“HANDS BEHIND YOUR head, sir.”
I looked at Nikki, waiting for her to let go of the bullshit she was holding onto. From the way she looked back at me, I didn’t know who she was. She was encased in ice. Obviously, I needed to try a different approach, but what I wouldn’t do is stop trying.
Sighing, I got down on my knees with my hands behind my head. I knew the drill because I’d done it many times in the past.
Not for one single second did I take my eyes away from her, and what I held in my eyes was enough to melt her fake cold front. Her expression began to dissolve when they put the cuffs on me. She turned her back, covering her face. Her sobs were heard even at the door.
She wanted to punish me. Fine. When I got out of jail, things were going to be very different between us.
“BRENTON, YOU’RE OUT OF here.”
I’d chewed my nails down to the stub and was going out of my mind, planning, scheming—working out every detail in my mind to gain back the control I’d lost. The control I was starved for and needed in order to survive. I was going to have to dust off the cobwebs and do something I hadn’t done in a very long time.
Being released without a date for my first hearing told me one thing: Victor called in a few favors to make sure I was released.
After going through the motions and getting my shit back, I was greeted by Victor in the lobby.
“You’re really the last person I wanted to see,” I said, brushing past him.
He grabbed my shoulder in a failed effort to stop me. “I should be the first person you’d want to see, boy. How did she escape?”
I let the charade go because I didn’t have the energy to keep it going with him, at least not now. “You must think I’m fucking stupid. I know about what you’ve done. Making me doubt Nikki. Preston? Setting him up to fail and cutting ties when he got caught. The test results. The phone calls. The package. The video. It was all you, making me think Nikki was betraying me. Real bitch move. You really want to be put in the same category as two bitches—Estelle and Tamala?”
His eyes widened and he appeared close to blowing his top. Giving very little of a shit, I kept walking, because I wanted to get as far away as possible from the police station. When I reached the sidewalk, I started to call a very old connection at Nation X to get my hands on some tools I needed to take things to the next level. Being that they fucked me over by doing Vic's dirty work and made me believe things about Nikki that weren't true—giving me false reports when I asked them to dig up information on Nikki—I think they'd be receptive to do anything I wanted them to do.
Victor knocked the phone out of my hands, causing it to shatter on the ground. I turned to Victor, growling with my fists balled.
“Look at you, boy. You’re a mess. Let her go. She’s just a random whore who wasn’t worthy of you. You’ll find another—”
I did something I shouldn’t have done in the moment. Something that would bite me in the ass later. With my thoughts jammed on the vision of Nikki slipping away from me, I couldn’t care less about the one person who was standing in my way. I hit Victor with a haymaker that knocked him to the ground and took off before I could be arrested again.
AFTER PICKING UP A new pay-as-you-go phone from a convenience store not far from the station, I had to take three buses and walk five blocks before I found my car in front of the bitch of a psychiatrist’s office. I didn’t bother knocking on the door. I kicked it the fuck in. And to my surprise, I was met with Dr. Erin on the stairs with a 12-gauge long barrel shotgun in her hand.
“Well, aren’t you a very fucking interesting therapist. Do you moonlight as a killer by night, too?” I asked with a toothy grin.
“I expected you.” She angled the barrel toward her office, directing me to follow.
Rolling my eyes, I put my hands behind my head while keeping my smirk steady. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. You’re going to force me into a session with you by gunpoint? You sure you want to do this, Dr. Erin? I have a way of making people want to kill themselves. This might be your last chance to hold onto your sanity. Because you know what they say about therapists, correct?”
She pushed her glasses up on her nose and scowled at me. “Dr. Brenton, your choices are my office or the police.”
“Or the shotgun,” I deadpanned, touching the tip of the barrel. “But you and I both know you’re missing the balls it takes to pull the trigger.”
“You’re making horrible assumptions based upon your very skewed view of women.”
“You want to play. Let’s.” Behaving like I owned the place, I slipped my hands down in my pockets and strode over to her office. Looking around, I found her desk with the laptop sitting on top of it. Making myself at home in her chair, I kicked back and put my feet on top of the desk.
Dr. Erin glared at me, thinking—wrongly—that she could will me to move with her dagger-eyed stare. Like she suddenly remembered something she forgot, she fixed her nightgown to better cover her legs.
“Don’t flatter yourself, sweetheart,” I muttered with a smile and a wink.
Giving me a way in, she turned around and gave me the seconds I needed to do what I came for.
She sat rigidly on the couch with the shotgun in her lap and her finger on the trigger. “Why are you so threatened by my visits with Nikki, Dr. Brenton?”
Ejecting from the chair with a Cheshire grin, I sat on the couch opposite her. “I know this game. The forced introspection when you already have ideas about who I am and what I’m about worked out in your head. Let’s play another one.” I lazed back and slowly spread my legs, giving my cock much needed room to breathe. “When’s the last time you’ve been fucked until you couldn’t feel your toes, didn’t know where you were, didn’t even know your own name, only the one of the guy diving his cock inside you? Have you experienced that, Dr. Erin? A guy who fucked you so good you knew of nothing in that moment other than what his cock felt like inside of you?”
She crossed one leg over the other, the edge of her robe slipped up her thigh. She adjusted in her seat and pulled her robe down, still keeping one hand on the shotgun. “Why do you think everything breaks down to sex, Dr. Brenton?”
I slanted forward, clasping my hands across my open lap. “Do you know what an orgasm does to a woman, Dr. Erin? A very, very strong one?”
“Of course I do.”
“There have been studies that showed the brain activity found in people who had an orgasm and those who just took a hit of heroin were almost identical.” Watching her uncross and re-cross her legs felt…vindicating. I pointed to her legs. “You just crossed your legs again.” I changed my tone to the one that made women soak their panties with one word. “Are you thinking about your last orgasm? If you’ve ever had one.”
She continuously rocked her finger on the trigger, annoying me. If she became really turned on—and with the direction of the barrel—she would’ve shot a hole clean through my throat. While I never really cared about dying under the right circumstances, near decapitation is not the way I imagined I would go. “Would you care to answer my question?”
“No. I have no inclination to indulge you, because I don’t give a shit about what you think.” I sat back and spread my legs again, taking a hold of my cock at my thigh. She tried to pretend she didn’t notice, but I caught a split-second glance. “I’m going to ask again…when is the last time you’ve been properly fucked?”
She gasped sharply and uncrossed her legs, bringing her knees together.
I gave her a lip-biting smirk. Fingering my bottom lip, my eyes smiled at her. I was getting to her. Therapists…were always so fucked up and easy to rile. They were used to the patients who came to them weak and wanting their misguided direction or putting up emotional walls, thinking they were rebelling. Funny fact: most therapists have to see their own therapist.
“If your question is answered, can we get to your answer?” she asked.
“No.”
“Then we’ll have a stalemate while I hold you at gunpoint.”
“You’re barely holding on,” I sneered. “You really think you can outlast me?”
“Although I’m not going to break the patient doctor confidentiality, I’m going to inform you that I know a lot more about you than you think I do.”
I curved a brow. “Nikki…” I cut down the level of interest in my voice “…talks about me?”
“Why else do you think she visits me, Dr. Brenton? You are an aggrandizer for her internal issues.”
I removed my hand from my cock and sat back. “And this?” I pointed to the gun. “You’re so eager to pick my brain, you brought out the twelve gauge. What are you curious about, Rebecca?” I delayed, waiting for a reaction. She gave me exactly what I wanted. “Are you curious about the man Nikki loves, or do you want to dissect me?” My eyes narrowed. “All of me.”
She averted her eyes to the ceiling. “Your need to center the conversation around sex is very telling.”
“Whether it’s repressed or exploited,” I explained, “sex makes the world spin on its fucking axis.”
“That is where you are very wrong, Dr. Brenton. I believe you were taught to think that way, but there is much more beyond our carnal nature. Do you feel it’s the biggest asset you have to offer, because it’s the only thing you believe to be your skill?”
“Interesting theory, Rebecca. You know why you’re wrong? I have quite a few talents, and they have nothing to do with sex. For the point, I’m a damn good doctor.”
“Are you?” Her forehead scrunched up, creating the appropriate lines for a woman of her age. “What does it take to be a good doctor, Dr. Brenton? Bedside manner? Or does that escape you? Do you do the bare minimum while conducting your job, hoping to get by with your looks and words that make some women’s hearts flutter? If you had been born in a different body, with a different face, without an above-average length penis, what would be your greatest asset?”
“How many lives have you saved, Rebecca? How many people have come to this office with suicidal tendencies, hoping you’d be their fairy godmother and make it all magically go away? How many times have you failed and lost a patient?” Before she could think of a response, I bolted off the couch, slipped the gun from her loose grip, and went to cock it. Shit. It wasn’t loaded. And I stayed longer than I needed to.
“That’s very sloppy of you,” she chided me like I was her spoiled brat. “Nikki’s making you fraught, isn’t she? The tools you used to lure her are no longer working. You haven’t the slightest clue what to do. She’s going to continue to slip away from you. You’re going to lose her forever.”
Images of the smug doctor shuttered over my memories of Mrs. Givens. I could’ve sworn I heard Mrs. Givens say, “I told you I would haunt you. You haven’t done right by her. Now it’s time you pay.”
I shook my head, seeing Dr. Erin again.
I’m losing my goddamned mind. “There are many things I haven’t tried with her yet. Believe me, I’m going to do them. Matter-of-fact, I’m in the process of making things happen right now.”
“Reality hurts more than the discovery that our delusions are tools for escapism that can never come true. Let’s discuss why you feel an innate need to belittle women—to make them feel as though they are less than you? Is that why you became a part of the BDSM scene? Do you need a submissive to feel some sense of normalcy? Does a part of you place the blame with your mother for her death? Do you feel abandoned? Do you feel as though if you defecate on enough women, you will resolve your latent issues with her?”
My decision was split between choking the life out of her or getting what I came for and leaving. She knew too much—more than I knew Nikki would ever tell her. “For the point, I’m not a part of some scene. I’m not a part of anyone’s scene. I don’t fit into molds, I break them. I break down women who aren’t inherently submissive because it makes me hard. I’ve never shat on a woman, nor pissed on one. I pay other people to do that disgusting shit. Fuck. Sometimes they do it for free.” I slowly smiled at the irony. “Although, once, I had Nikki piss on my cock while we were in the shower. Sounds gross, but it was very fucking hot. Shit…I’m getting hard thinking about it again.”
“And, back to what you were discussing…about breaking women.”
“It’s all a part of the process,” I explicated and wondered why I bothered. “It’s not because the actual act of bodily function play that turns me on. It’s because of what it does to the woman. Think about it. What’s the worst thing you can do to a person?”
“Rape comes to mind,” she answered without missing a beat.
I slipped down in the chair, scowling at her.
“Should I take your silence as an agreement?” she questioned.
“It is the most disgusting, debilitating thing you can do to a person. Killing someone destroys their body. Raping someone destroys so much more. It’s worse to be a soulless, walking corpse than to be six feet under. No. You’re in purgatory while you just want to feel. No matter what you do, you feel nothing. And when you finally find someone who makes you feel, you don’t know what to do about it. Because loving someone is giving up control. Control that was stolen from you when you were raped. It’s not comfortable. It’s…standing in the middle of fire…willingly.”
“Wow,” she said with a smile and slouched backward. “Imagine how far we could’ve gotten if you’d come to my office sooner. Do you realize what we’ve just experienced together, Dr. Brenton?”
I faked a cough, making it appear as though I had a hard time recovering.
“Can I get you something?” she asked, standing.
“Bourbon.” I said, making my voice raspy.
She put her hands on her hips, chastising me.
“Water.”
When she left, she took the gun with her.
Moving fast, I went over to her laptop and checked on the progress of the software installed on the zip drive. The program worked, revealing everything it had retrieved and copied from her hard-drive. Keeping one eye on the door and another on the laptop, I scrolled through her patient files.
She took five minutes to bring me a glass of water, but really, five minutes was all I needed.
“Dr. Brenton, could you please return to the couch?”
Sliding the zip drive in my pocket, I reclined back in her chair. “I have a question for you, Rebecca.”
“Do you?”
“Is Janet one of your patients?”
“You know I can’t talk about that. Would you like to continue our session?”
“I noticed you came back without the shotgun.”
She held the glass out to me as though she thought I needed it. The sight of my smile was her reality check and it immediately made her uncomfortable. She was right to feel that way.
As she stared at me, I could tell she began to realize that leaving me alone with her computer for a few minutes was a huge mistake on her part. “I suppose you used some sort of hacking program. Is this what the visit was all about? Do I need to remind you of the illegalities?”
I chuckled. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. How long are you going to keep this up?”
She closed her eyes for a moment and slammed the glass of water down on the desk. “What did you discover, Ethan?”
"I should've figured it out the moment I saw you. You look just like her, and like most men, Charlie clearly has a type." I pushed the chair out and stood, sauntering over her with a posture that made her walk in reverse. “I’ll tell you what I know, Rebecca. Charlie is a tricky fucking bastard who went so far as to have your daughter, Jodie, sleep with a friend of mine to get information and get her to start seeing you. Melonie, being Melonie, at the right time would send Nikki on her way to you. It’s very fucking clever. Let me see if I have this completely right: You were tasked by Charlie to convince Nikki I was no good for her—to drive her away from me. He did all this unnecessary shit to make me kill a man I would’ve eventually killed on my own anyway. Fuck. Does anyone just pick up a goddamn phone, say their peace, and be done with it anymore?”
She clutched her hands to her chest tightly, staring back at me as if she wasn’t scared shitless. “A-are you going to kill me?”
“You don’t know me very fucking well. I think the fact that you and I both know you failed to cure Nikki—because there is nothing to cure—should serve as you penitence for now.”
“And Janet?”
“Don’t you fucking worry your pretty head about her.” I moved to touch her and she jumped, making my smile broaden. “I think of all the people surrounding Nikki, she is the only innocent one. You? You preyed on her." I let a few seconds of silence pass to make her uneasy. "Thank you, Dr. Erin.”
“For what?”
Winking, I broadened my shoulders and headed toward the door.
“I’m required to tell Charlie about this, Ethan.”
“Good,” I glanced at her over my shoulder. “I’ll be waiting for his call, because I’m going to need immunity very soon.”
I’d had enough trouble for one day and my mind was too hung up on Nikki to care about the bitch behind me.
“If you were serious about having feelings for her,” she yelled after me, “and keeping her in your life, my doors is always open, Dr. Brenton. Regardless if I work for Charlie or not, I am still a certified doctor. I can help you before it’s too late.”
“Go fuck yourself, and when you’re done, kill yourself, Dr. Erin,” I spat back at her.
I NEEDED ISOLATION, SO I headed out to my house in Webster. For the entire night and a few hours into the brink of morning, I read up on all the little false demons planted inside Nikki’s head.
With my fresh new education on all things Nikki, I was ready to approach things from a different perspective. While killing Vic would take some time, there was one person who tormented Nikki and didn’t deserve to breathe another second of the same air. For the next two hours, I used my connections to find out everything I could about the woman who haunted Nikki.
It was pure luck and my rediscovered way with words that seduced the bitch’s assistant over the phone. After five minutes, she was more than willing to tell me the bitch’s entire schedule and send me a picture of her. All because I told the assistant I was doing a news article on her, and obviously, the woman she worked for was an attention whore.
I’D BEEN FOLLOWING HER BMW for a few minutes after she was done getting her nails done at a strip mall. Her speed slowed and she pulled over to the side of the road. Finally, what I did to her car kicked in. I was at least a quarter of a mile back, far enough to keep our pending meeting from looking suspicious.
She walked out of her car, teetering on her heels and hit the hood of the car repeatedly.
When she spotted me walking up to her, her whole body froze.
“Are you okay?” I asked, successfully sounding concerned for her well-being.
Holding her neck, she nodded and held up her phone. “I’m fine. This is what I get for trusting my husband to do the car’s maintenance. Bastard. Can’t send a man to do anything. If things keep going like this, I’m going to be late for my own fucking New Year’s Eve party. Can you believe that?”
I smirked at her, making her think I took her as humorous, and when I did, she melted just a little. “It’s a good thing I was on the road and saw you.”
She put her hand on her hip and flipped her long dark hair over her shoulder. “Do you think you can check out my car or something?”
“Of course.”
I did the bit, looking under the hood and explained what was wrong with her car by using overcomplicated jargon to confuse her.
Her eyes glazed over and she looked at her phone, unable to find a signal thanks to a device I had in my pocket. “I can give you a ride home or to a repair shop if you’d like.”
She looked back at my car, to my watch, and over what I was wearing, calculating my net worth in her head. “Can you just take me home?”
She’s too fucking easy and incredibly dim. “I can definitely do that.” I walked to the car, opening the door for her to get in.
As I began to drive, I could tell I had her. She kept hiking up her skirt and readjusting her tits to peek out of her sweater. Her smile broadened as she darted out her hand. “I’m Cherish Clarke—Seymour now. Not for long. Hoping to get a divorce from my sadistic bastard of a husband soon."
And it couldn’t have been any more perfect. There is nothing better than a predator faced with wounded prey. She looked up me expectantly and the look on her face was as though she thought she’d just won the lottery.
The bitch just didn’t know she was going to die very soon.
No bad deed done against Nikki goes unpunished. Ever.
Maintaining my grin, I introduced myself. “It’s nice to meet you, Cherish. I’m Dr. Eric Brenton.”