45. Juliet
45
JULIET
N ausea rolls through me as I stand under the spray of Lex’s fixed shower head. I’ve never been more grateful for the high-pressure spray in my life than I am now. The water rolls over my hair and shoulders. Some turning into little rivulets of blue as some of the dye gives up its hold on my hair.
I killed a man tonight and there’s no hiding that fact. It wasn’t an accident and I can’t lie to myself and say it was in self defense. I was safe when I took that gun from Nolan’s hand. I was proud when I held it up and pressed it to that fucker’s forehead and I… liked the smoking hole the bullet created in his skull and the splatter of brain matter that erupted out of the back of his head before he flopped to the ground.
I killed a man tonight, I repeat the words in my head. And I liked it.
A knock on the bathroom door startles me from my thoughts. I jolt and reach for the knobs, only to pause when Lex’s voice comes through the wood. “Hey, baby, I’m going to run over to Nolan’s to grab some of your things so you can stay here tonight. Do you need anything else?”
Breath rushes out of my lips, and I let my hand drop away from the knobs, turning and letting the spray wash over my chest and belly. “Just a toothbrush and toothpaste,” I reply.
“Got it. Don’t go anywhere, I’ll be right back.”
I’m half tempted to ask him “where else could I go,” but I don’t. I swallow down the words and close my eyes and relive the moments when I ended another human being’s life. Like an old-timey projector screen, the images replay with a bit of fuzziness around the edges. Over and over again, pausing and rewinding and then replaying.
I don’t know how long it takes for Lex’s hot water to run out. Fifteen minutes. Thirty. It doesn’t matter. I stay under the cooling spray until I’m shivering from the cold, and when I finally turn it off and step out, I feel no cleaner than I had before I started.
The inside of Lex’s bathroom is big—bigger than I expected for him to be able to fit inside a refurbished carriage house. Then again, he’s a big man himself—tall and broad and every bit the footballer he looks. Seeing him standing at my side, still dressed in his white football pants and blue jersey even with the blood and dirt splattered on his uniform was a sight I’ll never be able to erase from my head.
It kind of turned me on, and that should bug the shit out of me.
I grab a towel and dry myself off to the best of my ability before wrapping it and tucking it securely around my frame. When I step into Lex’s bedroom, it’s to the sound of an odd beeping noise.
“Lex?” I call out, but get no reply.
With a frown, I follow the noise into the hallway and then pause in front of the door halfway between the bedroom and the main living area. The door that had been locked the last time I’d been here. There’s a dim light peering out from beneath the thin slit at the bottom.
The beeping continues in incessant, repetitive chirps and this close, I know it’s coming from inside. Curiosity and hesitance war within me. There’s no reason to suspect the guys of hiding anything from me now. They watched me kill a man tonight, and I watched one of them do the same.
Still, my hand lifts to the knob and when I try it, I find it unlocked. Wet hair dripping against my shoulders, I twist the handle and push it inward.
Computer monitors line the back wall of what can only be a ten by six foot space. It’s hardly large enough to be a closet much less a room, but that’s what it appears to be. An office of sorts.
I step inside.
There are three monitors placed on the desk that takes up the back wall in its entirety, and above them are several more, mounted each above the other. The upper screens showcase camera views of woods and the gravel path that we’d taken past Lex’s aunt’s house to the back of the property.
The source of the beeping comes from one of the upper screens that reveals a grainy image of vaguely familiar woods. The monitor glitches. A flash of red in the corner, warning of a low battery, blinks and then disappears as the screen shuts off and goes black.
That infernal beeping finally stops, but I don’t.
I take a look around the rest of the room and stop when I look to the board plastered across the left side of the room. It almost looks like one of those crime boards from television shows, minus the red string. Instead, there’s just a collection of pictures and other small bits of paper.
A receipt from the diner I vaguely recall Lex taking me to the night I’d smashed a brick through his back windshield. A ribbon that looks like something a kindergartener would win in class. And pictures—loads of pictures.
Black and gray ones. Grainy ones. High-definition ones. Some in color. Some from Silverwood Prep football games. Some at fancy galas. There are so many my head spins, but they all have one thing in common.
Me.
Each and every photograph plastered to the wall is of me. They’re posted with no visible rhyme or reason. Some are from years past. My childhood primary school graduation. Pictures from when I had social media accounts that I regularly updated. Vacations with Avery and Bran. Me in bikinis. Me in dresses. Me in workout gear. The most recent ones stop the air in my lungs.
Me… sleeping, curled up against Nolan’s pillows with my lips parted and my eyes closed. Me, sitting on the bleachers next to Roquel and Mads. Me, in class, absently biting the end of one pencil. Candids. Pictures I didn’t even know were being taken.
My stomach drops.
“What the fuck?”
I stand there, rooted to the floor and unable to drag my gaze away from the violation before me. Questions attack my mind.
Where did they come from? How long has he had them? Who took them all? How long has he been collecting them? And worst of all… why?
I turn to the computers and take a seat. There has to be more, I decide as I start tapping away on the keyboard. How much more, I don’t know, but I have to find out, and find out I do.
He makes it easy for me. His folders are labeled and I find the multiple with my name, clicking on it and finding far more than could ever fit into this tiny ass room. Picture after picture—some pulled from security feeds and some easily copied from social media.
At the end of one of the folders, there’s a video. Heart in my throat and stomach on a vacation, I click on it.
Moving images pop up on the center monitor of the three in front of me. Sickness creeps back into my veins and the nausea I thought I’d banished in the shower flies back to me.
“ Spread your thighs .” Gio’s voice is the first to come out of the speakers and I stare, in a combination of horror and arousal, as the scene I know too fucking well plays out in front of me.
Naked, bare, vulnerable. I am all three of those things as I sit in the chair before the computer screens and watch myself get fucked by one of the Scorpion Kings. I made a sex tape and I never even knew.
“Fuck yourself with my knife and show me how you get off,” Gio says.
I’m going to be sick. Actually ill.
I cover my mouth and turn away, slapping the fucking keyboard until the video turns off and I can breathe again.
“What. The. Fuck.” Why? Why would he do this? Why would they…
To fuck with you, of course. An irritated inner voice snaps. Did you really think they cared about you? Of course not. No one in Silverwood gives a shit if you live or die.
I shake my head. No, they came for me. They rescued me.
They put a gun in your hand and forced you to kill someone, the voice responds.
No, that’s not right. I—they didn’t force me. I did it on my own.
But would you have if they didn’t give you the gun?
My eyes burn and I shove my palms against them, squeezing my eyelids shut to keep the tears from falling. “What the fuck? What the fuck? What the actual fucking fuck!” I scream.
“Juliet.”
I whirl around, standing up so suddenly from the desk that my towel nearly unravels. I capture it quickly, gripping it and holding it to my chest like a lifeline. Lex stands in the doorway, a duffle bag hooked over his shoulder. My duffle bag. I hadn’t even heard him return.
He’s changed since I was in the shower. Gone is his uniform and in its place are a pair of dark washed jeans and a black t-shirt that makes the tattoos rippling down his arms stand out even more than normal. His hair is pulled away from his face, tied off in a knot and revealing just how fucking wide his eyes are.
He looks at me and I stare back at him. Shock. Confusion. Fear. Emotions swarm my system as my heart races inside my chest. It’s him. He’s been following me. Stalking me .
They warned me that someone could be behind all of the bullshit in my life. They had promised they’d help me find whoever it is. It never even occurred to me that the very ones I should be running from would be the ones who offered me their protection.
It was all a game to them. It has to be.
Lex steps into the room and I back up until my ass presses into the edge of the desk. Those storm cloud eyes of his are locked on me, and his lips twist into a grimace. There’s no excuse he could come up with now. He knows that as well as I do.
Alexio Medicci is stalking me and I never had any clue.
His broad shoulders droop and his head falls against his chest, chin to sternum. I hear nothing but the hum of the monitors and computers and my own breathing. Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.
“Juliet…” I almost scream when he speaks my name again, but I manage to repress it. Lex lifts his head once more and there’s a wealth of pain in his gaze. Guilt. Shame. Hope. I don’t understand that last one, but I do know one thing—I have to get out of here.
When Lex speaks again, though, I know… I’m probably not going to get that chance.
“I really wish you hadn’t opened that door.”
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