Page 56 of To Curse A Knight

Mybitter tone belied my unwarranted feelings of betrayal, even after all this time. I broke Lucky’s gaze and examined the creases in the floorboards, needing the distraction for what came next.

“It broke my heart, but the longevity of what we had didn’t exist. She would return home to Brazil when she graduated, and I was returning to Cascade Falls to work with Daddy’s companies, with plans to start my own.”

I filled my lungs with stale basement air and exhaled sharply—finally getting to the meat of the story; how my prisoner upstairs had come into our lives—the person who destroyed Isabella and took my innocence along with her. The man who’d changed everything.

“Alec Turner was handsome, charming, and successful, claiming to work as a hired contractor for a DC law firm. They’d met at a party and he’d immediately swept her off her feet. He was all she could talk about, but he never came around. I’d only met him a handful of times. He started giving me red flags when he didn’t want to join her and her friends, and she became more and more reclusive because of it. I’d raised it with her a few times, but every time she waved me off, thinking I was just jealous.

“Ihadbeen jealous. Isabella was everything I wanted in a partner—beauty, grace, poise, intelligence. Fiercely protective, and feisty as hell. But I was also right. With each passing week, she became a shell of who she once was.”

My audience must have forgotten to breathe. The apartment was as silent as a tomb, save for my lonely, shaking voice. I raised my eyes again, this time focusing on Kellan. The hardest man in the room to read on a good day, but the pensive look on his face felt like he was finally seeing me—through my bullshit, through my hardheadedness; just me in my rawest form.

I couldn’t delve deeper into that terrifying thought. Not now. I fixated on a point on the wall behind him instead. The slight crack in the drywall was far easier to speak to.

“Eventually, he wanted her to move in with him, and I begged and pleaded with her to stay with me. I didn’t trust him, or his intentions. When he came out with us, I’d watched him go off into dark corners of clubs to speak with known high-end gang members—the ones who peddled designer drugs and designer girls. I knew if she moved out with him, I’d lose her altogether.

“One night, she called me to come pick her up from a club. She was high as a kite, her dress torn in several places. I took her back to our apartment and cleaned her up, tucked her into bed, and promised to protect her.

“The next week, she disappeared with him again, and didn’t return until a few days later. I’d been ready to call the National Guard, and then she waltzed into our apartment like nothing had happened. There were faded bruises on her arms and legs, and two track marks in her arm that she insisted were bug bites.”

Aaron’s growl of anger broke my train of thought. My head whipped up to meet his vehement disgust, his pretty, pouty lips curled into a savage snarl.

He stared at me in challenge, as if taunting me to finish my story, so he could go upstairs to kill Alec himself; I had no doubt in my mind Aaron would strip the man’s entire skinsuit off his body if it would bring me pleasure. That kind of dedication was petrifying and yet so deeply comforting.

I unflinchingly met the challenge of his stare and kept speaking.

“I changed the locks on our apartment and kept a close eye on her, but it wasn’t enough. It happened again. She was flunking her classes and was clearly miserable. What I didn’t know was Isabella had been a victim of sexual assault as a child. An uncle. She was the textbook perfect victimfor grooming, and Alec continued to make me out as the enemy, slowly working his way under her defenses with presents and nice words, and then threats of his disappointment when she was reluctant to do what he asked of her.”

Blistering heat crept up the back of my neck, and my throat tightened as I fought back the burning ache of tears. The shame had buried me under its weight all these years, yet still suffocated me as if it had been yesterday when I lost her.

How much hope I had in my heart that…

I swallowed the thorny vine that had crept its way up my throat and blinked back the haze of tears hovering on my eyelids waiting for gravity to take them.

“She was getting ready one night, and somehow, I convinced her to stay home and watch a movie with me. We drank two bottles of wine, laughed until our sides hurt, and passed out in our bed—the one we hadn’t slept together in in months—and I remembered feeling like I’d finally had my best friend back, even if we’d never be lovers again.”

Bile raged in my gut, the acid churning and biting viciously at my insides at what was coming; the strength of these memories was enough to knock me over with the lasting effects of disgrace, guilt, and scathing doubt.

Their expectant eyes on me, each man waiting for the terrible punchline to become their chant for vengeance in my honor. It would never be for my honor—I needed to honor Isabella. And all the women who’d fallen victim to scum like Alec. Like Alvarez.

“I woke up in the middle of the night with a man hovering over the bed, his hands wrapped around Isabella’s neck, strangling the life out of her. She barely fought back, her eyes glossed over with whatever drug he’d given her, and I struggled to move, incapacitated with whatever he’d given me, too. I was helpless, trapped in my body, as he raped her beside me, and then squeezed her throat until she couldn’t breathe anymore. Until she never breathed ever again.”

The ravenous edge of that night’s terror trickled through me again at the memory. Terror of being helpless, of being useless. Terror I’d never hear her voice again.

The frantic need to control my limbs as he laughed at me, as he forced himself inside her, as we both lay helpless to stop him. How he’d angled me to my side, so I could watch the whole thing, how I saw the single tear escape down her face before all life left her tiny body.

My breath stuttered in my chest, the agony of that one life-altering night forcing its ugly head back into my heart. Isabella was the one person I’d ever loved—the one person I had allowed myself to love; without pretense, without an agenda—the most beautiful woman to ever cross my path. The last woman I’d ever allowed myself to touch; preserving her honor in some warped sense of duty. I couldn’t preserve her life, so I’d preserve who she was to me in death.

My will to defy gravity dissolved, and my tears slid down my cheeks in hot, angry rivulets of pain.

“A tox screen showed that he’d injected us with a paralytic used for anesthesia, but he left no trace behind, literally disappearing into the night. Daddy paid off the news outlets to keep any of this from the press, and her parents were told that she’d died from a drug overdose at a party. A fucking insult.”

Blind rage still overtook my senses every time I recalled her obituary. The most beautiful woman in the world never even had a proper burial service. Her parents couldn’t come to America for the funeral, so I had the body preserved and shipped to Brazil with my own savings. I paid for her burial plot, but I was a coward—in all the years after, I couldn’t bring myself to visit it. I couldn’t tell her buried bones I’d failed her.

Maybe one day I’d find it in myself to make the trek. Once she was properly avenged, and her memory was more than asolemn tale that filled my nightmares and walking daydreams.

I raised my wet eyes, braving their gazes for the faintest fraction of a moment before staring through the floor again: concern, anger, love.

They made no move to come to my rescue, knowing me well enough to understand my need for space to share this. If one of them held me right now, I’d shatter into millions of shards, and not one of them could glue me back together.

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