Seducing Virtue (Wicked Trinity Book 3)

by Courtney Lane

  She would never change without my strong hand guiding her, and because she made it clear she hadn’t, she gave me a free pass to get what I wanted easily. “Say the friend you think is dead really isn’t. Say her life depends on your actions. Let’s also say if you come with me, I’ll feel suddenly very charitable and keep her alive. I’ll let her go, and she’ll be free to fuck up someone else’s life. But think of this scenario, if I go to prison, she’ll die.”

  Her tears, streaming down her cheeks, were the cherry on top of my dessert. The facade my brother wrongly encouraged her to adopt broke before my very eyes. “I-I don’t believe you.”

  “Mind backing off the gun so I can show you how much you should believe me? It’ll only take a minute. Promise, princess.”

  She relented a little, but I could tell from the position of her shoulders she was leaning on the side of discharging at least one bullet. Had no idea she knew how to fire one.

  Moving slowly, I slipped my phone from my back pocket and held it up in the air. I dialed Syl on video chat. As rehearsed, he answered immediately, wearing a black drama mask.

  “See who I’m with.” I moved my phone over until the camera focused on Keaton and flipped around until we could both take in the show. “You know what to do.”

  Syl’s camera panned out and showed Brandy, barely holding onto life and almost unrecognizable through the improvements I made on her face. The subtle rise and fall of her chest was clearly seen. When Syl held up a tablet with today’s newspaper, clearly showing today’s date, Keaton lost her breath in a high-pitched wheeze.

  I ended my call with Syl, watching Keaton evolve. She was resigning herself to her situation, and it was far past time she did. “Promise me you’ll leave my family and friends alone? Promise you’ll get Brandy medical attention and leave everyone who matters to me alone.”

  “Your friends and family are of no fucking use to me once you say those three little words, and make them sound very, very convincing.”

  “Not now. When I see Brandy and you do what you promised, I’ll give you everything you want.” She shut her eyes, her face hardening in a way I’d never witnessed before. It threw me off.

  “Get back in the car,” she ordered curtly.

  I’d cut the edge off her foray into adopting Nadine’s bossy nature when I had her alone. There were many things I would do to her body to negate all that my brother might’ve put in her head.

  She’d survive it…possibly.

  I’D SPENT MY too much time pretending my life mattered, never feeling more of a fraud until I was stolen and forced to live under Noah’s brutal rule at Rebirth. I attempted my life and showed how little it meant to me, and thought he made me feel alive with the pain I endured, calling to memory the things I should’ve appreciated and didn’t.

  During the long drive with Noah in the driver’s seat, I pretended I had no fear over losing my life and I wasn’t feeling a little ill over my assumptions of what my final destination would include.

  I had a will and a reason to live. I had so much in my life to live for and people who loved me. I wanted to live to see and hold them again. I wanted to let them know how much they meant to me, when at times I never took advantage of the opportunity.

  I knew I could never live with myself if anything happened to another friend. I’d put many of my friends and family through too much. It was time to sacrifice my life to make sure they never had to, even if it terrified me.

  In the night, the crunching sounds of gravel on a paved private road resounded in time with my shudders. Ahead of us was an estate in a heavily wooded area. Construction trucks and chaotic noises emanating from the house gave an indication of the activity inside. Noah was deep in his planning stages and had nothing standing in the way of carrying them through.

  I kept my gun steadily on him as we walked toward the house and disappeared behind the open door. The warmth of the home made me think it wasn’t originally his. It lacked the coldness of his preferred style of interior design.

  In the center of the house stood a door at the end of a wall, separating the kitchen from a fully furnished formal dining room. As we descended the steps, we were met with dank and stale air.

  My feet landed on the concrete of an unfinished basement. On a threadbare mattress, stained with unknown fluids, lay my friend Brandy. I ran to her, careful not to move her too much or too quickly. Her pouty, cracked, and chafed lips moved. Her swollen lids barely revealed peeks of her dark jade eyes.

  Like a spark of energy, igniting her strength, she opened her eyes a little more and began to fight for consciousness. I could barely understand her through her mumbles and when I finally did, ice ran through my veins. “What are you doing here? It’s a trap. He knows who Braedan really is. He knows he’s Shiloh.”

  Stunned as to how she knew under her current circumstances, I was unsure of what to say to her. Had they grown close and planned this all along? “I know.” I smoothed the wavy strands of her dark hair from her face and kissed her forehead. “I’m here for you. It’s my time to protect you.”

  “No.” The shake of her head was barely seen, she didn’t have the strength to hold her head upright. Her tears fell down her cheeks faster than my own. “He’ll kill you, Keaton. Get out.”

  I held her head and gave her a subdued smile, pretending to feel brave when I felt less than confident in my decision to fall into my open grave. “I love you, Brandy, you have to know that. Thank you for being everything a good friend should be. I’m sorry for all I’ve put you through, but this isn’t your battle. It’s mine.”

  She was yanked from my arms before she could speak another word. The man I saw on the video, still wearing the black mask, tore her away from me. She tried to struggle but was too weak to give the masked man any semblance of trouble.

  “Take her to a hospital on the outskirts of D.C. and dump her there,” Noah ordered his henchman.

  My arms were still outstretched wanting the reunion with my friend to last a little longer.

  As Brandy and the masked man disappeared up the steps, Noah approached me. I held up the gun and shook my head. “Not until I have proof she went to the hospital.”

  He held his phone in his hands and rolled his eyes to the ceiling momentarily. He typed a text on his phone, keeping one eye trained on me. “The way you’re holding the gun, I could easily take it from you.”

  “You haven’t yet.”

  “I’m giving you what you want, princess. I want your heart fully into what you promised me. So I’m going to play the nice guy for however long it takes my harbinger to take your friend to the hospital.”

  We stood there in the middle of a suffocating mix of silence and creaking sounds from above us. Thoughts I couldn’t hold onto as belonging to me ran rampant in my head. How easily I could end it all with the pull of a trigger. I could end everyone’s pain and take one monster out of the world with the power of my finger. I could have the life I took for granted. I could get over my fears and my grudges. I could forgive, but never forget, and see the value in my charmed life. I could be free.

  The chime of his cellphone set me at ease for only a second. Noah held up his phone to me, showing his “employee” standing a street away from a hospital in Maryland. Brandy’s limp body was in a wheelchair, quickly surrounded by several nurses who ushered her inside to tend to her. Noah ended the video, his blue-hazel eyes smiling at me. “Can we begin, princess? I have so many exciting things I want to show you…do to you.”

  As the gun slipped from my hands, I knew certain aspects of who I was would never change. I could never have the death of someone else on my hands…for now.

  I meant every word of my statement to Noah.

  He deserved worse than death, and I would be the one to give him his version of hell before my last breath escaped my body.

  IT WAS THE first in many phases to bring her back to the woman I needed her to be. The first phase was to leave her in isolation with a looped sequence of the sce
nes of the miscreants indulging in their depraved pastimes from the camera feeds at Rebirth. A man forcing himself on an underage girl, a woman forced to perform with a dog, a man mutilating a woman’s tits and pussy by cutting off her nipples and plunging the sharp edge of the knife inside her. The list went on and the scenes became more brutal.

  With a room—closet—devoid of light only large enough for her to stand and turn around, she took it easier than I thought she would. I would turn up the volume on the victims cries until it didn’t matter if she closed her eyes, and punish her for doing so by leaving the volume on maximum for hours.

  On the second day of her remaining in the closet without her so much as flinching, but going on a hunger strike, I decided it was time to move things to phase two.

  From the panel at my fingertips, remote controlling every aspect of the house, I pressed a series of numbers to unlock the door. She took one step and collapsed. I gave her time to find her way to the bedroom. Things to help her clean herself from head to toe were laid across the bed.

  Once she was able to stand on both feet, she took them and staggered into the bathroom.

  While she was getting prepared, I brought a tray of dinner and a few pieces of chocolate to her room.

  She stopped cold when the door swung open and she saw me sprawled out on the bed. She fixed the towel to fit a little tighter across her chest and stood there, staring at me and not moving.

  “I know you’re hungry, princess. You haven’t eaten in days. I could use the company.” I bounded off the bed to approach her and combed the length of her wet and slightly curly hair with my fingertips. “I want your company.”

  She brushed against me to sit on the bed but wouldn’t eat. She continuously stared at the recently warmed glass of white liquid on the tray.

  “We’ll get to what that is later, princess.” The downtrodden look on her face irritated me. She was different in a way I didn’t like. It was almost as if she missed someone I couldn’t bring myself to name. “Did you think you loved him?”

  Suddenly I had her undivided and unwavering attention. “I’m in love with him.”

  My chest burned, ready to shuck all the calm and speak to her in a language she understood a little better: pain. I made quick and long strides toward her, fingering what didn’t belong on her body, a cross necklace, hanging from her neck. I pretended I didn’t notice the way she cringed and the look of disgust on her face when my finger touched her collarbone. “Was this cross a gift from him?”

  “Yes.”

  I yanked it from her neck, breaking the chain and squeezed it inside my fist. “Do you want it back?”

  Her fist clenched as it slid across the front of her lap. “Yes.”

  “What would you do to get it back, princess?”

  Her arched brows arched a little more. The tiny candlelight of a fire flickered in her amber eyes. “Do you want me to sleep with you, Noah? Is that what this is about? I can lie on that bed and spread my legs for you, but I won’t be present in my body. I’ll never be present in my body when you touch me or hurt me. My body is the only thing you can touch. My heart and my mind are the two things you could’ve had and permanently lost.”

  Braedan had poisoned her to the point of making her sick, and I had to be the cure. “You know who I am, Keaton. So I’m not sure why you think I’d be so simple-minded. It’s fine. I know how much you love your rebellion. Keep it. It was always entertaining to break, and I do like a challenge. Remember, I have ways of breaking it, I always did.” I dropped the necklace and stomped on it, intending to warp it. Anything my brother gave her had to come with more than what was at face value…a tracking device, maybe. “Why don’t you try your glass of milk?”

  She looked sheepishly at the glass and grimaced.

  “Nothing gets by you, does it?” I picked up the glass from the tray and placed it on the table next to the leather bench where I planned to fuck her. “That’s for every day you were without me, and you’re going to drink every last drop of my cum while I mark your body with every day you spent with him and not me.”

  Shaking her head, she turned away from me. “Your crazy made sense to me once. Now it knows no limits.”

  “Because I don’t fit into your monochrome picture of normal? I’ll never be the lamb who idly lies down for the slaughter. I am the fucking butcher, princess.” Her hair was a knot in my hands as I threw her across the leather bench. The towel fell from her body onto the floor.

  I slid the knife from my back pocket and secured it between my teeth as I got to work uncovering my cock. I didn’t take my time to savor any piece of her. I needed inside her, and I needed to be there now. She was barely wet, but it wasn’t anything a ton of spit couldn’t handle. With my hand on her shoulder pinning her down against the leather, I fucked her, intending to fuck her until my cock chafed and every hole she had was overfilled with my cum.

  In seven groups of five, jagged bloody lines about an inch long were spread across her ass—the work of my knife, marking every time I fucked her. I was draped in sweat while her face, pussy, and body were as dry as the Sahara, preventing me from getting everything I needed. I could tell she felt the pain given the blood staining my cock. She wouldn’t give me indications of it on her face like I craved.

  Naked and almost exhausted, I strode over to the dresser to pick out a new toy. I could see my brother in her eyes every time she looked at me. He was deep inside her, and I needed to dig him out. I had to eradicate him from her body, and to make her cry for me. The funny-looking hollow metal cylinder with silicone coating for my pleasure would do the trick.

  Returning back to the bed, I grabbed her thigh and flipped her flat on her back. “Struggle against me, and I’ll make you drink every ounce of my cum all at once, princess.”

  I shoved the silver cylinder inside her, only eliciting a wince when the pin pierced her cervix. I turned the dial, expanding the pin, expanding her. Her face no longer held the plastic expression, masking most of what she felt as it once did. She fought hard to remain stoic, but when I reached for the dial to expand her at least three inches, her eyes watered. I slid my cock inside the hollow metal sleeve, shoving my hips against her, impaling her with my cock as far as I could go. Her blood became my lubricant.

  Her cries shook with every sob. My hand was on her throat, the other hand gathering her hair and yanking her head back, holding her still as I fucked her harder, driving so deep, I thought I could see the head of my cock in her abdomen.

  Her shrill screams and strangled, choking cries led the way for her redemption. Slowly, she’d earned herself a place back on my good side.

  She did the unthinkable, what I warned her against and tried to push me away.

  My hand clamped down hard on her neck, snuffing out her ability to breathe, forcing her watery eyes to stare at me. She struggled and shook, gurgling on her sobs.

  I shoved my hips so hard into her pussy, she jarred. More struggling tried my patience. I picked her up, pinning her against my body in a bear hug while keeping my cock inside her and plopped her down on the mattress. Twisting my body a little, I plucked the glass filled with thick white liquid from the table and pressed a hand on her nose as I worked hard to push every inch of me past her cervix. Her mouth opened with a scream. I tipped the glass, and the liquid flowed slow and thickly down into her mouth.

  She choked and gagged on it. Some of it came out of her nose from underneath my hand. As I looked down on my withdrawal from her pussy, clumpy blood coated me, flushing out of her system. I immediately withdrew and let her go. She slid to the floor in a heap, her body trembled with her sobs.

  A hand went to her stomach and she cried the hardest I’d ever witnessed her cry.

  Normally, I would be harder than a sheet of metal. But I knew what I saw sliding out of her. I’d seen it before. I was sure I turned sheet white at the realization. My feet were implanted on the ground, and I had no idea what to do.

  I fucked up.

  I fu
cked up, epically. “Our baby?” The words barely made it out of my mouth. “Were you pregnant with my baby, Keaton?”

  She attempted to crawl and fell, collapsing into a misshapen lump on the floor.

  I WAS NEARLY prepared for my houseguest later in the evening when an interruption from Mrs. Mara froze my actions.

  “Braedan.” She sidestepped the niceties, the pain and desperation in her voice excused it. Her audible struggle against sobbing over the phone took the beat from my heart. “They found her. They found her!”

  I interrupted her constant chants, fighting against the stolen will to speak. The worst of all outcomes streamed across my vision like a memory that hadn’t yet occurred. “Found whom?”

  “Brandy,” she urged out and began to moan her discontent. “She hadn’t been on vacation like we all assumed. The things she said? Oh, God, Braedan. You promised to protect her. You swore to me you would. You broke your promise to me.”

  The blood pumping through my veins turned into acid. “Mrs. Mara, please calm down and tell me what you’re talking about.”

  “Please give me good news. Tell me Brandy was delirious after all that monster had done to her. Tell me that she’s not home right now because she’s with you.”

  “Keaton?” Her name cracked through my dry throat. “I dropped her off at the door and left her with three security guards.”

  “No, this can’t be happening again.” I barely understood her words as they became consumed by her sobs. “He got to her. He got to her again.”

  The phone slipped from my hands, falling with a cracking noise to the floor. The weight of a million people pressed against my chest. My vision was a blur of indiscernible scenery. A thought striking my mind like a knife brought me to my knees. I grappled to keep myself afloat when a dark dense pond of misery threatened to pull me under. I reached for my phone, opening the tracking application, praying she never removed the cross necklace I had given her, and I could track her.