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“Yeah. I’ll spare you the details. We slept together, and then we went our separate ways. I didn’t know anything was wrong until the MP came knocking the next day.
“He strangled her to death and blamed me for it.”
“I don’t understand. Him blaming you shouldn’t matter. It should have been easy enough to clear your name. Witnesses you met in the bar or, I don’t know, something.”
“There were witnesses that saw us in the bar, but it just proved I was with her, not that I didn’t kill her. When they questioned me, I denied knowing her because they framed the question in such a way that I had no idea what they were talking about.”
My face must show my confusion.
“They asked me if I knew Major Elks’ wife. I told them I’d never laid eyes on her before in my life. Of course, at that point, they already knew I had. They had the CCTV footage from the bar.”
“Okay, but that wasn’t your fault you didn’t know her as the Major’s wife. You weren’t lying. But let’s play devil’s advocate here. Let’s say you knowingly slept with his wife but lied about it because you knew it was wrong. That still does not make you a murderer.”
“No, what it made me was a scapegoat. Elks found out his wife was having an affair with a soldier who was killed in action a month before I slept with her. The story goes that he felt he couldn’t do anything about it because the man was dead, so he decided to forgive his wife. However, when he turned up at the bar that night to find her, and she was all over me, something in him snapped. He recognized me. So, he let her fuck me in their bed while he watched, and I had no fucking clue.”
“Jesus, that’s messed up.”
“You have no idea.”
He pulls back and sits up, running his fingers through his hair in agitation. Hating to see him looking like this, I crawl into his lap and wrap my arms around him, his arms automatically going around my waist.
“After I left, he waited until she fell asleep, then killed her.”
“You left a lot of details out there. I have a stronger stomach than you might think.”
“He raped her—brutally—before choking her to death. Then he pulled the condom I had used with her from the bathroom trash and emptied it inside her.”
He swallows hard, squeezing me a little tighter.
“They found my skin under her nails where she had raked them down my arms and back, my DNA all over her sheets—” He shakes his head. “Trust me, they’ve convicted people with less.”
“But you obviously know what the Major did, so it worked out. Still, I’m so sorry you had to go through something like that.”
He looks down at me, his eyes strained, as he tucks my hair behind my ears. “We found that out after the fact.”
“After the fact? What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I served ten years of a life sentence before they realized they had the wrong guy.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Jagger
I lost track of time talking to the guys. E is like a dog with a bone right now, wading through all the shit Judge Jones had his hands in. I tried to help him but ended up getting in the way. I’m convinced the man is part machine.
When I walk back into the house, I’m surprised to find Slade and Astrid asleep on the sofa. I thought for sure napping was going to turn into fucking.
I stand there for a minute and just watch them. Astrid is tucked against Slade’s chest, and the man himself has his arms wrapped around her like he’s worried she might slip away. They look so peaceful that I leave them and head to the kitchen to make something for dinner, deciding on pasta with a spicy tomato sauce and a salad.
I chop the onion and the chili peppers, my eyes drifting to Slade and Astrid often, a weird feeling running through me. I’m not saying I’m jealous because I don’t hold any animosity toward either of them, but there is a part of me that feels left out.
Jesus, fuck. I sound like a baby.
Shaking it off, I go back to cooking, making an extra special effort to ignore them until I hear Astrid stirring. She gently pulls herself free from Slade’s arms before leaning down and pressing a kiss against his forehead. The move surprises me. Slade had been a dick to her when she first arrived. I’m glad she managed to put that aside and offer him affection, something he doesn’t get from anyone except Salem.
“Hey, are you hungry?” I ask her quietly when she gets closer.
Instead of answering, she walks around the counter and straight into my arms, pressing her face against my chest.
