Tangled Obsession
Book 2 of the Obsession Trilogy
Roxy Sinclaire
Illustrated by
Natasha Snow
Edited by
Elizabeth A. Lance
Copyright © 2019 by Roxy Sinclaire
All rights reserved.
Cover design by Natasha Snow
Edited by Elizabeth Anne Lance
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locations is purely coincidental. The characters are all productions of the authors’ imagination.
Please note that this work is intended only for adults over the age of 18 and all characters represented as 18 or over.
Contents
Mailing List
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
About Roxy Sinclaire
A taste of Shattered Obsession…
Also by Roxy Sinclaire
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Chapter One
“Samuel?” Camila breathed out, putting a hand over her harshly beating heart. “I didn’t expect you to be here.” She thought he was supposed to still be out of town. He must have gotten back early and come to see her.
A slight frown marred his brow. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. Are you okay?”
Camila was staring right at him, wondering what was wrong. Samuel was standing in front of her, and it should make her happy. She’d not been expecting Samuel, but now here he was. However, something felt off and she frowned. It was in his eyes. Camila’s blood went ice cold and she gasped. “… Adrien.”
The frown on his face deepened.
He didn’t say a thing for a moment, but she was already sure. Now that she had spent time with the both of them, she could tell their differences. Samuel was reserved, but he always had a gentle look in his eyes when he let his guard down, and it hadn't been up around her for a long while. Adrien on the other hand, always looked like he was a step away from cracking a joke, like life was a big party. Or doing whatever else to lighten the atmosphere, whether or not the joke was tasteful.
The man standing in front of her was not Samuel Kane.
She put her guard up, stiffening, ready to step back inside quickly and shut the door in his face.
“Camila, what are you talking about?” he tried to bluff. “Don’t tell me you’re mistaking me for my brother, too?”
She narrowed her eyes on him. She might not have seen Samuel for the past couple days, but she had been dating him ever since she broke up with Adrien. There was no way she would mistake Samuel for anyone else, even his twin.
“Can I come in?” he said, looking over her shoulder. “You look like you’re about to go out, so your mom is probably out, right?”
She could feel the blood flowing out of her face. He even knew about her and her mother.
“Stop it!” she screamed at him, feeling terrified for herself and her mom. “Adrien, just stop, right now! Don’t think you can fool me just by coming here and pretending to be your brother! Who the fuck do you think I am, huh? One of your little groupies? Would you just fucking leave me alone already before I call the cops on your ass!”
She had been loud, and it was probably a nuisance for the neighbors. Camila was panting from the force of her shout, but she did feel a bit relieved. The anxiety she had been carrying around with her had died a little now that she finally got to say to him what she’d wanted to say.
The expression on his face twisted to something angry and ugly, an expression she didn’t think Samuel would ever make, further proving the man in front of her was Adrien. He took a deep breath, looking like he was trying to hold himself back.
“Camila, please try to reconsider,” he muttered through gritted teeth as he glared down at her. “I’ve given you enough time to play with my brother. Now, it’s time for you to come back to me.”
She looked at him incredulously for a minute, then burst out with a laugh. It was partly angry, partly hysterical.
“Did you not just hear what I fucking said? Adrien, I want nothing from you. I want nothing to do with you.” After all this time, after weeks of him terrorizing her, it was freeing to scream it to his face. “Not anything, do you hear me? How can I spell it out for you so you’ll understand?”
She could see his eyes go wide, and she tilted her chin up, feeling triumphant for hitting him right in his ego. Her pride didn’t last long, though, as his expression became one of fury, and he moved. There wasn’t that much space between them, and he raised his hand so quickly and shoved his way in, she was forced to stumble backwards.
Adrien followed her into her apartment, as she scrambled backwards. He slammed the door and then grabbed her arm and whirled her around, pinning her back to the door. He pressed his arm across her throat, holding her there.
Camila clawed at his arm, her eyes widening in terror at the psychotic look on his face. “Adrien! I can’t breath!” she eked out between gasping breaths.
“Listen, you fucking little slut, I have given you time. I’ve been fucking patient. I chose you. You are mine! Not my goody-two shoes brother’s! You are done playing with him!” Adrien was so close to her face she could feel his hot breath with ever hissed word. “Now I’ll have to punish you, won’t I? Such a naughty little slut, not doing what she’s told.” He stroked her hair for a moment and then yanked on it, several strands pulling out of her head.
Camila screamed and blacked out.
* * *
Samuel
Work had kept him from seeing Camila for nearly two weeks and he couldn’t wait to see her. Her smile always brightened his day, and he’d missed it. Their daily texts had allowed the week and a half to go by quickly, and he always reread them at night, before he went to sleep. Camila was a ray of sunshine in his stress filled world. Climbing from the car, he hurried up the steps into her building. As he pulled open the door, he noticed a few neighbors lingering in the hallway.
He smiled and gave him a nod, but they stared at him oddly and then looked up the stairway. His smile fell as a scream sounded from a couple floors up. It chilled him to the bone. He knew that scream. Rage filling him, he raced up the stairs to Camila’s apartment. It was quiet. Way too quiet!
“Camila?” He pounded on the door.
He could hear muffled cursing beyond the door and he knew his brother had gotten in. His heart in his throat, he rammed his shoulder into the door, but it didn’t budge. “Camila! Fuck!” He rushed the door again, but the door held steady. “Damn it! Fucking door! Open!”
Switching tactics, He stepped back and kicked the door right by the handle and it was enough. The door slammed open and hit the wall to the right of
it, and bounced back at him. He shoved it out of the way to find Adrien on the floor with his hands around Camila’s throat, squeezing.
With a roar, he grabbed Adrien and ripped him away from her. He turned and planted a right hook against his jaw and Adrien went down. It wouldn’t be enough to knock him out, but it was enough to check on Camila and make sure she was still breathing.
He placed his fingers on her carotid artery, looking for a pulse. It was there, faintly. Looking up he noticed two things. His brother rising from his spot on the floor and a neighbor lingering in the hall. “Call 911!” he demanded before tackling his brother again.
Samuel punched him, bloodying his nose, but Adrien was ready with a punch of his own, as well as a kick to the groin. Samuel fell to his knees, his breath knocked from him. He watched Adrien tear out of the apartment and down the stairs. Taking a deep breath, he raced after him. Over his shoulder, he called to the neighbor, “Keep an eye on her!”
Chapter Two
Camila heard a loud thump, but she was too busy trying to keep herself breathing on the floor. Her lungs hurt, and so did her neck. She blinked a couple of times trying to remember what happened. And then it hit her. Adrien had pretended to be Samuel and forced his way into her apartment. She reached for her neck and winced at the soreness. Turning her head, she noticed her neighbor standing in the open doorway.
“What happened?”
“Don’t know, exactly.” He looked at her. “Two guys who look alike are fighting. Looks like one of ‘em tried to hurt you and the other went after him.”
Taking a breath, Camila sat up. Cautiously she pushed herself to her feet. Once she had herself steady, she scrambled for the door to look down the stairwell, and saw the twins fighting. They had equal looks of anger on their faces, and if Samuel wasn’t wearing something different from what Adrien was, in that moment, she might have had trouble telling who was who.
“Why the hell did you come here to interfere!” Adrien yelled, shoving Samuel to the wall. Blood was pouring from Adrien’s nose and had coated his chin. He looked like a cannibal and it freaked her out.
“That’s what I should be asking you!” Samuel gritted back, ducking the punch aimed at him and circling around Adrien, catching him underneath his arms to try and restrain him.
“I called the ambulance and cops, like the one in the trench coat asked,” her neighbor commented as they watched the brothers fight.
Her eyes on Samuel, it was clear Samuel was better than Adrien. His movements were all smooth, aimed at getting Adrien to stop, while Adrien’s were more rough, like he was at a bar brawl. He went for an attack when he thought there was an opening, but more often than not he got stopped by Samuel. They looked equally matched in strength, though, and both looked like they had experience with fighting. Otherwise, it would have been a very one-sided match.
Adrien threw a punch at Samuel that threw him against the wall and Camila gasped. He must have hit the back of his head, because he was suddenly stunned and didn’t immediately move to attack again.
“No!” Camila gasped, her hand jumping to her throat.
She was worried about Samuel, and she was about to run over to him to check if he was okay. But she stopped, because right then, she saw Adrien reach behind his back to pull something. She caught the move in her peripheral and turned to look at it, only for her eyes to widen as she saw a gun.
Adrien was armed.
“Samuel! Watch out!”
It was redundant, Adrian was right in front of Samuel, and he must have been used to being in dangerous situations in his time in the army. She didn’t doubt he was aware of what was happening, but there wasn’t much else that she could do, practically a cheerleader at the sides of their fight. She wanted to jump forward anyway, knocking into Adrien and at least knock him off balance. She didn’t think, with her small size, she would actually be enough to trip him.
In the next moment, though, she realized she wasn’t needed.
In a matter of milliseconds, Samuel had already stabilized himself and lunged at Adrien. Even though her breath had frozen in her throat, she watched Samuel, grapple with Adrien whose arm had yet to properly come around to aim the gun. The two of them were about the same size, and probably close to the same mass. Samuel also ducked down so his shoulder knocked into Adrien’s stomach, and Camila could see the wide-eyed look on Adrien as he was knocked back, all the way into the other wall in the hall, just a couple feet away from her door.
More importantly, his gun hand was affected by the knockback, sending the gun out of his grip and spun to the floor. No shots had been fired. Camila’s eyes followed the gun, momentarily ignoring the brothers as they continued hitting at each other.
It’s right there…
Camila remembered all the shit she’d had to put up with from him, ever since he’d met Adrian. His nice acting wasn’t nearly enough to make her forgive and forget all the bad things that came with it. She remembered being afraid to leave her apartment, and when she did, looking around the streets as she walked around like some paranoid idiot, only to run off and hide behind higher authority when she actually caught sight of him. And Adrien practically baiting her, trying to wait her out until she was alone again.
She wondered what he would have done to her, if she hadn't seen any sort of cop or security guard around when he stalked her. what he would have done, if she hadn't met so many sympathetic people that were willing to let her be their shadow for a moment so she would feel save.
Camila wondered when the last time she truly felt safe was, and suddenly, she was angry.
All these thoughts swarmed through her mind in seconds, and in the next moment, she was down the stairs and diving for the gun. She grabbed the gun from the floor, and rose back up, ignoring the ache in her side from slamming to the ground. She raised the gun.
The object felt heavy and foreign in her hands. It was a large gun, enough to be comfortable in Adrien’s hands, but not in hers. She only knew how to hold a gun from a bunch of movies she’d watched over the years, her palm and four fingers wrapped around the butt of the gun, pointer finger poised next to the trigger. With her other hand, she tried to steady the hand holding the gun, but still, her fingers trembled. Because it was heavy for her hands, but mostly because her mind was a confusing whirl of emotions.
She pointed the gun toward the two men, who had stopped when they heard her thump to the floor. Samuel had backed away from Adrien, who had slumped against the wall, both of them staring at her with wide eyes as she pointed the unsteady gun right at Adrien. She wasn’t sure of her marksmanship at all, but she was only a few feet away and his body was wide, she didn’t think she could miss this shot. She could hear sirens in the distance and her hands shook more.
“Camila.”
It was Samuel calling her, his voice a forced calm. All three of them had come to a standstill, and there was sudden quiet in the hall. Camila heard him, but didn’t shift her eyes from Adrien.
“Camila, can you please put down the gun?” he tried again, his voice even gentler.
She just stood there trembling and not moving. She was very, very tempted to just shoot Adrien. Even if it was just in the leg so she could watch him be in pain, then maybe she might feel better in the end.
After a short stand-off, Samuel moved. Camila noted it in her peripheral vision, but she didn’t let it distract her.
“Camila,” he said, his voice softer as he moved closer to her. “Don’t shoot, okay? We’re in a residential building, if you shoot right now and something went wrong, you could shoot someone that has absolutely nothing to do with this. You wouldn’t want that to happen, right?”
His words had her trembling even more. No, Camila didn’t want to hurt anyone else. Really, she didn’t even want to hurt Adrien, because she didn’t want to deal with the consequences of it, but the man wasn’t really giving her that many options, now was he?
“It’s okay, the cops are on their way, you don’t have to do thi
s,” Samuel said, voice low and persuasive. He came up beside her, one arm circling around her shoulders, the other carefully reaching for the gun. “I’ll take care of this, all right? We need to allow the police to deal with him, Camila. It’s the best way. Okay?”
Camila thought about it for a minute, then nodded jerkily as she loosened her hands around the gun. Samuel took it from her gently, then after checking the safety was on, put it away in his pocket. The tension around them suddenly left, leaving Camila feeling cold, even as Samuel put both arms around her and held her close. Adrien slumped all the way to the floor, looking frustrated, his eyes a bit wet.
They stood there only for a few short minutes as their neighbors all returned to their apartments. Camila sat on the stair step, hugging her legs, her mind blank. She looked up when she heard the police and paramedics come through the front door to the building, then a bunch of them moved up the stairs to her and the twins.
She was in a daze as Samuel directed the paramedics to her, and spoke with the cops. Her head in a fog, she returned to her apartment with the help of one of the medics. They checked her out, finding she’d broken two ribs in her slam to get the gun, so they taped her up. Her throat they said would be bruised and sore for a while and to take some Ibuprofen as needed for the pain. She sat on her couch staring at nothing as she waited for Samuel to return to her.
Tangled Obsession: Book 2 of the Obsession Trilogy Page 1
