CADEnce (Deception Book 2) (14 page)

RUNNING MY TONGUE OVER MY teeth, I smiled as I terminated the call. Malik frowned, his head tipping to one side. “What’s brought that smile?”

I chuckled and sighed. “Life, my friend. Life. How easily it can be controlled.”

Confused by my sudden good mood he shrugged his shoulders. “I’m so glad life is good for you, but is it going the way you thought it would? Star is gone. Your brother is most probably between her legs. Your latest deal fell through, and the shit you’re peddling into your body is making you ill.”

Usually I would agree with him, but now? Now, none of it mattered. “Ahh, but . . .” I lifted a finger, pausing, when the doorbell rang through the house. “Right on cue.”

He quirked a brow when I signaled for him to follow. I couldn’t contain my grin as I slowly walked through the house with a spring in my step.

I swung the door open. The small skip in my heartbeat angered me but I ignored it and smiled. “Welcome home,
baby.
”

Malik gasped when I stepped back and she stepped inside. Her eyes were fixed on the floor, refusing to look at me. That would be the first lesson dealt with.

“Star?” Malik said in a shocked tone. She lifted her eyes to his, acknowledging him momentarily before shifting her gaze to me. She looked like shit. Her eyes were red, her face pale and gaunt.

“I’m tired.” Her voice was flat. Lesson number two. “Can I go straight to my room?”

I nodded. “I’ll give you that, just this once.”

She nodded. “Thank you.” She walked past me slowly, dragging her case.

“Malik, take Star’s case up. She shouldn’t be carrying anything up the stairs. After all, we need my son or daughter to be nice and healthy.”

Star flinched and dropped her face back to the floor. Malik stood frozen to the spot, stunned at how easy it had been to get Star to come home.

“Malik?”

He blinked at me. “Oh yeah, sorry.” He rushed forward, taking her case and following her up the stairs.

“Star!” She stopped, waiting for me to continue without turning around. “Tonight I will allow you your arrogance. But when you wake tomorrow, fresh, make sure you give me the respect I deserve.”

She snorted, her head shaking slightly but didn’t reply.

I watched her disappear up the stairs, my smile wider than any smile before it. How easy she was to control. Life was again how it should be. Star was mine, for good now. A baby and a wedding would make her realize she had settled for the correct brother.

After all, she had always been mine. Cade had been support for her until I reclaimed her. And how easy her support structure had crumbled. Or rather it would when he realized just where his beloved had gone. It was a shame I wouldn’t be able to witness the destruction when he found out.

But never mind, just because I wasn’t witness to it didn’t mean it would be any less victorious. He played his hand and it was weak! The precious Blue was another message to show him I had very little morals when it came to revenge and no one was untouchable. I gave my inside man the pleasure of breaking Blue with a couple of his sadistic friends. She fucking deserved everything she got. How dare she betray me?

“How far we’ve come, brother.” I chuckled as I made my way upstairs. “What was the pact we made when we were eleven? What’s yours is mine and what’s mine is my own.” I laughed harder. “She was always mine.” My phone buzzed in my pocket. I swiped the icon and brought my cell to my ear.

“I have the doc. I should arrive tomorrow.”

“Good work. That bastard better not have harmed my baby.”

“He’s a pussy. He will squeal like a pig and if he doesn’t, she will when she sees him.”

“Good.”

I KNEW AS SOON AS I opened the door to Frank that she had gone. His eyes told me. So did the anger radiating from him. He remained silent as he moved past me.

“When?” I flinched as my voice broke and I squeezed my eyes closed to contain the desolation. I kept my back to him so he couldn’t see it take me.

“Last night. I found this.”

I turned to him, my eyes falling on the long cream envelope in his hand. I focused on the scrawl of my name, the ‘e’ smudged where one of her tears had drowned the ink.

I was struggling to hold it together, my irregular heartbeat fighting with the brisk pull of my lungs. Sweat dampened the back of my neck when I reached for the envelope. His eyes clashed with mine. “Don’t pity me, Frank!”

He sighed and nodded, wisely deciding against argument, then turned and walked into the kitchen, leaving me alone as I stared at the envelope.

I pressed my thumb into the wrinkled part of paper that held her teardrop, my heart breaking with the evidence of her own heartbreak.

I heard Jenson come bounding into the apartment as I stepped into my bedroom. Slamming the door shut, warning him, I knew Frank would fill him in as I sat on the edge of the bed and opened her letter.

Cade,

I don’t know how to . . . this is so hard. Before I start, you need to know that I love you, with everything, with every single breath I take. You gave me life when I didn’t want to carry on, you held me up when I wanted to fall and you made my heart beat, as broken as it was. And it’s only you it will ever beat for again.

But you need to know that I’m dead now, Cade. To you. Forget me.

There’s much you don’t know and I never want you to know. I’m not the girl you fell in love with, and that’s the reason I’m doing this, to stop you from seeing the real me, the me that is so ruptured that no one, not even you will ever be able to fix. The me that you will never find it in your heart to forgive.

As much as it hurts me to say it, you need to be with someone who deserves you and the pureness of your heart. I’m tarnished and damaged now, so much so that I know the darkness in me will one day consume you, and I would never forgive myself for that. You have the biggest heart and it is worthy of a matching soul.

Although I’m not willing to say it, you know where I am. I know you don’t understand why, but you don’t need to, just accept this is how it is and move on with your life. But please, whatever you think of me, however much you hate me, please know that I will love you until the day my heart finally stops under the pain of losing you.

One day soon, Cade, I hope you can look through our memories and smile. Because if nothing else, the love we shared deserves that, deserves to be cherished as one that outnumbered all others on this fucking depraved planet.

I am so sorry, baby. So, so sorry.

I love you and every time my heart takes a beat you will be in my thoughts. You once told me I was the cadence in yours, well you’re the cadence in mine too. It’s only ever been you, Cade, but I need to go to him.

Don’t come for me.

Yours forever,

Faye

I folded the paper and slipped it back in the envelope, taking out the ring she had slipped in. It was so tiny it didn’t even fit onto my pinkie. It sparkled under the lights, reflecting the eyes of its owner.

It hit the mirror when I threw it, disappearing behind the dresser. The lamp on the bedside table followed it. Then the table. The pictures adorning the walls tore so easily. The spindles on the bedframe broke effortlessly in my grip. Her clothes in our wardrobe shredded like paper under my fury. The bedding that had once comforted us both ripped apart with my heart as feathers piled out onto the carpet. My screams left me as easily as the room tore apart under my heartache.

However, none of it matched the rip in my soul, the destruction of my heart or the rage that filled my veins. The obliteration of the room was nowhere near as messed up and broken as the annihilation happening inside me. Rage fueled me, anger forced my heart to beat and my wrath was the only emotion making my lungs take air. She went back to that animal.

I felt Jenson grab for me before he and Frank lifted me, both of them needing to hold me to stop my wrath as they carried me through to the bathroom and forced me into the shower. Only the sharp sting of cold water culd break the storm inside me.

Screams were the only thing that released the rage, my fists battering the tiles and smashing the ceramic as Jenson continued to grapple with me until I finally took a shuddering breath and allowed him to hold me.

My hands clawed at him as he took us to the floor and brought my body to his, his arms crushing me as he held onto me.

“Shush, buddy. Come on.” His voice was choked, his devastation for me at the hands of my brother as intense as my own grief.

I cried into him until I felt the ice creep in, and the numb beat of my heart and the slow regular breaths took control. I no longer lived. I existed. My heart only beat to keep me alive. My soul died. However, I didn’t need it to live. I didn’t need it to seek vengeance. On Dante. And on
her
for leaving me . . . again.

She would witness a side to me she never saw before. A side I had kept from her. And now, now she deserved to not only perceive it, she deserved to witness Dante take his last breath under it.