by Marata Eros
I glower, but my worry over Kandace has me only half-listening.
“Then there's the butler, gate security—Clarice herself. Oh yeah, and dear old dad. He's all kinds of putrid now.”
I blanch. Father had allowed many atrocities, it was true. But he had been the only parent I had left. And now he was gone.
I look away. “I want to see Kandace.”
“Negative. You're wanted for the willful murder of Clarice Sinclair.”
I breathe through my anger, and it feels like sucking oxygen in hell. My own personal hell.
“She killed everyone. She tried to kill me.” And Kandace, I want to add.
Thorn leans back, folding his arms and looking down at me. “Why would a chick with her kind of green and clout kill moneybags Sinclair, some of the staff, poison your ex-girlfriend, and go after you and Kik?”
I don't have anything to protect anymore.
“I need a reason, Sinclair. We don't have all the facts. But there are some I do know.”
Our eyes lock.
“You’re schooled enough in martial arts that your fists are considered lethal weapons. They're going to bring you up on charges unless you give me a reason as to why a woman who has absolutely no motive would go batshit crazy and whack everyone.”
Thorn scrubs his head, threads his fingers, and looks away. When he speaks, it's to the wall. “Including Kik.”
I know why.
“We can't question Kik. She's not fucking with us.”
I stand, the chair coming with me.
Thorn turns, glaring. “Sit the fuck back down, Sinclair.”
“Give me something, you fucking thug.”
He gets in my grill. “Fuck you! You put her in harm's way, and she meant nothing to you. Some kind of fuck fun for a couple of weeks before you're on to the next rich bitch.”
A beat of hate drums between us. I grit my teeth. “I love her.”
Thorn jerks his face back as though slapped. “No fucking way.”
I tell the truth, the hell with how it makes me look. “I'm as surprised as you.”
“I can smell a lie.”
“Sniff away,” I say.
“God!” Thorn roars, stalking away, hands on hips.
I stand hunched over with my hands cuffed around a chair that is growing off my ass.
He points at me. “You better be straight with me.”
“Where is Kandace?”
“Fine. She's in surgery.”
I take the first breath that feels real since I've been incarcerated. “Will she...” I can't say it.
He looks down, his rough exhale sounds like a popped balloon. “They don't know.”
Moments tick by, and our mutual grief hangs in the air like a bad smell.
“Clarice…” I can't. I do. “Clarice Sinclair was my rapist from the time I was eleven.”
Thorn's head jerks up. Instead of the look I expect—disbelief, derision—I see shock.
“What did you say?” he asks quietly.
“You heard me.”
“I did. I want to hear more.”
I slowly lower my chair and myself into it. I start at the beginning. I leave nothing out.
The first time and the last.
My guilt over having sex with my stepmother. My guilt and being forced to enjoy it.
My hatred of everything she was.
After a half hour I fall silent. I'm spent.
A full minute buzzes by.
Thorn whistles low, and I don't move a muscle. “Your life was almost as fucked up as mine.”
I still don't move.
Thorn walks around the table to me and unlocks the cuffs.
I lift my head, ready to ask him what's going on.
He says, “When did your real mother pass away?”
I can't hide my surprise. That isn't what I expected him to ask. “When I was four.”
“Cause of death?”
“Unexplained. They couldn't determine it.”
Thorn nods, stroking his chin. “I think we might have motive after all.”
He jerks his chin toward the door, and I stand, rubbing my wrists.
“Mick made your bail. But only on the condition I got an hour with you.”
I don't care about my parents right now. Or the fact that I might go to prison for the murder of my rapist, the woman who would dare to snuff out the one life I gave more of a shit about than my own.
“Okay,” I answer. “I want to see Kandace.”
Thorn claps me on the back. “You're fucking persistent for a rich asshole.”
I grab his arm, spinning him. His arm rockets out, capturing my throat. I grab his nuts with light pressure.
“You have no idea,” I manage to croak around his hold.
“You're something, Sinclair.”
“Yes,” I hiss, “now tell me where the fuck Kandace is.”
He jerks his hand off my throat. “I'll do one better, I'll take you there.”
I release his nuts, and he backs away.
“That sucked.”
I smile for the first time in hours.
It fades when we walk outside the interrogation room and I see a pale, distraught Faren clinging to Mick.
FIFTEEN
Chet
“I'll be honest,” the doctor begins.
No, please lie. I peg his throat with my eyes, wanting to strangle him so badly my teeth ache.
“Miss King is not out of the woods yet. The bullet went straight through but nicked a lung. Her breathing is precarious, and we won't know what her body's recuperation time line is for at least twenty-four hours.” He looks at all of us, his eyes finally resting on me.
I stand, striding to him.
“She has asked to see a Chet Sinclair.”
I turn away, preparing to sprint to her room, but the doctor grabs my arm.
I don't know what my expression is, but he steps back from what he sees on my face.
“Do not excite her, Mr. Sinclair. I know a little of the events that brought her to us, and I am telling you, she cannot handle a secondary trauma. Her body can't. Is that understood?”
“Yes, you stupid man.” My nostrils flare, and he glares at me.
“Sin—” Mick starts.
I put up a palm.
“As if there was any force in this world that would cause me to put Kandace in danger.”
“Again,” Thorn grumbles in the background.
I shoot him a glare meant to incinerate. He throws up his hands in defeat.
Faren approaches me, moving between Mick and the pissed off surgeon. “Tell her I love her.”
“Tell her yourself. Speak to her when I'm through telling her that I love Kandace more than anyone alive.”
Faren grabs my lapel, soaked with Kandace's blood. She whispers, “Mick knew you were for her. Now I know.”
We stand there for a moment, then her hand slowly glides off my ruined clothes.
I turn and jog. I sail past nurses, doctors, and patients.
I ignore their looks and move to the door of the room she lays inside. I sweep it open, and it thunks the wall.
There lays Kandace. She's so beautiful. So alive.
I move to her in a trance. She turns her face, sees me, and tears well.
“No, don't talk. Just listen.”
I hook my foot around a stool with rollers and it scoots under me. I sit down, take her hand, and look into eyes spilling water that falls and soaks the hair at her temples.
“I love you.”
She nods.
I grab the hand with the IV, and the tubing swings between us.
“Don't you even think about dying on me.”
She laughs a little then grimaces from the pain. I wipe her tears away.
“I have to confess something.”
Her eyebrows lift.
“I lied.”
Her brows fall like a stone above her eyes, and that fire—the unquenchable enigmatic spark that is all Kandace—lights, and I
chuckle.
“I do care about the addendum in the will.” I look at my hand around hers. “I figured I'd live without the money if it meant I could be with you.”
Kandace clears her throat.
“No, let me finish, stubborn girl.”
Her lips purse. I want to kiss them, and I mourn the ashen look of her caramel skin.
I dig around in my suit jacket before pulling out a small velvet box.
Her eyes go wide.
“When?” she croaks, seeing what I have in my hand.
I set the box on her chest. It rises and falls with each breath. I count them all.
I drag my cell out of my hand and scroll through the million texts I sent her. I get to the one where she finally replied.
It has the date next to the word Hi.
“You—you knew back then?” she asks, her non-IV hand moving to her chest.
“I suspected. Then the first time we were together I knew. I tried to deny it as long as I could. But I've always been one to tell myself the truth. I lived with terrible secrets for so long, that this was one I didn't want to keep.”
“But your—your dad and all these murders. Chloe?”
“Chloe was poisoned by Clarice. When she discovered Chloe was pregnant with someone else's baby, that she hadn't gone through with the tampering, she was no longer of use.”
“Clarice wanted a cover marriage so she could...”
I see her throat convulse. “Shhh. Yes, she's a sick person.”
“Was,” Kandace whispers, and I nod.
I tell her the worst truth of all. “My mother's body will be exhumed.”
Kandace's eyes close. “Oh my God.”
“Women murder, but their weapon of choice is almost always poison. Thorn suspects Clarice may be responsible for my mother's death.”
Kandace covers her mouth, her shocked yes round in her white face. “I'm so sorry, Chet.”
“No, I am. I'm sorry it took me so long to figure out what was most important. To stop living under the threat of exposure that Clarice constantly hung over my head. I had nothing to feel bad about. She was the criminal.”
Her eyes are unflinching. “Most definitely.”
I lean forward and press a kiss on her forehead.
We stare at each other. Then our eyes go to the box at the same moment.
“Well, show me my worth, stud.”
I break out in a laugh. “There is no ring in this world that could do you justice, Kandace King.”
“I should get shot all the time. You're really pouring it on thick, Sin.”
I can hardly smile, and hers vanishes.
“I don't ever want you hurt again,” I say.
“I know.”
Then her morose expression moves to delight. “Show me.”
I smile, popping open the velvet box.
“Oh my God!” she squeals. “That is obscene!”
“I am a billionaire, you know.” I wink.
She quirks an eyebrow, and I waggle mine. “I am aware, but this—this is celebrity star big.”
“You don't like it?” I ask.
A look of horror crosses her face. “Hell no! This ostentatious sucker is going to be worn twenty-four hours a day!”
I cherish the look on her face without an ounce of restraint.
“Is that a yes?”
She grabs the box with her free hand. “Hell yes!”
I gently take the box from her hand and slide the ten carat princess cut diamond on her finger.
It fits perfectly.
I frown.
“What?” she asks, her eyes going to the ring.
I smirk.
“It will look much better with the wedding band.”
“Uh-uh, Sin. I want a big wedding with all the stuff. I'm going to be a girl about it all.”
“I would hope so.”
“So gorgeous,” she whispers, admiring the stone.
“Not as gorgeous as you in front of me. Alive.”
Her eyes meet mine.
“Come ʼere.”
She doesn't have to ask me twice.
EPILOGUE
Eight months later
Kandace
Chet works his way up my body from my feet. The man has a mouth that should be a mortal sin. The things he can do with it… he reaches the puckered scar tissue where the bullet hit me. Chet kisses it, licking at the sensitive flesh.
Healed but still raw.
I grab his hair, fisting it, and my wedding ring flashes in the candlelight. The candles are burnt low after we've spent half the day in our bed. Together.
For the first time as a married couple.
My little condo is long gone. I now share the house Chet had, if you can call it a house. When the second floor is an exercise palace, it seems like more than a place to live.
A life with chauffeurs, cooks, cleaners, and credit at stores I could never afford to step foot in before doesn't feel like my life. Those luxuries are all at my disposal, and it's great.
But nothing is as great as having this man I love.
“Stop thinking,” he growls and bites me softly, his teeth digging into the soft flesh around my areola. I gasp.
“Hard not to, me having a brain and all.”
He chuckles, laving my nipple. “That is sexy, but shut it off when we’re fucking.”
“Ha! I can't believe you can get it up again, Chet Sinclair.”
“And I can't believe I finally have you, Kandace Sinclair. All”—kiss, lick, nip—“to”—he bites me again, and I moan—“myself.”
“You do,” I agree, breathless.
Then he shows me how much he enjoys our new status as man and wife.
*
“I guess he was for real, Kik.”
“Yeah,” I answer softly, “he was.”
Ax stands away from me, and we look out over Union Bay. Moored boats rock in the early fall wind. Gasworks Park feels as though it has risen from the ashes as a different place in my heart. I don't need to come here anymore to feel safe.
Chet is my safe harbor.
But Ax needs to know.
“I want to find all those half-siblings, Ax. But Chet doesn't want me in danger.”
“Kik,” Ax says, catching a tumbling curl that goes horizontal in the wind and pushing it behind my ear. “There's no way. I don't want anything to happen to you either. That first month when you were recuperating? Those were the worst four weeks of my life.”
I don't say anything. I'll never forget the shadow of worry Chet wore as a permanent expression until the doctor gave me the okay.
“Yeah.” I'm not here to talk about my brush with death.
“So I'm just some chapter in the book of your life now, Kik? We can't see each other?”
“You're a good chapter. You'll always be good. But now I've got someone.”
“He's pretty fucked up. You know, I was there when he kicked everybody's asses. Read online he bashed in his stepmother's face with one blow. Cartilage to the brain. She was dead before she hit the floor.”
I lift my chin. “You know how Roi was evil?”
Ax just nods. There's no denying that.
“She was like him.”
“Fine, but that guy has potential, Kiki. Violent potential.”
“And I married him.”
He nods. “That you did. I just hope you know what you're doing.”
A sad little smile tugs at the corners of my mouth. “I don't. But my heart does, and I feel more alive with Chet than I did without him. More safe.” I capture his dark gaze. “Just more.”
He nods and throws his arm around my shoulders. We sit together in companionable silence.
“What about his mom? Is all that shit true?”
I sigh. “Which part?”
“That the stepmom poisoned his mom?”
“Yes. She was already sniffing around Chet's dad and coveted what they had.”
“And—god—it's so fucking disgusting. She—”
&
nbsp; “You can say it. She raped him.”
“Don't know if you can rape a dude.”
I turn underneath his arm and stare at him.
His skin is dark, but I see the red.
“They were men, Kik,” Ax says. “Back in the hood, those were adult men going to town on me. Not soft, rich gorgeous women.”
My eyes narrow. “But did you want your first experience to be your stepmother after your mom passed away? Did you want to have to come because if you didn't, there'd be pain?”
Ax's eyes widen. “That's fucked up.”
“Yeah,” I reply softly, “really, really fucked up.”
“So he's got this rich experience—”
“And all the money in the world didn't make him safer or happier.”
“That sucks,” he says.
“Yeah.”
I lean my head on his shoulder, and grab the hand that dangles off my shoulder.
“I love you, Ax.”
He squeezes me. “I love you too, Kik.”
*
Thorn breezes through the door, his arm slung around Juliette.
“Hey, Jules,” I say.
Eugene flusters around the door as all my ruffian relatives saunter inside.
Ax pats the solid door and says, “Chill, Poindexter.”
“Ax, don't be an ass,” Thorn says, giving him a brain duster.
Ax pouts. “Bully. Fuck off.”
Eugene sways.
“Thank you, Eugene. They're just…” I bite my lip.
“Uncouth,” Chet supplies, drink in hand. His glowing eyes find me, and I blush.
He was inside me ten minutes ago. I can't get ready with that man around.
Chet intuits my thoughts and tugs me against him before laying a wet, hot kiss on my mouth.
“God, get a room!” Ax says.
“We have,” Chet purrs and steps away, wearing my lipstick and making no move to wipe it off. Instead, he takes a sip of whiskey, his first in the entire time we've been together.
I don't ask why he has a mild aversion to it now.
Faren and Mick come through the doors next, followed by Shane, who toddles with expert waddling to Chet and wipes drool on his pantleg.
