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ChapterTwenty-Nine
HAVEN
“Where the fuck is she?”Demetri’s deep voice viciously bellows in my best friend’s face. His anger is tangible, and most definitely threatening as he hovers above her. His promising tone of retribution echoes off the cinder block walls of the buildings surrounding us and cascading down the alley.
“Looking for the wife you didn’t want or your pregnant girlfriend?” I sarcastically call from my hidden spot where I am concealing myself behind a dumpster where he can’t see me. I take a step out. “I’m going to go with option two.” I wave two fingers in the air as I step out further, showing myself. My breathing is a stutter of anxiety, but no more words cross my lips. Not because I’m afraid but because I feel so much pain when I look at him. He’s so damn handsome. So rugged. So rich in manliness. I feel as if I wasn’t good enough, and a special force placed him in my path and said this is the man you need in your life, and then for shits and giggles threw a contract in there to make sure my inadequacies didn’t chase him away.
I ran to the alley because I needed to be alone, to get air, to process my thoughts in private. To formulate a plan for my next move. Where was I to go? What was I to do? Though, taking that time, recalling every betrayal behind everyone over the past few months surrounding me has only made me angrier. It’s as if the liquid inside my veins that has kept me alive is boiling inside the vessels and making me irrational. I have a right to be. Everyone has betrayed me.
I take another revealing step, needing to save Paisley from Demetri’s deadly wrath. She’s not used to a man like him. Hell, I’m not used to it, but I’ve been around Demetri when his temper flairs. He’s so dominant and possessive over what he thinks he now owns. It will only have him spewing careless words that will hurt my friend. She doesn’t need to become the next fingerless victim, or her face smashed against the dumpster for being a loyal friend.
“Haven,” Paisley huffs with relief as she runs to me, shocked that I am standing in front of her. She wraps her arms tightly around my waist and cries, “I’m sorry. I thought I lost him. I was looking everywhere for you. He must have followed me out here. He has everyone looking for you. The club has been turned upside down.” She speaks with terrified urgency, her voice choppy with emotion. “There are thirty men tearing this club apart to find you.” Her eyes stretch wide at the length my husband is going to find me. She has never seen this side to him or any other man in their position. The side of powerful men who become territorial when they are threatened with losing something they consider theirs.
“For what reason?” I snarl, pushing her back and looking over her shoulder at the man that caused this pain I feel suffocating my insides. It’s as if his massive hand has a grip on my heart. I can only compare it to the image at the sex museum he took me to on our first date. The woman was wrapped so tightly in rope, immobile and unable to fight if she wanted to. I feel as though each finger on Demetri’s large hand is a corded rope strangling the muscle in my chest of its blood flow. I’m furious at the audacity of him pretending to care by having his men hunt for me. But then I realize it’s not him caring; it’s ownership. It’s the loss of control. He’s losing what he now rightfully possesses in the eyes of God and the men and women who watched our exchange of vows. That loss of control doesn’t sit well within him.
Swiping the tears from my flushed cheeks, I glare at him with rage swirling in my veins. The frenzy of emotions I’m enduring at his betrayal—at everyone’s betrayal—hits me so hard, it is violent. The few bites I allowed myself of wedding cake I shared with him to celebrate our union now lays next to the dumpster.
The anger inside me simmers, just festering like diseased meat, blistering my insides with the filth of lies.
This man standing before me lied to me and told me he loved me in front of a priest. A man of faith acting under the eyes of God.
I stare at him. My stomach churns as it all sinks in and swirls with deceit in my gut. “The first time I met you was a set up.” I looked my future husband—the one I now consider a devil—in the eyes that day, and I didn’t even know it. “Every step, every phone call, every text was all calculated steps leading up to today.” He took my virginity. The very part of me I held on to for so long because I wanted it to be a memory I cherished. I gave it to him freely with innocence in my heart, but he took it deceivingly, knowing he was receiving a virgin bride. My body convulsed in pleasure for him and bled its virtue for him. “You stripped me down, uncovered issues I had worked on and placed protectant layers over. You used my body and abused my emotions all for your own gain.” Foolishly, I let him. “I’m a stupid girl.” I shake my head, unable to bear the weight of it all. “I trusted you.” And now... Now, I know. “I’m a joke of a woman to you.”
But I know I’m not. And Demetri Carbone will soon see that.
I will show him.
Paisley’s cries for me should break my focus. They don’t.
All those thoughts funnel retaliation down my arm like an unpredictable storm. The energy builds in strength as it reaches the tips of my fingers. It’s powerful in its need to retaliate, wanting to return the pain he and everyone else has caused me. I lift my arm and straighten my index finger, bracing it against the cold, sleek steel. I point the heavy metal I have gripped in my shaking hand at the man who has done the most damage to my heart. Closing my tear-filled eyes for only a hateful second, I breathe in the painful truth of the duplicity surrounding me. I flex the muscle in my finger, energy making the digit twitch with the need for salvation, and I squeeze, pulling the trigger.
The sound of the gun releasing is deafening. My ears split with a ringing that deafens me.
My eyes close with a heaviness I can’t explain. Maybe it’s the shelter among the black abyss of nothing it offers. No longer feeling pain in the dark void.
My body is jerked back with a force I’ve never felt before. So much power is wielding around in my shaking hand.
The loud hollow ting from the metal door slamming against the side of the building startles me. A slew of high-ranking men rush into the alley, halting in their spot when they see the broken woman before them pointing a smoking gun at their friend, their business partner, their boss, and employee. Demetri holds every single title.
My brother rushes around them, pushing and shoving his way through, stopping in his tracks and holding his hands up when I turn the gun on him. He was the originator. The seed that started the growth of deceit.
“Why?” I tilt my head to the side, feeling crazed. “Why did you do this to me, Cillian?” My lower lip starts to shake. “Was I not pretty enough? Skinny enough? Worthy enough? Was I not as special as my older sister? Did you not think I could find a suitable husband?”
“Put the fucking gun down, Haven,” he snaps at me, no sympathy present on his part in humiliating me.
“You had to go and find me a husband?” I flick the tip of the gun in Demetri’s direction, getting angrier. “A man that doesn’t even want me. A man you made sign a contract so he wouldn’t or couldn’t back out.” I choke out a cry, breaking down further. “The least you could have done was find someone who wanted me.”
“I want you, Haven.”
My head snaps to Demetri. “Don’t!” I jerk my arm, aiming the gun back at his overwhelming physically fit body. There isn’t a muscle on him that is undeveloped. Not a spot on him that doesn’t exude sex in a way that consumes your thoughts. “Stop lying. It’s all a lie. Everything is a feckin lie!” I scream at him, feeling the instability within my head and chest start to amplify and emerge to levels I’ve never known.
“Haven, calm down.” I hear Ciáran plead as he steps up next to Cillian. I pay him no mind. My focus is solely on my husband.
“Why?” I shake my head. “Why? Last night… You and I—Why did you do it? You stripped me down. You peeled back the layers I had buried. Did you get off on that?” I huff with an irrational laugh, shaking my head. “That’s fucking sick. You know that, right?”
“No.”
“Then why?” I cry out, screaming at him in distress, my tears sailing to the ground around me as I shake. “Why?”
