Chad's Chase (Loving All Wrong Book 2) (29 page)

Removing my hands and dropping them to my side, I surrendered. If death was what he chose for me, then death it would be.

Tempestuous dark eyes flew open and glowered down at me. “Did you make it easy for her, or was it painful?”

Temples throbbing from all the blood trapped in my head, I shook my head as best I could. “Slit…her…throat.”

That elicited a wolfish growl from him, savage, ferocious, as he pinned me with his hips and really started to choke me. With that rage in his eyes, I no longer recognized him. Instantly I remembered his words from the night before:

…
it’s easier not to get pissed off than it is to control myself after I get pissed off. Rage kills, it consumes you and makes you do impulsive shit
…

Rage killed indeed.

Chad’s face shifted into twos, and then back as one, in twos, then back to one. My air dwindled lesser and lesser until my body went limp, my vision nothing but a thin sheet of darkness, and, though I knew I was gasping in my last counts of breath, I heard nothing. I saw nothing. It was such a contrast the way my body was struggling, but my spirit, my spirit was so peaceful. Floating.

Suddenly, it was like a ton of steel was lifted off me, and my body was sliding, falling down, no longer struggling. Then the sense of hearing was back, like a gushing waterfall inside my head, and someone’s voice from far away. “…pen…eyes…eety Byrd…”

Tactility returned next, but I wished it hadn’t, because I sure as shit felt that hard ass slap on my cheek, and then another in quick succession. I blinked open my eyes and brought my hand to my throbbing cheek.

Chad was leaning over me, my upper half cradled in his lap, his expression an artist’s sketch of panic and contrition. My body suddenly convulsed, lurching forward as I heaved up nothing at all, then inhaled a long lungful of breath, eyes stretching wide.

“Jhay?”

As everything rushed back to me, I lay there, audibly inhaling and exhaling, while mulling over the conclusion here: he didn’t kill me.

“Talk to me, Jhay,” his voice pleaded, vigorous hands shaking me. “Tell me you forgive me. I’m so fucking sorry. I don’t know what—”

“I forgive you,” I rasped out.

He paused. “What?”

“I forgive you.”

Those dark eyes, they were wet. Those long lashes, they stuck together from the salty moisture. Tears. That’s what the wetness was called. Tears.

Although those pained eyes watched me like he thought I’d lost my sanity during the strangulation, his shoulders sagged in relief. “You stupid, stupid girl,” he whispered, pulling me to him, stifling me in a tight hug. “You shouldn’t forgive me. You should be running from me.”

“No,” I protested to his chest. “I told you, I’m yours.”

A therapist would purse her ruby-red lips, tap her ballpoint pen against her clipboard, and scribble down something like, ‘
Patient suffers bondage complex. As a result of being kidnapped, enslaved and mastered since the age of ten, patient does not know how to lead an unfettered, liberating life, but feels the need to be owned and mastered, as that is the only way patient will ever feel loved and appreciated
.’ And in fine print summary: ‘
Patient is dumb as fuck.
’

But screw that. I needed Chad.

“How can you trust me, Jhay?” he asked the top of my head. “I promised you I wouldn’t hurt you, and I did.”

Because I have no one else to trust.

“You didn’t hurt me, Blood,” I answered, soft and quiet. “You just had a hard choice to make. Maybe you made the wrong one in the beginning, but you eventually chose the right one, didn’t you?” Lifting my face away from his chest, I peered up at him. “You chose to love me.”

Shaking his head at me, Chad leaned down and pressed a soft kiss to my lips. “You’re doing my head in, Tweety Byrd.”

“Well,”—I gave a weak shrug—”you take my breath away. Literally.”

Chad stared at me for a long, long while, as if committing all my features to memory, before asking, “You still like opening your legs for me?”

“Yes,” I answered in a rush of breath, my body instantly alive, like I hadn’t just danced on the toes of death.

At the same time he stood up off the floor, he scooped me up with him. “I’m gonna take you to my room and you’re gonna open your legs for me and let me make sweet love to you. Long, slow, and deliberate. Then we’re hitting the road. There’s something you need to see.”

Forty-eight hours later, we were speeding out of Chad’s compound.

I had no idea where we were headed, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t paranoid as hell. Rafail was still after both our lives, and, even though Chad assured me some mysterious stranger was protecting me, what did I know about him? Maybe I was mostly scared of the unknown than the known.

If this unknown protector was so set on keeping me safe, why would he leave me with
Chad
? My fake kidnapper. Considering Chad almost snuffed my lights out a few hours ago, what made him think he could trust Chad with me? What would they have done to him if he
had
killed me? Is this protector even real? Was any of what Chad told me even true?

Well, shit. Who else did I have to trust but him? Who else was there for me, but him?

No longer in the claws of The Voice—Rafail Niiveux—I was now a confused, lost, meandering sheep. Unsure whether I should turn left, right, or go straight ahead to fucking jail. All I could do—foolishly so—was bank my faith and fate in Chad, a man whose own best friend described him as a
constant
betrayer.

The answer was right there. Glaringly obvious. I could not, and should not trust him.

I did, though. Oh, I did.

He was right: I was a stupid, stupid girl.

But this stupid, stupid girl did not regret letting him make sweet, sweet love to her body two hours ago. The most euphoric experience of my entire existence. One I’ll never forget. So maybe being stupid had its perks.

As the R8 kicked up speed, weaving and overtaking every inferior vehicle in its way, the engine growling a vicious “get the fuck out of my way”, the air-conditioner blasting stiff, frigid air, Eminem booming through the confinements of the car, I peeked over at Chad, wondering where the hell he was taking me. To life, or to death?

With a black ball cap pulled down over his face, and a mirror aviator hiding his eyes, he seemed distant, far off in his thoughts, his jaw set tight, a tic jumping occasionally. I couldn’t tell if that was from some evil thoughts or from nerves.

With Chad, one never knew.

I reached forward and powered down the volume on the monitor, and Chad leaned a little to the side, resting his shoulder on the car door, as if bracing himself for whatever conversation I was about to strike up.

“Why did Org allow you to keep me?” I asked. “I mean, if he’s so keen on protecting me, how can he trust
you
with me?”

“I killed one of his men thinking he was out to harm you.” His eyes remained hidden, but on the road. “Org understands we have one common goal, to keep you safe.”

“Keep me safe from Rafail, sure,” I said. “But does he know you can’t keep anyone safe from
you
?”

Tic.

Tic.

Tic.

Jaw tightening. Tic jumping.

Tic.

Tic
.

He was sorry. But he had already apologized and he wasn’t going to do it again. He’d been like this since we were young. Once or twice he would apologize, but no matter how sorry he was, that was it.

“What happened to her?”

At that, he glanced over at me, giving me a view of myself in those mirror aviators. “Who?”

I’m one hundred percent sure he knew I knew he knew who “her” was.

“Your uncle’s mistress,” I reminded him. “Twenty-one-year-old bombshell who took your V card?”

Tic.

Tic.

“She’s dead.”

I sat up straighter, not wanting to believe what my mind was screaming at me:
He killed her! He killed her! He killed the woman he was in love with! His being in love with you does not exempt you from his maleficent stabs in the back. “
What—how? Who?”

Tic.

Tic.

TicTicTic.

Tic.

“I killed her.”

Oh…God… He was…he was unredeemable. Pure evil.

The haze of madness and stupidity I’d been floating around in dissipated all at once. And suddenly I wanted out of that car, away from him. Rational sound of judgment returned, and the only thing I could think about right then was “run, run, run”.

Ah, Jhay, what about “I’m yours. To kill or to love”?
my mind jeered at me.
So quickly you change your tune
?

“Why, Chad?” My voice was a shaky wisp of hot air. “
Why
?”

Emitting a sigh loud enough to be heard over Eminem’s spitfire rapping, he leaned his shoulder further into the door. “Remember when I said I signed my legacy over to my father for my freedom?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I also did it for her.” His voice was so still. “We never stopped fucking. Even while I was being punished. Pavel got tired of it and stripped her of everything he’d given her, so she was moving back to the States. I wanted to take her, save her.”

“Yes, I get it, because you
loved
her.” So why kill her?

TicTic
. “She’d known I was the inheritor of my family legacy, but what she didn’t know was that I gave it all up for my freedom.”

I unsnapped my seat belt and turned in my seat to face his direction, pulling my feet up and tucking my hands between my thighs. “And?”

“When we got here, we were living with my aunt—the same one you killed.” He added the latter with a gritty edge. “My aunt was well-off, with a house too grand for just a family of three, so she was overly happy to have us there with her. But Liz wasn’t. She wanted to know why we were living with my aunt when I was supposed to be rich. I eventually told her the truth.

“She changed after learning I was broke. But still stayed with me because she had no family; had grown up in foster care. Was probably regretting ruining the luxury she had with my uncle, for me. She was after all six years my senior, mooching off her eighteen-year-old boyfriend’s aunt.”

His free hand went up and tugged the cap lower. More hiding. “She became friends with another young, pretty trophy wife to a real estate mogul who resided in the same gated community my aunt did. Before long, she was sleeping with the mogul behind her friend’s back. My aunt tried to warn me a couple of times, but I didn’t believe her. Until one night Liz left and never came back. Her friend came by our house some time after, crying. The mogul was divorcing her and moving Liz in.”

“What a selfish, traitorous bitch,” I said, face contorted in disgust. “So that’s why you killed her?”

He shook his head no. “That was my first instinct, yeah. I was hurt and broken, fucked up for a while. But at that time, I hated what my father had turned me into so I was rebelliously trying to suppress all they taught me in training. The whole ‘kill first, face the consequences later’ MO. So I sucked it up and let her go.”

What? “I don’t understand. How did—”

“A year later, I got a visit from Grandad’s lawyer,” he carried on, letting me know it wasn’t over. “Apparently, Grandad had predicted my father’s actions. Had known family meant nothing to him and that he would do anything, no matter the cost, to manipulate me into signing over the legacy to him. Grandad had known that leaving the legacy to me would plant enmity between me and my father, possibly all his sons, which would lead to me becoming the outcast of the family. And all his predictions came to pass.

“According to his lawyer, Grandad knew I wouldn’t end up with the legacy in the end, so he’d opened a secret account for me and instructed his lawyer not to apprise me of it until I was at least two years out of my father’s grasp. It was exactly two years after leaving Russia that the lawyer showed up.”

His head turned to me now, shades still over his eyes. “4.9 billion, Jhay.”

“Whoa.”

“A small grain comparing to the 57 billion family legacy, but still, at that point in time, that lawyer was like Jesus turning water into wine for me, stone to bread.”

I said nothing, waiting for him to tell me how all this led to him murdering Liz.

“After finding out about my new wealth, I set out on sowing seeds all over SF and LA. Inventing. Partnering. Buying. Building. The apartment building I live in now, it was being constructed buy Liz’s real estate mogul. I saw it, I wanted it, so I made an overly generous offer and bought it.

“I was in his office signing the final papers one evening when Liz walked in. I looked at her and realized I still loved her. But I was still blinded to the fact that all she was seeing was my money. She inquired what we were doing and I proudly told her I just bought the entire Russian Hill apartment complex from her fiancé. Because I wanted her back. I wanted her to know I could take care of her now. She came back—or so I’d thought.

“I thought we were good. But one night Ronnie caught her digging around in my office. That’s when I found out she never really came back to me; she was still with the real estate mogul, and I was the side fuck. She confessed she was searching for documents that would tell her what my offer price on a company—that both her fiancé and I were bidding on—was, so he could outbid me and get the company. I realized then that between me and him, he was her priority.”