Chapter 26 Everett #2
“Stop it. Who did this to you?” I grit out. “Give me a name. Give me the last location you’ve seen them. Something. Anything.”
“Let me show you.”
Instantly, I loosen my hold. Hoping she has a note, a street name.
Her attacker’s license plate.
This isn’t a piece of paper she’s fishing out of her pocket. She raises a crumpled photo between us, shaking.
Time stops.
It’s my sister’s photo.
“Why?” I push the word out, barely. I’m wound too tight to say anything else. “Why?”
“My parents—err. Winston and Molly.”
I’m pleased for all of a second that she corrects herself.
The warmth doesn’t last. My dead sister’s bright smile shines back at me. Aurora has her picture.
Why?
“You wouldn’t talk to me. I figured…” She blinks back tears. “I assumed that Winston might’ve known who she was. He could’ve told me. I could’ve understood why you’d ignored me and fixed it. Fixed us. I was desperate, Everett. I’m sorry. I just wanted to fix us.”
Winston.
He beat my wife.
He beat my fucking wife.
Black dots dance around the edges of my vision. I’m aware, barely, that my fingers don’t just hold Aurora anymore. I’m bruising her.
“Who was she?” she whispers, not flinching at the change in me. I’m about to detonate, and this beautiful creature stays. “He wouldn’t say anything. You’re shutting me out, all of you.”
My life has been flipped upside down over the last two weeks.
Hate has blended with lust. Guilt has been polluting my soul.
My heart has started beating all over again.
I don’t have the faintest idea of what to do with myself.
Only one thing’s stayed the same. My unwillingness to share my secrets.
The picture goes into my jacket pocket.
My past, for now, is behind me.
My present is right here.
With the woman whose cheeks I’m cupping.
“Please, tell me who she was. Winston said was.”
One shake of my head, then my lips are on hers. This kiss isn’t meant to hurt Aurora or dominate her. I’m gentle and desperate. Searching and sure.
I’m relieved when she doesn’t fight me. When she feels how much I need her, she grants me access to her mouth, parting her lips. Rubbing her tongue along mine.
She gives me even more by grinding her sex over my cock. Her moans are delicate compared to my feral groans.
I tug on her hair, my lips trailing a path over the exposed parts of her neck.
Pleasure blinds me as she rocks harder on top of me, my name on her lips.
Fucking her will be so easy. Quick, rough, and hard.
Fucking her will have to wait.
I’ve wasted too much time here already.
“No.” Aurora grasps for me when I deposit her on the bed. She watches me as I adjust my cock in my pants.
Her eyebrows scrunch when I remove the collar from her neck.
I need it there, now more than ever. I also need her to rest. To take care of herself. She’s been through a lot.
“Take a long bath. I’ll be back soon. Then you’re going to be punished for running away from me. The right kind of punishment. By the right person.” I’m at the door, the key to it in my hand. I don’t miss her grateful, soft smile that breaks something inside me. “Your husband.”
The door is locked.
My way of keeping her safe. Always.
The last time I was alone in a room with Winston was years ago. When we were young. Really young.
His only living parent, his father, was ill. His mom had died of TS complications a few months before that.
We, the kids of the Royalty families, were expected to take turns at the hospital.
He and I barely exchanged a word.
Soon after, he turned into my enemy.
For over two decades, I’ve waited for the right time to strike. Sat on the sidelines. Watched him live the life no member of my family could ever have.
He’s ended up richer than his parents. Has a beautiful wife. The perfect daughter.
The three people I loved the most were rotting in their graves.
And now Aurora walked home with dust on her crumpled clothes. Her hair was disheveled.
The bruise on her cheek.
Because of him.
The memory twists my gut. Blazes through me over and over and fucking over.
I’m not leaving here until I’m done with him.
“Look what the cat dragged in.” The smug bastard grins at me from his doorway. So sure of himself that he let me in through the gates. And now he’s beckoning me into his home. “My son-in-law. Too bad Molly went out shopping. She’s been at it for hours.”
Hours that Aurora spent walking home alone, wandering the streets she barely knows, and somehow managing to find her way home.
While she was broken. Wounded.
Thinking I’d abandoned her.
I don’t bother answering him. I stalk across the driveway. Climb the steps to his porch.
“Winston.” My hand curls tight at my side.
On the drive here, I pictured him hitting Aurora. Imagined the taste of her fear on my tongue.
Those thoughts fueled me.
Pushed the rage straight into my veins.
That same fury is what sends my fist right into his jaw.
He laughs, the sound harsh. Cutting, despite his weaker position on the floor. “I see your wife has been influencing you.”
My shoe meets his abdomen in the soft area beneath the ribs.
“How’s married life treating you, by the way?” His grin is wide and mirthless as he sits up, coughing. Droplets of blood paint his lips red.
I should be concerned that he doesn’t put up a fight. That he lets me go at him.
He could press charges. I could lose everything.
And yet.
Aurora, bruised. The way she cried in my arms.
I was desperate, Everett. I’m sorry. I just wanted to fix us.
Since I failed her, she went to him for answers. To find a way to reconnect with me.
So no, I don’t care what he has planned. No one would put me away for this, anyway.
“Such a big man, aren’t you, Winston?” I grab the collar of his shirt and bend toward him until we’re face-to-face. “Assaulting girls half your size?” Since I don’t want him suspecting my revenge plan, I add, “Your own daughter?”
“No idea what you’re talking about.” The twinkle in his eyes sets me off.
Bam.
This blow lands on his chest. Another coughing fit starts.
I stay exactly where I am, relishing the stench. The pain.
His helplessness is a balm to my wounded soul.
“Your reign of terror is over.” I snarl, my chest heaving. “This was the last goddamn time you’ve had your hands on another person. On someone I care deeply for.”
“She was begging for it.”
Lotus.
Aurora.
Whoever else he might’ve violated or injured.
“Next time Aurora shows up here you don’t so much as look at her.”
When he smiles, I’m right there. Crumpling the collar of his shirt in my hand, tighter this time. Choking him.
He’s wheezing, his face turning red.
“You don’t talk to her.”
The lack of oxygen finally elicits a reaction from him. His hands wrap around mine, prying me off him.
Trying to.
The madness coursing through my veins has turned me into a beast. I’ll release him when it suits me, not a second before.
“Mr. Clarke,” a woman from their staff shrieks.
She doesn’t deserve my wrath. She’s having it anyway. “Get the fuck out of here.”
Her heels clack away, leaving me alone with purple-faced Winston.
“Stop,” he begs, still coughing.
“And you definitely”—I growl, punching him one last time in the gut—“don’t touch my fucking wife.”
With that, I leave him crumpled on the floor. I stand up straight, smoothing my clothes.
“This”—he coughs violently at my back—“isn’t over, Alder.”
“I’m counting on it,” I say to the night air.
I’ll be seeing him soon.
Just a few more weeks.
Tick tock. Tick tock.