AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Forget strangulation. That was too good for my brother. I was going to make him watch while I shredded every suit in his closet with garden shears before suffocating him alive with the scraps.
A bitter taste welled in my throat. My first instinct was to lie and say I didn’t know anyone named Easton, but I was tired of living in the shadow of what happened. I’d let that asshole dictate too much of my life for too long. It was time to let go of the past, once and for all.
“Easton is my ex. The last man I was with before you and the reason I didn’t date anyone for two years.” The bitterness spilled into my chest and stomach. “I met him at a bar. I wasn’t working that night, just having fun and meeting new people. I was by myself since Sloane and Vivian were both out of town, and when he approached me, I thought he was perfect. Smart, good-looking, successful.”
Kai’s eyes darkened, but he remained silent while I talked.
“Our relationship took off quickly. Within two weeks of meeting, he was taking me on weekend getaways and buying me all these expensive gifts. I thought I loved him, and I was so blinded by my infatuation that I didn’t pick up on the red flags that are so clear in hindsight. Like the way he only took me to remote places for our dates, or how I never met his friends and co-workers because he wanted me ‘all to himself’ for a while longer.” I grimaced at my younger self’s naivety. “He spun his excuses into romantic intentions when the truth was so simple. He had a wife and two kids in Connecticut.”
A bitter sound, half laugh and half sob, scored my throat. “What a cliché, right? The proverbial married cheater with the family stashed away in the suburbs. But that wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was when said wife walked in on us in the middle of sex.”
Kai blanched.
“Yeah, I know. She suspected he was having an affair, and she hired a private investigator to tail him. That night, she’d had a little too much to drink. Got aggressive when the P.I. sent her husband’s location to her. She showed up, screaming and crying. As you can imagine, I was horrified. I had no idea…” I forced oxygen past my tightening lungs. “Easton and his wife got into a huge argument. I tried to leave because my presence was making things worse, and that was when she…she took out a gun.”
I still remembered the cold glint of metal beneath the hotel lights. The bone-deep terror that’d robbed me of breath and the cold, pervasive silence that’d fallen over the room like a white sheet over a corpse.
“Easton and I both tried to talk her down, but she was too drunk and upset. The next thing I knew, he was trying to wrestle the gun away from her. It went off by accident, and it…” My breathing shallowed.
Screams. Cries. Blood. So much blood.
“The bullet somehow hit her. She’s alive, but she’ll never walk again.” The knowledge smashed through me like a wrecking ball, scattering jagged splinters and shattered grief through my chest. “She didn’t—I mean, she shouldn’t have taken out the gun, but she was…it wasn’t her fault. Her husband cheated on herwith me, and she’s the one suffering for it.”
A sob racked my shoulders. I hadn’t talked about it in so long. Even my friends didn’t know the full truth of what happened. They just thought I’d had a bad breakup with a cheating asshole.
Talking about it with Kai broke the dam on my emotions, and everything—the guilt, the anger, the horror, the shame—rushed over me like a flood sweeping over a plain.
Kai engulfed me in his arms and held me as I cried. Easton, Valhalla, theNational Star, my manuscript deadline…every fuckup and mistake I made over the past few years. They poured out of me in a river of grief until I was hollow and aching.
“It wasn’t your fault,” he said quietly. “You didn’t know. You didn’t make him cheat on her, and you didn’t make her bring the gun. You’re as much a victim of the situation as anyone else.”
“I know, but itfeelslike my fault.” I pulled back, my voice raw from my sobs. “I was so stupid. I should’ve caught on…”
“People like that are expert cheats. You were young, and he took advantage of that. It wasn’t your fault,” Kai repeated firmly. He brushed a stray tear from my cheek. “What happened to him?”
“Last I heard, he moved to Chicago before his business went bankrupt and he’s estranged from his kids. They’re over eighteen now, and I don’t think they ever forgave him for what happened with their mother.”
I didn’t know where Easton was now. Hopefully rotting in the pits of hell.
“I see.” Kai’s expression sent a dart of trepidation down my spine.
“Don’t track him down,” I said. “I mean it. I just want to leave him in the past, and I don’t want you to get in trouble.”
A hint of amusement bloomed at the corners of his mouth. “What do you think I’m going to do to him if I do, hypothetically, track him down?”
“I don’t know.” I wiped my cheeks with the back of my hand. “Maim him?”
“That’s certainly crossed my mind,” Kai muttered. “I—”
The gentle chime of the doorbell interrupted him.
I stiffened again as Kai and I exchanged wary glances. We were lying low until the CEO vote—I snuck in through the building’s back entrance earlier—and an unexpected visit these days was more cause for alarm than celebration.
A shimmer of dread threaded through me as Kai answered the door. Had a tabloid reporter somehow gotten past security? Should I hide?
A faint murmur of voices leaked from the entryway. I couldn’t hear his exact words, but Kai’s surprised tone came through loud and clear.
He reentered the living room a minute later, his face grim.
