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“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Cuckoo said, lowering herself back into her chair and smoothing her blouse. But she’d already cracked, the damage was done, Zara had seen her true jealous, erratic nature.
“Don’t I?” Zara asked. “Which part? The part where I said he loves me or when I said he couldn’t get it up for you?”
It took a bit of time, but Cuckoo surrendered a smile. “I should feel sorry for you. He might be interested in you now, but it won’t last. We’re a part of a vast web of darkness that you don’t understand. Our paths intersect and then we fade from each other’s lives, but we always come back.”
Zara had not gotten specifics on the last time Raven had been with Cuckoo, but she knew not to trust this woman. After letting Caine get into her head, she wouldn’t fall for the same ploy again. “Like you and Griffin Caine?” Zara asked. Bringing him up startled Cuckoo, which was the response she was going for. “You fucked him before you fucked Raven. How many times have you come back to him?”
“You think my not getting back together with Caine somehow proves that Raven and I won’t reconnect?”
Yes, that was Zara’s point. Raven had said his feud with Caine had started because of Cuckoo. The temptress had chosen Raven, and Zara couldn’t blame her for that, but it had left Caine vengeful and obsessed with his rival.
“I don’t think that you and Raven are destined to be together,” Zara said. “He won’t come back to you.”
Cuckoo wasn’t discouraged. “Do you know where Caine got the scar on his neck?” she asked, stroking her throat in the place Caine’s scar was. Zara didn’t but said nothing and let Cuckoo continue. “He got it from Raven. Caine walked in on us having sex in his bed, and the lunatic lost his mind. He tried to attack us, tried to attack me, and Raven got between me and Caine’s blade. He took the knife from him and in the struggle… he cut Caine’s throat.”
Her words slowed as the story progressed, not out of disgust or regret, her smile grew in time with her satisfaction. Cuckoo was enjoying this. Zara’s sixth sense twitched, warning her of danger. She might not have liked the woman before this story, but watching the pleasure Cuckoo experienced while recounting it revealed to Zara what Art had seen in this woman. Mischa was cold. Unable to feel remorse for getting between the two men. She saw nothing wrong in what had happened and rejoiced in retelling the tale like it was something to be proud of.
“Caine loved you,” Zara said. Although he hadn’t gone the right way about expressing it, she did feel sympathy for Caine in that moment. Walking into your own safe space and finding your girlfriend wrapped around your idol’s idol must have split Caine’s heart in two.
In much the same way as she imagined Brodie would react if he walked in on her screwing another guy, Caine lashed out. It probably hadn’t been Brodie’s intention, but the scar he’d left on Caine’s neck was a constant reminder of that day, of that betrayal. One that Caine would see every single day in his reflection. It was no wonder the man had been driven half mad. Every time he looked in the mirror, he probably replayed that experience. Remembering how he felt when he opened that door and absorbed the sight before him.
“Men often do fall in love with me,” Cuckoo said, lifting a hand to comb her long digits through her luscious locks.
“How terrible for you,” Zara muttered, quite at a loss as to how one person could love themselves so much.
“You’re wrong though, unfortunately.”
“Wrong about what?”
“Caine and I did not separate forever… after Raven left me, we reconnected,” she said, appreciating her own symmetry.
“Caine and you did not separate forever,” Zara repeated, not believing the beauty for one second.
“No, we didn’t. He’s a dutiful little puppy dog. He sits and stays and begs on command. Whenever I have use for Griffin Caine, all I have to do is snap my fingers. I haven’t even had to demean myself by having sex with him for the last three years. He just does my bidding if I pout, it’s entertaining. He’s desperate to please me and drools all over himself until I give him a command.” Cuckoo laughed and swung forward and back like they were gal pals exchanging salacious gossip. “At first, I had to force myself into his bed, I had to make up some of that ground to get him back to the land of the living. After losing me, he turned into a hopeless disgusting drunk who just whimpered and moaned and cried. There’s nothing manly about him, nothing attractive.”
Zara began to listen. She’d been listening before, but Cuckoo’s ranting was giving Zara the chance to make connections. “Why would you go back to him if you weren’t attracted to him anymore?”
“I was never attracted to him,” she insisted. “I needed to find someone, someone who could do what needed to be done. I needed the best and once I heard Caine was the closest follower of the man I needed… Sleeping with him was just the easiest way to get what I wanted.” So a relationship that Caine thought was real had just been a ruse on Cuckoo’s part to tempt out Raven. “The plan worked perfectly, Raven came to me and we… came together.” She smiled as her focus drifted, and Zara told herself not to yak all over Grant’s carpet.
“Caine walked in on the two of you, got his throat slit, managed somehow to survive, but lost the will to live and so turned to despair. While you and Raven were cozy, you didn’t think about Caine again. You didn’t care about him… until Raven left you.”
Cuckoo picked up a letter opener and squeezed her hand around the handle. “It was his ridiculous chief. I know it was. We were happy. Then suddenly, poof, he was gone. On another job he said, but he never came back. The bastard.”
Zara wasn’t sure if she meant Art was the bastard or Raven. But admitting that Raven didn’t return to her contradicted what she’d said earlier about them always coming back to each other.
“That’s when you went looking for Caine?”
“Found him lying in a pool of his own vomit, it was foul.”
And from the sneer on her face, Zara would guess that Cuckoo didn’t enjoy the memory, which was odd given how she’d enjoyed recounting the story of her infidelity. “Why did you go looking for him?”
“Caine had skills. A unique skillset that I needed. He had experience that no one else could boast.”
Zara’s mouth opened a good three seconds before she managed to talk. “He could track Raven,” she whispered in a single slow breath.
After learning who Raven was, Caine had followed his work, both Art and Brodie had told her that. At the time, he’d probably been young, impressionable, and over-eager. But having been Raven’s groupie once gave him the knowledge that Cuckoo needed to track the man who’d scorned her.
“Yes,” Cuckoo said and she was smiling again.
