Page 87 of Wicked Deceit
She rolls her eyes. “What the hell do you think you’ve been doing for the past few years? Sunbathing? Fuck, Carter, you’re not a dummy. Your daddy will explain it, but you were chosen a long time ago, and now your birthright is happening. So chop, chop! I need to text Daddy with updates.” Her eyes narrow, strolling toward me. “Hand it over. No one walks into Grandma's house with a phone.” I scowl more, swallowing the hard lump sliding down my throat at the mention of Grandma. Because what the fuck is she talking about?
“Grandma's house?” I ask, shoving her hand away.
“Yeah, Grandma's house. Now, give me your phone. It’s the protocol now. No phones in or out of the house.” She doesn’t elaborate further, sticking her hand out and wiggling her fingers with impatience.
Finally, I lose my patience and shove my phone into her awaiting hands. She can have it. AntiEyes is my baby, so they’ll never break through it like Kaycee did. And if they do? Everything’s encrypted now. They won’t find anything on there but more blank messages and emails. I’ve learned that fucking lesson once when I thought it was secure, and no one on their payroll is as smart as my Sweetheart.
“Good boy,” she coos again, pulling her phone out of her pocket. “You’ve got two minutes before we need to leave. Get the fire started, and let’s fucking go.” Piper walks into the front yard without glancing back over her shoulder, giggling. Through the window, I see her eyes firmly on her phone as she prances around, pacing wildly.
As soon as her attention is on that screen for more than five seconds, I quickly move. Running to Benoit on the ground, I slam the door shut behind me and check him over.
“Fucking, Benoit!” I shout, shaking his body. “Wake the fuck up before you become ash!” I hiss, checking his neck for a pulse. It firmly pounds against my fingers, so that’s good. “I’m throwing you out the fucking window,” I grunt, trying to heave his heavy ass onto my shoulders.
Heavy. Ass. Mother. Fucker. I can’t lift his beefy ass from the ground. For fuck's sake! I've seen him naked. He shouldn't be this hard to move. What does he have? Bricks in his ass? For fuck’s sake, I should have that weird adrenaline shit coursing through me, giving me superhuman strength, but it’s not there. His dead weight is too heavy to fucking move.
I sit back on my ass, running my hands through my hair, pulling at the ends. How the fuck am I going to pull this off? How can I save him and Kaycee without sacrifice?
After filling a pitcher with water, I toss it onto Benoit’s body and stand back. Fuck. He doesn’t budge—not a damn inch. Not a finger or leg twitch. The only sign he’s alive is the slight murmur. Shit—fuck me.
“Benoit, man,” my voice cracks as I sit beside his knocked-out body. “You gotta wake up. I need you to get Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum! You. Have. To. Survive.” I growl, shaking him again with all my might until every inch of him moves. But still, he gives me nothing but a few slurring words.
“Five more minutes,” he murmurs again. “Just leave me alone,” he slurs. Fuck. What did they do to him? Drug him? Knock him out with a blow to the head? I grunt, checking his temple, and sure as shit, there’s a huge, bloody mark. Fuck!
“Can’t do that, shit-brick!” I hiss, trying to keep my shaking voice low enough to not draw attention to the bitch pacing the front yard.
Benoit doesn’t fucking stir, and I have no fucking choice. I tear the room apart. Picking up discarded clothes and fucking trash and upending everything until I find a pencil and a wad of used paper. And they turn their fucking nose up at my chaotic apartment. Fucking Seger's dirty ass saves the damn day. Scribbling six very important words onto the old piece of paper, I shove it into Elf Ear’s shorts and pray to fucking God he finds it before he’s a molten marshmallow. Since I can't wake his ass up or throw him out the window, he's left me with no other choice.
The words replay in my mind over and over again:
I’ll fucking save her. Save yourself.
Taking stock of the room one last time, everything is in place, and I put my fucking game face on. This is it. I have to go back out there to that psycho. This is the moment I need a fucking Oscar for the performance I’m about to give.
I grunt, slamming the door as I walk out of the room, leaving Benoit on the ground with a bloody head and passed out. Piper still paces the length of the lawn, nose buried in her damn phone. Her giggles soar through the damn room, forcing a shiver down my spine. Whoever the fuck she’s talking to, I hope they keep it up. They’ve kept her occupied and need to do it for longer. Thank fuck.
I heave a relieved breath, shaking the tension from my chest when I stand before Kaycee’s room. The room where so many of our memories together linger in the back of my mind. If I close my fucking eyes, I can feel her fingertips brushing across my shoulders, urging me to enter and figure out what happened to her. Walking into Kaycee’s room, I stop dead and take it in.
Everything is in its place. It’s as if she was just here, lying in the unmade bed, and had just taken off her sweater, which lies on the ground. Walking around, I rush, listening for crazy pants on the lawn. When silence greets my ears, I walk to her computer and lean in. My eyes widen at the email sitting on the screen, still open from the last person who viewed it. I swallow hard, click the video and watch it in its entirety with my heart pounding so hard, it feels like it's about to shoot out of my chest. Watching Piper’s crazy-ass stab Magnolia repeatedly and ditch her over the railing like trash makes bile rise in my throat, triggering my gag reflex. I bend at the waist, dry heaving several times, but nothing comes up. I just heave and heave until I can’t fucking take it anymore, and my breaths strangle in my chest. Closing my eyes, I suck in several fresh breaths and clear my mind. When I stand straight up, the video starts over again, and I punch the desk, leaving the indent of my fist in the wood. Fuck! I knew Piper was a bat-shit crazy ass bitch, but this? This is fucking off the charts insane. She’s the Alpha, and she’s in way fucking deeper than we fucking thought.
Running a hand down my face, I try to regain my breaths and my fucking composure. My mind whirls with chaotic thoughts, and indecision strikes again. I need to hurry this entire operation along and get the fuck out of here so crazy-pants outside doesn’t notice I haven’t lit the fucking fire. Because, yeah, that’s not going to fucking happen on my watch. He’s going to wake up covered in gasoline and get the fuck out of here before anything bad can happen to him.
My foot stalls when I take a step towards the door, and a genius idea strikes out of nowhere. Something I should have thought about the moment I saw that sick as fuck video the first time. Instead of dry heaving like a ballsack, I should have jumped into action and presented Veritas with one more piece of evidence against these cocksuckers. Without a second thought, I quickly forward the email to my private server, preserving it forever, and breathe easier. I can only hope nothing happens to this fucking house while I distract Piper long enough to get her away from here.
So, what is Piper truly capable of? Killing Kaycee? Hurting Kaycee? Am I going to have to witness this shit as a fucking bystander unable to do anything about it? I’m so fucking fucked being tied up in the middle of this sick shit.
I shake my head out of those thoughts, looking around the room one last time. I wish Kaycee would jump out of the fucking closet and proclaim this was all a sick ass joke and laugh in my face. But I know it’s not. Kaycee’s gone, and I’m about to be her only fucking hope of escape. My eyes slip to the floor near the door, and my blood pressure soars, forcing me to see red. Taunting red speckles lead from her computer chair to the bedroom door and fall into the other room. Little innocent drippings, but it’s not innocent. They fucking hurt her. They made her bleed, and I will return the favor tenfold when I get my hands on them. Red takes over my vision, and I completely fucking fall away from myself. Pain explodes through my fucking hand when I come back to reality. Apparently, I’m punching the fuck out of her closet door. It’s too solid to collapse, but the pain clears my head instantly. I let her go once. Not again. I'm fucking coming, Sweetheart.
I shut the bedroom door, forming a quick plan in my mind. I jump out of Kaycee's bedroom window and race to the front yard, grabbing Piper’s arm with more force than necessary. I drag her through the front yard, as far from the fucking house as possible. Hopefully, touching her will infect me with some of her crazy. Because I’m fucking going to need it to survive whatever hell I’m walking into.
“Finally,” she huffs, placing her phone in her pocket.
“It’s fucking done. Benoit’s roasting as we speak,” I grit through clenched teeth, hoping she doesn’t sense the lie because I sure as fuck didn't set that fire. I need to get her the fuck out of here and away from this house before she clues in to my massive lie. Fuck me if she does.
“Mmhmm, good,” she hums, shifting something in her pocket before bringing it out. "Well, since you already started it, I'm going to speed it up a bit!" She giggles, slamming her thumb onto a red button and then clapping her hands. A sharp boom happens behind us, the ground vibrating at our feet, stopping me in my tracks. For the millionth time tonight, the world has stopped turning. Everything fucking freezes. I plead in my head as I turn around, praying to fuck that it’s not what I think it is. But, it is. My heart stops. A bright light paints the sky in orange and yellow, illuminating the path we just walked, like the sun has come out. Twirling around to stare at the carnage, Piper grins, slapping me on the shoulder. “Look, Brother, look at what I did! Isn’t it beautiful!” She golf claps repeatedly, jumping up and down with excitement.
“I’ve always wanted to do that,” Piper giggles, staring over the destruction with stars in her eyes and cocking her head with a sigh.
What starts as tiny flames grows higher and higher on the porch. It engulfs it, eating away at it until it breaks through the windows, invading the barriers of the house, licking up the facade, climbing higher and higher. It crackles and pops as the wood screams in pain from the heat of the flames. All I can imagine is Chase on fire, and my heart breaks in half at him lying there and fighting for his life. Or maybe, he’s knocked out, and the smoke will get him first, and it’s all I can fucking hope. I just… I fucking… I suppress the violence brewing in my pent-up fists and turn to look at Piper, who still looks at the blazing inferno like she wants to hump it and have its babies.
