Unorthodox (Sick Love Book 1) Read online

  He was gone.

  It wasn’t until later I knew what my father did to him.

  I searched for him. Those first three days, and later.

  For years, I poured over the news. Police reports. Foster homes.

  For years, I didn’t sleep, thinking about the horrors he must’ve endured.

  For years, I blamed myself.

  Sometimes, I’d imagine he found a loving home. I’d imagine he found a woman like my mother, who loved him for who he was, and cherished him and helped him and adored him.

  Sometimes, I’d dream he found a man like my father.

  Sometimes, I’d hear his screams in my head.

  But now, I can get him back.

  All I have to do is give up the girl. Send her in Oliver’s steed.

  It’s not hard.

  I don’t know her. I don’t fucking care about her, and we all have to live through pain at some point.

  To take Oliver’s away, I’d throw Addison to the wolves.

  He was so good. So happy. So…innocent.

  She might be, too. But someone has to pay, and I learned a long time ago you don’t ask for things that can never be. Saving them both is a pipe dream.

  If she thinks what she saw was a weakness to exploit, she’s dead fucking wrong.

  I hear something, before the sun has risen.

  The floorboards creaking down the hall. The subtle shift as my new guard moves from his position by the door.

  My new guard, because Dante has been dead for four days.

  Four days.

  I didn’t know him. Never even learned his last name. But it doesn’t stop the ache in my chest when I think about Max holding that gun to his head.

  He didn’t want to kill him. But he did it, because Max is terrified of betrayal.

  I don’t know what him and Mamie were arguing about when I walked in on his breakdown, but I saw Mamie’s face when I confessed to her what happened to Dante.

  She had come in my room, with clean clothes.

  Had asked where he was.

  I’d told her about his last words.

  She’d left the room in tears.

  There was a moment afterward, when she went to confront Max, that I was scared for her life.

  Max is dangerous. Volatile. And deep down, somewhere he doesn’t want to admit, he’s terrified of having nothing, and no one.

  I sit up slowly, blinking that thought away, instead watching in the dark as my door opens. I tense, holding my breath, heart hammering hard in my chest.

  Is today the day?

  Has Danik come for me?

  Or is my time over?

  Will I fight?

  Max stands in the doorway, dressed in all black, hands in his pockets. But even in only the dim light from the hall to see by, I can make out the light blue-grey of his eyes.

  I don’t say anything.

  I just wait.

  We haven’t spoken since Dante. I haven’t seen him since his held a gun to his own head. I’ve been dragged to breakfast, lunch, and dinner. All eaten alone, save for my new guard’s silent presence. The guard I don’t bother to learn the name of, because what’s the point anymore?

  I’m allowed to go to the gym, but not outside. I’m allowed to roam the house if Mamie or my guard is with me, but I have a strict curfew, and I’m locked inside once I’m in my room.

  I wish I had a book to read. Something to do besides wonder when my life will really end. I wish I hadn’t smashed my television.

  I wish I had fought back when Max fucked me.

  I wish I hadn’t liked it.

  “Do you want to go outside?” Max finally speaks, and his voice is hoarse. Aside from his eyes, I can’t make out much about his face, but I’d be willing to bet he hasn’t slept any better since Dante than he did before his death.

  I don’t answer him, my heart racing in my chest. The last time I went outside, Dante died. I tried to run, right after I watched Max put a bullet through the brain of his personal guard.

  I’m not so keen on the idea of going outside right now.

  “It’s…early.” I don’t tell him no, because I remember too well what happened the last time he was in my room. My mirror was replaced one morning while I was eating breakfast, so I know the bruises have nearly faded around my throat. The soreness in my body has faded too.

  I don’t want more of it.

  Max doesn’t say anything. He keeps standing there, leaning against the doorframe, watching me.

  The hair on the back of my arms stand on end.

  I wonder if he plans to kill me today. I draw my knees into my chest, wrap my arms around my shins. I think about him holding that gun to his head four days ago, and I hate how it makes me feel: sorry for him.

  It makes me feel pity, and a man like Max Bennett doesn’t deserve pity.

  “I’m aware of what time it is,” he says softly. He doesn’t say anything else, doesn’t ask again, but I know he’s waiting.

  “Do I have a choice?” I ask him, hugging my knees tighter to my chest, my body tense as I wait for his answer.

  I swear I make out his smile in the dark. “No.”

  Swallowing down the lump in my throat, and the angry retort, I nod, even though I don’t know if he can see it. Slowly, with shaky limbs, I get out of bed and head to the closet, which brings me far closer to Max than I really want to be. But all of my clothes are in there, and I’m only in a sleep shirt and shorts.

  When I reach for the closet door with trembling fingers, he steps into my room, so close I can smell his beachy scent.

  I freeze, turn to look at him as my knees feel weak beneath me.

  He’s staring into my eyes, and his face is a mask of calm that I don’t like. Not when he makes me feel so far from it.

  “Are you scared of me, love?”

  I blink, my hand still reaching for the knob, but immobile. Frozen. I think about his hand against my face. About him pinning me to the bed. The fall down the stairs while he watched, after Ben pushed me. I think about spitting on his shoe and licking it clean.

  The gun against Ben’s chin. Dante’s head.

  Him, inside of every part of me.

  I feel dizzy with fear, but I force myself to answer him. “Yes,” I whisper in the dark, and my face warms with shame. With self-loathing.

  With hatred.

  He puts his hand on my arm, gentle as he lowers it down, away from the door, his fingers curling around my wrist. I try not to flinch with his touch. Try to hold my ground.

  He steps closer, pulls me so I’m facing him, the closet adjacent us, the door to my room at his back.

  His hand comes to my face and my jaw tenses, but I don’t move.

  His fingers are gentle as he traces the curve of my cheekbone, then over my brow, across my temple, back down to my throat, where the bruises are healing.

  “I’m sorry.”

  I don’t think I’ve heard him correctly.

  He continues tracing my face, his touch light, his eyes on mine. “When all of this is over, I don’t want to be the worst man you’ve ever met.”

  My stomach twists into knots. His fingers skim over my lips, and I can’t breathe.

  “But I think, even if I hurt you more,” he leans in close, his thumb pulling down my bottom lip, “you’ll find there are far worse monsters in the world.”

  I try to turn away from him, anger and fear colliding in my bones with his twisted words. I’ve already met worse monsters. But before I can get away, he grabs my chin, forces me to look at him.

  “Don’t think that what you saw means you know me, Addison.”

  For a moment, I’m confused, and it’s on the tip of my tongue to ask him what the fuck he’s talking about, but I quickly swallow the question as it plays in my mind again.

  The gun. The way his eyes glistened with tears he’d never shed.

  He’s embarrassed.

  “I cannot tolerate weaknesses.”

  He’s angry that I saw him at a
moment of weakness. That’s what this is. Not a truce. Not an apology. This is a reckoning. A do over. A way for him to claim his power back, his strength, by making me feel small.

  “You don’t know me, baby girl.” He presses his brow to mine, his fingers tightening around my wrist. “You won’t.” He smiles, and it sends a shiver down my spine. “You’ve seen me hold a gun to three men’s heads. How many of them are still alive?”

  I suck in a breath as he tugs my lip down lower, and I don’t know if he really wants me to answer him or if…

  “One.” His finger leaves my mouth, comes to rest gently around my throat instead. “Only one.” He runs his mouth over mine, and I try to step back, but he tightens his grip on my neck, keeping me still. “So, don’t think you’ve got me figured out, Addison.” His lips brush against mine as he speaks. “Don’t think I showed you something you can use against me. The only person I’ll ever save is myself.”

  I wish he could hear the pain in his own words. I wonder if he knows he’s bleeding out for me, right here. Showing all the ways he really is weak, in his threats to try to make himself appear strong.

  I wonder why he’s giving me so much, and if he realizes he is.

  “I know, Max,” I tell him, still so close that every word brings my lips to meet his. “I know you’re really just a scared little boy.”

  His grip on my throat is bruising, but I can still speak.

  “I know you only think of yourself,” I continue, while I still can. “But the thing about being so selfish, Max, is that you forget you’re not the only one born from monsters.” I step closer to him, nearly gagging with his fingers around me, but I don’t care. “And you’re not the only one who will do whatever it takes to survive.” I smile at him, and his eyes narrow, turning murderous. “This isn’t my first trip to hell, Max Bennett. Now,” I swallow around his hand circling my throat, “do you still want to go outside?”

  He stares at me a long moment, marginally loosening his hold on my throat. Then he lets go, turns on his heel, and slams the door closed.

  I hear the lock click, but even still, I can’t help but smile.

  Max is cracking.

  The bookshelf is broken on the floor, books scattered around and over the polished hardwoods. The floorboard is gone, the safe open.

  I’m breathing hard, the exhaustion of destroying a solid oak bookcase wearing on me. The hammer is against the wall, opposite my desk. I think about picking it up again, swinging it a few more fucking times to get this weight on my chest off.

  I fist my hair in my hands, stare at the rectangular flash drive, blood still flecked against it. It’s on my desk, beside my laptop, next to the empty decanter of whiskey I finished before I destroyed half of my office.

  It was better than what I wanted to do.

  It was better than destroying her.

  “This isn’t my first trip to hell, Max Bennett.”

  Like it’s mine? Like murdering my own guard, my only friend, was the worst thing I’ve ever done in my life? The worst thing that’s ever happened to me?

  She doesn’t know me.

  She doesn’t know what I’ve seen.

  And maybe her father is a dick. Maybe those cigarette burns came from him, and maybe her and Danik have had a few demons of their own. But she’s still good. What could they have possibly done that would compare to what I’ve lived through? That innocence she still cleaves to, what could they have taken from her? She has no idea what happened to me. What happened to Oliver.

  I think of her under Dante.

  She was so willing. So eager to give to him to get away from me. She gave it to him.

  I swipe my hand across my desk, knocking the decanter and the rocks glass to the floor where they shatter into pieces.

  Snatching up the flash drive, I stand in front of my desk, put it in the USB port with trembling fingers.

  Trembling fucking fingers.

  I hate this.

  I hate this.

  I hate her.

  I hate Dante.

  I hate…all of it.

  The files open up on my screen. I use the trackpad to scroll through the dates, the rooms. Everything my father watched. Everything he probably used to get off to later. Maybe he raped my mother while he did it. Maybe he raped someone else.

  Maybe he had someone’s mouth around his dick as he watched his son get fucked when I didn’t inflict the pain on his slaves he demanded me to.

  And he knew. All this time, he knew where I hid Oliver. He knew I tried to save him.

  He knew, and he made sure he heard every fucking minute of it.

  There’s a lump in my throat so big I can’t breathe when I open up one of the videos from my room.

  My own bedroom.

  I slept in there at night. When it was all over, I had to go back there and find a way to rest.

  When I did, the demons came all over again.

  I slip my free hand into my pocket, clench the playing card.

  “Let me know you’re still in there.”

  I’m not, Mom.

  I feel pressure building behind my eyes, and it takes effort not to reach for the gun on my hip.

  I’m not in there.

  I press play on the video, watch Coda drag a boy into my room.

  I ball the playing card up in my fist, still in my pocket, one hand over my mouth.

  The boy doesn’t fight.

  Coda throws him on the bed, pulls down his shorts. The boy doesn’t move.

  Coda turns to look at the camera, a smile on his broad face. He was younger than I am now. Young enough to still have a heart.

  Except my father probably took that from him too.

  Coda moves over the boy, and the boy…does nothing.

  He doesn’t fight.

  He isn’t brave.

  He’s barely alive, barely in there at all.

  He’s a ragdoll, a toy. Something to be used, then discarded.

  That boy is weak.

  He’s nothing.

  “You had to be stitched up. And for what, Maximus?”

  Long after Coda is gone, the boy lies there.

  Even as another, smaller boy slips from underneath the hollow space in the floorboards, rubs his brother’s back, that boy doesn’t move.

  He stares at nothing. He feels nothing.

  I know.

  I remember what that feels like.

  Because I still feel it.

  What I am.

  What I have.

  Nothing.

  I grab my laptop, slam it against the wall.

  It isn’t enough.

  She knows I’m nothing.

  She fucking knows, and she still feels.

  I kick the laptop, pick it up and try to rip it apart, separating the keyboard from the screen. I slam it against the wall again, and when it falls, destroyed, my fist goes into the wall.

  Over.

  And over.

  And over.

  Until I can’t feel it.

  I can’t see it.

  I sink to the floor, my head in my hands.

  Numbness.

  Nothing.

  That’s all I’ve really been, and I hate that I can’t stay there. That when she’s around, when her bravery and her goodness come through…I. Want. More.

  I pace the foyer, waiting for Addison and Evora, the guard at the door keeping his eyes on the floor, like a smart man.

  Mamie tried to tell me I shouldn’t go to Luca’s party. After she saw the wreckage of my office two days ago, she tried to tell me I should stay home, and that Dante should be properly mourned. But the idea is almost amusing.

  You don’t mourn people you murder.

  After Mamie’s confession, my nerves were rattled, but I push that from my mind. What she saw. My weakness.

  I meant what I told Addison.

  I can’t tolerate weaknesses.

  Not even from myself.

  The bookshelf, what I said to Addison in the darkness of her room? Al
l weaknesses. But I’m better now. I watched the video.

  I faced that fear.

  I know where I came from. And I know I will never allow myself to go back there again.

  And I will never leave my brother alone again.

  When I can get my hands on him, Addison will be gone.

  She’ll hurt, and she’ll hate herself. Her life. What she’ll become.

  But Oliver…he’ll be safe.

  “Are you ready?” Evora’s voice draws my attention and I stop pacing, slipping my hands into my pockets, fisting the king in my hand.

  Evora is in another white dress, long, glossy hair over one shoulder as she eyes me. She has yet to meet Addison, but in a few moments, that will change. She knows there’s a girl here to be sold, but Evora is smart.

  She doesn’t ask questions she doesn’t want the answers to.

  It’s why she hasn’t spoken to me about Dante again.

  “Someone is coming with us,” I tell her. Her eyes narrow as her heels click on the floor when she crosses the space between us, running her hands down her hips, smoothing her tight dress. I smell her floral perfume as she approaches, see bruises around her throat from my hands.

  I wonder what it would be like to make Addison watch me fuck her. Maybe that would completely erase that moment of weakness I displayed, gun to my head.

  “Don’t take the coward’s way out,” Addison had said.

  “Who?” Evora asks me, still frowning.

  “The girl.” I glance down the hallway her room is on and see Evora turn her head, too. Evora’s cheekbones are bronzed, her lashes thick with mascara, expertly applied. She’s beautiful, in her mid-twenties, and with everyone but me, she’s feisty too.

  I briefly imagine her first encounter with Addison and feel a sick pleasure that she’ll likely make the girl feel small.

  Weakness.

  Addison saw my weakness.

  It’s another reason, despite Dante’s death, we have to go to this fucking party. I cannot allow her to think she could manipulate me with her words. That she actually got through to me.

  Not to mention the parties waiting for proof of life lurking in Luca’s home. I can only hope they don’t ask her about her purity. Knowing her, she’d be sure to tell them all the things I did to her.

  All the things Dante fucking did to her.