Sweetest Torture (Sweetest Kill Book 2) (13 page)

I forgot what that was like. To
feel hope.

Despite the psychotic way I met
Max, he’s actually really good to me.

He brings me breakfast in bed every
morning. He always asks me the night before what I would like to eat when I
wake. He always seems to know when I am waking and has it ready. A smile on his
face as he serves me.

In fact Max is very odd about being
the only one who directly does most things for me.

When someone takes my laundry, he
brings it back in to me. When meals are served, he sits right with me and makes
sure that he is the one to ask me if I need anything else.

He paints my toes every night. A
new color.

He lays on the couch and watches
romance movies with me.

When I go running early after
breakfast he runs beside me.

His smile is contagious after I
learn to stop resenting him. Which happens fairly quickly. Max makes me feel
safe, and I see the other men and women walking around here. I know that I
cannot trust them.

He asks me how I am feeling. He
asks me if I need anything. He rubs my feet, he runs me baths.

He doesn’t push me to have sex.

But we eventually do.

6 months after I was taken. On one
very drunken night….

Stella returned one day randomly.
Max explained that it wasn’t uncommon for her to do so when she needed more
money, or had bitten off more than she could chew with someone and needed
Michael to clean up her mess.

Michael was like a dog in love with
her. The second she walked through the door, he stood and walked quickly to
her, pulling her into his arms and hugging her like she was the love of his
life.

Max hated her. I could tell the way
he grabbed my hand, and looked deep into my eyes like he needed me to hold him
back. I placed my hand on his lap and gently rubbed him, to reassure him.

But I was no happier that she was
here.

Michael got a call, and walked off,
leaving Stella to walk into the kitchen

I hadn’t talked the woman too many
times. I saw her the first time outside of dean’s shortly after he and I met,
and then when she was picking up his stuff when he went off the radar when he
was done with this job while we were dating.

She smiles at me, in a manner that
is anything but friendly

“Are you married yet?” she spits

Max and I say nothing

“I have been doing a very good job
of taking care of your family, you will be happy to know that your screaming
kid no longer whines for you, and that your husband no longer cries out your
name at night. Now he just moans mine when we fuck.”

I drop the fork I am holding. The
sound of the heavy metal clinking against the fine china echoes through the
dining room.

Max grabs my hand and pulls it
beneath the table, gently squeezing, reminding me not to let her get to me. But
I can’t help it. I can’t listen to what she has to say and not get upset.

“You always did seem to me like a
sloppy second’s kind of girl, Stella.” I say

She lunges across the room, but Max
stands up and shoves her away from me. I hear Michael walking into the room and
Stella takes that moment to smirk at Max and me and then falls dramatically to
the ground.

When Michael sees her on the floor,
she begins the waterworks. Michael looks pissed

“What the fuck happened in here.”
He yells, reaching down to help her up

“Max attacked me, when I asked
Olivia how she was doing.” Stella pouts

Max looks at his father “she was fucking
running her mouth about fucking Olivia’s husband and telling Olivia that her
kid doesn’t cry for her anymore. Olivia made a comment which I personally found
quite humorous.” He pauses and looks over at me with a smile “and then Stella
lunged for her, I was just protecting what’s mine dad.”

Michael looks to me and then down
to Stella. “Just what did Olivia say that was so humorous?” He glances up at me
for a response

“I told her that sloppy seconds was
always her style.” I murmur

Michael looks at Stella and then
his son and starts to laugh. It’s not a fake laugh, but rather a giant belly
laugh which I didn’t even really know the man was quite capable of.

“Stella, you are no longer a part
of my family, Olivia belongs to Max so you cannot come in here and say such
things and not expect a response.”

Stella looks put out “so you don’t
care about me anymore, you are choosing her too?”

“There is not much of a choice, Max
likes having her here, and he intends to marry her and have children with her
and so she is the priority over you.”

“Fine.” She spits out “I will just
go back to Dean and tell him how well you are doing here Olivia, tell him not
to waste his time on you anymore. Not that he has been, since I got him back.”

“Dean wouldn’t take you back
Stella, you are disgusting, he hates you.” I state to her back as she walks
towards the door.

She walks back towards me, with her
cell phone now in her hand she turns it to me and a text message is on display
as she hands me the phone. I look up at her, the smile that is plastered on her
phone makes my stomach drop.

‘
Stella, when are you coming
back baby. I can’t wait to sink back inside of you. I am sorry I made you feel
like I didn’t want you. I married her out of obligation for our son, but she’s
gone now so we can be together. I luv you.’

My anger takes control. I don’t
know why Dean would say something like that. He didn’t have to ask me to marry
him, he had a choice. I told him that very thing when he first asked me. I
thought he was happy. He looked so proud when we were finally married. But I
couldn’t deny the words, or the proof of his phone number at the top of the
text message. It was from Dean. It was dated this morning.

Still holding the phone I ask her
“if he has been fucking you this whole time, why is he just now sending you a
text message to reaffirm his feelings for you and defend our marriage?”

Her smile is still there “I had to
have an excuse to get away and make sure that you weren’t going to come back
and ruin things. I was rather hoping you would be dead by now, but knowing that
you are with Max for real is
SO
much better than that. He sent the text
when I staged a fight between us, but now I am on my way back. By the way. Your
son really does look just like his father, he looks nothing like you. Which
means I can totally play off being his mom from here on out. You won’t mind
will you?”

The cell phone is out of my hand
and thrown at her head so hard and so fast I didn’t even realize I made the
decision to do it. The plastic cracks off her skull and blood is instantly
dripping off her. I quickly reach for Max who had positioned himself earlier
between us slightly to protect me from Stella, and grab his gun which is always
in the band of his suit.

I cock the gun quickly and point it
at her head. Max laughs slightly.

One of the first things that Max
and I started doing together once he realized he could trust me, was to take me
shooting. He said it was something that Dean should have taught me after I was
taken the first time. It was one of the few jabs he really threw Dean’s way, in
front of me at least.

Max moves away “angel, she’s not
worth it.” But he’s still smiling

I look at Michael “do you love
her?” I ask

Michael looks at his son and says
“no I do not.”

“Stella. I want you to do me a
favor. When you go back to Dean, I want you to tell him that I love him. I want
you to tell my mother to kiss my son and then I want you to tell my lovely
husband that I want a divorce. I expect that the divorce papers can be brought
here?” I ask looking to Max, who shakes his head yes

“I want you to remember this moment
for the rest of your life, I want you to look me in the eye and remember each
and every time you have fucked me over personally, or through someone else. I
want you to look at me and know that I did nothing to you, but fall in love
with a fool. My son has no part in your evil bull shit. So if you and Dean are
going to be together, that’s fine and great, but you get my best friend or my
mother to raise Landon. You will not raise my baby. You can have my fucking
husband if he’s too busy fucking you and sending you text messages to actually
look for me. You can have everything I own, but cannot have my child. Do you
understand me?”

Stella is shaking, but she nods her
head yes. “Obviously you aren’t going to shoot me.” She replies a few moments
after I finish. She’s getting cocky again

“Oh yeah, about that.”

I drift off. I turn the gun down to
her leg and pull the trigger. I could have shot to kill her. I wanted to, but I
wanted her to hurt the way that I hurt when I was first taken, when Hector had
hurt me. I wanted her to feel physical pain and have a scar that make her
remember this moment.

“I loved him with everything I
had.”

I hand the gun back to Max and walk
back upstairs. No one says anything behind me as I go.

I grab the first bottle of alcohol
that I see on the cabinet before I walk up the stairs.

I walk into my room, and into the
bathroom. The bath tub is large enough to fit 3 adults. Max made sure that I
had a large variety of soaps and hygiene products, which I thought was sweet.
Baths were my favorite past time here.

I drink about half the bottle of
tequila, which is risky considering I don’t drink much but I need to numb the
pain.

Part of me wonders if Dean is
playing Stella, but if he was playing her, it would mean that he was there in
town still. Which meant he was not out trying to find me. All of the previous
pain of what he had done to me before Landon was born came flooding back and
twisted in with the fresh hurt of Stella’s declarations.

I did forgive him, but that didn’t
mean that I forgot all of those feelings, it didn’t meant that part of me
didn’t resent that he had admitted to sleeping with Stella over the years when
she had manipulated him earlier. It was all very possible, or it was not
possible at all, but the pain was there all the same. Chewing up my heart and
Patron was going to make it all better for now.

I turned on the stereo with the
remote. Listening to Kings of Leon, they were one of my favorite groups.

“Wait for me” came on. It was off
their newer album, which Dean bought me shortly before we got married, it was
uploaded onto my IPod one day when I was sick in bed. I never bought music
anymore. With the baby I didn’t have time to really listen to it.

I hear a light knock on the door,
before Max comes in.

He doesn’t usually come into the
bathroom while I am in here, he has opened the door, but stayed where he was. I
don’t even care that he is entering now, and pulling a chair up to the side of
the raised bathtub.

“You didn’t knick any major
arteries on Stella, so she will be fine.” He states

“That’s almost too bad.” I reply,
looking at him. He smiles at my response

“I know you know right where you
could shoot her if you were intending to take her life, you wanted her to feel
pain, but you didn’t want her dead. You made your point. She will be stitched
up tonight and sent back in the morning.”

I nod my head. And take another
pull of the tequila, it still burns down my throat.

“Did you mean that stuff that you
said about asking for a divorce?” Max asks me suddenly after several moments of
silence

I look to him again. His suit
jacket is off, his tie loosened and he looks fucking gorgeous.

Move some bubbles around, waving my
hand in and out of the water, loving the numb feeling that has taken over most
of my body.

“I did. Have you ever been in love Max?”

He looks at me, like he is seeing
me for the first time. “I have... Once”

“Imagine if you fell in love for
the very first time, and thought that you had met the love of your life imagine
you had every reason to believe that this other person loved you every bit as
much as you loved them, if you poured your heart and soul into making another
person happy and they just didn’t seem to appreciate it. Or they acted like
they did, but all the while their actions said that they didn’t care. Imagine
if you were in my shoes, and you knew that the person you married did not wait
a single fucking second after you were kidnapped before moving on. Just imagine
finding out that you were not the love of your life’s one true love. But rather
just another conquest that he just so happened to knock up. Stella has been a
road block our entire relationship. This is the 3
^rd
time she has
really fucked stuff up. And it’s the last time.

I know I will never see my son
again. I understand. I know my mom and Alexis will take care of him. It hurts,
it really does. But Dean had a choice. He could have fought for me, and he
choose instead to screw Stella and make her feel good. It sucks.”

I stop talking and watch Max. He’s
still staring at me

“When you were in love, how did it
end? Did it hurt like this?”

Max reaches forward and takes my
bottle of tequila, he takes a long pull and watches me for several moments
before answering

“It hasn’t ended yet.” He whispers
holding my gaze

“Oh, I didn’t know you were seeing
someone else, when do you have time for that?” I laugh

Max laughs “You are a silly girl,
it’s you Olivia, and it is you that I love.”

“What?” I ask

“I think I have been in love with
you for a few weeks now. Since I realized that you were making a real effort at
making a life with me. Somewhere along the way, I feel in love with you. I have
never loved another woman before. I have never wanted another woman before. Not
until you. It’s you.”