by Ker Dukey
She didn’t know I had come home or that I had cameras in all the bathrooms of the house. So when she watched the pregnancy stick turn positive and spoke the words, “I’m pregnant,” I heard and saw everything.
The end game had worked to perfection.
I stood when I saw a boat approach with a man holding up a huge camera.
I WAS SO IN MY own head I didn’t hear the boat or the shouting until a flashing camera was in my face.
“Faye! Faye! Can you tell us why you let the world believe you died when your plane went down?”
What? The person barking stupid questions at me shoved a paper into my hands.
I couldn’t read anymore. It was like being hit with a tidal wave that destroyed the wall that was put up to hide my memories. Everything came flooding back into me. My lungs squeaked when the visions ploughed into my brain. It was like someone had clicked their fingers and my life hit me with the force of a train wreck. My knees buckled as my legs gave way and I fell to the floor, everything suddenly making perfect sense… perfect horrifying sense.
I was aware of Malik man-handling the guy asking questions as a fury found me and I pushed myself back upright, adrenaline forcing strength to overpower my weakened body.
“We were tipped off by a local who delivers mail here via speedboat.” The guy was answering Malik’s questioning but my feet started moving, one in front of the other, until I stood in front of Dante who was blocking the entrance to our… no not our, HIS house.
“Why Dante?” I choked out. “Oh God, why did you do this to me?”
His face was stoic like he wasn’t human. How could he do this to me? I loved him. When we were younger I thought he was my soul mate and would have given him anything. I aborted my child so he wouldn’t find out and ruin his future. He would have stayed and dropped out of college to work a shit job so he could support me and I couldn’t do that to him. Dante’s were rare in this world and I recognized his greatness.
“I saw you!” My head tipped up to his, his angry eyes holding my confused ones. “I didn’t leave. I came to your house and saw you leave with him. You went to a motel and stayed in there all night with him. How long were you fucking him behind my back?”
What? Oh my God.
My head shook as I answered him, completely defeated. “I had to take these pills,” I said. “They force an abortion to happen. You get really sick and I needed someone with me. I couldn’t do it at my house; you know what my mom was like.” Is like. She wasn’t dead. He had lied about that too.
He looked pale.
“I would never cheat on anyone Dante, and God, I loved you so fiercely. I died the day they told me your plane went down. I was never the same and when we got news you were never on the plane, I have never felt more joy in my life but then the fact you didn’t contact me broke me all over again. I was clueless to why you abandoned me. I thought you liked your new life and had maybe met someone else.”
A choked sob ripped from me as tears cascaded down my face, their torrent tearing my soul out of my body with them. “Do you know what that does to a soul that’s so in love and attached to another? To endure pain like that was truly unbearable. No one could drag me from the depression. Then months passed, a year, and I relearnt how to be me again. To breathe for me, to wake up and know I was alone and I needed to keep living.”
“But you’re with him!” he screamed at me, making me flinch and step back.
“Three years later, Dante!” I screamed back and hammered my fists at his chest. “What have you done? What did you turn me into?”
My sobs turned to frantic wails when the reality of everything I had become settled in my chest. I had betrayed my real fiancé, the man I was crazy about. He had saved me and reassembled the damaged shadow of the girl that was left after Dante. He rebuilt me piece by piece, by letting me heal myself, by showing me I was worthy of living a good life, and that I had something to offer the world. That I was still loved and still valued and needed. Now I was disgusting and ruined. He would never forgive me for becoming what I was now.
My legs gave out, my body colliding with a crash on the concrete beneath me. How could Dante turn into this? He was sick, cruel to an unimaginable degree. He kidnapped me, he manipulated me, lied, betrayed…ruined me. How did he get away with this?
Dante’s shadow fell over me. “You belong to me.”
A hysterical laugh bubbled up and ripped from my lips. “I belong to him and I will go to him.” Even if he turned me away, I still needed to go to him. He was where I belonged.
Anger coated me in its venom as it dripped from Dante’s demeanor. “You belong to me and you are staying here through choice!”
My eyes sprung to his. Was he insane?
“You will tell him and everyone else you have been away on a secret getaway to marry your lover. You had no idea of the media storm.”
He was certifiable. Freaking crazy son of a bitch!
“Screw you!” I spat.
He dropped on his haunches, gripping my jaw with his fingers, and lifted my face to his. “I have everything on tape, Star.”
My stomach vaulted, threatening to expel the contents.
“You begging me to fuck you in the cell. Every depraved act inside the house. Your pleasure from all the dirty things you let me, hell, begged me to do to you. Malik watching… seeing your pussy on full view.”
The bile burned my throat. The tears blinded my vision. The frantic pound of my blood made me lightheaded.
“I’ll leak everything first to him, and then to the media.”
“Why do you hate me?” I sobbed. I was dizzy and on the verge of passing out. The torrent of memories, the truth of everything was too overwhelming, and the loss and ache from what I knew I could never have back was unbearable.
“We will go through with the wedding and then you’ll give me the child you should have given me years ago.”
My breath left me, along with a long high-pitched sound. I was pregnant. Did he know? Did he plan that?
“I have cameras everywhere, Star… even in the toilets.”
Star… that had been his pet name for me. No one called me Star any more.
I was drowning in despair, my heart bleeding… crying for its mate… Cade.
Faye. God, she was there again in my dreams, so vivid I could smell her scent. “Argh!” I screamed, smothering my face in her pillow, the one I traveled with. I didn’t give a fuck if that made me a pussy. Yeah, I was a film star but I was also human and I was dying inside without her.
My body wept in sorrow, my heart beat out of my chest. I wanted this crippling throb to ease so I could focus on anything but the hole in the pit of my stomach that swallowed another piece of me every day I woke up without her. I wanted to be set free from the ache that was constant since the day they told me her plane went down.
I loved her then and my love for her now was killing me slowly.
Men are funny creatures. We love fiercely when we find the right woman. Family, friends… none of it matters when you have the one. We fly the nest and our love and life, our everything, revolves around the love we harbor for our woman. Don’t get me wrong, I loved my family, friends but if it came down to a choice, she would have won every time.
I didn’t need anyone but her. Men don’t need much to function, it’s true what they say; you only need the love of a good woman. I had that and lost it.
I couldn’t believe she was gone. If she was dead, I would have felt it, I would have ceased to exist. I was barely existing now; an apparition of my former self. I was only breathing for the sake of living but not really present in the world. My heart was dying; there was still a beat but there was no sound.
Thoughts tore at my mind. Was she scared? The sound of the impact, the twisting and crunching of metal, the whooshing of air as it was sucked from the cabin. The heat from the fire that lit up the engine on impact. My beautiful girl, scared, screaming and crying. Did she think about me as fear took hold of her
and held her in its grip?
They found no bodies. They said the fire was too bad and refused to allow us the pictures. I knew my woman was still out there. My soul was tethered to hers and it still sensed her essence. I would find her. I would never rest until I found her.
My phone buzzed, startling me. I reached across the bed and grabbed my cell. My best friend Jenson had finally text.
I have someone willing to take us to the location of the crash site. Be ready in one hour
At last, progress. I would start there.
An hour later I waited outside my hotel room for Jenson. I pulled my baseball cap down further over my sunglasses and tightened the hoody so my lips and nose were barely on show. I looked like a weirdo but that meant people stayed away. I couldn’t risk being recognized by a fan.
I ignored the heat as it soaked into the black fibers and made sweat pool in every pore. I sighed in relief when Jenson pulled up in a van, until he gestured for me to get in the back. My brow scrunched but I was too anxious to bother arguing. I opened the back and got in.
A scrawny guy sat in the back looking like someone was about to jump out and shank him. He was nervous, his eyes moving rapidly in his head, his teeth worrying his bottom lip.
I shut the door and ignored the guy itching at his arm like something was crawling under his skin. I was in the film industry and my best friend Jenson was a famous rock star. I knew a tweaker when I was shut in a van with one.
“Please tell me you’re not our tour guide?”
He looked up at me, then away, shaking his head. “No tour needed, sir.” Sir? I didn’t think anyone had ever called me sir before. I waved my hand in a continue gesture. I was being irritated at breakneck speed. “I work out in the field where this plane crash happened. It’s a vineyard. I pick grapes, sir. We were told not to come into work that day but I left something there the day before and I needed it, so I crept in.” His eyes kept darting to the door like he was waiting for it to fly open. What the hell was he scared of? His hand went back to tearing into his flesh. “A plane landed right out in the field, it was amazing. I have never seen a plane up close before.”
My heart was on a rampage, raging war with my ribcage. “When you say landed, you mean crashed?”
He stared straight at me, his eyes finding focus as he leaned forward. “There was no crash, sir. The plane landed perfectly and a car came. Men went on board and came out with a woman. She was unconscious and then they placed her in the car.”
My woman, my fiancée, the love of my life was alive… but taken, which meant she could be found and whoever had stolen what was mine would die painfully, choking on his own blood.
I couldn’t breathe. The anger, fear and relief all bombarded me at once. There was no air. My phone vibrated against my leg grounding me. Slipping it free the number was unknown.
“Who’s this?”
I heard a gasp then a drop of the phone. Then … her!
“I’m sorry. I’m going to get ready now.”
I scrambled to loosen the hood, pulling off my hat and glasses, trying to suck in oxygen. My Faye …
“Faye… Faye...”
The line was dead.
The tweaker’s audible gasp brought me back. God, of course he would recognize me, fucking figures. Why was he scrambling for the door? Usually they scrambled towards me.
Turning to me, his head shook from side to side as his wide eyes filled with fear and confusion. “You were there. Is this a test? Please don’t kill me.”
Shit, he was tripping out on something; a bad batch of whatever he pumped into those veins. He was so pale, you’d have thought the devil had appeared to him.
“Dude, relax, you’re about to stroke out.” I tried moving towards him but he flinched and started crying. I banged on the adjoining wall to get Jenson’s attention.
I heard his door open and close before the back of the van opened. The tweaker spilled free, landing in a heap at Jenson’s feet. “It is him! He killed Rahul and stole the woman!” he yammered at Jenson in a panic.
It took five seconds for it to register. A further two for me to collapse to my knees. And one more before his name left my lips in disbelief. My brother… my twin brother… “Dante!”
Continue their story in book 2… CADENCE ← Don’t grumble we warned you!
Keep reading for a sneak peek at other work and upcoming releases
Cade.
He had her love. Her devotion. He destroyed her with it!
Years I loved Faye Avery from a distance, watched my brother have something he didn’t deserve. She was always too good for him. Dante had a need for control and that grew with him from childhood, infecting her to bend to his whim.
When Dante abandoned her, the girl who put his future and needs before her own, I rediscovered the girl who lost herself to the heartache. She blossomed and flourished in the light of the love she deserved - until he robbed me of her. Breaking her down, dimming the essence of the woman she had become.
Dante had a darkness inside him that led him down a path of depravity. He was too far gone. He functioned on corruption, humiliation, power and retribution, and all for something that never happened.
What he forgets is this! I not only wear his face, I carry the darkness inside of me too, and my wrath will coat him with it so thick he will drown under the rain of my reckoning.
He wants Star, a memory of a girl he used to know. He stole Faye, a woman who owns my heart and is the cadence in mine.
I will find him.
I will find him. I will take her from him.
And then I will kill him.
Out now
My birth name is Damian. Fitting, really, or so I’m told by the woman who named me.
“You’re the devil’s son,” she would spit at me, pointing a shaky finger in my cheek in a drug induced haze whenever I refused to bend to her whim. I can still feel the impression of her fingertip where her nail broke the skin. I go by Blake now; it’s my middle name, chosen by the midwife who brought me back from the dead. My mother couldn’t wait for me to be out of her womb, expelling me too early from her body with the cord wrapped neatly around my neck, almost robbing me of the life I’d been gifted by a drunken fondle in the back of a truck.
They say some people are born with decreased activity in the brain; a cold spot in the front central lobe. Where most people have activity, a hot area giving them feelings, emotions and enabling them to love, there are a rare few who have a cold spot, affecting their ability to feel emotions, empathy. There are theories that serial killers have this cold spot. Psychopaths. That’s why they lack the ability to connect, to care.
I don’t have feelings the way most people do. I may be one of those people/psychopaths. I don’t know. What I do know is I can fuck the woman who claims to love me and leave her before the sweat’s even dried on my skin, knowing she will cry herself to sleep. I can supply my mother with cash to fund her drug habit, hoping this will be the final hit to send her to the afterlife and… I can kill without remorse.
My emotions are corrupted, have been since my life changed in a single night. My ability to give a shit is absent. I don’t care about anyone with the exception of my kid brother, who is the sole reason I became a killer to begin with. Maybe I would have killed no matter what. Some people are born predestined to become evil, to mark the world with their darkness. Some paint the world in techno color, I paint it in red; blood red.
Can circumstances change us? Can the evil doings of others force us to change the path we’re on? To alter the warmth in our souls? Can they dim our light, making us cold, dark, evil? I don’t know. I’ve questioned this before, but now I accept this is who I am. Just like we cannot choose when the sun will rise and when it will set, I could not choose my destiny. It was mapped out for me. When life drowns you in its cruelty, you don’t know which way the current will drag you, or who you’ll be once you re-surface.
What I do know is, my emotions switched off when I came h
ome from a party at eighteen years old, fully expecting a beat down by my Step father for coming home drunk after telling him I wouldn’t be home that night. Instead I found him in my eleven-year-old brother’s bed. I literally felt myself change. A flick of a switch. If there ever was a warm spot, it turned cold in that moment with the rest of me. Reasoning became impossible, questions I never thought I would have to ask raped my once placid mind. Shutters came down inside me, closing over the windows to my soul, changing me forever.
The muffled cries of my brother, muted because his head was pushed into his pillow while his own flesh and blood, the man who created him, the man supposed to protect, love and cherish him was naked above him, changed my direction in life; mine and Ryan’s, creating my step father’s fate in the process.
I didn’t even flinch when I walked up silently behind him. The drunken haze cleared, nothing but rage burned in my veins, a blood red fog clouding my vision. Rage wasn’t an emotion in that moment, it was an entity grown from the darkest depths of my being, vibrating through my skin to be released. Nothing felt more right than allowing it to take control, seek retribution for the abuse we were born into, to let it consume the boy who once lived there, devouring any human part left of my soul.
The darkness I harbored deep inside that we all have under the surface took control. I gripped his head, and with all the strength I had, I twisted until I heard the loud pop, click, snap, whatever you want to call the sound of his neck breaking, ending his life and shutting off his switch to the stained soul inside him.
I dragged his warm, sweaty body away from my brother, out of his room, closing the door behind me. Alcohol and sweat seeped from his pores, assaulting my nose and making my stomach twist with more hate than I knew possible. I dropped him at the top of the stairs and nudged him with my foot. His lifeless body thumped down, landing in a heap at the bottom. The man who gave my brother life, who had been all I knew as a father figure was now nothing but a decomposing body. If I could have killed him again and again, I would have, without hesitation. I went to the shower and turned it on before going back to my brother’s room and scooping up his trembling body. I put him on his feet, told him to shower and promised no one would ever hurt him again.
