Chapter 30 Amber #2
Cal looks like he'd like to disappear into the floor right now.
“Dex?” I ask because I feel like he's the only one capable of giving me a fair story right now. It’s a weird position to be in, particularly when my brain still isn't certain whether it's as allegiant to Cal as my body is.
“It was months ago... before you. Before the other one.”
“Other one?” Katrina grimaces and then looks at me apologetically.
Well, this is fucking awkward.
“I can explain.” Cal says, drawing my attention and Katrina's.
I gesture to him, showing him he's got the floor.
He opens his mouth, hesitates, and then shuts it. “Fuck. This is hard.”
“I'll handle this.” Dex says, bracing a hand on his shoulder like he's looking for permission. When Cal gives it in the form of a nod, he turns to me. “Cal was raised to take a place in his father's business.”
I blink, unsure what kind of business we're talking about. Does his father work in film too?
“It's not exactly a legal business. You understand?”
I squint, wondering what exactly he's trying to get at. When he realizes he needs to spell it out for me, he just sighs.
“He provides a front for human trafficking. His hotel casinos make it easy to launder money earned from girls who are brought into the hotel, where clients pay for their... services.”
Katrina shifts and crosses her arms over her stomach.
“When he was eighteen and it was time to start operating his own branch of hotels, he went out to Vegas for the week. He's never told me what happened that week.”
Dex glances at his friend, who doesn't seem bothered by the fact that he's speaking about him as though Cal isn't even here.
“But something about that time there changed him.
He almost didn't survive, either. He was beaten pretty badly, suffered some bleeding on the brain.
He just showed up on my doorstep half dead and refused to talk about it.
But ever since then, I knew something about him was different.
.. like he was exposed to something so sinister that it grabbed ahold of him.
For years, I've watched him deteriorate.
The old Cal is still in there, sure, but he's not the same.
I've watched him escalate, turn into someone I was scared of... not for myself, but because he was doing things that could ruin his own life.”
He sighs. “I was by his side when he got engaged, completely on a whim.”
Engaged?
Cal was engaged?
That feels like a betrayal…
God, I sound fucking pathetic and ridiculous.
I'm nothing to him, but he's all that I've got.
The unfairness of it makes my stomach twist, and I can't bear to look at him.
“I was going to be his best man, so I was even more shocked when he called it off out of nowhere.
It took a lot of prying before he finally confessed about how things had gotten violent.
.. how he was scared that he'd wake up with his wife dead in his bed one day.
That's when I realized I had underestimated the darkness inside of him.
.. a void that sucks everything in if it gets too close.
I didn't know what to do, so we agreed to try therapy, but the first therapist he went to…” Dex hesitates.
I imagine he fucked his therapists, that they all fell for him and wound up bent over their own desks.
“I said I wanted to fuck her throat…”
That's not so bad. I open my mouth to say as much, but Dex scowls. “With a machete.”
Cal shrugs.
“She was hot but fucking annoying. I thought therapists were supposed to let you talk. Instead, she told me everything about herself.”
Oh my God.
Katrina whimpers, and when I look to her, her hand is pressed against her mouth. I don't know what compels me to do it, but I decide to stand beside her, to position myself to be able to step in front of her if Cal snaps.
“We probably should have tried a different therapist,” Dex acknowledges, “But we just decided to try and manage it.
And we were managing it. Boxing, grappling, golf, shooting.
We tried a lot of different ways to manage the restless energy, but nothing could tame the beast, and I couldn't be with him twenty-four seven. The closest he can get to sating the desire is through sex... dominant, brutal, sometimes cruel sex.”
“Fuck.” Cal frowns. “Am I really that great a monster?”
“Your beast is.” Dex sighs. “One night I got a call that he'd killed someone.
He was horrified, scared... didn't know what to do.
But I'd spent a lot of time thinking about it.
I could sense it was coming, so I'd been planning. I had everything we needed to dispose of the body and found the perfect dumping ground. But when I got here, she was still breathing, and Cal was a fucking mess.”
Dex's gaze turns to Katrina.
“That was not a scenario I had planned for. But I took one look at you, and I knew I had to help.”
Somehow, Dex is filling in the puzzle pieces for all of us. It's Cal's turn, as his friend looks to him apologetically.
“I was going to take her to an airport and get her a ticket somewhere far away, but it's not like the company you contracted her through didn't think of stuff like that. She had no passport, no ID, and wasn't really fit for travel, either. So, I took her home.”
“That was months ago.” Cal says, his nose scrunching as he realizes how long Dex has been keeping this from him.
“Yes. She's been with me since I took her from your place.”
“What the fuck.” Cal whispers, his eyes glancing up to meet Katrina's before darting to mine. “You gave me hell when I showed you my little doll.”
“Yes,” Dex nods.
“But you had your own dirty little secret the whole time?”
“Yes.” Dex nods again.
I turn to Katrina, curious about their dynamic. “So, are you guys...?”
“Together?” She laughs. “Yeah. I guess we are. Are you and Cal together?”
I shake my head because we still haven't figured that out. And after everything Dex just revealed, do I even want to be with him, willingly or not?
I know the answer, but it feels wrong to admit it to myself.
“Yes.” Cal says firmly. “You're mine, little doll. Whatever you want to be, fine, but mine is non-negotiable. I can't let you escape me because you're the thread that's holding me together.”
I open my mouth, prepared to tell him that he can't decide that sort of thing for me. I could run away and never look back, but I won't. I'm not sure I really can, after all.
He sinks to his knees before me, and Katrina takes a swift step around him, into the comfort of Dex's arm.
“I know it's not fair to you. I can see that. But you... you fix me. You keep the monster at bay, keep me... me.”
I feel dizzy; the world around me is too staticky.
He presses a kiss to my thigh, right below where the hem of his shirt falls a few inches above my kneecap.
I'm decently clothed, compared to the wardrobe he prepared for me, but it still feels like too intimate a position to be in with Dex and Katrina in the room.
“Don't leave me, little doll.” He pleads, clinging to the back of my leg like a child being dropped at school on the first day. “I know I'm broken, but I'm not when I'm with you.”
I try to breathe around the confusing swirl of emotions like a tornado in my stomach. I don't know what I'm supposed to do, what I'm supposed to say. It's on my tongue to tell him I forgive him, but that doesn't feel quite right.
Do I forgive him?
I'm not entirely sure yet. Even if he hasn't been the greater evil, he's still responsible in part for what happened to me. He keeps wicked men in their wicked business by purchasing from them.
And even if I can find it in me to forgive him for what he did to me, I don't know if I can forgive him for what he did to the girls before me. I can't forgive him for what he did to Katrina or his fiancé, and especially for the girl he buried in his family mausoleum.
I can't forgive him yet, and he hasn't apologized.
So, I settle for all I can give him.
A promise, a truth.
“I'm not leaving. Not today.”