Page 29 of Vow of Vengeance (Destruction & Vengeance Duet #2)

twenty-four

Declan

"I thought you said you never wanted to hear from me again?" Wes chuckles. "You can admit that you miss me and what we had. I miss you too, booboo."

I grit my jaw, refraining from taking the bait. He wants me to get mad at him. He's always liked to fuck with me.

"I need your help."

"You need me?" Wes chuckles again, completely unserious as always. He's always fucking joking, like life isn't all that serious. I suppose to him, it isn't. "What is it you need, Dec? My fat cock or my hot mouth? I've got a wife now, but she's happy to share me and to let me share her."

I ignore his offer; some small part of me is grateful to know he’s the same old Wes.

Wes was born into privilege. Sure, he was also born into a world of disgusting predators, but his struggle has been different than mine in about five thousand individual ways. And yet, we ended up rooming together in college. I know now that was by design.

"I need to know how to get away with murder. You ought to have an answer for that, right?"

On the other end of the line, Wes sobers. I can hear it in his sudden silence.

"What sort of body are we talking about? Someone that people are gonna miss?"

"I fucking doubt it." I grunt.

Sure, Soren will miss him. She wouldn't if she knew what he did to her, but I can't tell her that.

I can't tell her that the two people she loved most in the world made a game of taking what they wanted from her body.

She'll mourn her best friend especially hard since Marissa is still missing, but I think that will also blunt the pain a little bit.

I'll keep her under lock and key so that I can be sure she survives his disappearance, and I'll have Georgia for therapy as many sessions as she can possibly stand. I won't let her shut down, won't let her suffer any more.

Other than Soren, I don't think anyone will miss Khan.

He seems to only have Soren and Marissa anyway.

I've asked my little bird about him, very carefully, and surmised that he doesn't speak to his parents.

His father doesn't even live in the States, and his mother's last recorded location was at the bottom of a bottle.

"Okay. Well, then you've got plenty of options. Public execution? I can give you the name of a guy that's former military. Can hit a moving target from two football fields away."

"No." I shake my head even though he can't see it. "I want him to know it was me."

"Hmm." Wes muses. "Alright. You could go more personal then, have them deliver a message. Stage it as a home invasion, robbery gone wrong."

"No. No staging, no paying someone else to do it. I want to do it myself."

Wes snorts. "You're not a killer, Declan. But I can appreciate wanting him to know why he's going to die."

"I'm not a killer yet." I agree. "That's why I called. Tell me how to get away with it. I know you've done it, or else you know someone who has."

"Evers..." He laughs in disbelief. "You're fucking with me, right? Is this call recorded to try and bring me down or something?"

"No. I'm serious. There's someone that I want dead. And I want him to suffer. You can either give me the crash course on getting away with murder or you can promise me that if I get caught, you'll personally guarantee the safety of someone I care about. You owe me that much."

Wes is silent, debating his options.

"We can't discuss this on the phone. Listen, don't do anything until you hear from me, okay? I know you said you want this guy gone, but-"

"I need him gone."

"Okay." Wes blows out a breath. "Like I said, don't do anything until you hear from me. Got it?"

"Fine." I agree.

If waiting for him to compose a plan that allows me to get away with murder means I can stay out of jail to protect Soren when Khan's body is found, then I can wait.

"I have one more question." Wes ventures.

"This guy... he obviously fucked with you pretty bad. You're not exactly a white knight, but you've always been on the other side of the morality spectrum than me. So, what gives? What did he do to warrant his death?"

I don't hesitate. "He touched what belongs to me."

There's no sense in explaining it was before she belonged to me. She's belonged to me from her first breath.

I just didn't know it until I found her in the parking garage.

"This guy..." Wes ventures. "Is he a bad guy, or just stupid?"

I laugh at that, dragging a hand over my face. Fuck, I'm tired.

"Both."

"Got it."

He hangs up without another word, leaving me to stare blankly at the phone. I don't know what I'm waiting for, or how long I'll have to wait. But I can give him the opportunity.

I'm not going anywhere tonight anyway.

The nail was the easy part. The resident removed it easily, assured us there was no need for stitches. He just wrapped it and prescribed antibiotics, told the nurse to give her the tetanus shot. But he frowned when Soren told him she fell because she got lightheaded.

“I want to find out what caused that episode, so we can avoid it again.”

I appreciate that he actually does his damn job. Soren rolled her eyes when they said they wanted to keep her overnight.

“They must be really bored.” She laughed. But she relented when I agreed that it was a good idea and promised that I wouldn’t leave.

And I haven’t. I’ve been tucked on the bed with her, despite the frown the new nurse fixed me with at shift change.

They took blood to run tests, but said the lab was short staffed so the results wouldn’t likely come back any time soon.

She’s been good about eating, and I’m sure she’s not dehydrated, so whatever caused her to get so dizzy she fell through her bedroom wall into the attic must be something more.

I’ve already surmised the truth about the wall, though I can’t exactly explain it to her.

She doesn’t need to know that the wall was paper thin so that her husband could sit on the other side of it while men fucked his wife on the other side and hear everything.

I didn’t realize it until she fell, but that must be where he set the camera up…

in the attic. It’s why some of the audio was distorted, muffled.

I guarantee most of the men didn’t know he recorded what they did.

Obviously, it was illegal on all ends. But whether he kept records for blackmail or to fulfill his own personal kink, I haven’t thought much about it.

The truth is, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t change what he did.

It does, however, open up a greater concern for her health.

I don’t know how many people he let fuck his wife.

I don’t know if they all used condoms, if he vetted that they were all STD free, if the condom remained in tact every time.

Her tests that I had Dr. Kane run came back clean, but what if we missed something?

Or what if she has an underlying condition, something that’s never been diagnosed, something you would have to know to look for.

By his own admission, Vin stated to Khan that he’d done it hundreds of times. I don’t know if that means he drugged his own wife hundreds of times, or drugged women in general hundreds of times. But either way, there had been so many DVDs, some of which contained multiple instances of assault.

Who knows what sort of long-term effects she could be suffering as a result of the prolonged drug use?

She may hate it, but the observation is the best thing they could do for her right now.

At least she’s sleeping well. She’s been crashed for hours in a dreamless sleep, and we’ve been mostly uninterrupted during that time. I don’t think the ibuprofen did a ton for the pain, honestly, but in sleep she doesn’t seem to have any discomfort. No dreams, good or bad.

I want to crawl overtop her and kiss her mouth, but if I get my mouth on hers, I won’t be stopping until her heart monitor goes off and the nurses come running. No, I can restrain myself until we’re out of the hospital, when I get her back in our own bed.

My eyes are growing heavy, the cadence of her heart monitor and the steady rise and fall of her chest I’m lying against seducing me into a strange sense of comfort.

It’s not a familiar feeling for me, but I like it.

I like knowing that this woman beneath me is mine, that I control her.

She surrendered to me, and now I own her body, her heart.

I may have had to take them with a little force, but I don’t begrudge anything that got us here.

My eyes have just closed when my phone begins to vibrate against my hip.

I strongly consider letting it go to voicemail, but what if it’s Wes?

The name on the screen, though, says Dr. Kent.

“Declan.” He says by way of greeting when I answer the phone.

“Kent.” I grunt. My voice is thicker than I expected. Maybe I slept for more than the second where my eyes closed.

“Remember how you had me set up that alert for Miss Palmer’s medical records? If anything was manipulated or any new results came in, I’d get notified?”

“I recall.”

“Well, there’s been a few hits tonight.”

“Yeah.” I yawn, scrubbing a hand over my face. “Makes sense. We’re at the hospital now.”

“I see the admission order but wanted to be sure you were aware.”

Of course I’m aware.

“Thanks for checking in.” I shake my head, trying to cast off the dregs of sleep. Now’s as good a time as any, I suppose, to ask about the information I’ve recently learned. “I actually have something I wanted to talk to you about.”

“Oh?”

I stand slowly, doing my best not to wake her as I slide off the hospital bed.

I walk to the door and flip the lock securely in place, then make my way to the bathroom.

I don’t lock this door. I don’t even shut it.

I leave it open just enough that I can see her, so serene under the little bit of light over her head.

Like a fucking angel. She’s innocence, corrupted by a man who was supposed to cherish her.

I’ve corrupted her a little more since I’ve known her.

I turn the sink on and let it run straight down the drain, the sound enough to cover my words just in case she happens to wake.

“I learned something about her past. Something I’m worried about having an impact on her health, which may not have shown up on previous checks.”

“What is it?” Dr. Kent asks.

I brace my hand against the porcelain sink, gripping so hard that it’s a wonder it doesn’t shatter and send water spraying everywhere.

“Her ex,” I grit my jaw, refusing to give him the title husband. He never fucking deserved that honor. “He trafficked her. Drugged her repeatedly, let people come pay to use her while she was too out of it to know what was going on.”

He’s silent a moment. “That’s a very serious accusation, Declan. She told you this?”

I laugh, though it’s not because anything about the moment or situation strikes me as funny. “I witnessed it. He recorded the assaults… hundreds of them.”

My voice cracks, and I take a jagged breath. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to unsee it, either. Soren, so tiny and helpless, vulnerable. She trusted that the one person who wasn’t supposed to hurt her would keep her safe. She trusted that her own home was a safe space that no one would violate.

The new information certainly gives more credence to what could have happened the night Vin died, why she can’t remember almost anything about it. Was it just another night with a paying client that went wrong? If so, is there footage of the murder?

“Does she know what he used?”

“She doesn’t know.” I swallow past the lump in my throat. “And she won’t. Her brain doesn’t need any more trauma to unpack. I just need to know if there could be any lasting effects? Anything we didn’t look for before?”

“I ran extensive tests the first time we had her blood analyzed. And looking at her most recent results, I don’t see anything too concerning.

Her iron is a little too low for this point in pregnancy, so you’ll want to work on that, but without knowing what he drugged her with, I can’t say there’s any outward indicators of any health concerns. ”

I blink, my spine straightening as my brain tries to replay his words to make sure that I heard him right.

“Of course, that doesn’t exclude organ damage. Liver, heart, kidneys… you need ultrasound or MRI to check for anything else. But without suspicion of something being wrong, it’s not like we can explain those tests away to justify them being done.”

Dr. Kent is still prattling on, but whatever he’s said since the word pregnancy has gone straight over my head.

“Pregnant?” I say slowly, gently, like the word will dissolve on my tongue if I’m not careful, taking away all possibility of it being real.

“Yes. Her HCG levels are consistent with a first trimester pregnancy. Did you not know?”

I didn’t.

I knew that I was going for this.

I knew that I’ve been obsessing over the idea of her small body softening with a second life.

I knew that I’ve been feeding her a specific diet to help her gain weight and improve her chances of conception. I knew the tea I’ve been making for her twice a day was said to be a miracle brew. But I did not know that she was pregnant. And I know she didn’t either.

I wanted this, sure, but it became a passive thing.

I fucked her good and hard and often, pushed my cum back inside when it started to leak out of her glistening pussy, gave her all the things that would help her body prepare for this.

But it was static in the background, not something I had to spend every moment of my life obsessing over.

The reality feels different than I thought it would. Particularly since that is not how I’d expected to find out. I imagined her taking a test and having to wait, anxiously, for the results. I imagined her planning how to tell me. I imagined her knowing first.

But I suppose this is fair. I know her body better than she does, anyway.

It’s why I know I won’t be telling her about this. Not yet.

My sweet, pregnant fiancé. She hasn’t let me make her my wife yet because she needs Marissa to be there when I do. She’ll need Marissa there when she finds out she’s pregnant too. I won’t let her learn about this until then.

Will she be happy? Will she cry? Will she be scared, when she realizes that this tethers us together for the rest of our lives?

She agreed to this, whether in absolute clarity or in desperation to reclaim what she lost, but the reality may be different than whatever she thought it would be.

And elated or not, afraid or not, she’ll need to share those feelings with someone other than me or Georgia. It sure as fuck won’t be Khan.

I refuse to watch my future wife be gutted all over again at the realization that she can’t share the news with her best friend.

My timeline for finding Marissa just got tighter.