“Why? Why didn’t you tell them? Jesus, you could’ve called my unit. Someone would’ve got hold of me.” He turned over onto his back but took me with him, flipping me over so I was half on top of him. His arm was still around me preventing any escape, and his other was over his eyes.
“He threatened my mom, said he’d cut out her throat if I ever said anything. I was sixteen, Deck … I believed him. It started only a week after Connor died and I was vulnerable, depressed and I felt … alone.” My cheek rested on the tribal ink drawn into his chest. “And scared.” Deck squeezed me.
“I would’ve killed him.” And that was the issue. I knew that. Even at sixteen, I knew Deck and Connor—if he’d been alive—would’ve killed Robbie and ended up in jail themselves. It wasn’t something I was willing to risk even if I had considered trying to get hold of Deck.
I nodded and my cheek rubbed on his chest.
“Where is he now?”
“I don’t know.” I didn’t. He’d been looking for Robbie ever since he left prison.
I felt his body stiffen. “I’ll find him.”
I sat upright, putting my hands on his chest. “Deck, no. You don’t understand—”
His brows lowered over his darkened eyes. “Oh, I fuckin’ understand. Some guy tortured you for months when you were sixteen. A fuckin’ disgusting lowlife who doesn’t deserve to breathe air.” He threw his legs over the side of the bed and reached for his cell.
“Damn it, no.” I leapt on him and knocked the phone from his hands, causing it to slide across the floor. “You can’t.”
“What the fuck, Georgie? You expect me to hear about some fucker who tortures you for months then sit back and do nothing? No fuckin’ way in hell.”
He went to get up and I grabbed his arm with both hands. He ignored me and kept walking, and I scrambled after him. Years of lying, deception, doing things I didn’t want to do, all of it was slipping away. All I could think about was Deck being killed because of this. If he started digging …
“Deck. I need to do this.”
He was halfway leaned over to pick up his phone when he froze and straightened while looking at me still holding his arm. “Do what?”
My hands slowly slipped from him and it felt as if I was being suffocated by my own breath. Would he understand? Would he walk away and never see me again? I couldn’t bear to think of it.
I thought of the only thing which came to mind and it was the truth, just an omission of a few things. “I have someone looking for him. Please, Deck. I don’t want you involved.”
His eyes widened with surprise and shock. Why wouldn’t he be? Deck had no idea we’d been searching for Robbie for years. That I was Chaos and did … assignments for him.
“Stay right there.” Deck snatched up his phone and started walking from the room, the phone to his ear. “Tyler,” he snarled.
I was unravelling. Every part of me was being splayed out in front of the one man I’d loved all my life and I felt—gutted. I felt weak and vulnerable and he was taking my power away.
“Damn it, I waited for you to come back,” I shouted. “To see your car pull up to the curb, to be waiting there in the morning when I looked out the window. But you weren’t. You never came.” I took a deep breath and tried to steady my voice for the blow. And it would be a huge blow to Deck, but he was going after Robbie and would soon find out everything. I couldn’t let him go in blind. He’d be killed. I had to tell him. “But Kai did.”
He stopped. The phone lowered and I heard Tyler yelling on the other end. He kicked the bedroom door closed, then slowly turned. For a second, I saw the shock, eyes wide and mouth dropped open, and then it changed completely. His eyes darkened and narrowed—unyielding, and mixed in was a sneer of disgust. There was no sexy anywhere in him because his intimidating stare overrode the sexy.
“Kai?”
I swallowed then nodded, but I really felt like denying it and then running for the door.
“You fucking him, Georgie?” With the way his hands were clenching and unclenching, his jaw tight and his eyes hard … Deck was holding on by a thread.
I shook my head. “No. It’s not like that.”
“So, it’s like something? With Kai? The unstable fucker who was at an auction buying sex slaves? Who doesn’t have a fuckin’ history? Who no one trusts? Who handles a knife like it’s part of his hand. Whose morals border on—” He stopped abruptly, his eyes glaring into me so fiercely I looked away. A deep, resonating growl emerged from his throat. He tossed his phone on the dresser and I jumped when it made a loud clang. “Tell me he didn’t put those cuts on you.”