are so fucking compelling, the trust she showed me on the bed so goddamn arousing, I can’t hold back.
Even though right now, I fucking hate her.
“The girl? He killed her.” Her mouth falls open. “Blunt force trauma to the head.” She shifts back against the arm of the couch, as if she can get away from me. “The man?” I reach inside my pocket, but there’s no fucking playing card there. I clench my fist around nothing. “I killed him.”
Shock registers in her eyes as they widen, and her body is frozen, her mouth still hanging open as she tries to decipher what I’ve just told her.
“He was my father.” I enjoy the way her fingers tremble under her chin as she struggles to hold the blanket up. “That house? That was my childhood home.”
She doesn’t even blink. She just stares at me.
I don’t like it.
“What are you thinking?” I snap at her.
She looks at me blankly for a moment, taking shallow breaths. Her voice is quiet when she finally answers me, “I don’t understand you.”
I smile at her. “You don’t want to.”
Seemingly out of nowhere, she blurts out, “Did you buy Dante?”
The mention of his name from her mouth has my entire body coiled, and I see her swallow, as if she’s nervous.
“No,” I answer her.
“Then how did you—”
“You want to talk about Dante?” I ask her, the warning clear in my question.
Despite the warning, she doesn’t back down. “You regret it.” She doesn’t phrase it as a question. “You regret shooting him.” Her voice breaks on the last word, but she doesn’t look away from me.
“Addison,” I warn her, sitting up straighter, hands on my thighs as I angle toward her on the couch. “We’re not fucking talking about—”
“He was your friend.” Her words are fast, as if she’s scared to get them out but she doesn’t stop. “He was your friend, and you shot him because—”
“Addison.”
“Because h-he touched me. You shot him because you thought he’d taken something that you wanted, and you—”
I move fast, my body in motion before my mind can catch up. My fingers are in her hair, my hand around her throat before I can think.
I push her to the floor, her head colliding with the hardwood.
“Stop.”
Her hands go to my wrist as I pin her down by her throat. “You killed him because of me and you—”
“I didn’t,” I tell her, pressing harder against her neck, her nails digging into my wrist, the blanket between us. “I did it because he betrayed me.” I feel my throat grow tight, and it’s hard to get the words out.
Addison stops digging her nails into me and stares up at me with wide, fearful eyes.
“He betrayed me,” I tell her again, “and he knew.” I move my fingers from her hair, slam my fist on the floor beside her head. “He fucking knew what they did to me. What I had to lose. He knew.” I don’t think she’s breathing underneath me, but even though I’m staring at her, I’m not really seeing her.
Dante was the only person I ever told.
He’s the only person who didn’t try to steal my secrets, like fucking Mamie did.
I told him, because he used to have nightmares too. For what they did to him, he’d wake up screaming too.
How was it, he once asked me, that I could do the same thing to other people that had been done to us? How could I live with myself?
I’d told him that it was easy for someone like me.
What I didn’t tell him was that I’d been forced to, since I was child. That my father once took a knife to my groin for not kicking a sex slave in the head, then for not putting my fingers inside of her. That he held a knife over my dick until I forced my entire fist into the girl, the both of us sobbing as he watched.
I told Dante I had no problems with what I did.
I told myself that I didn’t fuck around with kids, and I never again personally hurt people who didn’t deserve it.
Not until Addison. Not until I knew I had a chance to make right with the one person I’d betrayed. The one person who deserves my love.
And Dante knew.
He knew what I could’ve lost.
He knew about Ollie, and he still fucking betrayed me.
“Tell him it gets better.”
Fuck him.
Fuck Addison.
She’s why Dante is dead. Evora.
She did that.
“Max,” she whispers, and I feel her throat move beneath my hand as she speaks.
I realize my eyes are closed and I snap them open.
“How can you live with yourself?” Dante had asked me.
“It’s easy,” I told him.
But the real answer is that I can’t. I can’t fucking live with myself.
“He knew,” I tell her, “and he still…he still chose you over me.”
Addison’s eyes are lined with tears and I hate her for it. I haul her up by her throat, snatch away her blanket and set her in my lap.
She grabs my upper arms to steady herself and I flinch. “What happened to you?” she whispers, gliding her hands up my shoulders, careful to avoid the gauze. Her hands cup my face and I want to throw her off. I want to hurt her for pitying me.
Instead, I let go of her throat, trail my hands down her waist and grip her tightly as she stares up at me.
“Let go, Max,” she says softly, repeating the words I told her earlier, on the bed, when I was manipulating her. “What happened?”
I want to hate her.
I want to hurt her.
I do none of those things. Instead, seeing
her bravery, seeing the way she doesn’t shy away from me, even after what I just did to her, I cling to her small body, jerking her closer to me, until her forehead is against mine as I war with myself.
She fucking betrayed me…but I would have done the same.
Brave.
She’s fucking brave.
“Who hurt you?” she asks.
I close my eyes, see it all flash in my head. My father. His men. The stick. Ollie. Ollie. The gurney. The extension cords. The skin flaying off of my back. The women I was forced to hurt. My mother’s screams. Oliver’s. The blood all over her face, all over my father’s fist.
All over my brother.
My stomach convulses, and I grip Addison tighter.
Her hands move from my face to around my back and she hugs me, as if she’s holding me, instead of the other way around.
“You can tell me, Max,” she says sweetly, her arms wrapped tight around me. This girl that I’ve broken and used and manipulated and hurt. “I’m not afraid of your monsters.”
I open my mouth to say something, anything, but the only sound that comes out is a strangled sob and I fucking hate myself for it. I hate myself, and I tense, expecting her to push me away. To slap me. To fucking scream at me or hurt me or leave me.
Don’t leave me.
“They used to…my father used to…” I can’t say it. The words are there, trying to scramble up my throat, trying to tear their way out of my mouth, but I can’t say them.
She brings her hand back to my face, pulls away from me just enough to take me in. My eyes snap to hers as she runs her palm over my face, so gentle. “He hurt you.”
I nod, because that’s all I can do.
I can’t tell her.
I can’t tell anyone.
“He let other people hurt you.”
And he made me hurt other people.
My fingers dig into her skin so deep I know it has to hurt but I can’t stop it. My eyes are burning but I can’t cry. I won’t. Not for her. Dante. Evora.
Maybe when I see Ollie’s face.
Maybe when I stare into his grey eyes, listen to his soft hums of happiness.
But for her? No. I won’t break for her.
Her fingers glide against my face as she feels every part of me. As she takes the broken pieces of my soul and holds them in her hands. She doesn’t look away from me.
“When you were a kid.”
I nod again, unable to look away from her beautiful green eyes. If I close my eyes, if I turn my head, I’ll be there again. At my father’s mercy. I’ll hear Ollie’s screams.
I’ll be there, and I might never leave.
“Well you know what, Max?” she asks me, her eyes narrowing.
I feel myself tense, at the mercy of her next words. As small as she is against me, as much damage as I can do to her—as much as I’ve already done—if she hurts me now, if she betrays me again, it’ll destroy me.
Her hand stills on my face, one still around my neck, her fingers in my hair. “Fuck him.” She leans in close, presses a soft kiss to my lips, but her words are anything but. “He’s dead, and you survived.” She kisses me again. I don’t kiss her back.
I can’t.
I can’t move.
“Fuck. Him.”
He betrayed me.
My own father. The man who was supposed to love us and care for us and help us grow, he betrayed us.
When I look into Addison’s green eyes, shining with unshed tears, fierce and angry on my behalf, I know it’s all bullshit.
Because she betrayed me too.
For a moment, he just stares at me. His eyes are shining, but no tears fall. As the seconds tick by, I regret what comes after this.
Maybe I shouldn’t do it.
Maybe I should stay.
Those thoughts echo in my head, along with ideas of how he was hurt. How he was created. What made him this.
I wonder if he could be different because there is something human in him, after all. He’s not entirely a monster.
Like Satan, he was born with at least an ounce of goodness.
But just like the devil, he learned how to use it to make himself appear human. Because the next words out of his mouth aren’t about his father, or his past, or any of the people that turned a little boy into my worst nightmare.
His next words are simply, “You lied to me.”
My breath catches, my hand still on his face, one around his neck, his fingers digging into my waist.
He blinks, and where I thought he might actually cry, he looks instead as if he might kill me. Because Max likes to hurt people. It’s the only thing that numbs his own pain.
And he won’t let go of it, because he enjoys the horrors.
I don’t regret it anymore, what comes next. That moment is gone, vanished like the glimpse into Max’s grief.
Instead, I leap to my feet while I still can, and he lets me go, because he thinks he’s going to win this too.
I don’t think Max is used to losing.
I grab my shirt from the floor, my pants, too. And when I’m dressed, I run my hand through my hair, turning to face him. The alcohol has me feeling a little off-balance, but Max is actually drunk.
I know he is, because he stands to his feet, and even though his gun is on the table that was right beside him, for once, he doesn’t reach for it.
“You lied to me, baby girl.” He says those words as if he didn’t just expose himself to me. As if he didn’t just reveal that he had a heart.
As if what just happened was nothing.
He’s compartmentalized it. Put it all aside.
He steps toward me, a smile on his face, his eyes red and the tears long gone. I move closer to the coffee table, careful not to look at the gun.
“What are you talking about, Max?” My words are clear, even as my hands tremble at my sides. I ball them into fists and Max keeps his eyes on me.
“Have you spoken to anyone since you’ve been here? Anyone that doesn’t live in this house?” He asks the questions like a man that already knows the answers.
My stomach flips. I think about his phone call. His eyes, so intent on me. The way his hand tightened on my hip.
He knew.
He fucking knew.
But the truth is, I haven’t spoken to anyone outside of this house. That was Mamie. Always.
“What?” I ask him, shaking my head. He steps closer, and I change my direction, angling toward the coffee table as I step backward. “No, I—”
“No?”
“No, Max, what are you—”
“You know that if you’re lying to me, I’ll fuck you up.”
Before I can move closer to the table, he lunges for me, gripping my wrist in his hand, yanking me toward him and grabbing my other arm. I try to yank free, but his grip only tightens.
I can smell the alcohol on his breath, see the promise of brutality in his eyes. It’s the same look he had when he led me and Dante to the woods. The same look he had before he killed the man that shot him. Before he slit Colton’s throat.
Before he hurt me.
I lean back, away from him and those dark, dangerous eyes. But my pelvis tilts upward, my torso shifting closer as I lean away, and I can feel his cock against my stomach.
I ignore it, focusing on his eyes instead of how much fucking with me turns him on. “I’m not lying,” I say, even as my core tightens, my knees trembling.
“I’ve heard some very disturbing things about your family, baby girl.”
Confusion washes over me. I have no idea what he’s talking about. I don’t have to fake this surprise. For some reason, it doesn’t make me feel better.
“I’ve heard that your brother is an informant to the DEA. That he’s planning to get the money to buy you back, and at the same time, have me arrested.”
What? “No,” I tell him, meaning it as I shake my head, my mind spinning. “Danik isn’t…he doesn’t want anything to do with this world—”
“That
’s exactly why those allegations make sense though, isn’t it?”
I glance past him, thinking as I stare at the wall of windows, the curtains pulled closed, streams of morning light peeking through the cracks.
Danik wouldn’t do that.
Danik would want nothing to do with this, and he wouldn’t put our father in jail. Not because they ever got along, but he wouldn’t go through the trouble of working with the feds unless…
Unless it was for me.
“Look at me.” Max’s cold words draw my gaze back to his.
“I really don’t know—”
“I know you want to leave here in one piece,” he interrupts me. “I know you don’t want to be used for the rest of your life. But you understand that if you were planning on doing something like running, or turning me in, or otherwise fucking me over, I’d make Colton’s death look peaceful compared to Danik’s? And yours?”
I feel that familiar anger returning, under the fear. Under the desire to find something good in Max. Underneath the little fantasy in my head of what he might feel for me. Two broken souls, both fucked from the beginning. For a moment there, I thought that could make us something.
That could make us a force.
Together.
But Max is too caught up in his own pain to give a fuck about mine—past or present. And as far as my future is concerned, he wants to be the cause of all the pain there.
“It doesn’t matter,” I tell him, and I see the surprise in his face as he raises his brows. “You’re going to sell me anyway.” The finality of that is a loud roaring in my ear. No matter what I guessed about him, no matter what he admitted to me, that’s never going to change. It doesn’t make it hurt any less though as I stare at his chest, unable to hold his gaze. “You’re going to let terrible things happen to me. Why does it matter if you do them, or someone else does?”
He lets go of one wrist, tangles his fingers in my hair and presses his brow to mine. I inhale, trying to catch my breath, but I can’t smell his familiar scent anymore.
It’s just the alcohol. Just the one thing that broke him down, but even that’s temporary. There’s no drug in the world that could get Max Bennett to show his heart. Not for long.
“And if you could choose—me, or the man I’m going to give you to—who would you choose, Addison?”
