“Oh, yeah.”
I run into the pharmacy, grab her pills, and a few minutes later, we’re walking into the house. I go straight to the kitchen and grab out two bottles of beer from the fridge. Eden is fiddling with her birth control pack, slipping the old one out of the small plastic case to put in the refill. I set her beer on the counter in front of her when she sucks in a startled breath and her hands freeze.
“What’s wrong,” I inquire
I look down at what she’s looking at and my blood runs cold. There’s a tiny micro-chip lying on the counter. I reach for it and her eyes shoot up to me.
“Do you think….” She pauses for a moment and clears her throat. “Could this really be the chip Diego’s been talking about? It was behind my birth control pack.”
I scowl down at the small piece of plastic in my hand like it’s ticking time bomb I can’t defuse. “I don’t know.”
“I swear I don’t know how it got there.”
I snap my head up at her wobbly voice. “I know you don’t, Eden. Someone must have slipped it in there somehow.”
Relief has her shoulders sagging. “I don’t see when they could have. I always—” She stops abruptly, a frown appearing between her eyebrows. Her shocked gaze jumps to mine. “I left my purse downstairs that last night I was with Diego. That has to be when they put it in my birth control pack. But why?”
“It’s obvious whatever’s on here is damning. Maybe they wanted you to use it against him.” I grab Eden’s hand and pull her behind me into the living room where my laptop is. “There’s only one way to find out.”
EDEN
JW AND I WALK INTO THE HILL, the dim light momentarily blinding us. Instead of stopping and looking around for who we’re meeting, JW keeps
going and turns to the left. Apparently, it’s a usual meeting spot because he leads us straight to a big table that’s already full with people. There’s Trouble holding Elijah with Remi beside him, her brother, Kian, Judge, Jamie, Gillian, and a lady named Susan I met yesterday while I was with Trouble and Remi when JW went to go check on Emo. I’m surprised to see Emo sitting at the end of the table with Grace to his left. From what I saw of his mangled back yesterday, he has to be in a lot of pain. After what JW told me, something tells me he likes the pain. The sight of the damage done to his back broke my heart. I can’t imagine living with such heartache all the time.
We’re all here because Remi wanted us together on her brother’s last night in Malus.
I take a seat beside Jamie and JW sits next to me, putting him at the end of the table. Judge is to his left.
I reach over and grab Jamie’s hand. “How are you holding up?” I ask quietly.
It’s been a week since Jenny died, but the pain is as fresh as if it happened just moments ago.
She gives me a sad smile and squeezes my hand in return. “I’m getting there. It’ll just take a while. I loved Jenny like she was a sister.”
My heart pinches. “I’m so so sorry.”
She’s shaking her head before I get the words out. “There’s nothing for you to be sorry for, Eden.”
No matter how many people have told me that over the past week, I still feel responsible.
I look around the table. “Where’s Layla? Isn’t she supposed to be here too?”
“She wanted to come, but Trouble ordered her on bedrest. She has the flu.”
“Oh, no. That’s horrible.”
“She’ll be better in a few days. He gave her some medicine to help with her symptoms.”
We talk for a few more minutes. Danaka, our waitress, comes to take JW’s and my order since we were the last ones to arrive and everyone else has already given theirs. After she walks away, JW’s quiet words capture my attention.
“I’ve made a copy of it, and I’m sure Diego isn’t stupid enough to not think I did, but I plan to call his father tonight to pass along a message.” He stops and flicks his eyes to Kian down at the other end of the table to make sure he can’t hear him. Kian doesn’t know about Diego or what JW and his brothers have planned for him. As he’s in the military and essentially government property, it’s best it stays that way. “If he doesn’t back the fuck off, he’ll not only have me after his ass, but the state police as well.”
A shiver races down my spine, and I fight the bile rising in my throat. The chip that fell out of my birth control pack yesterday? Yeah, there was some pretty gruesome footage on it. Diego is a lot more acquainted with eviscerating people than I thought. I don’t know how many girls there were, because I only made it halfway through the third one before I couldn’t watch anymore and had to run to the bathroom to empty my stomach. What makes it so much more horrendous is he would be raping them as he sliced into their stomachs. They actually died while he was still inside them; him coated in their blood and guts.
What kind of sick person does that? And how in the hell did I not know what he was? Was I so enamored by his good looks and his gentlemanly treatment toward me that I overlooked the signs? How did he keep that hidden from me so well? We weren’t together that long, and I didn’t know him that well, but there had to have been signs that he wasn’t right in the head.
When I think about him touching me, using his hands that’ve gutted God only knows how many girls, sickens me. It makes me want to soak in a bathtub full of bleach and scrub every inch of my body with a steel wool brush.