Seducing Virtue (Wicked Trinity Book 3)

by Courtney Lane

  “I won’t.”

  He removed my hand from the panel. “I have a few things to say to him, and tomorrow, the basement will be filled with concrete.” He kissed me to subdue me and nodded toward the living room, telling me to join Archie and Brandy.

  “Have a seat, Noah.” Clasping my hands, I settled myself into the chair. “This place brings back memories. It’s intriguing that even in my absence, the prison I built specifically for you, became occupied. I have more people loyal to me than you could ever have.” I pointed my gaze to the gun on his desk. “Do you recall the games you coerced me into playing often, when we were kids while you were bored?”

  “I tried to make you stronger,” he replied with a pitiful excuse for a grin. “Our parents made you weak. It’s too bad none of the things I did worked. Because here you are, chasing after my tail.”

  “Chasing after your tail? It’s clearly tucked between your legs.”

  His cutting glance was possessed by the television screen. “So you’re still putting on a show for her like you’re sorry? She’ll see through it eventually.”

  “You were never able to see the world with clarity. I’m sorry for the things I did to her—for the things I did to take back my life, I’m not apologetic in the least. I never expected to be here. I expected to be the one holding you in that prison, tormenting you daily as I fucked Keaton nightly and had a family. I had plans of marrying her in this house and forcing you to witness it all.”

  “And like the weak man you are, you abandoned that plan for some silly redemption. See, that plan of yours? That would’ve finally impressed me.”

  “I stopped living for your accolades long ago,” I stated with a chortle. “Did you know?” I asked, his eyes turning into sparks of embers. “Did you know all the things our parents did to me?”

  Wearing an irritating smirk, he shrugged. “Maybe I knew, and I didn’t care. Maybe I didn’t know because I was hardly ever there.”

  “You were there often enough to make things worse for me.”

  “Cry me a goddamn river, Shiloh.”

  “Has Keaton ever told you what happened to Mrs. Sherman?”

  “She hasn’t.”

  “I take it the picture I sent wasn’t shared.” Clutching my old phone, I pulled up the picture and shoved it against the glass. The photograph of the dead woman who was once everything to him.

  “She would never break for you.” His iron exterior began to burn away. “She’s been through hell. What did you do?”

  I gathered the paperwork from underneath the chair and delayed in walking toward the slot intended to serve him food. I slid it through the opening. Without him on the other side to retrieve it, it fluttered to the ground. “You’re not curious?”

  “No.”

  “Allow me to tell you who she really was… From birth, Mrs. Sherman was a member of The Birth of a Prospering Nation. She was a concubine for the leader until he grew tired of her. Until she gave him the sons that his primary wife never could. After enduring the torture, the loss of a child, and numerous regulation sessions, she began to drink and was ostracized from the compound.”

  “Shut your fucking mouth,” Noah warned, a spark of madness indicating his descent had begun.

  “She escaped, and after giving birth to her youngest son, she sought refuge in a church,” I continued, undeterred. “She took a man’s kindness for love and sought to get closer to him by becoming a nun. The thought of her son never left her. It could’ve been fate that her love for yet another priest led her closer to what she scoured the world for: you.”

  “You’re a liar. A bad one.”

  “Look at the papers, Noah, and tell me again how I’m a liar.” With a smile toying with my lips, I recalled more. “During her time at Rebirth, she told the story of your depraved love affair. She met you in the hospital after your incident with Father Corrica and couldn’t help her feelings for you.”

  “Shut your fucking mouth.” He ejected from the bed to glare me down, the gun held tightly in his hands.

  “She was very graphic with the details of seducing you in a red negligee, your favorite color. She said she had exhausted all she could to help you and only knew one other way. To show you love through affection. She recalled confessing that she knew her body and face weren’t desirable to you, and you belayed her fears.

  “Your body betrayed you that night. It wasn’t until she gave her body to your pain and the senselessness that made up parts of who you were, made sense to you.”

  He threw a string of threats, never to be fulfilled, at me.

  “She was the only one on your side. That is, until she learned the truth about you. You might think it was because of what you did to Keaton. It wasn’t. The man you knew as Sylvester Martin? His real name was Sylvester Corrica, the nephew of Father Corrica.”

  He rolled his eyes, turning his back to me. “You both believed his lies, huh?”

  “He had proof.”

  I immediately had his undivided attention.

  “I give the time the relationship started, when you were sixteen, a small amount of sympathy, despite whether you seduced him or not. But what really happened the night he stabbed you? That’s the interesting part. You’d bribed Father Corrica for years about your consensual affair to steal money from him that you didn’t deserve. He decided he’d had enough, and you made good on your threat to make him pay.

  “The fateful night that scarred your body…he came to see you because you convinced several underage boys to point the finger at him as their abuser, instead of the priest who truly harmed them. You killed his reputation, and what’s a man to do who has nothing to live for? He tried and failed to kill you.”

  “Syl told you this story, huh?” Spittle flew from his mouth, his shoulders shook in pure fury. “Where’s your fucking proof?”

  I held up my phone and played the video Syl saved of that fateful night. “He came to Mrs. Sherman and turned her against you by playing this very video. He was a determining factor in what brought your world to a crumbling end. If you last long enough, he may just come around to end your existence. All it will take is one phone call.”

  “Are you going to show that to Keaton?”

  I ended the video shortly before Father Corrica revealed his knife after attempting and failing to reason with Noah in the dark alley. “Goodnight, Noah.” With a wink, I stood and paced myself toward the doorway. I could hear him beyond the glass, a muffled sound of his frustration and pain beyond the bulletproof material as he gathered the paperwork.

  In the game of lies, I had become the victor.

  Sister Abigail had thought her son was Noah, but through DNA found that her youngest son still lived: me. Sylvester Corrica was the reason she happened upon the information. He had many pieces of proof in his arsenal to point Noah as pure evil, beyond saving. It was the same day she turned against Noah. The day she came to me and swore to help me wrangle Keaton from Noah’s grasp.

  I looked in on my son before I prepared for bed and met Keaton in the bedroom. She was awake, her gaze was enraptured with the ceiling.

  “I’ll call the contractor tomorrow and have the door permanently sealed within a week. Whether you want to remain here once it’s complete, is a decision I’ll leave up to you.” On all fours, I wormed myself onto the bed and pulled her underneath me. “Are you all right?” The backs of my fingers brushed against the small glint of moisture collecting at her hairline.

  “He…wasn’t my family. I should ask you that.”

  “My answer doesn’t matter.” My fingers raked through her coarse strands. “But yours does.”

  “Ask me again in five minutes,” she told me, and for a full five minutes she hemmed and hawed. “What did you say to him?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” I seized her chin between my fingers. “Are your tears for what I think they are?”

  “My son is our son. Whatever he said, you know he’s ours.” Her deflection of my answer was noted.

 
; “I know.” A slow smile spread across my face. “Now…are you all right, Keaton?”

  She nodded, a dreamy smile pressed against her lips. “And you?”

  My darkness was a shadow at high noon. It would always be at my heels, chasing me and clamoring to be a piece of me too difficult to erase. My darkness would be a welcome sight when the occasion called for it.

  For now, I was trying on a new life; a life in service to Keaton and my son where I earned the redemption I so badly wanted with my family.

  “I finally feel free, Braedan.” Her confession was whispered against my chest. “Thank you for showing me what it really is.”

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