Fake madison kate book 3, p.1
FAKE (Madison Kate Book 3), page 1
FAKE
MADISON KATE #3
TATE JAMES
Contents
STALK TATE
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
To be…
Letter from the Author
Also By Tate James
Tate James
FAKE: Madison Kate #3
Copyright © Tate James 2020
All rights reserved
First published in 2020
James, Tate
FAKE: Madison Kate #3
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. All characters in this publication other than those clearly in the public domain are fictitious, and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Cover design: Tamara Kokic
Photographer: Wander Aguila
Models: Jonny James and Amanda Joan
Editing: Heather Long (content) and Jax Garren (line).
To making smart choices and owning our own bullshit.
STALK TATE
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1
Archer
"Congratulations, Mrs. D'Ath. Welcome to the family."
My brother's words hung in the air like a death knell. Damn, they were exactly that because there was no way in hell she would forgive me for this.
I couldn't look at her. My head refused to turn and see what was sure to be horror and betrayal passing over her beautiful face. I didn't need to. Not when Kody's tortured expression said it all as his gun arm lowered and his eyes pleaded with her.
She wasn’t looking back at him, though. I knew her better than I knew myself some days. The staggering silence that followed Zane's words told me how she would react to this new development. She wouldn't yell or scream or punch me... no matter how much I hoped she would.
From the corner of my eye I caught her stooping to swipe the folded papers off the step. She didn't look at them, just stuffed them into her back pocket and gave a short nod.
"Thank you for letting me know," she told my brother, and the ice in her voice was like a jagged blade straight through my heart.
Zane's brows shot up in surprise, his eyes shifting to meet mine once more. He didn't know her, though. He couldn't sense the cold, acidic fury coursing faster through her veins with every passing second. He hadn't witnessed her highs and lows, and he had no idea that this was worse than all of those lows combined.
I was fucked. Totally, completely, utterly fucked.
But I would still do it again. Given the same choice, offered the same opportunity to buy her, to own her and all her assets? Yeah, I'd do it again. In a fucking heartbeat.
"MK, it's not what it sounds like," Kody started to say, his voice threaded with panic and his gun at his side, forgotten, as he implored the girl he'd fallen in love with.
She wasn't listening. The second Zane had dropped his truth bomb, she'd shut us out. All of us... because regardless of the fact that it was me who'd purchased her like a fucking prize cow at market, both Kody and Steele were complicit. They’d known all about it, about how deeply intertwined our lives now were, and they’d kept my secret.
In that light, their betrayal had to be so much more cutting. They'd made her care for them... They'd fallen for her in return. That, surely, was a bigger crime than what I'd done.
At least I’ve never fucked her.
Anger burned through me as I eyed my brother, ignoring everyone else for a minute. They'd directly violated the rules of our agreement, and crimes like that couldn't go unpunished. I'd proven my point to Zane over and over, but apparently all it took for him to forget those bloody lessons was a pair of great tits and some silken pink hair.
"Boss," Cass said quietly in his damaged voice, "we should go."
Smart move. Cass had known me since I was a kid; he'd been there as my grandfather put me through training. Hell, he'd been through it himself. He—even more so than Zane—understood what I was capable of. He'd sensed the shift in my mood and recognized the impending danger.
Zane gave me a small, cruel smirk, and a growl of anger burned through me. He claimed he was doing this for some debt he owed Kate's dead mother? I called bullshit. He was doing this to hurt me, and it was working. That motherfucker.
Cass and Zane climbed back onto their motorcycles, kicking the engines over. Kody shot me a confused look, and I knew exactly what he was asking me. Was I going to let them leave unharmed? Probably not. But it was more fun to leave the illusion of freedom, only to shoot out their tires right before they exited the property. Then? Well... then I dare say my big brother was well overdue for a lesson on exactly why I was a bigger, badder wolf in Shadow Grove than anyone else.
"Wait," Madison Kate shouted, her voice like a bucket of ice water over my bloodthirsty plans. She stepped over the bloody heart—the one stalker gift I was glad to see—and approached the two Reaper leaders. "I'm coming with you."
She didn't wait for permission, just climbed onto the back of Cass's bike like she fucking belonged there, linking her hands around his waist in a way that sparked my anger to murderous levels.
Cass was a fucking dead man.
"Hellcat, don't do this," Steele pleaded, his silent resolve cracking. "Don't fucking run from us. Please, baby, you need to hear us out."
For a moment, I thought he'd got through to her. Those violet-blue eyes of hers flickered with pain—and any emotion was better than the cool mask shuttering her true feelings away. But as quickly as it came, it shut back down. Her eyes flicked away from Steele like he no longer existed in her world.
"Go," she ordered Cass in a whip-crack voice, "there's nothing left for me here."
He was smarter than that, though—certainly smart enough that he hesitated and his brow creased ever so slightly with indecision.
"Boss?" he asked Zane, seeking direction.
"You can't be fucking serious!" Kody exploded, shaking his head in disbelief. "Arch, do something. You know you can."
Zane met my gaze, his lips curled in a smug grin of victory, and sour hatred filled my body. I wanted to kill him so fucking bad. The only reason he was still breathing was that he served a purpose in running the Reapers. That usefulness was fast running out.
"MK, come on," Steele tried again, taking two steps closer to where she perched on the back of Cass's motorcycle. "Please, trust us. Don't run."
"Archer!" Kody snapped. "Say something. Fucking anything."
But what the fuck could I say? Zane hadn't lied. He hadn't even misled her, although I had no idea what was in those papers, what proof he'd provided. But it didn't matter, did it? Money had changed hands, her piece-of-shit father had had his bad debts cleared and his life saved. All it’d cost him was his only child.
What a bargain.
When I said nothing, Kate's curiosity won out. I’d known it would. Her eyes met mine for one tense, soul-destroying moment. Her expression was shuttered, her pain and fury tucked carefully away behind a mask of indifference, but I knew it was there. She couldn't hide from me.
"Let her go," I finally said, holding her gaze and giving away nothing in my own. Two peas in a pod, we were. A match forged in the blood-drenched bowels of Hell.
"What?" Kody exclaimed at the same time as Steele shouted a curse.
I let a small smile touch my lips because if there was one thing I was good at, it was getting under my wife's skin. All the better now that she knew the truth. We were married and had been for over a year.
Happy belated anniversary, babe.
"Let her go," I repeated, bleeding smug satisfaction into my smile and locking down all the howling pain
inside me. "She knows she can't escape me forever."
This provoked a reaction from her, just as I’d expected. It was small, just a fractional lift of her brows, but the message she conveyed was clear.
Bring it on, motherfucker.
The roar of motorcycle engines filled the air as Zane and Cass took off, carrying my wife with them, and I did nothing to stop them. My vicious plans were abandoned as quickly as they'd been formed because there was no way I'd shoot out their tires when she was involved.
They knew it too, those bastards. Kate was their shield, and they'd keep her close to save themselves from my retaliation. That knowledge both infuriated me and eased my mind. As badly as I wanted to tear carnage through the Reapers for this breach of the rules, for this literal act of war against me... I couldn't. They'd keep her safe, guarded, protected, and that was something I'd failed miserably at recently.
Maybe she would be better off with Zane and his gang of criminal misfits, at least until we could neutralize the threats against her.
The three of us stood there in silence as the two bikes disappeared through the main gates of our estate, then Kody turned to me with an accusation clearly written all over his face.
I closed my eyes, but didn't flinch. I knew what was coming well before his fist met my cheek, snapping my head back and making my ears ring.
I deserved that. And more.
"This is on you, Arch," he seethed, glaring daggers as I squinted back at him and dabbed my lip. He'd split it open, but I'd wager he wanted to do a whole lot worse. "This whole fucking mess could have been avoided if you'd been honest with her from day fucking one!"
I gave him a casual shrug, totally at odds with the screaming turmoil inside me. "Well, you know what they say about crying over spilled milk. She'll get over it."
This time I didn't see the punch coming—despite how badly I deserved it—because it came from Steele and was delivered solidly to my kidneys. He may not have any interest in fighting competitively, but he'd trained with Kody and I for years. That fucker could make a punch hurt.
"You fucked up, and you dragged us down with you," Steele growled, his fists clenched like he wanted to keep hitting me. "And you're not fooling fucking anyone with this blasé attitude, Arch. Just because you refused to fuck her doesn't mean you haven't fallen just as hard."
I grunted but couldn't force the denial past my lips. He was wrong, though. I’d kept her at arm’s length because I’d known this day was coming. They should have done the same.
The two of them gave me disgusted, disappointed looks and stalked back into the mansion—my mansion—without another word. Understandable, considering there was literally nothing else to say. Nothing could take back what I'd done over a year earlier, and nothing could fix the betrayal and heartbreak Kate must be feeling now.
I sank down on the front steps, sitting my ass right beside the bloody lump of meat which had once sustained a rapist Wraith. Her stalker and I seemed to be more alike than I'd originally realized, considering I'd sent Kody out during the night to kill that piece of shit Wraith himself.
Scrubbing a hand over my scruffy stubble, I released a heavy sigh.
The cat was out of the bag, and now I needed to figure out where we went from here. Did I even really want to bring her home?
Of course, that wasn't even a question. Because deep down I knew the answer. I'd known the answer to that underlying question for years, ever since I’d held the hand of a frightened eleven-year-old girl while she watched through the window as my father executed a man.
Did I regret my choices? Not a fucking chance. Owning her meant she was safe. She was free from servitude. But more important than anything else... it meant she was mine. And that was something she could never change.
2
MADISON KATE
Trepidation curled through my belly as Bree turned her car into the familiar driveway of Shadow Grove University. It'd been four weeks since that day on the front steps of Danvers mansion—sorry, I meant D'Ath mansion—and I was nowhere near ready to face my new reality yet.
But unfortunately for me, SGU wasn't going to go pushing the semester start date back so I could take a couple more mental health days hidden away in Bree's Aspen chalet, so here we were.
"I mean, they're probably not even going to be here," Bree offered with a hopeful shrug. "Didn't you say Steele was graduating after finals?"
I sighed heavily and stared out the window. It was still snowing, but it lacked the magic of Aspen. There was something about ski resorts that was so totally removed from the rest of the world. They were quieter and cozier. It was so easy to forget all my real-life problems when for four weeks in a row all I needed to do was catch the first ski lift of the morning then come back and drink mulled wine.
"I don't want to talk about them, Bree," I told her in a tired groan. We'd only returned from Aspen the day before and had spent the rest of the day and night decorating my new apartment. For some reason I'd gotten it into my head that my bedroom needed to be painted before I could settle in, so Bree had come over with wine and Chinese and we'd spent half the night playing interior decorator.
She bit her lip, shooting me a sheepish look as she stopped her car in a vacant spot some way from the campus buildings. We'd both overslept, so we were lucky to get a space at all.
"Right, of course," she said with a nod. "No more mentions of those-who-shall-not-be-named."
We piled out of her car and I shivered as the cold air bit through my sweater before I got a chance to pull my winter coat on. Bree checked her phone, smiling all girly, and I couldn't help grinning.
"Dallas?" I asked, and her cheeks heated.
"Yup," she replied, all cagey and shit as she tucked her phone back in her bag. "Just wishing us luck for the first day back."
I laughed. "Uh-huh, sure he was. Pretty sure that wouldn't make you blush like that."
After everything that had gone down the night of Archer's fight, Bree and Dallas had been able to sort things out pretty quickly. Neither one of them had mentioned that weird interaction again—when Bree had thought Dallas was hitting on me—and they seemed totally smitten with each other. So I was happy for them.
He'd visited us once in Aspen, just after Christmas, but otherwise it'd been all hushed, late-night phone calls and dirty texts. It was cute as shit. It gave me hope that one day maybe I'd be able to move on from the three time-bombs who'd detonated my heart and left it splattered all over the steps of the fake Danvers’ mansion.
"So, do you know if Scott actually managed to transfer here?" Bree asked, linking arms with me as we made our way to the lecture halls. "He seemed pretty determined to make it happen." She waggled her brows at me, and I gave her a flat glare back.
"Stop it," I muttered, feeling my own cheeks heat. Except mine wasn't the fuzzy, loved-up glow that she got when Dallas dirty texted. Mine was embarrassment... I think. "He was just talking it up to try and get me to sleep with him."
Bree snorted a laugh. "No shit."
Scott was someone we'd met on a night out in an Aspen bar after a long day on the snow. He was a part-time snowboarding instructor and had been pretty forward about asking me out. I'd refused—thanks to my severely damaged trust in men and my shattered heart—and he'd become a pretty good friend to us in the weeks since. A flirty friend, for sure—he'd made no secret of the fact that he was attracted to me—but a friend nonetheless.
