Bound by Rapture (9 page)

I glanced at Cole, confused. Why would they be looking for him? 

“Well, here I am.” He held out his arms. “You could have just called if you needed to speak with me.” Even he seemed a little perplexed. 

I glanced over at Vic and Chris. They looked equally confused. 

“This isn’t something that can be discussed over the phone.” Gary stepped forward and the other officers flanked him. Cole’s men closed in tighter, not letting them through. Their stance wasn’t threatening, though. All of the men had their hands at their sides—no weapons. 

“Excuse me,” Officer Dillon said.

“Let him through.” Cole pushed me behind him and I was suddenly very nervous.

“What’s going on?” I stepped back around him.

“Cole Maddon you are under arrest for the murder of Mandi Hubbard and solicitation of murder for Julia Collette.”

The collective sound of gasps rang out.

“What?” I grabbed my chest and looked back and forth between the cops. “No. That’s not right.”

“I assure you it is. Please turn around and put your hands behind your back.”

“Cole?” I stared at him, but unlike earlier, he wouldn’t look at me. His gaze was focused on Officer Dillon.

“You’ve made a mistake,” he said evenly.

“We haven’t. A witness came forward yesterday, placing you at the scene.”

“Of course I was at the scene. Have you seen the back of my head? It was bashed open.”

“I don’t have to discuss the details of the case with you at this time. You are welcome to call your lawyer and settle the details with him. For now, you have to come with me.”

“Like hell I do. This is bullshit.”

“With your history, I don’t think so, buddy. Just because you have a lot of money, doesn’t change the fact that you’re a convicted murderer.” 

I expected Cole to deny it. To laugh in their faces or even attack them for saying such things. But he did none of it. Instead he just stood there. His face was a blank slate of emotion. After several beats, he stepped forward and held out his wrists. 

“What are they talking about?” I grabbed his arm. “This is a mistake,” I said to Officer Dillon. “You have the wrong guy.” Sure, Cole acted like an asshole, he was possessive, and he
had
killed Jay, but only because he’d attacked me. He would never hurt me or Mandi. 

What the hell is going on?

“Your boyfriend didn’t tell you about his past?”

“Don’t,” Cole snapped. 

“What does that mean, Cole?” I pleaded. All of a sudden I was terrified. I didn’t know what was going on, but I knew I was about to lose Cole. He was about to go to jail, and where did that leave us—me? “Talk to me.” But he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t even look at me. 

“Randy, you and the guys get her home. Don’t let her out of your sight. I’ll get this shit handled.”

And then they were leading him away. 

“No!” I tried to rush after him, but strong arms captured me, stopping me in my tracks. I flailed, hysterical. “They can’t take him. He didn’t do anything!”

“Let him go, Jewel.” The voice belonged to Vic.

“Let me go! Now!” Suddenly all I could think about was the fact that we had hardly said a word to each other since what happened in the bathroom yesterday. He had barely touched me, even in his sleep. And now they were taking him away and he wouldn’t look at me. It was as if I didn’t exist. As if there was something more, something deeper I wasn’t a part of. 

I twisted my body back and forth, trying to break free, but I didn’t succeed. Vic held me tight, trapping me against his chest. It seemed surreal, all of it. Only moments ago, I had my face pressed against Mandi’s casket and now I was watching the cops arrest Cole for trying to murder me. For murdering her. 

Officer Dillon opened the back of his police car and Cole climbed in, but not before looking my way. His gaze only met mine for a second, but his expression was frighteningly sad. As if it was all over. That sorrow called to me, but it also scared the shit out of me. I slowed my movements and pressed the back of my hand to my mouth. 

What did you do, Cole?

SEVEN

Julia.

I sat on Vic’s ugly, flower-patterned couch in my living room. A show played on TV, but I wasn’t paying attention. I was too lost in the information I had learned over the last few hours since Cole had been carted off to jail. 

The articles were there. Just a simple Google search away. Endless pages, stories people had written on the gruesome murder of Garrett Maddon, Cole’s older brother, and the murder trial that ensued. I vaguely remembered it now when I thought about it. I’d been thirteen when it happened. It had been on the news, sure, but I didn’t pay attention to that stuff. I was more concerned with my Gameboy and the crush I had on Jake Reynolds at school. A twenty-five-year-old billionaire, who viciously murdered his brother and then buried him in the pasture behind his mother’s house, hadn’t held my attention. 

But it held it now, because Cole Maddon was that man. He was the man who had murdered his brother. He was convicted of the crime, but received a light sentence on a technicality that only got him three years in prison and a non-existent parole. 

“I can’t believe it,” I said out loud for what had to be the hundredth time. 

“I know. I’m so sorry.” Chris patted my knee. “Some things just aren’t meant to be, though.” 

I glanced over at him. Vic had gone to the bathroom. 

“Don’t say that.”

He frowned. “You can’t seriously still want him after finding out he killed someone?”

“It’s—” I didn’t even know what to say. It was the story of the
other
dead body that broke my heart. At first Cole had been convicted of two murders, the murder of his brother and the murder of Sandy Maddon, his younger sister. She had been found in the same house Garrett was murdered in, but in the second floor living room, hanging from one of the rafters. It hadn’t been until after the autopsy that the count of murder for Sandy was dropped and concluded as a suicide. 

My heart ached as I thought about the portrait tattoo on his arm of the woman with dark, sad eyes. The wind blowing her hair around her face. 

“She killed herself.” 

Cole’s words from that morning so long ago rang through my head. Words he’d spoken to me only minutes before I stumbled onto his computer and found out he had been stalking me. He’d seemed so sad. So lost. 

None of the articles gave any answers as to why Cole had done it. He’d pled guilty. And none of them said why Sandy killed herself, either. There was some speculation about money problems or some twisted love triangle, but nothing was concrete because Cole never answered those questions. I read multiple articles that said he refused to speak about the case at all to reporters. And people claimed his mother, Jennifer Maddon, who was typically very interested in the limelight that came with her son’s fortune, hadn’t spoken on the subject at all and neither did Elaine.

“I just don’t understand how I didn’t know. How it wasn’t in the tabloid magazine that came out after Cole fucked me at Rapture X.” I shook my head, letting it all roll around inside. “The magazine discussed how it was a big deal that a man like him, of such high profile, would do something like that. But it didn’t say anything about him being a murderer. No one ever said anything about him being at the Rapture X shows, which are exclusive.” I let my words trail off as my thoughts caught up. “And he was at every one, as far as I know. Don’t you think that’s something we would have heard about? I don’t get it.”

Chris shrugged and took a sip of his beer. He had his blond hair pulled back in a ponytail and wore basketball shorts and a t-shirt. “I don’t know, Jewel. People like that, people who have more money than sense tend to turn a blind eye to things.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean this whole murder thing happened years ago, over a decade ago. I’m sure a lot of them knew Cole beforehand, so maybe he did stuff afterward to earn back acceptance. Hell, maybe he bought his way back in, paying people off to forget. I think you forget just how much power there is in money, and wealth.”

“Yeah, but the wealthy are talked about all the time and there’s nothing they can do about it. It’s part of being successful and in the limelight.”

Chris took another sip of his beer. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. I don’t know. Maybe there was stuff about it and you just didn’t see it? That happens. Big things happen all the time and we just miss them because we’re too focused on our own lives. Things slip right under our noses and we never notice until it’s too late.”

I nodded. “You’re probably right.” My heart was in my throat, and I was sick from it. Cole hadn’t been fazed at all when he pulled the trigger that snuffed out Jay’s life. It hadn’t seemed weird to me because I had been dealing with my own shit. But now I realized he seemed eerily calm about it. Taking it all in stride as if he hadn’t just blown someone’s brains out. 

“He didn’t try to have me killed. He didn’t hurt Mandi either,” I blurted, hating the direction my thoughts were going in. 

“Come on, Jewel. Look what you’re saying. He stalked you.”

“I know, but…he didn’t. I just know he didn’t. Maybe he has a fucked-up past. But there’s more to it. There has to be. And he didn’t do this,” I said again.

“Okay.” Chris patted the top of my thigh, a skin tone Band-Aid on the back of his hand. “Maybe he didn’t do this stuff. I get where you’re coming from. It wouldn’t make sense. Why would he kill you? He’s had plenty of opportunities where he could have, right?”

“Yes. Many.”

“But would you still want to be with someone who murdered his own brother?”

“But—”

“He slaughtered him, Jewel. Didn’t you read the autopsy report in that one article? He cut out his heart.” Chris shook his head as if the very idea disgusted him. “What kind of sick person does that kind of shit?”

I closed my eyes. I didn’t have answer for that. It had to be wrong. Cole couldn’t have done that. Not the man I knew. Not the guy who poured his heart out to me on the broken steps of his childhood home. Not the man who held me in his arms and told me I was beautiful when I was a blubbering, scarred mess. That man couldn’t have done those awful things.

But everything seemed to point toward the fact that he had. 

I woke up to cold, empty sheets and a loud banging noise. I rolled over and looked up at the ceiling. I had even less energy than the night before when I’d gone to bed alone. 

The banging happened again and I frowned, realizing someone was knocking on the apartment door as if their life depended on it. A bubble of panic jumped into my throat as I rolled out of bed. I had barely made it out of my bedroom when the front door flew open revealing a middle-aged woman clad in a pink lace dress. Diamonds dripped from her arms, ears, and neck. Her bleach blond hair brushed the top of her shoulders and a scowl was set into her heavily painted face. 

“You can’t be in here,” Randy hissed, grabbing one of her arms. I stared down at the diamond-studded heels on her feet.

What time is it? Who is this lady?

I rubbed the top of my head in confusion.

“Yes, Randy, love. I
can
be here. With my son behind bars, I am the person in charge of his estate. Therefore I own this building and can be anywhere I want inside of it.”

Son? 

Cole’s mom. Realization of who the woman was made my skin prickle with something dark, something hateful. It wasn’t because Cole thought she was the person behind my attack, it was because of that old house in New Orleans. That broken down shack where the love of my life had starved because the bitch in front me hadn’t gone home to feed him. 

“There are privacy laws, ma’am.” 

“Oh, don’t feed me that bullshit. We both—” Her gaze landed on me. The dark blue pools of her eyes were so much like Cole’s that I sucked in a breath. “Well, look what we have here. The stripper Cole can’t seem to keep his hands off.” 

“What do you want?” I was shocked by how menacing my voice sounded. I put my hands on my hips and nearly cringed when I realized the only thing I was wearing was the My Little Pony t-shirt that brushed the tops of my knees.