The Deception series boxset: FaCade, Cadence, Beneath Innocence (45 page)

ROLLING HIS EYES, HE WAVED me in. “Took you long enough,” he grumbled. What the hell did that mean? “You won’t want to see some of this shit, Cade.”

I threw my jacket on the arm of his couch and pushed multiple electronic devices out of the way so I could sit down. His apartment reminded me of an old back alley collectors shop; shit everywhere. Everything looked like junk, but in fact the equipment was awesome and worth a fortune.

“I did what she asked but once I was in I decided to delve further . . . and then what happened with Blue. I want to help take this fucker down.” I was stuck on the ‘I did what she asked’ part of his statement.

“You need to walk me through this. Who’s
she?
”

He looked over the rim of his glasses at me. “Faye! She came to me.”

My pulse thundered in my veins as it always did with the mention of her name. “Start from the beginning, Kenny.”

“Faye came to me, walked right in on Brett and Tom going at it. She blushed like a nun at a strip joint.” Like I needed to hear about his sexploits or visualize Faye walking in on him jacking off to his two boyfriends ass ramming each other.

“And?”

“She wanted me to find out where the footage went from his camera system.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know, she was jittering and pacing.”

“Did you find out where the footage was going?”

He looked at me with a
duh
expression. “I traced them to a building built at the back of his house. This is where the power grid for all the monitors is and where they are recorded. The live feed receivers are blocked and it’s taking some time breaking through firewalls and shit but I do know that everything recorded is uploaded every couple of weeks to a secure channel and stored there.”

“So can you tap into the feeds?”

“Not the live feed yet but the saved footage I have.”

My pulse pounded in my neck. I needed to see. “So you’ve seen the footage from when he took Faye?”

“I have seen some, but trust me, you don’t want to see this.”

“I need to.”

“She begged me not to tell you I had accessed it.” Why? Damn my thoughts were going to eat away at me imagining all sorts anyway. I needed to see what happened to her.

I stared at him, imploring him to understand. He walked over to his safe and unlocked it. He pulled out a packet and threw it into my lap. “My loyalty is to you, Cade, so I downloaded everything from the date of her disappearance. I warn you, it’s hard to watch even for me and I’m just her friend. She also told me to tell you to look and remember the memories and smile.” His hands went up when I look at him confused. “She was really specific, man, that I tell you that exactly.”

“Okay, listen if I wanted to go back there, is there a way to kill the cameras?”

“It’s all backed up and can only be overridden from the source. I can’t delete the saved data either. It has to be done manually there. That’s what she wants to do, Cade. Delete the files and shut down the cameras but I don’t know her end game.”

“You think she doesn’t want to be there? To be with him?”

“Fuck, no! She just needs to neutralize the damage.”

“She’s pregnant with his kid, Kenny.” I swiped my palms down my face trying to contain the despair inside me.

“Do you love her?”

“You know I do, more than anything.”

“Then you bring her home and you deal with all the fallout because love is like suffocating when you’re not with the person who owns it.”

Damn, he was right.

“Cade, there’s something else.” I wasn’t sure I could take much more. “I was just about to call you before you showed up. I found some interesting stuff on his server.” I quirked an eyebrow. “His payroll list. All the dirty cops, all the perverted fucks he deals with. You know what that means? No cop is only dirty for one person. They care about the pay load, and we know exactly what that is and how much we need to top it, and then use the evidence I have on those fuckers to get them to turn a blind eye and let you be after it’s all done.”

After it’s all done. He knew what I was going to have to do and would help me cover my tracks. These guys were my family, not Dante.

I CLOSED MY EYES, MY finger hovering over the play button. Kenny had warned me, and as sadistic as it sounded, I needed to see for myself. I needed to see and understand what she went through. And if it emerged that she had given herself to him freely then it was time to let her go.

An image flicked up. From the angle, it appeared that the camera was situated in the corner of a ceiling. My hand slapped over my mouth as the contents of my stomach rushed up, meeting the waste bin when I snatched it up quickly.

“Fuck!”

My eyes burned, my whole body shaking when I saw Faye, naked and dangling from a hook in the center of the grimy room. Her legs twitched as she tried to support the weight of her body, her muscles contracting tightly with her attempt to reduce the load on her arms.

Every single hair on my body snapped to attention when the lights flashed and Theo walked in with the tall guy from Dante’s place. I was already struggling to hold onto my shit with the sight of him. However, I couldn’t help but frown when Faye watched him warily.

The tall guy, Malik, I think his name was, un-cuffed her, catching her around the waist when she dropped. An instinctive growl curled my lip when his hands touched her bare flesh, dragging her hands around her back to re-cuff her.

My gaze landed on the bowl of bread and water on the floor but when Theo spoke to her, telling her they weren’t there to serve her, I flicked to the next scene. Some things are tolerable, but watching the woman you breathe for naked, dirty and having to eat and drink from bowls on the floor like a dog, I couldn’t do.

In the next scene, Faye was laid on a bed, her back to the camera as she remained completely still. She appeared to be asleep, but eventually she turned slowly, the effort of moving masking her beautiful face with pain.

She blinked, regarding something curiously.

“Hello, Star.”

Dante walked into the shot. My teeth chattered against each other and I sucked my tongue to stop them grating together. I wanted to kill him. I wanted to dig my knife so far into his throat that I could feel his esophagus crack under the pressure. I wanted to watch as his blood trickled free, liberating it from its keeper, releasing his fucking soul and last breath with it.

I titled my head, straining to listen.

“Don’t hurt me.”
Her voice was quiet; full of fear and pain.

Dante proceeded to un-cuff her then pour water down her throat. But it was their next conversation that made my eyes widen.

“Always were the defiant one.”

“You . . . Do I know you?”
Faye rasped as her eyes widened on him.

“What?” I choked out. This wasn’t making any sense.

Dante disappeared. Faye slung the bottle across the room then my soul died when I saw her bladder empty and she sunk to the floor, screaming for them to let her out as she pounded on the door.

She didn’t know him. She—did—not—recognize—Dante. What the fuck?

Numerous other scenes flashed up but I didn’t stop hitting ‘next’ until a scene unfolded that my sick sense of need wanted to see and I hit play halfway through the scene.

“Do you want it, Belle?”
Dante growled at her,
his filthy hands holding a wand on some pearls that were barely covering Faye’s pussy. She was propped up on a table by her elbows, her face tight with pleasure, and her body trembling in need.
“Tell me, do you want me inside you, fucking that throb you have building. Does your greedy little pussy want to be fed? I can smell you. Damn, I want to fuck you. Do you want me to?”

“Yes!”
She shouted as a sob tore up my throat. I licked at something tickling my lip, realizing it was blood when the copper tang burnt my tongue.

“You really asking, Star? Does your pussy want to strangle my thick cock?”

“Damn you, Troy, just fuck me!”

“You asked, Star.”

I closed my eyes when Dante freed himself and thrust inside her. Inside my girl. His filthy fucking dick taking something from her. Me.

I watched the rest of the clips in shock, my stomach emptying twice more before I couldn’t watch any longer. My eyes were sore, my throat constricted with pain. My body was both weak but over-sensitized, my skin prickled with goose bumps as deep shivers ricocheted through me.

I had watched as memories came back to her, confused and twisted memories, memories Faye couldn’t decipher in her own head, leading her to believe Dante was me. I had witnessed each one as they snapped inside her mind, her brow creasing, her head tipped slightly at an angle as if she tried to force the replay in her mind to make sense.

And Dante had never seen it. He’d persecuted her, degraded her and humiliated her. He’d definitely raped her, whatever stupid thoughts she had about it all. He’d played with her, manipulated her emotions until like a lost sheep she clung to the master as her only source of comfort. I understood why she had been reluctant to tell me, thinking I wouldn’t believe she had lost her memories. And to be honest, maybe if I hadn’t seen this footage and the way things had developed, then I would have had a hard time believing her.

The remote flew across the room as my temper snapped, hitting the wall and starting the whole damn disc to replay on fast forward, the images flicking in sequence and pouring gas onto my already burning fury.

The room took my wrath. I pulled at everything, needing to ease the raging storm inside me before it ripped me in two, my screams fuelling my rampage as the room disintegrated beneath my hands. Knick-knacks and cheap junk that Faye and I had collected over the years from our vacations that had been stored in order on a dresser scattered across the floor; the shoddy workmanship pulverized easily under my wreckage.

Finally spent, I slid down the wall, my tears dried up under my rage, my heart beating furiously as I panted, trying to bring it back into pace with my breathing.

My gaze landed on the tiny cocktail umbrella. Picking it up, I swirled it in my fingers unable to hold in the smile as the memory of that day filled my mind. I’d asked Faye to marry me a few hours earlier, and then we spent the rest of the day in our hotel room; I’d had drinks delivered. The umbrella had decorated our cocktails and I had tortured Faye with it, trailing it softly over her hypersensitive skin and tickling her until she couldn’t stop the tears and the giggles.

A tear slid from my eye when I saw it was torn now, the little stick snapped in half and sharp. I snapped my eyes to the rest of the things, despair clawing its way up my throat when I realized I’d destroyed our memories.

Scooping up the fractured parts, I attempted to fix them all back together, another frantic sob bursting from me when I found them all ruined beyond repair.

“No,” I whispered, gulping back the ache.

Everything was such a mess; my life as well as the souvenirs a mass of twisted and broken dreams. And she was carrying his baby. How could I ever look at it and not see him and what he did to her?

What the hell was she playing at, asking Kenny for the footage? She was up to something, I was sure of it.

‘Remember the memories and smile.’

What the hell did that even mean? I picked up another trinket, sighing at the smashed Eiffel tower. I’d ruined our memories. I frowned, picking up the tiny pebble we’d found on the beach. Faye had a replica in her memory box.

In her memory box!
Fuck! Her memory box!

IT WAS STILL WHERE SHE kept it on the top shelf in her closet. Lifting down the large pink box covered in a multitude of our photos that she’d glued all over it, I lifted the lid. A sharp gasp rushed from me when a blank disc in a clear sleeve lay on the top. What caught my attention, though, was the small round smiley face sticker on it.

‘Remember the memories and SMILE.’

Scrambling into her bedroom, I climbed on her bed, hitting the button in the headboard that brought up the TV that was sunk into the base of her bed. It climbed slowly; too fucking slowly. As soon as it snapped into place, I slid the disc into the slot in the side and hit play.