The Deception series boxset: FaCade, Cadence, Beneath Innocence by Ker Dukey, D.H. Sidebottom

much more dangerous.
    “He’s in his room. Maria is with him.” Maria was his woman, only brought in to play a role but she was a parasite; her goal was to be a pillow whisperer to someone like me.
    My strides ate up the space to his room. He rose from his sitting position, flanked by Maria. I slipped out my 9mm, swiftly aiming and firing. She dropped like an anchor being dropped in the ocean. Theo’s wild eyes scanned my face.
    “You had the audacity to touch a woman who belongs to ME!”
    He was shaking, the little weasel.
    It took me two seconds to locate a can of deodorant. He cried, begging, which I muffled by ramming the entire thing in his mouth, dislocating his jaw with sheer strength as I leaned back and stamped down with my foot, pushing the can down his throat. I watched fear rape him before his lungs failed him - then his heart.
    “She is mine!”
    “You killed them both.” I turned my cold gaze on Malik. “Revenge doesn’t like company. Three was a fucking crowd. Let this be a lesson to you.”

I WANTED TO SHOWER FROM the inside out. I felt so dirty and broken. My face throbbed in a matching thump to the burning pulse between my thighs. I was completely done, I couldn’t take it. I came to the conclusion that although I had proven to adjust to circumstance, cold ruthless violence was not something I could handle.
    My internal war still raged with my feelings towards the man I knew as Mr. Troy, who they called Dante. I felt betrayed by him. He let this happen after I willingly gave myself to him. I obeyed his rules and he left me to be violated. God, did he even care? I highly doubted it.
    The soft fabric beneath me both soothed and irritated the scratches I knew painted my back. The room was luxury at its finest; silk bedding ornamenting a thick hand-carved four poster solid wood bed. The wood of the furniture, including the floor, was dark in contrast to the white walls and drapes.
    A moan escaped me when I tried to sit up, the pressure in my jaw from using the muscles to tilt my head exploded, leaving a wake of pins and needle down the entire side of my face and neck.
    “Don’t try to move, Belle.” His voice was thick and deep, startling me. I hadn’t realized he was in the room.
    A shadow moved across the room, alerting me to him before his powerful frame filled my sight. He was wearing a white shirt and slacks, a tie undone and hanging in two strips down either side of his chest. I wanted to open my mouth to talk to him but couldn’t from the sheer pain.
    “You need to not talk or move, Belle. You’re extremely bruised and need time to heal. I won’t apologize for his actions, those were all his, but I will tell you he paid for them with his life. I don’t tolerate disobedience and disrespect from anyone, and you belong to me therefore touching you was directly insulting me.”
    I wanted to let the bile scorching my throat ignite and decimate me into ash. He didn’t give a shit that I was raped with a fucking object or that I couldn’t speak through the injuries of callous violence from a man he left me with. I didn’t know why I was surprised and hurt by it but I felt it so deeply, the betrayal, and he wouldn’t even say he felt bad that it took place.
    Closing my eyes, I tried to ward off the coming tears. They were an all too familiar sensation for me, welling and slipping free down my face, collecting in tiny pools at my hair.
    I felt his shadow fall over me before his breath warmed my face. My eyes dragged slowly open, his intense features masked by the distortion of my tears. “Everything is not always what it seems, Belle, but you are too weak to learn truths. Sleep now.” Pressure pushed down on my lip making me wince, the warm damp swipe of his tongue over the cut soothed the sting.
    My eyes pinched closed. I didn’t want to feel anyone over me ever again. I would not admit the longing in my chest, though, for him to hold me while I cried a stream of broken tears into