19. Miranda
19
MIRANDA
S oot, dust, and a smell I can’t quite recognize filter into my nose when I follow Nero into the basement of the house across the road from my home. I could blame it on the untouched onion rings sitting beside empty takeout containers on a black TV stand dinner tray, but the stain in the front of Roy’s pants won’t allow it.
He’s ruining what I’d hoped would become my favorite pair of skinny jeans with more than a voluptuous frame, and the situation worsens when anger isn’t the first thing to flash through his eyes when they land on me.
It isn’t even wordless begs for help.
It is a lusty glint a man as dominant and claiming as Nero will never sweep under the carpet.
A crack sounds.
It is closely followed by a groan.
Oddly, I don’t cringe when the removal of Roy’s gag, so he doesn’t choke on the blood Nero’s fist forced from his nose, is chased by a tooth being spat onto the dirt floor.
I get an immense amount of satisfaction.
For years he abused me. It may not have been with his fists, but it was just as dangerous.
It almost killed me.
Though I’d like to witness Roy get some more just desserts, I shift on my feet to the true culprit of the latest crime wave to hit Vegas.
I was already slotting the pieces of the puzzle together, but the picture became clear when I attended a meeting with Nero in Nikolai’s office.
When I look at Tasha as if it is the first time we’ve met, I don’t see her svelte frame that would have been revolted at the thought of eating greasy burgers and fries to make it through the week alive, or the glossiness of her hair that couldn’t look bad no matter how disastrous the hair day.
I look at the woman behind decades of perceptions and years of false idolizations.
That’s when I truly see her, and the dilation of her pupils when I smile announces she is aware her cloak has been stolen.
As I raise my hand to Tasha’s mouth to remove her gag, Nero issues her a stern warning. “If your teeth get anywhere near her fingers, I will saw your hands off and feed them to you.”
His threat shouldn’t turn me on, but it does. Confidence doesn’t solely come from within. It comes with the utmost certainty that someone will be there to catch you anytime you may fall.
Nero is that man for me.
The way he defended me to Nikolai assures me of this, not to mention how he’s letting me take the lead in our latest coup.
I remove Tasha’s gag without incident before shifting my focus to the pain in her eyes.
“It hurts, doesn’t it?” Confusion blasts through her eyes, forcing me to clarify. “Not being seen.”
She scoffs at me. “Please. I was so seen your husband couldn’t get enough.”
Her snippy attitude doesn’t dint my confidence in the slightest because I wasn’t referring to Roy. I was talking about how even being the prettiest, shiniest object in a room of despair can’t force Nero’s eyes to rake her body once.
Although grubby, her clothing is risqué and she has a ton of cleavage on display, yet Nero isn’t the least bit interested.
I’ll keep Roy’s horndog expression to myself. I don’t want to make you sick.
“Was it like that the first time?”
Nero warns Tasha to watch her fucking tone when she snaps out, “First time what? You’re acting as if you know me.”
“I do know you,” I bite back, giving her a small snippet of the attention she’s being denied from Nero. “You’re the woman he never saw. The one who stood right in front of him, dying for an ounce of his attention, but was not awarded a single snippet of it. You may as well have been invisible because he was never going to look at you how you looked at him.”
I twist to face Nero, who appears as lost as Roy. He is an amazing actor. “When I met your mother on the first day of the rebuild, the entire crew was here. Contractors, electricians, plumbers, and an interior designer team who had allegedly cut off their noses to spite their faces by offering their services for well below market value.”
I return my eyes to Tasha in enough time to watch her throat work hard to swallow.
The quote I found in Nero’s room matched the details of the business my assets had been transferred to.
It is then that Tasha’s ruse started unraveling.
“There was so much buzz that day, but hardly any of it centered around the build. Everyone, including yourself, was excited about the owner’s anticipated arrival later that afternoon.” She lunges forward like a lunatic in a straitjacket when I mockingly whisper, “But despite killing your livelihood to get close to him, he didn’t look your way once, did he?”
“He almost saw me. He was about to look straight at me!” she barks in my face, covering my cheeks with spit. “Then he saw you.” She is already blistering with anger, but her next confession surges it to a pliable level. “He canceled an entire rebuild and stole months of income from his construction crew so he could watch you through shutters incapable of revealing how horrifying you truly are.”
She spits in my face, but before Nero can pounce, I retaliate with the same level of violence.
I slap her hard across the face, sending her ranting shrieks to pained sobs.
My whack does little to weaken her campaign to slice down my confidence, but since it sees her walking straight into my trap, I don’t protest. “It is disgusting. You couldn’t even keep your husband’s attention?—”
“So you stole it before plotting ways to get back at me for stealing Nero’s devotion you wrongly believe you deserve.” Everyone is stunned into silence, leaving the floor to me. “Roy wouldn’t leave me, because in his own sick, twisted way, he loved me.” Roy murmurs in agreement, and it makes me want to barf. “But you couldn’t comprehend Nero’s devotion. You’ve been told time and time again that beauty is rated on a clothing size, so you could never admit that he didn’t want you because you are nothing close to his type.”
I drag my eyes down her rake-thin frame, suddenly envious of my chunky thighs, wide hips, and squishy stomach. They gave me Nero. How could I ever hate them?
“So you hatched a plan to seduce my husband and destroy my life for warping Nero’s perception of beauty.” I ignore Roy’s mumbled promise that she means nothing to him. “Your plan was working, but it hit a snag when Nero witnessed Roy switching my birth control tablets with placebos.”
“Placebos? You said they were weight loss tablets?—”
Nero slaps Roy like I did Tasha, but he uses the back of his hand and a heap more force. “Last warning, fuckface. Say another bad word about her, or insinuate she isn’t perfect how she is, and I’ll pull your intestines out of your nose.”
With the situation under control—because Roy is too scared by the sheer honesty in Nero’s tone—I shift my focus back to Tasha.
“You must have thought you had hit the jackpot when you found Nero strung out and drunk. You had a man willing to watch a woman from afar for a year without touching her solely to uphold the sanctity of marriage, so surely he’d give even a quickie Vegas wedding everything he had to make it work.” For some stupid reason, I feel sorry for her during my next sentence. “But then he requested an annulment, and your world came tumbling down.”
I wait for her sob to stop rolling in the back of her throat, silently asphyxiating her, before continuing. “That’s when you shifted your focus back to Roy, right? You were hopeful Nero’s disdain for adulterers would end badly for him.”
I twist to face Roy, amused by the fear in his eyes.
He isn’t scared of Nero.
He’s terrified of the confidence spanning my wings.
“When Nero killed you, and don’t mistake me when I say that is precisely what he would have done if I hadn’t arrived at the hotel”—Nero does not interrupt since every word I speak is gospel—“ she would have gotten everything. My business, your 401K, our house. My dog. It was all in her name because she sucked your dick so hard that your brain no longer worked.”
I’m not upset. I am disgusted at the lengths people will go to get something they haven’t earned.
“And then she could have taken Nero to the cleaners, either by being a witness to your murder or by bringing the judge proof that he had allegedly ‘cheated,’ in the means of a positive pregnancy test since you knew the instant you yanked Roy out of my hair, Nero would have no reason to hold back his desires for a second longer.” I air-quote cheated , faultlessly devoted to my stance that nothing Nero and I did warrants a cheaters tag.
Nero didn’t stalk me once the six days he tried to give his marriage a go.
Well, not in person, anyway.
Online surveillance doesn’t count.
I return my eyes to Tasha. “Since neither of those options are now available, you’re left with two new choices.” She looks bored, so it is only fair I make things more interesting for her. “Either sign the annulment paperwork and transfer the titles of the items you stole back to me, or I’ll let Nero kill you as he pleaded to do only an hour ago.”
She glares at me like I don’t have it in me.
She doesn’t know me at all.
I’m sick of being shit on, and it is time to take a stance.
Will that include murder? I’m highly doubtful, but you don’t realize how strong you are until someone pushes so hard that you are forced to shove back.
“I—”
“Option one or two. They are the only words I permit to leave your mouth.”
I can’t see Nero, but I know he is hard. His cock forever thickens when my confidence soars, and my panties are sticky.
“One,” Tasha mumbles after a short stint of silence.
“Sorry, what was that?”
Her snivels louden along with her words. “I said number one. I take option one.”
I hit her with a mocking glare. “I figured that would be the route you’d take.” I turn to face Roy. “I don’t want everything like she did. I just want what is rightfully mine.”
“You can have it,” he mumbles, his words muffled by an annoying whine. “But?—”
“Nah,” Nero interrupts. “You don’t have any say in these negotiations. She’s going to tell you what she wants, and you’re going to give them to her as you should have done the past fourteen years. Do I make myself clear?”
Roy’s Adam’s apple bobs up and down before his head follows. “Yes.”
Nero looks disappointed. He has a bone to pick, and Roy’s scrawny legs are far too skinny to make a meal from. “Good.”
After butting his gun at Tasha’s temple, Nero releases her from her restraints so she can sign the paperwork we had pushed through in a hurry.
Her signature is messy but close to the one on her driver’s license.
Roy’s is far messier.
It demands a stern threat. “If you try to make out these documents are fraudulent, I’ll let Nero bring you back here, but I’ll ask him to place the feet of his chair on your crotch instead of your toes.”
His next two signatures are easily readable. They match the one on the marriage certificate I plan to shred the instant these forms are processed through the courts.
After pulling me behind him to shelter me from any more harm from these two lunatics, Nero gives them their marching orders. They scramble for the exits, their movements remarkably fast considering the circumstances of their detainment.
Once Tempy’s barks alert us to unwanted guests in the street and her dislike of Roy, Nero turns to face me.
I smile like my insides aren’t twisted up in knots when he says, “Now our second game of chase can begin.” He drags me forward before brushing his mouth over my kiss-stung lips. “This one will be nowhere near as fun as our first foray but just as rewarding.”