The Filthy Series: The Complete Dark Erotic Serial Novel

by Megan D. Martin

  I had hated Faye so much in those moments. And I never knew, Jessica never told. She never spoke a word about the things that had happened to Faye. She took them to her grave. And that did something to me. It made me want to fucking lose it. She could have saved Faye, but instead she watched him hurt her.

  Instead of answering Faye shook her head and stared down at her lap.

  “What’s the matter?” She was usually forthcoming, telling me the horrors, as if saying them out loud would change their reality and make them easier to stomach.

  “I…” She glanced up at me, “shouldn’t.”

  I frowned. “Why?”

  “There are things you don’t know.” She ran a shaky hand through her hair.

  “What do you mean?” I started to pull my hand away from her shoulder, but she stopped me, covering it with hers.

  “I mean…nothing.” She sighed. “Just nothing. Just go.”

  “No, don’t do that. Don’t shut me out.” What more could there be?

  My gut twisted in on itself.

  “I loved him.” She looked me straight in the eyes when she spoke.

  “What?”

  “I loved Taylor, Rhett. I used to. I used to believe he hung the moon.” She pulled my hand away from her shoulder and clasped it in her lap.

  “Of course, before—”

  “Yes, before and during.” She let out a shaky breath. “I loved him for years.”

  My heart clenched. We hadn’t talked about the way she felt about Taylor. I didn’t think it was important. She hated him. He had destroyed her, ruined her life with all the horrible things he’d done to her. “There were days when I would wake up and couldn’t wait to see him.” She squeezed my hand hard. “Days when I couldn’t wait to have him inside me.”

  I recoiled at her words like a physical slap. “No. You were a kid. You were just misguided.”

  “Call it whatever you want, but that’s my truth. Misguided or not—I believed it. I believed I loved him. This was all before the torture and things he did at the end.”

  I shook my head hard. “He raped you, Faye. You were a child.”

  “He never forced me. Not until the end.”

  “You were nine years old. Of course he fucking forced you.”

  “No.” Her voice was lethal, her eyes hard. “He didn’t. And I won’t let you victimize me anymore.” She took a deep breath. “I wanted him for all those years. I wanted him inside me. I wanted his cock.”

  The words rattled at my ears, scraping at me like bloodied glass. “Stop.” I held up my free hand, the other still clasped in hers. “Why are you saying all this?” I hated the plea in my voice. I hated how this was hurting me, how it was killing me from the inside out.

  “Because it’s the truth. No one asked if I wanted him. If I loved him.”

  “But—”

  “My dream tonight was about one of those times. I haven’t actually dreamed about them at all in a long time. I try not to think about when things were good, because I know they weren’t actually good. You’re right, I was misguided in my love for him, but it was the most real thing I’ve ever experienced. I was just a child so that love consumed me. It was more apart of me than anything else.” She paused, staring down at our intertwined fingers. “We went to a play with mom. I was thirteen. The play was boring to me. Some Shakespeare play that was confusing as hell. Daddy sat between me and mom. He held my hand the whole time. One of the actors got completely naked on stage. A man. I’d never seen another man naked before. Only daddy.”

  Her gaze was far away, as if she was back there. The fact that she called him daddy festered underneath my skin, but I didn’t correct her.

  “The man on stage was around the same age as him. But stage guy was hairier and his dick was smaller. We were close. Sitting practically on the front row. I couldn’t stop staring at it. At how different it was from Daddy’s. Daddy hadn’t fucked me in almost a week. He’d been gone on business. And suddenly I couldn’t stop thinking about his dick and how I wanted to have sex that night. It was the first time I remember craving it. Wanting him. Wanting sex. I squeezed his hand and he looked down at me. His face was inquisitive, normal like any father looking at his daughter. And then I whispered in his ear.” She paused looking up at me for the first time since she started her story. She was squeezing the hell out of my hand. Her eyes looked lost, far away as if she was somewhere she would never be found. “I told him that I wanted him in my mouth.”

  It took everything I had to keep from jerking away. From running from the room like the scared little boy I was. I expected her to continue talking, but she didn’t. Instead she just sat there, saying nothing.

  “What happened next?” Though that question scared the hell out of me.

  “We went home. The ride was nice. Mom talked about the play. I stared out the window and thought of what would happen when we got home. When he came to my room. The things we would do. The sky was so dark. It was late. A little cold out. I thought he would wait until mom went to bed. That’s when he usually came to me. But he didn’t. We got out of the car and he took me upstairs…”

  My heart pounded in my chest. Fueled by all the hate in my veins. I didn’t want her to say it. I didn’t want to hear about how he put his cock in her mouth and how she loved it.

  “Oh my God.” She covered her mouth with her free hand.

  “What, what is it?” She glanced at me and shook her head. “He…”

  “He what?”

  “Holy shit. I can’t believe I didn’t think of it.”

  “Think of what?”

  Her face turned white, whiter than a ghost.

  “Faye, are you okay? What is it?” I touched my hand to her cheek.

  “There’s proof.” Her voice trembled.

  “Proof of what?”

  “Of the things he did to me. The sex. There’s proof.”

  “But—”

  “Videos, Rhett. He took videos of me. Of us. Of the sex. I forgot. But he did. They’re real. They’re somewhere in the house.”

  I stared at her in disbelief. Something inside me said I should be happy. That I should be rejoicing at the news. It was proof. If the videos were in the house then there was cause to put Taylor away for years. Maybe even the rest of his life. It was the kind of evidence I had been looking for, for almost a year. But I couldn’t be happy. I couldn’t even find words to speak. All I could do was stare at Faye. See the fear in her eyes at what the reality of those videos meant for her.

  And I couldn’t help but be scared too.

  TEN

  Faye.

  Three weeks later.

  Today was the day. The day I would have to face Taylor. The trial had been going on for two days. The plan had never been for me to grace the seat of the stand and tell my story. Before three weeks ago all the prosecution had was my word against his. And my word meant nothing—I was a prostitute. A drug addict. A woman who had tried to kill herself over and over. I wasn’t credible.

  For once the reality of those things didn’t hurt my feelings. I’d been happy to avoid sitting in that seat and facing Taylor. But the videos, the pictures. They changed things. They changed everything.

  They found them. In the house. In his room. VHS tapes, then DVDs for the later ones. There was more than I ever imagined they would find. More than forty hours of footage. Almost two full days of Taylor fucking me.

  I didn’t watch any of it. I didn’t want or need to relive those things. I didn’t want to see the minute things, to remember the little things that I had forgotten. Footage of me undressing, footage of me showering. There was footage of me doing everything apparently. Damning fucking footage. Literally.

  I didn’t know if Rhett had watched them. He was there when we found them. The special shelf in the back of Taylor’s closet of movies just of him and I. Rhett had avoided me, working late and endlessly since then.

  “Now when I call you up, just go up there and tell your story, okay? The jury will
want to hear it, just as we talked about it. Okay? Don’t be nervous.”

  But I was nervous, and Jim telling me not to be, didn’t really help at all.

  “You’ll be fine, kiddo,” Roger said just after Jim walked off. I had forgotten he was there. I tried to muster up a smile, but it was futile. My nerves jittered beneath my skin. “After today it will be all over and you can leave everything behind. All of it.”

  I wanted to tell him how wrong he was. That I would never be able to leave any of it behind. That I would never ever be able to forget the way Taylor felt when he was inside me. That I would never forget the way he fucked me while I bled out after they’d butchered my baby. There was no leaving anything behind because it was all a part of me. Attached to me like festering wound that would never heal. I would always carry that ache, that sore. Even if Taylor never got out of prison again, the wound would never heal.

  “Yeah,” I said, instead of the truth.

  I took a deep breath, letting the air seep out of my lungs. Where was Rhett? I hadn’t seen much of him lately, but I knew he would be here. That he would be with me before I had to face Taylor.

  “You’re a smart woman, you know that, right? You’re going to do great in there. Just tell your story. That’s all the jury needs to hear.”

  I nodded, but couldn’t even muster up a weak smile for Roger.

  “Oh my goodness, I’m so glad I made it in time.” I glanced up to see Sarah pushing her way through the door. I tried not to let the disappointment eat away at me that it was her and not Rhett. “Are you ready?” Sarah’s soft eyes implored mine, searching me for an answer.

  I had come to love her, even though there were moments when I hated her. When my jealousy ate away at me. The fact that I loved her made me hate her more in those moments. She was honest and pure. Things I would never be. But I could tell in the wrinkles around her eyes, even through the concern, that she was ready for this to be over. She wasn’t the only one. But I got the distinct feeling that she was ready for me to be gone. To be the sister that visited occasionally. Not the one whose life and problems consumed every moment of their time. I couldn’t blame her. If anything she was the only person in this equation who made the most sense. She never said anything to me about it. I knew she never would. But she didn’t have to. It was written all over her face every time she looked at me. There was a sourness that had crept into everything she did.

  I was both thrilled and saddened by the fact that I was the person to bring this onto her kindly demeanor. That I was the one to make her wither and shrivel.

  “I’m fine.” I looked down at my hands. The lie slipped out so easily.

  “You’ll be great.”

  But I think we both knew that was a lie as well.

  “Faye Turner.” A bailiff stuck his head into the room. “They’re ready for you.”

  I glanced around in panic. Where was Rhett? He hadn’t said that he would come, but I couldn’t imagine him not coming. This was what we had worked on for nearly year. Everything that led up to right now. And he wasn’t here. I was alone without him. Panic gripped my heart. “Ms. Turner?” I glanced at the bailiff and realized that I hadn’t moved a muscle. I was frozen in place.

  But then somehow I was moving. My feet carrying me across the wood floor and toward him. Sarah said something, but I didn’t listen. Roger did too, but they became background noise of the horror movie I was about to walk into. In reality I knew that I was going to be fine. That nothing could happen to me. Everyone explained the way things would go. Where Taylor would be sitting. Where I would be. The guards that would be there. I would be fine.

  But I didn’t feel fine. The black heels on my feet clacked against the wood. The skirt on my hips suddenly felt too small. My shirt stuck to my back. All in the matter of seconds as I walked into the courtroom.

  The courtroom was full of people. But I didn’t see them. My eyes found his. Taylor’s. It was like we were two magnets. No one else existed when our eyes met. Just the two of us in this big room. His hair was longer. His face needed to be shaved. But he was the same. Ten months away from him hadn’t changed much. But I knew that would be the case. It was never different with him. No matter how much time apart we had. It was always the same.

  Over and over. We were the same. The same fucked up people. The Lover and the Stranger. The people who fell down the fucked up rabbit hole and still hadn’t found their way out. Pulling each other down over and over until there wasn’t any light at the end of the tunnel. There wasn’t a light at all. And maybe there had never been a tunnel either. Just a space of time, of despair that destroyed us until we were both broken.

  Rhett said I wasn’t broken. But he was wrong. I had never been whole. Not since I fell in love with my daddy. With the man who sat just ten feet away from where the bailiff placed me on the stand. The man who fucked me senseless and tortured me. The man who killed my baby.

  The judge asked me some questions. Had me place my hand on a bible. I did everything as they said, but I didn’t really hear them. Just more background noise. I couldn’t keep my eyes off Taylor. There was love in his eyes. It was so familiar I nearly choked on air when I sucked in a deep breath.

  “Can you please identify the man who attacked you?”

  The question seemed to come out of nowhere, startling me. I glanced away from Taylor for the first time to look at Jim. He stood just feet away, looking at me expectantly. I lifted my hand, pointing my finger. I would identify Taylor just as we had discussed.

  I looked back at Taylor, meeting those blue eyes. There was something else there now. It wasn’t love. Something more familiar. A warning. A promise. It was the look that told me I was in trouble, that if I fucked this up things would be bad. Things would go from good to worse when he got ahold of me. And then I was back there. I didn’t want to be. I fought it. I was stronger. I didn’t have to go back to those times, those places. But there was nothing I could do. I was sucked into the hell I left behind.

  “Don’t you love me, Faye baby?”

  “Of course I do.” My voice trembled. I couldn’t help that I was scared. That I was terrified every time he came into the room. The baby in my stomach fluttered. Tiny hands or feet bouncing around inside me. I’d been afraid when I first realized what happened. That I was having a baby, but now I was happy. Something good would come from all the pain I had lived through over the last 5 months. Something beautiful and pure. I kept it from them at first. My mom and daddy. Even when he was torturing me and she was watching. I kept it from them. I was strong and I knew my baby would be too.

  I’d made plans. I was going to run away. My baby and I. We were going to get away before Daddy or Mom found out. I used to believe that Daddy wanted a baby with me. That we were meant to be together. But I knew that wasn’t true. And I was scared. I was terrified of what he would do when he found out.

  But then he did find out. I couldn’t hide it forever. My belly started to grow. And he knew. They both did. He didn’t seem mad. Not at first. He touched my marred belly with reverence. As if he couldn’t believe that a piece of him had lingered inside of me. There were moments when his eyes had shown with pride.

  Those were moments I cherished. I coveted that look. It was the one I had always strove for. Longed for. But it was gone too soon.

  “Then you know this is for the best.”

  I glanced up at him. It was just the two of us in the stuffy little room. It wasn’t a very nice place. The chairs were old and worn. The floor dirty. This was to be my first appointment with the doctor who would deliver my baby. They were going to do an ultrasound and make sure he or she was okay.

  “For the best?” I frowned. “Of course. We want to make sure the baby is okay.” My words sounded dead, even to me. The happiness of my coming baby was there inside me, but it was buried beneath all the pain. All the torture. The moments of happiness about the baby with Daddy had been less than short-lived and he’d had no mercy on pregnant body in the week since
he found out.

  “That’s not what this is.”

  “Faye Turner,” A nurse called my name from the door and we stood. I followed her inside and she took my weight and jotted something on a chart.

  “We’re going to take good care of you Ms. Turner.” She smiled at me and handed me gown after leading Daddy and I into a room. “George will be in to talk to you before the procedure.” She shut the door.

  Panic flared under my skin. “Procedure?”

  “Put the gown on, Faye.” Tayor’s voice was stern.

  “We’re supposed to check on the baby. They’re going to tell me that he’s okay.” My voice shook.

  “He?”

  “Yes, it’s a boy.” I didn’t know for certain, but I had gut feeling.

  Something strange flickered over his eyes. Hurt maybe. But then it was gone.

  “After today there won’t be a baby.” He leaned against the wall, his arms folded over his chest, staring at me. And I knew he was waiting for me to get undressed so he could watch.

  “What are they going to do to me and my baby?”

  I knew the answer. It was there in my head. I should have known all along that he would never let me be happy. Not after what I asked from Rhett that night months ago. He’d done everything he could to suck the joy from my life. I should have known that my baby would be no different.

  “Do you really want me to say it?”

  “Don’t take my baby, please.” Tears dripped down my cheeks and I clutched my hand to my swollen belly, dropping the gown on the floor.