Page 56 of Sacred Vow

TILLY

C hloe and I stand at the door of our destroyed apartment, staring in at the mess with dread. It’s been a little under two weeks since Jordan decided to take me on a little adventure, and since then, we have done everything imaginable to avoid coming back here.

But today is the day.

For the past twelve days, Caesar has barely let me out of his sight, and to be completely honest, I haven’t minded it at all.

It’s not as though we’ve spent the time getting down and dirty.

We haven’t, and it’s killing me, but my body hasn’t been ready.

Bruises still linger on my skin, and after getting a baseball bat to the head, I’ve been suffering from some pretty severe migraines, though they seem to be taking a backseat for now.

For the first few days, the cops would come and go, asking the same questions over and over again, treating me like a criminal, but after receiving the surveillance footage, they backed off and accepted that Caesar was acting in my defense.

Jordan is still in a coma, though, and I don’t doubt that the moment he wakes up, he’ll realize just how badly he fucked up.

As for Annie, she’s been a ghost.

There’s been no sight of the woman. The cops have had her home staked out, they’ve searched for her at Vixen, and even camped out at the hospital waiting room to see if she would show up at Jordan’s bedside, but so far, there’s been nothing.

Sooner or later, she’ll screw up, and when she does, I’ll be waiting.

I don’t exactly know what I intend to do, probably call the cops and run away like a little bitch, but as long as she ends up rotting behind bars, I don’t really care.

Besides, Caesar told me that she would pay for her role in all of this, and he doesn’t strike me as the type of man to go back on his word.

If he says she will pay, then I trust that with everything that I am.

After getting a frantic call from his secretary this morning, Caesar had no choice but to head into work, leaving me free to do my own thing.

Don’t get me wrong, I have loved spending every day wrapped in his arms in the comfort of his bed, but I’m going stir crazy.

Despite my slobbish week of living on my couch while I held the world’s best pity party, I usually can’t stand being holed up at home.

I needed to get out of the house, even if my body isn’t ready for it.

Chloe has stayed with Zeph this whole time, and while they refuse to put any labels on their relationship, it’s clear to everyone except them that they’re exclusive. Zephyr has all but moved Chloe into Caesar’s place—otherwise now known as Caesar’s Palace—and she doesn’t even realize it.

“Come on,” Chloe mutters beside me, not looking excited for the job ahead of us as she hauls a stack of cleaning products and trash bags in her arms. “The sooner we get this done, the sooner we can get out of here.”

There’s no denying it, she has a good point.

“Fine,” I groan, striding deeper into our small apartment, only the further I get, the more unfamiliar it seems. It doesn’t feel like home anymore, just a place that once held some of my best memories during my college years.

We get into cleaning everything, and I do what I can not to overexert myself. If I were to push myself too hard, Chloe would end up doing the rest of this shit on her own, and I’m not about to do that to her.

Music blasts through the apartment as I scoop pieces of shattered glass into a dustpan, when Zephyr appears in the open doorway and casually strides in as though he owns the place. His arms are full of boxes and cleaning products.

I let out a sigh as a teasing smirk cuts across my face. “Ugh. Fucking perverts everywhere I look.”

Zephyr flips me off as Chloe bounds into the living room and throws herself into Zeph’s arms. “What are you doing here?” she asks. “I thought you had a lecture.”

“I do, but it’s nothing I can’t watch online,” he says, dropping the boxes onto the destroyed couch. “I thought I’d come help you idiots out. It’s not your fault your place got trashed. Besides, if it weren’t for me, Jordan wouldn’t have even known the two of you.”

A heaviness weighs over me. Zeph has been feeling a lot of guilt about everything that went down.

He blames himself for bringing Jordan into our lives, but it’s not as though he knew that was going to happen.

He’s not at fault and shouldn’t have to shoulder that burden, but no matter how many times I tell him that I don’t blame him, it doesn’t seem to help.

It’s just one of those things he’s going to have to work through on his own.

“Don’t get me started on that shit,” Chloe tells him. “You know damn well that none of this is your fault.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he mutters, making me roll my eyes. It’s the same cycle every day. Only some days it’s me who rats him out, while other times it’s Caesar.

Zeph starts by taking out the trash bags we’ve already filled, and just having them gone from the apartment makes a huge difference. Between the three of us, things start moving pretty quickly.

We’ve been here for almost three hours when a text comes through on my phone, and as I see Caesar’s name on the screen, a stupid smile pulls across my lips.

Caesar: I hope you’re not doing too much.

Tilly: The only thing you need to be concerned about me doing is you tonight.

Caesar: I don’t know, hellcat. You’re still healing. I don’t want to hurt you.

Tilly: I’M DYING HERE! Quit depriving me. It’s either going to be you or the monster cock in my bedside drawer. Take your pick.

I laugh to myself as I hit send before striding into my bedroom and letting out a heavy sigh. It’s so much worse than I remember. My bed is destroyed, shredded to pieces, while most of my clothes are strewn across the room. But the dried blood staining the floor is what really gets me.

A chill sails down my spine as memories of finding Jordan in my room assault me.

The fear of not knowing what was going to happen and the pain of that baseball bat smacking across my head .

. . shit. That moment has nothing on the terror I felt in that storm cellar, yet it’s what sticks with me most.

My phone chimes again, and I welcome the distraction.

Caesar: Fuck.

Caesar: Do you think you could handle Vixen tonight? Nothing too much. Just you and me. And nothing crazy. I’m not risking hurting you.

Tilly: Now we’re talking! Should I bring the whips and chains, or should you?

Caesar: Don’t push your luck!

The most moronic grin tears across my face, and I’m not too ashamed to admit that I might have also just fist-pumped the air. Caesar has been cautious with me for the past twelve days. Too cautious. To put it bluntly, he won’t fuck me. And damn it, this girl needs to be railed.

I get it. The doctor said it could take up to six weeks for my body to completely heal from the ordeal, but it’s not as though I had surgery or anything like that.

My bruises are basically a road map across my body, telling him where he can and cannot touch, but for the most part, they’re gone now.

I am more than okay to be thrown around again.

In fact, I demand it. It’s an integral part of my survival, because if I don’t get to feel him inside of me soon, I think I might actually die.

My whole mood has shifted, and as I get back to work, I hear Zeph on the phone in the living room. I try to tune him out, but I quickly realize he’s talking about Jordan, and I get back to my feet before hovering in my bedroom doorway.

“Who’s he talking to?” I ask Chloe, my gaze shifting between the two.

“It’s the hospital,” she tells me.

“Shit.”

I suck in a breath and watch as Zeph collapses onto the destroyed couch, the phone braced against his ear as his elbow drops to his knees. “Right, thanks for the update,” he says before ending the call.

His head immediately drops low between his shoulders, his phone falling away from his ear.

He takes a deep breath, and as Chloe crosses the room and sits down beside him, he glances up, locking his haunted stare on mine.

Zeph shakes his head, looking torn. “He didn’t make it,” he says, his voice cracking. “Jordan’s dead.”

“Fuck.”

I drop to my knees in my bedroom doorway, unsure how to feel.

He was a complete psychopath and needed to be dealt with, but I was hoping he would wake up and be sentenced to life behind bars, not handed a death sentence.

But this is what I pushed for. His death is on my shoulders.

Caesar might have been the one delivering the hits, but if it hadn’t been for me pushing him, Caesar would have held back.

He didn’t want to kill him. He didn’t want to risk everything he’d worked for, for the life that he’d built. And now . . .

Since the day I met him, he told me he wasn’t a good man, that I deserve someone better. That I should run from him. But perhaps it’s the other way around. Perhaps he should be running from me.

Letting out a shaky breath, I lift my gaze back to Zeph.

He’s completely shattered, and it hits me just how selfish I’m being.

Here I am worrying about my own guilt when Zeph has just lost the man he called his best friend for thirteen years.

I know things have changed a lot over the past few weeks, but that doesn’t take away the years they had together. That can’t just be stripped away.

“I’m sorry,” I tell him, getting back to my feet and crossing the apartment, sitting down on his other side. “This isn’t the outcome I was hoping for.”

“Don’t be sorry, Tilly,” he tells me, dropping his hand to my thigh and giving a gentle squeeze before removing it.

“After what he did to you, you should want him dead. Hell, I did. I wanted to fucking kill him myself. I just . . . Now that he is, I don’t know how to feel about it.

But this is right. If Dad didn’t find you in that cellar, he would have killed you. This is for the best.”

My lips press into a hard line. It’s clear that he’s very torn on how to feel, which is only natural, but luckily for him, Chloe loves to talk through her feelings.

Once they’re alone, I don’t doubt that she’ll deep dive into that shit until he’s a sobbing mess, rocking in the corner of the room.

But then she’ll put him right back together until he’s almost brand new.

I nod, desperately wanting to lighten the mood. “I, uhhhh . . . bought a new shirt.”

Zeph groans as Chloe fights a smile. “Do I even want to know?”

“Oh yeah,” I say, getting up and finding my bag that I dropped somewhere among the wreckage. “This is a good one.”

Grabbing it off the floor, I dump the bag on the table that’s now the right way up. I search through the endless piles of crap inside before finding the little package that arrived in the mail yesterday.

A wicked grin stretches across my face, and I tear into the package before pulling out the new slogan shirt. I hold it up and grin to myself as I check it out. It’s absolutely perfect. Probably my favorite overall.

I pull the shirt over my head, making sure it fits properly before finally turning around and showing it off. “Whatdoyathink?” I rush out.

Chloe snorts a laugh, slapping a hand over her face as Zeph narrows his gaze, reading the shirt out loud. “I’m chunky because every time I—” He gives me a hard stare, clearly not impressed. “Get fucked.”

“Don’t even think about it, Zephyr Di Rozé. As your daddy has more than taught you, if you’re going to do something, then do it right. Finish what you started. Read the whole thing.”

Zeph glares at Chloe as she struggles to maintain composure, and seeing that I’m not about to give in, he lets out a loud huff. “You know I hate you, right?”

“Read the shirt, Zephyr.”

His shoulders slump, but nonetheless, his eyes start to sparkle with silent laughter, and he starts reading right from the beginning. “I’m chunky because every time I fuck your dad, he makes me a sandwich.”

“Mmmmm,” I say as he continues to glare. “It’s like music to my ears.”

Then, not wanting Caesar to miss out on the big reveal, I turn myself toward the secret camera hidden high in the apartment, overlooking both the kitchen and living room, before pulling out my phone and shooting off a quick message.

Tilly: Hey, you big pervert. Stop jerking off and check the cameras. I’ve got a surprise for you.