My lip quivered as I tried to restrain the sob. Having heard the news I didn’t want to believe, I clutched my stomach. “That’s not true,” I responded, barely audible. “I wanted this baby. I stopped taking my medication to make sure the baby was safe. Why don’t you believe me?”
“I think that’s utter bullshit, and I’m insulted you think you can lie to me. Admit it; you wanted this to happen. You never wanted to be pregnant. I bet you’re very fucking relieved right now.” He slowly paced toward my bed. A shadow hit his face, but didn’t hide the return of the emotionless monster. “Are you happy now, Nik?”
I kept shaking my head. “No. The blood tests are wrong. I didn’t—I didn’t—” Chocking on my sobs, I barely managed to shout a defiant, “NO—”
He abruptly strode toward me and held my head to keep it from shaking. “Stop,” closing his eyes, he spoke through his teeth, “fucking talking. Don’t say a goddamn thing. I knew you could be thoughtless at times, but this—this takes the fucking cake.”
“Since you don’t even believe me when I’m telling the truth”—I inhaled deeply and wiped the tears from my cheeks with the back of my hand—“are you going to divorce me now?”
“Goddamn it!” he shouted and stood upright. The timbre of his voice echoed off the walls and startled me. “Is that what you want? Because you’re off to very good start.” The shout was gone and replaced by something more menacing. The contradiction of displeasure and stillness.
“Maybe it was for the best.” I hid my hurt, trying to make sense of the loss. If I had to bear the fault for the loss, I might as well have borne all of it. But there was one thing I couldn’t let slip. If I showed my anger over what he did to Melonie, he would go after her. I made a mistake in mentioning her name once, and it proved enough to send Eric off. Despite her mistakes, I couldn’t shake the feeling that she didn’t deserve it.
I wasn’t in the position to let him know. Not at the moment. The best thing I could’ve done for her is to never let her name cross my lips in Eric’s presence without a knife behind my back. No matter how livid I was with what he did to her, or what she did to me, I would not be held accountable for her death.
I blamed the loss of our baby on him. The stress he forced me to endure. His brand of poison was so deep inside me, it spread to anything and everything innocent and good in our life. “We wouldn’t have made good parents.”
“Maybe that was your thought. But it was your fucking thought alone. It wasn’t up to you decide how it should end.”
“I want you to leave.”
He grabbed my chin, his harsh grip stung my flesh. “No, Nik,” he seethed with a menacing quiet. “You gave your body to me and it was a permanent deal. Being that you damaged something that belongs to me, you’ll excuse me if your life suddenly becomes hell for however long I choose to remain pissed off at you. ‘Cause, baby…I’m fucking livid. Mutilate you, torture you, kill you, and tell no one where the body is buried livid.
“You haven’t seen the full extent of how twisted I can be. Did you finish watching the DVD Tamala gave you? I don’t think you did, even if you did, you should know that I’m far more lethal on my own. As beautifully scarred as your skin is, it doesn’t have my brand on it.” He fingered the scars on my forearms, focusing on the ones he made the night I found out the full extent of his monstrous deeds. “These don’t count. Maybe I should do something about that. Your body wears the pain that other people have inflicted on you. My pain? No. It’s a problem I think I’m going to resolve very fucking soon.”
I jerked back from his hold. My eyes stung with bitter, angry tears. “Get the fuck out of my room, Eric!”
He continued to be unmoved and inexpressive.
Pushed to the limit of what I could endure, I forgot my pain and stood tall, nearly ripping the IV drip from my arm. “GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY ROOM!”
He stared at me and I stared back, unafraid.
A nurse peeked in the doorway. “Is everything all right?”
“My husband is causing undue stress,” I told her. The hoarseness took a hold of my words and made them barely intelligible. “Can you ask him to leave, or get a security guard to remove him? I’m” —locking eyes with Eric, my stare turned frigid— “afraid of him. He threatened to kill me.”
My last words were the ones that made him march forward and nearly topple me over. He grabbed the crown of my hair, harshly, forcing my neck back with a harsh jerk. He pressed forward, pushing his form against me. “Really, Nikki?” he asked testily against my lips. The heat of his breath, burned my lips with a fiery heat. “Are you aboso-fucking-lutely sure you want travel down this road with me?”
“Yes, Eric,” I forced through clenched teeth.
He looked at the ceiling for a moment, and took a painstakingly slow time to level his eyes at me. He plastered a deviant half-smile on his face as he nodded his head at something unknown. “Enjoy your fucking stay.” He released me with such an abruptness I felt like I was pushed. “It’s the last time you will ever feel this comfortable again.”
I staggered before finding my bearings again.
Without a goodbye, he left the room.
Completely aghast, the nurse blinked between me and the door. “Mrs. Brenton, if you need me to contact the local domestic abuse shelter—”
“I got it,” I snapped at her and got back in bed. Rolling over, I turned to face the pillow. I clutched my stomach. A womb without a baby. Disappointment took hold. I projected every ounce of the hurt and pain into my pillow.
“NIKKI?”
STARTLED BY A familiar voice, I slipped up in my hospital bed. The man before me was the same one I saw the night Tamala almost died, and never saw again—Dom. He looked different out of the flannel shirt and jeans. Dressed in a button up and slacks, he looked liken to a professional hitman.
Pulling the sheet up to my neck, I tried to cover myself. He appeared to suddenly remember how to be a gentleman and turned his back on me.
“I’m supposed to take you home and make you stay there,” he said over his shoulder.
“Your orders came from whom?” I questioned through vexation. “Because whoever ordered you to do that—”
“Ethan did, Nikki.”
Slipping into a furious anger, my body began to shake.
I couldn’t believe Eric. Not only was I his emotional stress ball—and the woman he no longer believed in—now I was his prisoner in the house my mother gave to me?
“Clean clothes are in the thing—” he pointed in the direction of the armoire. “I’ll wait here until you’re ready to leave.”
“You can’t—”
“I’m not going anywhere until Ethan decides you can be alone.”
“Decides?” I restrained what I was feeling and slipped out of bed, showing my compliance through my silence, when I planned to be anything but.
“You won’t get any ‘poor you’ from me. Lost my chance at being a godfather, because of you.”
I bit my lip, hard, to avoid expelling a string of venomous threats that I wasn’t sure I’d be able to stop once they slipped from my lips. Taking my clothes and my phone out of the armoire, I went inside the bathroom, intending to call someone to help me, but the one person I could call should’ve only been contacted during dire straits, and I didn’t want to invite him back into my life.
When my phone rang and displayed an unknown number across the screen, I jumped out of my skin.
“H-hello?”
“How are you, pretty girl?”
I looked at the phone for recognition. The man’s voice, though I’d never recalled hearing it before, brought about a terrifying emotion. “I think you have the wrong number.”
“On the contrary, Nikki. You are the exact woman I want to speak with.”
“W-who are you?”
“Victor Mejía, pretty girl,” the throaty, heavily accented voice responded.
A chill worked up my spine and made me shudder with displeasure. “A-and
what do you want?”
“I’d say it’s time we met.”
“Time we met?” I asked. “I don’t even know who you are.”
“Oh, you do, and if you need help, I’m the powerful man to get you anything you need.”
I glanced at the closed bathroom door. “I don’t want your help.”
“We have a common enemy, Nikki.”
“We do?”
“Who do you think switched your test results and made your husband think you were responsible for killing the baby? I’m looking at your real file right now. And it wasn’t your fault, pretty girl. These things happen.”
My hand shook as the anger rifled through me, knowing only one person who would go to such lengths to make Eric react.
“I’m going to guess through you passing dead air that you want my help. You want Preston out of your life, and I can certainly do that for you. We’ll be in touch.”
He hung up, leaving me staring at the phone, and wondering exactly what type of help he’d provide, how he knew Preston and the nature of Preston’s intentions, and what the help I didn’t ask for would cost me in return.
It was more of Eric’s past coming around to hurt me. The feeling Victor left me with made me think I reached the point of no return. If I thought things couldn’t get any worse, I was certainly wrong.
GIVEN THE SIGHT of the numerous cars in the driveway, I rethought my decision to return home. It was one of the few times in which I no longer felt comfortable in my mother’s home. The memories Eric and I made there soiled the few good memories I had—and there weren’t many.
When I opened the door, the clanking of glasses from people inside made me pause. I padded down the hall, my steps falling heavy and slow, reluctant to see the scene unfolding in the formal dining room. At the long formal table sat a handful of men. Looking as though he had not a care in the world, Eric sat at the head of the table. Half-eaten food and half-full wine glasses decorated the smooth wood surface.
Upon sight of me, the corner of Eric’s mouth curled up, crushing me with its devious nature. I suddenly felt stark naked with the way the men all turned to ogle me. One of the gentleman in attendance licked his lips as though he expected me to be dessert.
Pressing down on my stomach, I tried to keep the pit from spreading. Shaking my head at the unsaid, but inferred, I walked backward, Eric’s last words to me played constantly in my head. The heat rushed up my spine as a fire would spread once exposed to a sudden burst of oxygen. The anger was unbearable and consuming.
Lurching forward, I grabbed the half empty bottle of wine on the table and chucked it at Eric’s head. He dodged it at the perfect time. The glass shattered upon impact once it hit the wall behind him, staining it with red wine. The chiming sound of the glass shattering made a measured and eerie sound on the floor.
“You sick bastard,” I spat at him, having trouble finding the volume and conviction in my voice. “I’m not Estelle. I will never let you make me into her. I will never fuck a bunch of men so you can get off, so I can prove something to you. I’m not going to pay for something I had no control over. Not this way. Not anyway you fucking choose. You will not steal what’s left of my sanity…” My mouth continued to spout off venomous words.
Effortlessly and smoothly, Eric stood slowly from the head of the table. As he leisurely walked toward me, his expression never changed, nor did he show any distress at the threats and derogatory terms I hurled at him. My mouth was a separate entity that spilled all of his secrets. I mentioned the names of the people he killed and exactly how he killed them, amongst many other things he preferred in the bedroom that made the entire table gasp.
My words grew quiet when I heard a commotion from the guest bathroom. Two women were present and fell still when they saw me.
It was then I noticed the rings on their fingers and the rings of the men at the table. It was then I recognized one of the doctors that tended to me in the E.R. before I was transferred to a private room.
Eric’s actions were so abrupt, I jumped. Now standing beside me, he linked his arm into mine and jerked me toward him. “In the kitchen,” he pressed against my ear with a bridled anger. When I didn’t move, he barked, “Now!”
I fought with silent resistance, causing him to yank me inside the kitchen with his harsh grip on my arm.
The minute my foot slid against the divide between the kitchen and the hallway, he grabbed me by the shoulders and slammed me against the door of the refrigerator.
Leaning down toward my face, his heated breath splayed across my lips as his eyes searched mine with a controlled, menacing stare. “You…have two choices right now,” he started in a whisper, “you can either go back in the dining room, apologize, and sit at the dinner table like a civilized human being—or I can think of a more colorful way to make you do what any sane person should do. The question is, do you want to be made to scream your apology, or are you going to be a good girl and do anything and everything I tell you to do?”
He took in a long, delayed breath as his hand slipped across my neck. “Your decision?”
The longer I remained quiet, the tighter his grip on my neck became. He pressed his last question again without a hint of kindness.
“I’ll apologize,” I relented, my submission stated begrudgingly through my teeth.
A slow comfort-stealing grin spread across his lips. His eyes held onto a coldness I hadn’t witnessed in a long time. “Get to it.” He let me go and nodded in the direction of the dining room.
When I reached the head of the table, I fiddled with the back of the chair at the other end as all eyes fell on me. I remained silent until Eric returned to his seat. He looked at me with expectancy. It was apparent in his demeanor that he was seconds away from crossing the table and performing the things he promised to do to me only minutes earlier.
The Nikki who was vulnerable over having lost her mother would’ve done anything Eric asked of her only to get along. When I allowed Eric in, I unsheathed a secret I pretended didn’t exist. I wanted so desperately to cure my loneliness. Eric became my cure for everything I thought I needed to fix. None of it mattered when I slept beside the man almost every night and felt the division I’d lived with—for far too many years—return to me.
Beyond it all, I knew Eric purposely provoked me. He did this on purpose. He held a dinner almost in a celebration after I’d lost our first-born. I was still bleeding from the miscarriage, and he showed no semblance of sympathy for me.
He knew I would react this way. He had to have. He wanted me to react this way and embarrass me. The monster inside him resurfaced and Eric’s steel-plated exterior returned, hardening his heart and shutting down his ascension into the man he claimed I made him become.
Love. Addiction. Obsession. Need. All of it was tossed aside in an instant, because I was mourning the loss of my first child. The tangible loss trumped all. I no longer wanted to bow my head and get on my knees to appease him because I was afraid of losing him.
In the moments I stared at him, everything I felt for him was pushed down for something much stronger.
“I hope you know”—I gestured grandly to the table—“all of you are celebrating the miscarriage of a broken woman. You are also amongst the company of a sick bastard who gets off on making his wife feel like less than she is.
“I’m sure he shows you the charm at work, maybe he doesn’t. Either way, if you knew all the things I knew about Dr. Eric Brenton, none of you would sit comfortably in his company. My outburst earlier, wasn’t just a delusional woman spouting lies. Eric Brenton isn’t Eric Brenton. His real name is Ethan Brae. And Ethan Brae…” I locked eyes with Eric from across the table. “…is a serial-killer.”
He lowered his lids over his eyes, casting a shadow over his light brown eyes. The smugness in his expression was completely wiped away for a scowl so severe, it created tiny lines around his mouth.
He didn’t need to warn me away from the table, I was done. Before turning on my
heels, and heading upstairs, I snuck a steak knife from the table and hid it on my person. Panting and oblivious, Kifo followed closely behind me while I navigated my way to the bedroom.
I sprawled out on the bed, trying to find comfort in my discomfort. Kifo jumped up on the bed. Nesting, she decided to take her nap while lying partially on top of me. Too emotionally and physically exhausted to chastise her, I rested my hand on top of her head and closed my eyes.
The hushed conversations emanating from the open door, down the stairs, served as the only noise that filled the bedroom.
Eventually, things grew quiet.
His steady, measured footsteps echoed from the stairwell, and continued down the hall, nearing my bedroom.
Nearest the opposing wall inside my room, his steps paused.
I opened my eyes, unable to find Kifo anywhere on the bed.
Eric stood opposite the bed, resting against the wall. With his chin touching his chest, he stared at me from underneath his thick eyelashes. There was an empty bottle of wine in his hand, dangling just beside the outside of his thigh.
“If you’re wondering where your dog is, she’s with someone else until you can prove to me that you have some goddamn sense. Tell you what, Nik. I’ll give you a chance to fix this: I’ll forgive you and get your dog back if you apologize to me, and…be very convincing about how sorry you are.”
Unyielding, I glared at him.
His tongue darted inside his cheek before his jaw clenched. We remained that way, glowering at one another for many moments of silence. “This is your last chance. Still want to forgo the apology, Nik?” The timbre of his voice was calm, controlled, and almost fringed upon stoicism.
I slipped up and hugged my legs, propping my chin on my knees. “I have nothing to apologize for. You did this to make me out to look like the crazy one. Is this the start of the punishment you promised me in the hospital? Did you think I would lie down and take it? Fuck. You. Eric. I want you out of my house.” It was the first time I’d called it my home and felt comfortable with the term. It was clear from the glimmer of moderate surprise in his eyes, he was fully aware of the shift inside me. It was no longer my mother’s house. It was mine, and on this day, I didn’t want him here.
The Starkest Truth (A Breaking Insanity Novel Book 2) Page 23
