All I could focus on was the feeling of extreme violation eating through my guts. How could someone do this?
And why?
In my bedroom, the duvet and sheets had been ripped from the mattress and tossed into a corner. The mattress itself was slashed from corner to corner, the cuts forming an x. Broken glass crunched underfoot as I moved forward in a daze, smelling a potent confusion of flowers and musk lingering in the air.
All my perfume bottles on the bathroom vanity had been shattered, thrown hard against the mirror. They lay in piles on the marble and in the sink. Everything from the drawers beneath the sink had been dumped into the bathtub.
In the master closet, my clothes hung in shreds.
Someone had taken a knife to every piece of clothing I owned.
Stunned, I began to violently shake. My heart twisted, my stomach knotted. All that paled in comparison to what I felt when I turned and saw the blown-up black-and-white photograph stuck to the wall above the dresser with a carving knife.
The picture was of Nico and me, kissing.
It had been taken by the paparazzi the night we’d met, when he’d come to Lula’s and sat at a table with Chloe, Grace, and me. Featured on the cover of Star magazine, it was the picture captioned by the awful tagline, “Nico Nyx and His Harem!”
An angry, red marker line was slashed across our faces. Because my face had been obscured by shadow, whoever did this knew that the woman Nico was kissing in the picture was me. Every nerve humming with fear, I sank to the ruined mattress. For the first time, I understood that Nico’s concerns were founded on more than mere paranoia.
He must know exactly what his brother is capable of. He must have proof.
“Kat.” Barney stood in the doorway, his expression grim. “Let’s go.”
My head was a fog of jumbled thoughts. “But . . . I need to . . . there’s paperwork here . . . my things . . . I can’t just leave it like this.”
“I’ll come back later and get whatever you need. Right now we need to go. It’s not safe for you here.”
Tears welled in my eyes. I whispered, “It was him, wasn’t it? It was Michael.”
Barney nodded. “Most likely.”
“Why would he do this?”
Barney crossed the room, took my hand, and gently pulled me to my feet. With an arm around my back, he ushered me out of my ruined bedroom. “Because he’s damaged, Kat.” His voice darkened. “And damaged people are dangerous.”
I stumbled through the mess in the living room, leaning heavily on Barney’s arm. “We have to tell Nico—”
“Already called him,” Barney cut in. Something in his voice told me in no uncertain terms that it hadn’t been a wonderful conversation.
In the distance, sirens wailed.
Barney said, “Gonna have an escort back to the house, at Nico’s insistence. They’ll talk to us there.”
“Oh, God.” I knew what that meant. I could only imagine how ballistic Nico would be when we arrived home.
Nico was pacing in front of the fountain in the driveway when Barney and I pulled up at his house. His head snapped up, our eyes met through the windshield, and I went cold.
“Shit,” muttered Barney. “Brace yourself, Kat. This won’t be pretty.”
Barney cut the engine. The two squad cars parked, one ahead of us, one behind, and the officers got out. They headed toward Nico, but he was already striding toward the Escalade, his hands clenched to fists. His dark hair was in disarray, as if he’d been pulling at it.
He yanked open the passenger door. Nostrils flared, chest heaving, he stared at me in silence. He cut a burning glare to Barney.
“It wasn’t his fault,” I said. “I made him. He didn’t want to go. If you’re going to be angry, be angry with me, not him.”
Nico’s gaze sliced back to me, sweeping quickly over my body. “Are you hurt?”
“No.” I didn’t dare add anything else.
Leaning across my body, he unsnapped the buckle on my seat belt. I smelled the cigarette smoke in his hair. He removed me from the car as if I were a wild animal that might bolt at any moment. With his hand wrapped firmly around my upper arm, he strode toward the house, taking me with him.
“Shouldn’t we talk to the police?” I ventured, hurrying to keep up with him in my heels.
Nico didn’t answer. I looked over my shoulder and saw Barney talking with the two officers, one of whom I recognized as Eric Cox, Chloe’s new guy. He shot me a sympathetic look, right before Nico opened the front door, then slammed it shut behind us.
He whirled on me. I was so surprised I jumped. I retreated until I could go no farther, my back flattened against the door.
“Don’t be afraid of me,” he snapped.
“I’m not.”
“I can see it on your face, Kat!”
I wondered how it was possible for him to speak without moving his jaw. I moistened my lips, trying to breathe steadily so my heartbeat would slow down. “Well, I know you’d never hurt me, but honestly, you’re being scary.”
He whispered, “I’m fuckin’ scary? I am?” His blue eyes blazed. He towered over me, bristling, his voice growing louder with every word. “I’m the man who would lay down his life to keep you safe, Kat! I’m the man who would do anything to ensure no harm ever comes to you! I’m the man you promised to come right back to after work!”
Looking up at him, I bit my lower lip.
I didn’t want to fight with him. And I knew anything I said would only make the situation worse. I didn’t have Grace’s talent of gently speaking to someone in an agitated state, so I just had to let him get his anger out of his system.
If I’d learned anything about Nico, it was that his temper flared fast, but it burned out faster.
He paced away from me, looking around the entryway as if he’d like to find something to smash, then just as abruptly turned back. “Do you have any idea what I went through when I got that call from Barney? Do you have any idea how worried I was? What if Michael was still there, in your house? Barney told me the fuckin’ place was trashed! What do you think it would have done to me if you’d been hurt?”
I swallowed, chest tight, aching to reach out for him, wanting desperately to reassure him. I knew it was futile. I’d fucked up.
“Jesus, I got a room full of record executives who think I’m a fuckin’ madman, Kat! I must’ve shoved ten guys to the ground on my way outta that meeting! I didn’t even have a car—I had to take a cab, almost got thrown out when I kept screamin’ at the guy to go faster!”
With a guttural snarl, Nico spun away again, hands clenched in his hair. He stood with his back to me for a long moment, breathing hard, the muscles in his arms clenched tight, his posture rigid.
I went to him. It was pure instinct. I needed to hold him, and he needed to hold me.
He could yell at me later. Right now, I really just needed a hug.
Wrapping my arms around his waist from behind, I rested my cheek against his broad back. “I’m sorry, Nico,” I whispered. “I’m sorry I made you worry. I’m sorry I talked Barney into taking me there. I promise I won’t do anything like that again. I didn’t really think I was in danger. I thought you were overreacting, but now I get it. I get how crazy Michael is.”
A tremor shivered his body. He dropped his hands to his sides, and bowed his head. “No. You don’t. And I hope to God you never do.”
Hearing that, my skin crawled. Whatever made him tremble, whatever his brother had done that made Nico’s voice sound so hollow and hopeless, I needed to know.
“Why don’t you tell me?”
Nico turned and faced me. His beautiful blue eyes were so fraught with pain, I wanted to kiss his entire face just to make that awful look go away.
“You don’t need to hear every ugly detail, Kat. I don’t want you carryin’ that shit around in your head like I do. Just trust me when I say you have to stay away from him. Understand?”
I wound my arms around his waist again,
slipping my hands beneath his shirt so I could feel the warmth of his skin, needing the contact. “If you thought he was so bad, why did you let him come to the funeral?”
Disgust crossed his face. “My mistake. We hadn’t talked in so long, and I thought he needed . . . ” Nico swallowed. His voice dropped. “I thought he would need to say good-bye. I thought it might help him. Obviously I was wrong.”
“So now what? We have to look over our shoulders for the rest of our lives?”
In Nico’s beautiful blue eyes I saw cold determination. “Now you let me do what I need to do. I’ll find him. I’ll fix this. And you won’t ever have to worry about him again.”
The vehemence in his voice frightened me. “‘Fix this’? And what would that involve, exactly?”
Taking me in his arms, he squeezed me against his chest. His heart pounded against mine. “I’d spend the rest of my life in prison if I knew it meant you’d be safe.”
Oh God. Was he talking about doing something . . . permanent?
“No!” I cried, pushing against his chest. “That’s not what I want! Yes, he’s a crazy fucker who watched us sleeping and trashed my house and I’d love to see you kick his ass, but not—not—”
“Kill him?” he interrupted, his voice flat.
I yanked away. Crossing my arms over my chest, I glared at him. “Don’t even say that as a joke!”
“Do I look like I’m joking?”
Panic washed over me in a hot, huge wave. “You can’t possibly mean that, Nico.”
Silent, he stared at me.
“Jesus! Let the police handle him! That’s what they’re for! They’ll find him, we can press charges—”
“They won’t find him!” Nico cut in. “He’s too smart to be found if he doesn’t wanna be. He’s lived off the grid his entire life, Kat. He’s a fuckin’ drug trafficker who’s never once been picked up by the cops. He’s never even gotten a fuckin’ speeding ticket! He’s got three different identities—that I know of—you think he doesn’t know a thousand ways to hide?”
Reeling from this new information, I had to grip the edge of the glass console table beside the door for support. “A trafficker. A drug trafficker. That’s a bit different from a dealer, Nico. How the hell can one of the most famous men in the country have a drug trafficker for a brother, and no one knows?”
His reply was instantaneous. “The same way he can have a sister everyone thinks is his girlfriend: lies that go so deep, nobody can find the roots.”
I stared at him, rocked to my core by the realization that perhaps I was only seeing the poisonous flowers of this plant of deception. What else could be festering underground in the dark?
My voice shaking, I asked, “How many other lies are there, Nico? What else don’t I know?”
He took a step toward me, eyes fixed on mine. “You know me. You know all the important things about me. Don’t start second-guessing that.”
“Considering I just this moment found out your brother’s real occupation, I think that’s a stretch.”
Anger darkened his face. “That’s a matter of degree, not a lie. I told you before the business he was in.”
“There are no degrees of truth, Nico! Something is either a lie, or it’s not!”
“Blacks and whites don’t exist in my world, Kat. Everything is shades of gray.”
“And I’m just supposed to accept that? Accept whatever you tell me without question? Especially now that I know you think it’s okay to give me the barest pencil sketch of reality?”
He stared at me long and hard, tension radiating off him in waves. “If you’re thinkin’ that I’m bein’ a macho dick, or tryin’ to get away with somethin’ by withholdin’ information, you’re wrong. I’m only tryin’ not to expose you to shit that’s ugly and fucked up, and can’t be changed anyway. I’m tryin’ to protect you, Kat.”
Furious, frustrated, I shouted, “And it never occurred to you that I might want all this ugly, fucked-up information before I agreed to marry you?”
Nico’s face turned chalk white. He looked as if I’d slapped him. He growled, “What the fuck does that mean?”
The front door opened, and Barney stuck his head inside. “Boss? A word?”
Nico and I stared at each other in burning silence.
Barney cleared his throat. “Uh, Nico. Officer Cox here would like to speak with Kat. Take her statement. Is that okay?”
Looking at Nico, I spoke, my voice icy cold. “You can ask me, Barney. Nico doesn’t get to decide whether or not I speak with the police. And yes; it’s okay.” Lower, for Nico’s ears only, I said, “And thanks for asking how I’m coping with having everything I own destroyed. I guess you’re the only one around here whose feelings matter.”
Nico’s eyes flared. I could tell he was grinding his teeth together by the flexing of the muscles in his jaw.
I turned away, and went to face the police.
“Any idea who might’ve done this? You have any enemies, get into any fights with anyone recently?”
Officer Cox looked at me expectantly, a furrow between his brows. He was smart, and efficient, jotting down the answers to all his previous questions in smooth shorthand on a form on a clipboard, but I kept getting distracted by the vision of him slobbering kisses all over Chloe.
I looked away from his mouth, debating how to answer. Considering I’d just given Nico a lecture on degrees of truth, I was now faced with a dilemma. If I told the police I thought it was Nico’s brother who was behind the destruction at my house, the entire can of worms would be opened. If, however, I lied to the police . . . well, then I’d be a liar. And a hypocrite to boot.
Being with Nico was testing every conviction I had.
Barney stood discreetly to one side of the front door, pretending to watch a bird circling in the sky. Nico had stayed inside. He was probably breaking things.
“Actually I did get into a fight with someone recently, yes.”
Barney’s head snapped around. Officer Cox raised his brows. “Oh?”
I nodded. “There was a girl, a guest of A.J.’s—”
“A.J.?” Officer Cox’s pencil hovered above the form.
“The drummer for Bad Habit. I’m sorry, I don’t know his last name.” I looked to Barney for confirmation.
“Edwards,” said Barney. “The initials stand for Alex James.” His voice was smooth and untroubled, but I knew from the look in his eyes he was uneasy with where I was going with this.
“Yes, Edwards, that’s it.” Alex James Edwards, I thought. What a perfectly American name for a guy who’s trying to hide a James Bond villain accent.
“Anyway, there was a small gathering here a few weeks ago, and this girl of A.J.’s—honestly I don’t know her name, either, you’d have to ask him—well, she sort of got in my face when she found out Nico and I were dating. I guess they used to have a thing.”
Officer Cox prompted, “And? What happened?”
I looked him directly in the eye when I answered. “I slapped her.”
Barney coughed into his hand, hiding a laugh.
Officer Cox frowned at me. “Did she retaliate?”
“No. I mean, she tried to, but the guys separated us before it went further. I only did it because she was about to hit Nico, so I acted before she could. It was stupid, and I wasn’t thinking, and she left right after that, but,” I shrugged, “that’s what happened.”
Officer Cox scribbled on his pad. “Okay. We’ll look into it. Anything else?”
My mouth went dry. It was a calculated risk, but I had to do it. “Yes. There was an intruder here, eight days ago. Someone broke in to the house in the middle of the night.”
Almost imperceptibly, Barney stiffened. Officer Cox perked up like a dog when it hears the word “treat.”
“I heard about that. Officer Reynolds was on duty, correct?”
I nodded. “It was too dark for me to see the person’s face, unfortunately.”
Officer Cox had an unusually dire
ct, unblinking gaze. I began to wither under the weight of it. He said, “Nothing was taken? No damage was done?”
“No. We filed a report, though. Everything is in the report.”
“Hmm.” He inspected my face for so long I grew uncomfortable. “Hmm.”
One “Hmm” seemed okay. The second seemed suspicious. I was operating within a very tight loophole here, and I hoped he wasn’t about to figure it out. If he asked me the right question, my loyalty to Nico would be put to the test.
A cold trickle of sweat slipped down my back.
Officer Cox tucked his pen into the shirt pocket of his uniform and from it withdrew his card, which he handed to me. I took it, trying not to let my fingers tremble.
“You’re attracting a lot of attention, Miss Reid. You’ve been in the tabloids, you’ve been tagged as a person of interest by the paparazzi, and you’ve been in a very popular music video.” A faint hint of a blush colored his cheeks. “Nice job in the video, by the way.”
“Oh. Thanks.”
“The guys down at the station think you look like a brunette Anna Nicole Smith.”
He’d obviously said it without thinking, because his blush deepened, and he stammered when he spoke next. “M-my point is that there are a lot of crazy people out there. People who can become obsessive. When you’re a celebrity, you’re also a target.”
I was a celebrity now? How awful.
“So just be careful. Call me if you need anything. I’ll be in touch.”
He turned to walk away, and I felt as if my knees would buckle from relief. Until he turned around again.
With a sideways glance at Barney, he drew nearer. “Would you mind if I asked you one more question?”
I had the fleeting, horrible thought he was going to ask me for my autograph.
“Has Chloe . . . well, she uh . . . I don’t know. Things started out so well, but now it seems like she’s backing off. And I can’t figure out why. I know you’re her best friend and all, and I thought maybe you would know what the problem is.” He looked sheepishly at his boots.
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