Chapter 30 Lex
LEX
My entire world is tucked up in my bed, her face pressed to my pillow—the one that I usually sleep on—as if even in slumber, she’s trying to inhale my scent.
She doesn’t even know what she does to me like this—unconscious, vulnerable, oblivious.
My cock aches just watching her, imagining slipping between her thighs while she dreams, filling her until her body recognizes me even if her mind can’t.
Maybe that makes me sick. Maybe I don’t care.
Watching her used to be all I had—photos, stolen moments, her beauty caught in frames like a goddess I could never touch.
And now? Now she’s mine in the flesh. Warm.
Breathing. Within reach. I could ruin her in a thousand ways and she’d still crawl back for more.
It’s the kind of heady dream come true that I’d bleed for.
“Lex. We need to talk.”
Gio’s voice cuts through my haze like broken glass. I drag my attention from Juliet’s sleeping form and find him at the end of the hall, his expression carved from stone. He jerks his chin toward the living room and disappears.
Grinding my teeth, I shut the door on Juliet’s beautiful face and follow.
Nolan lounges on the loveseat, an ankle crossed over a knee. He lifts a brow when I step in. “What’s this about?”
Gio doesn’t waste words. He pulls a crumpled envelope from his back pocket and drops it onto the coffee table.
It lands with a light thap as if there’s something more than paper inside, but it doesn’t have much weight to it.
There’s no writing on the face. It looks like any other envelope one might find at an office store.
“This was left on my car when I was out with the girls today,” Gio says flatly. “Didn’t feel right opening it alone.”
Nolan leans forward, dropping his leg down to the floor as he picks up the envelope. He frowns at the empty surface before he retrieves a pocketknife from his jeans and slices the top open. Turning it over on the coffee table, a flash drive tumbles free along with a folded note.
I grab the note first and spread it out flat on the wood. Ink stains the page in nasty, jagged red letters.
WHORES DESERVE TO DIE.
Beneath it, there are more words, a few sentences even—scribbled in angry, block letters. As if the person who left this note was out of control when they wrote them and needed an outlet for their rage.
She killed them! She’ll kill you too.
Bitch.
Cunt.
She doesn’t deserve your protection.
Liar.
Murderer.
And most disturbingly of all are the lines at the very bottom, written in a far more concise and normal manner.
You think she loves you?
Juliet Donovan is a user. She fucked her father’s best friend. She abandoned her parents. She is a liar. If you don’t believe me, then maybe some proof will show you the truth…
Heat spikes in my skull, rage so sharp I can taste iron on my tongue. My fingers curl around the paper, crushing it before I realize what I’m doing.
“Lex—” Nolan tries to pry the page out of my grip.
“I’m going to find whoever fucking wrote this,” I growl, releasing the paper to his hands. “I’ll rip their tongue out and feed it back to them.”
Gio bends down as he and Nolan scan the page for themselves, their brows creased. I don’t have the patience to wait for them to finish.
“Fuck this,” I mutter, snatching up the flash drive.
“Hey, wait a second, Lex—” Nolan says, but I’m already out of the room and moving up the short hall to my office.
My ass hits the seat with a thump and I have the flash drive shoved into place before they’ve reached me. I don’t give a shit if the damn thing has a virus or if it fries my system—I need to see what proof that asshole thinks they have.
“Alexio.” Nolan’s deep baritone sounds right by my head before I even know he’s in the room with me. “Take a breath,” he orders.
“You want me to take a fucking breath?” I whirl on him in my chair and stand. He might be our de facto leader, but I’m fucking taller and broader than him. “This motherfucker is threatening her.”
“Goddamn, hush!” Gio says from the doorway as he peers out of it and down the hall, in the direction of the bedroom. “Do you want to wake her up?”
Nolan glances back at him. “We’re going to have to tell her about this,” he states. “But…” He turns back to me. “I’d rather we have a plan in place before we do.”
“I need information,” I snap. “I need to know what’s on this fucking drive.”
He nods and then points to the chair. I glare at him, but slowly lower myself down into the seat once more. “That’s fine,” he tells me.
“Then, why—”
“If you’d shut up for two seconds, I’ll tell you why,” he interrupts. My mouth snaps shut, but my jaw aches from how tightly I’m gritting my teeth. My hands curl into fists. He arches a brow as if waiting for me to take a swing. I don’t, and I don’t know who is more surprised—him or me.
“I expect you to check out the flash drive,” Nolan begins. “But you need to be smart about it—double-check it for viruses, make sure no one is using this to get into your system. We can’t run the risk if someone has figured out what you do.”
What I… Fuck. His meaning slams into my skull. The 5C0RP10N. Of course. How could I be so fucking blinded? He’s right. I blow out a breath.
“Better?” Nolan asks.
Without looking at him, I spin my chair back to the desk and the monitors anchored around and above it. “Yeah.” Not by much, but enough that I find the scanning system and have it lock onto the flash drive plugged into the machines.
The guys are quiet as Gio steps the rest of the way into the already small room and quietly closes the door behind him. I ignore them as I run the tests needed to clear the flash drive and ensure that no one has planted any malware that’ll fuck my shit up.
Less than fifteen excruciating minutes later, it’s done and I load the files from the card, right-clicking and dragging the mouse over each name and then forcing them all open at the same time. A split second later, little boxes begin popping up across the monitors.
“Motherfucker…”
Photos. Dozens of photos. All of them of her.
Juliet laughing. Juliet standing in front of the apartment fire. Juliet at The Dionysus Lounge. Juliet sitting on the bleachers as she likely watches us at football practice.
A still from what appears to be a security camera is next, revealing a slightly younger version of Juliet standing in a glimmering gown in a hallway of doors as Morpheus fucking Calloway puts his hands on her.
The walls of my chest constrict, fury blackening everything. Still, there are more—some of them clips and screenshots of videos.
Juliet sleeping. Juliet with Gio. Her face twisted in pleasure, her head thrown back on his shoulder as he forces both his fingers and hers into her pretty pussy.
I remember that night—that fucking video.
Desire scratches at my insides before I remember that someone else has seen this, someone has violated the sanctity of the silent agreement that no one else owns Juliet Donovan but us.
I want to smash my fist through the monitor.
Gio is the first to speak, his voice hoarse with shock. “There’s so… many.”
Too many for this fucker to have started recently. No, I know this kind of obsession. I am this kind of obsession. Whoever sent the note and flash drive has been planning this for a while. Months, at least, possibly even years.
“How the fuck could they think that this changes anything?” Gio mutters the question as he shoves his hand back into his hair, raking it away from his face.
“There must be something else on here,” I say.
“Or maybe they think this is enough proof that Juliet is a whore,” Nolan says, tone flat and cold. “There might be more videos of Lex and me with her too.”
A sickness churns in my gut as a horrific thought occurs to me. “No…” I lean forward and start typing. One by one, several of the windows disappear. Whoever did this knew what happened between Juliet and Morpheus, but would they have…
My heart stops. My fingers go still, hovering over the keys. The silence in the room is so loud that it screams in my ears, a loud rushing sound as if I’m falling underwater.
The image that appears on the monitor is Juliet in that same glimmering gown, her body slack, turning her head back and forth as she groans—sounding drunk. The room narrows down to a single pinpoint of light that is the screen.
The camera moves closer, shaking. Then, suddenly it turns, as if whoever is holding it is pressing the lens to their chest. Voices echo out through the speakers.
“What are you doing here? I told you to go home.”
This from the man—I recognize his voice immediately. Morpheus Calloway.
“I miss you. I thought we could spend the night together…”
The second voice is definitely feminine but there’s something off about it. It’s airy-sounding, as if the woman speaking is trying to sound softer than her natural tone, almost childlike.
“As you can see, I already have company. Get out.”
“Company?” The woman sniffles. “It’s just her—she’s already half asleep. She can’t do anything for you that I can’t do.”
Morpheus’ low chuckle is caustic, cruel. “You will never be Juliet, baby doll,” he says. “You were simply a good stand-in. Now, I have the real thing.”
For a moment, quiet reigns, then the woman responds. This time, when she speaks, it’s clear that she’s struggling to maintain the youthful breathy quality of her tone.
“She doesn’t want you. She never has. She doesn’t see you the way that I do! She’s too stupid to know—”
A sharp sound of flesh hitting flesh is followed by the camera's lens tilting—shadows shifting as it falls from its owner's hands. Unfortunately, it seems to land face down and the darkness continues. Feminine crying rises, soft and delicate even in pain.
“Juliet Donovan is mine,” Morpheus snarls. “She’s my future wife and I will not have you insult her. You are nothing more than a fucking toy. Do you understand?”