Nefarious b723 series bo.., p.18
NEFARIOUS: B723 SERIES BOOK THREE, page 18
I want everything.
And while I desire all of them, I need to leave certain things behind. Ones I can’t fix and others that don’t want to be.
I’m not a miracle worker.
A new chapter starts today.
With school back in session, it takes my mind off everything that’s happened over the last two weeks. I’ve written down my schedule, the easiest route to Philly to get to college, a few job interviews lined up, and I’ve gotten myself fully unpacked.
Laurent and I are meeting up for dinner tonight to discuss how we’re going to approach Dad. He also wants to go over a few other things that he keeps claiming that we’ll talk about when we sit down and eat.
It does nothing for my anxiety.
With only a few more months of classes to go, I’m in beast-mode when it comes to designing. I’ve been sketching late at night new ideas that hit me out of nowhere. I’ve been buying fabrics in loads, cutting and sewing pieces together to wear some of my concepts out in public. Being your own billboard for your craft is really the best way to go.
After another trip to the craft store, I’m throwing my bags and purse on the kitchen island. I stroll through the expansive living space and down the short hallway to get to my bedroom so I can quickly change out of my jeans and throw on the romper I planned for tonight.
My custom, one-of-a-kind, of course.
I deconstruct my ponytail, let the long strands hang loosely down my back and shoulders, and reapply my mascara. I pull on the white and green romper with a pair of white heels and a black leather jacket.
Glancing at my alarm clock, I still have some time to binge-watch Grace and Frankie on Netflix before I have to head out. The plush sectional and pillows faithfully call out to me—we’ve been acquainted all weekend—when I almost piss my pants from the sound I hear next.
“Love the outfit, Rus.” I gasp before whipping around so quickly that I almost trip on myself and fall right to my ass.
Sitting on the white marble of the island with my purse and bags still sitting there, Mills thoroughly studies me from head to toe…with a blunt between his fingers?
“What—“ His feet hit the hardwood floors with a soft thud, sending a violent shiver of fear sprinting through my frame.
See you soon.
Okay, so maybe I was beginning to believe he really wasn’t going to make good on that so-called promise.
Actually, I was hoping he wouldn’t.
Rhett Mills scares the shit out of me. The way his tone dips and coats in menace makes the hairs on my arms stand on end, sweat to bead at the nape of my neck, and my skin to crawl at the way his eyes bore into me with such intense dislike that it may result in a stroke.
But he’s gorgeous.
His medium brown hair is styled casually, slightly longer on the top than the sides. The dark stubble along his jawline is perfectly cut and shaped. His nose is a tad wide at the bottom when he breathes in.
Like he’s breathing me in like a predator hunting out his prey.
He’s in a gray t-shirt that molds to his broad shoulders and hard chest. Faded blue jeans and white shoes move, he stalks towards me.
His sole focus centered on me shaking in front of him.
Taking a long and deep drag of his blunt, his eyes never leave mine. I can feel the weight. The massive gravity that crashes down on me with such force that I’m surprised it doesn’t just crush my lungs and heart into pieces.
“H-how did you get in here?” I ask so I can figure out how I can get it to not happen again.
That’s if he doesn’t kill me first.
Oh, shit.
I take a step back, exhaling a shaky exhale to extricate some of the fear unwittingly settling in my gut when Mills flicks his lit doobie onto one of the suede sectionals.
“What the hell?!” I exclaim, moving quickly to grab it before the embers burn the fabric.
Then I hear a familiar click.
Not that I’ve heard one in real life, but I watch quite a bit of crime shows, so I know what the hammer of a gun sliding back sounds like.
Flicking my sights to Mills, he’s holding a solid black handgun, pointing it directly right at me.
“Pick it up.” I can’t stare at anything but the barrel, automatically thinking this is a trick just so he can shoot me.
He’d just shoot you.
I can’t breathe when I see him nod, face completely calm. “Go ahead.”
Hesitating for another second, I reach for it, still burning and leaving a small black rink of burnt fabric in its wake.
“Take a hit.”
I shake my head. “I don’t—“
“You’re making me nervous, Rus,” he claims smoothly, the glint of his watch catching the sun. “Go ahead and chill.”
Bringing it up to my lips and my eyes still on his weapon, I suck in a small inhale but don’t fully let it hit my lungs before I’m coughing and trying to blow it out.
“There you go.” His voice is like velvet, soft and smooth, and oh so freaking dangerous.
My focus slices to his, watching the way he blatantly stares openly at me with zero emotion in his face.
“Mills…what are you doing here?”
He knits his brows together. “What do you mean?”
I mock his actions and squeeze the end of the dupey. “I mean, the last time I saw you…you practically spit how much you hated me.
“Oh, that.” He shrugs nonchalantly. “I’m not here to talk about that.”
I slowly bob my head, careful not to make any sudden movements. “Did you want to talk about what…happened? Or—“
“No.” It’s that moment when I see the first glint on the inside of his mental state.
It still affects him.
It makes me wonder if he’s visited Solange or Odette yet or if he saved the weakest of the three to get rid of first.
“Okay.” I labor to keep my words composed with my breaths. “Then what are you here for?”
He hits me full-on with the velocity of his stormy eyes when he says, “You.”
My immediate reaction is to step back again, and that’s what I do, giving me more space in case I need to make a run for it somewhere in this penthouse. My brain searches for all escape routes, doors with locks, and how much time I can buy myself before the cops and security come to help me out.
“I told you I’d see you soon, Rus.”
I shake my head. “No, you—for what? I already told you—“
“And I already told you that I was going to return the favor.” I can barely hear him because my blood is pounding so loudly in my ears that it sounds like bongo drums. However, I still got the gist of it.
“You’re going to—“ I swallow, then force the next two words from my mouth because I need to know. ”—rape me?”
Mills averts his gaze as if he’s thinking for a minute before plowing it right back into me. “Haven’t decided yet.”
I glance back to the hallway—that was my first mistake. Marking my route before executing on it.
I sprint in the direction of my bedroom because Mills blocks the way to the front door. Everything around me blurs, the off-white paint and random paintings hung on the walls. I’m about to meet the hilt of the hall when something hits the wall, sending pieces of drywall flying back at me.
I scream, startled from the surprise of the small hole directing me to what it was and is.
A bullet.
“I don’t chase after girls, Rus,” Mills claims evenly behind me, sounding to be in the same exact spot I just left him. “But my bullets do.”
His footsteps sound at my back, and I can’t move. I’m literally frozen, scared shitless to even flinch an inch because of where he might aim his next bullet next. Goosebumps chill the lining of my arms and spine, at the back of my neck as if to send an SOS to move my ass before he ends it.
A hard object glides down the back of my ribs, and a violent chill takes that moment to break out, releasing a visible tremor through me.
“Fear,” he mutters, his voice still composed and steady. “I can smell it right off you.”
“Please,” I beg, a sob breaking loose from my throat. “Don’t hurt me.” The solid something at my back—I know it’s his gun—trails down to my right ass cheek and stays there.
“Your ass and your mouth. That’s why I’m here.” My eyes burn with tears as I stare straight ahead at the master bedroom. “But I’ll do that when I’m well and ready.”
“Mills—“ My voice breaks and cracks again as I suck in a jittery exhale to contain myself.
He wants to make me pay.
He took a page out of my book and sought out a surprise visit.
One with a weapon and a placid demeanor that only sets my wrecked nerves even more rattled.
“Mhm?”
I want to turn around and face him, but I can’t. Not only am I unable to move, but I don’t want to show him how completely and utterly terrified I am of him and what he’s thinking right now.
“I’m sorry for what happened. But you showing up here and killing me isn’t going to erase—“
“Turn around,” he snaps, the barrel of his gun gone from my backside. When I don’t do it as promptly as he likes, he rounds my trembling frame and stands in the way of my safe place.
Now it’s just me versus a very distressed man.
“I don’t need to shoot you in the back of the head because I don’t want to look you in the eyes, Rus,” he proclaims, dipping his grays to my greens. “I’d rather do it when I’m staring at them.”
The barrel of his gun brushes my temple then, pushing back my hair. My jaw shakes at how painstakingly slow he’s setting me up or making a decision.
I’m supposed to be leaving right about now to go meet my brother. He should be calling soon, and I might not be alive to answer it.
“Please…” I hold his focus. “I’ll do whatever you want, just...”
“You’ll suck my dick, Rus?” He lazily shakes his head. “Nah, I don’t think you would.”
“I would,” I blurt out because I’m desperate as hell right now to live another day. To act on all the things I’ve worked so hard to do. “I would, whatever you want.”
Mills takes a small step back, but those enticing irises never abandon mine. “Show me.”
“Now?”
“Right now.”
Reluctantly, very reluctantly, I get down on my knees with a thud. The hard surface of the floors unforgivingly digging into them. I’m in a worse position now than I was just a second ago, but if he needs to see that I’m dead serious, I’m left with no other option but to take a chance.
“That didn’t take much,” he snarks as I take in his distressed dark blue jeans.
“You have a gun,” I snap back, lifting my chin to look up at him. “And I am sorry.”
“And I’m tired of hearing it.”
“Well, what else do you want me to say?” I’m pushing a line here with his erratic temper, but I’m not going to go down sobbing like a weak little bitch either.
Or I’m going to try not to.
One of his dark brows raise, and even down here, he’s handsome and crazy as fuck. And I hate myself and him for me even noticing.
Today was a good day. Now it just took the train to go to shit.
“Nothing,” he finally replies. “I want you to say nothing.” I flinch back when he drops himself down to his haunches, the bottom of my heels digging into my ass as I lean back and away from him.
He smells like weed and cedarwood.
It assaults my nose on his way down, and he aligns his face somewhat with mine. My next inhale catches, and I’m face to face with my newly assigned tormentor.
The man I used to save my brother.
“Get used to seeing me,” he vouches slowly, his words encasing around me and holding me hostage like the chains that did to him in my basement. “I’ll be around.”
Then he rises but not before plucking his blunt out of my fingers that I had completely forgotten I was holding.
Then my cell goes off somewhere in my bedroom, signaling that Laurent is ringing me to make sure I’m on my way. I’m so out of it right now, my body quivering with adrenaline, that I don’t even make an attempt to stand for several minutes.
Get used to seeing me. I’ll be around.
I turn my head to glance over my shoulder just to hear the door to the penthouse click closed.
And instead of calling my brother back, I immediately call the maintenance department of the building and ask if they can put a deadbolt on the door ASAP.
Two of them, actually.
Bishop and Kyson sit on either side of me, our hands all clasped in our laps as we watch Emmy viciously pace the living space of her house, livid and pissed.
Her tiny hands are balled into fists. Her huffs and scoffs melodically leave her mouth, and she hasn’t spoken a word in about a minute which is scary enough on its own.
It’s a process with Ems.
If you speak too soon, she goes off the handle more like adding more gasoline to a fire.
If you don’t say something, then she gets lost in her own thoughts, and luring her out of them will take a full day and a half.
Time that I don’t have right now nor the patience for.
So I take the chance, the very slim chance, that what I’m going to say is going to settle her down and get her to stop moving around like she’s waiting on the test results of another pregnancy test.
“I’m fine, Ems.” She whirls on me. Her whitish-blonde hair hitting one side of her face as her light brown eyes narrow right in on me.
“How in the actual fuck can you say that?”
“Because he is,” Bishop reassures her, which gets a pointed index finger extended in his direction.
For such a short and little thing, she reminds me of a Chucky doll. That sinister glower on her face and the possibilities of either killing you in your sleep or surprising you with it eminent on her features.
Like it’s in her DNA.
She’s savage as fuck.
“Shut up, Bish,” she snaps before she starts retreading the hardwood floor.
So, I told her.
And right now, I’m regretting it immensely that it’s causing her any sort of pain or discomfort right now.
She’s blaming herself.
She would.
Emmy feels like she needs to take care of us all, and if someone gets hurt, she evaluates what she was doing, why she wasn’t there, and what she could’ve done better to stop it from happening.
Emmy doesn’t need enemies.
She’s her own.
A carbon copy of anything that could crash down her walls and plummet her into the ground.
“Emmy,” Kyson tries next—God, fucking help him. “Mills is a fighter. It’s in his blood to—“
“Don’t tell me he’s fine,” she leers. This time when she stops, there are floods of tears falling from her eyes, hitting her cheekbones and splaying all over the animosity that was just stewing over her body.
My heart cracks.
I love her; I do.
I’d never want to be the reason she’s upset, but I didn’t want to be someone she resented for keeping my situation from her.
We trust each other more than anyone. She full-heartedly depended on me once upon a time with her twins. I’m her rock, her person, as much as she is mine. And I don’t want to be the one to dismantle that into pieces that I can’t put back together again.
We’ve been through twins and surgeries, births, and deaths. If she would’ve kept a rape from me, I don’t know what I’d do.
I’d probably pull a Bishop and go off killing all suspects. I’d wage war against a whole continent if I had to for her.
You don’t get any closer than Emmy and I. You just don’t.
So while I understand her being agitated and bothered, I need her to pull it together because I’m still not able to swallow all of this myself.
I need her to help me do that.
And we both can’t be fucking messes while that happens.
“How do you want to do this?” Her eyes refuse to blink out more tears as she stares back at me with defeat in those pretty browns. “And can I kill one of them?”
Both Bishop and Kyson nudge me with their knees at the same time, hinting that if I don’t let her spill some blood, they're gonna spill mine for keeping her away from protecting me in some capacity.
“Yeah, Lou Boo,” I reply with a curt nod. “If that makes you feel better.”
Her features flash with immediate worry. “Are you okay with that?”
“Yeah. I wouldn’t want it any other way.” I watch my best friend release a held breath as she rolls her shoulders to relieve some of the tension in her tiny frame. “I’m gonna need some information on—“ She immediately moves, striding to the kitchen without needing another word from me. “I’ll grab my laptop.”
Speechless—I mean, I really shouldn’t even be surprised—I watch Emmy disappear out of the room and hear Kyson let out a low groan of displeasure.
“She’s going to obsess over this,” he mutters to my right. “And Ledger is going to kill us for going rogue again.”
“He’ll get over it,” Bishop quips confidently, propping his ankle along one knee. “There’s no one else fucked up enough to do his dirty work.”
“I want this clean and quick,” I tell them for obvious reasons. “Except for the one.”
“The one?” I feel Bishop’s eyes burrow into the side of my face, looking for an answer that he’s not going to get right now. Ems comes back into the room then—perfect timing—sitting on the floor in front of the coffee table and cracking the lid open.
I clear my throat. “Hey, Lou Boo, we don’t have to—“
“I have all their names and phone numbers. I know their schedules, what vehicles they drive and how much money is in their bank accounts.”
All that within ten seconds.
She scoffs, shaking her head disapprovingly. “If one of those stupid bitches didn’t keep turning your phone on, we wouldn’t have found you when we did.”
“Hey, how about we order some pizza, yeah?” Kyson rises from the couch, breaking through the darkness of mess that threatens to pull me under. “C’mon, Ems, show me where the menus are.”
