Page 63 of Promise of Destruction (Destruction & Vengeance Duet #1)
fifty-nine
Soren
Something about Dimitri’s presence is comforting, so when he leaves me sitting alone at the island on a surprisingly plush barstool, I feel instantly more vulnerable.
The housekeeper is kind enough, though I can’t say Dimitri’s assessment that she is ‘glad to have a distraction’ is correct.
She watches me warily, as if I’m the one who can’t be trusted despite Dimitri just pulling a gun on Declan.
Maybe she’s just a shrewd woman who trusts no one. I wouldn’t blame her for that.
Apparently, I’ve trusted the wrong people. Not just Declan, but Vin too.
The betrayal hurts—possibly worse than anything I’ve ever known. I don’t want to sit here with this stranger while I have to wonder who the hell I actually married, who I went to bed beside every night, who was the father of the baby that never got to know their mother’s love.
“I haven’t had anyone to cook for here,” the woman who Dimitri introduced me to as Elaine blows out a breath, looking in the refrigerator. “So, I don’t have a lot of options right now.”
“I’m not hungry.” I tell her.
I couldn’t eat right now even if I wanted to.
The images I saw on Declan’s computer have seared into my brain; as much as the idea of rinsing my eyeballs with bleach appeals to me right now, it wouldn’t do any good.
Elaine looks at me for a long minute, but I’m too exhausted to care. There are so many things in my head right now, the pressure feels like it will crush me. It also feels like it will crush my heart.
I thought the hardest thing I’d ever go through was losing my husband—a man who had been my constant, my everything, since I was a teenager. The only man who ever stayed.
When I felt that the life inside me was gone and I was hollow, I thought no pain would ever compare. When I watched Declan live his best life, parading whore after whore through his penthouse while I was left with nothing, I thought nothing would ever feel so horribly unfair again.
But this is worse.
I should have scrolled through the pictures—I should have tried to get more context from what I saw.
Vince was a cheater. That’s hard enough to stomach, but it’s not like he was just captured walking down the road with his hand on another woman’s ass.
They’re full-on pornography—shots of women tied up and bound in strange ways.
Maybe they were prostitutes whose services he paid for before we were together.
Maybe they were an inconsequential string of women who were willing to do the things I’d never thought to do.
Maybe he wasn’t comfortable asking to hurt me, or to degrade me.
I would have done anything he ever asked of me—I always did—but perhaps he loved me too much to treat me like that .
I’d willingly have explored any kinks he mentioned wanting to try, if only he’d asked.
But he never so much as exhibited an interest in anything beyond what we did…
simple, missionary, doggy-style when he was feeling particularly feral.
He never so much as tied me up with a scarf, so seeing him with women in full ropes and gags and weird metal devices I hadn’t studied long enough to see how they worked…
No.
I can’t believe it, don’t want to believe it, but I do.
Because every photo that showed him, I could see the angel wings tattoo on his back.
In every photo, I could see part of it—the velvety tips of the wings that wrapped around his throat, the flames that radiated around them—my name between his shoulder blades.
Call it intuition, call it psychosis. I don’t care what it is, but I know. I always know.
Except for when it counts, apparently.
My husband was cheating on me—for a long time, by the cursory glance I saw on Declan’s laptop. He tied women up, chained them, beat them, choked them, came on them and inside of them by the looks of it and then came home to me and… acted like fucking me was an inconvenience.
My skin prickles with the knowledge, my chest too tight to manage a good breath.
How many women saw my name on his back when he walked away and left them there to clean themselves up?
How many women did he fuck like animals and then come home to call me his angel ?
Did he pay them, or did he just seek out women who wanted the same rough things he wanted?
When we slipped into debt and he smiled and told me everything was fine, is it because he was offering women money to let him do those things to them?
I suddenly want to confront Declan. As pissed as I am at him for setting me up like that, for leaving those photos there, for shattering the memory of the man I gave my life to, I need to know what he does.
I need answers, and the dead don’t talk.
Elaine is saying something, but her voice sounds like static… it blurs into a buzzing sound that suddenly makes me feel like there are bees in my head.
Ignoring her, I stand up clumsily, my foot catching on the stool. I grip the counter for support, and once I’ve steadied myself, take a step forward.
And then I fall.