Dirty Stack (The Devious Games Duet 2)

I open the door and tag her hand, pulling her into the house.

“I don’t wanna be here, Killian.” She stands in the doorway, hair dripping wet, looking like her feet are glued in place.

“Fine. We’ll go home together. We’ll take my car and I’ll get someone to run yours back. I don’t want you driving on no sleep.”

She folds her arms over her chest. “You’ll get someone to come here, feed him dog or cat food and what? Knock him around some more before they drive my car back? That kind of someone? Will they urinate on him too or is that just your thing?”

“Try to put him out of your mind. Don’t worry about him. Let it be the way it was supposed to be…you living your life with me, him becoming a more and more distant memory by the day.”

She frowns. “How do you propose that? Got some way to hypnotize what I saw, what I know, what I smelled out of my mind? There’s also what I heard. The things you’ve been doing. All of it…” Her voice breaks and it feels like a punch to the throat.

“Let’s go home. We’ll go home. Sleep a little. And then talk.”

My words feel robotic. Because I know I have not a leg to stand on here, that I can’t hope to win this argument, but I’m trying to stop her from going and short of physically stopping her which might cross lines permanently, all I have is my fucking mouth.

“I need to go to work!” she shrieks.

“Go to work tomorrow. You already told her you weren’t coming in today.”

“You think we’re going to figure this out in a day? Or at all?” She stomps into the powder room and comes back with a towel, dabbing at her face.

“Is there a way that figuring this out today is conceivable to you?” I ask.

“What? Like if he’s turned back over to the cops, where he should be and then we could what? Pretend it didn’t happen? Pretend you haven’t lied to me for all this time?” She covers her face, dropping the towel. “You lied to me. Over and over and over.”

Ice pierces my veins at that statement. “You think that’s even on the table at this point? Turning him over? If that happens, guess who else goes to jail?”

She looks me in the eyes, and it feels like a sharp hoof to the gut because now that I’ve said it, that’s what she seems to be conveying – that it’s what I deserve. She can’t really think that.

“You don’t think I deserve jail for this.”

She says nothing; points her eyes at her feet.

I move in and tip her chin up. She tries to step back, like she can’t stand my hands on her.

“I don’t deserve to be put away for making him suffer for hurting us, Violet. If you think that…” I let that hang, too. Only because I’m having trouble wrapping my brain around the idea the woman I love could think I should be locked up for making that sonofabitch waste of space suffer.

“I need out of here,” she mutters, jerking away from my touch.

“Let’s go then. I’ll drive.” I pull her SUV key from her keyring and set it down on the table by the door. I’ll get Tony to bring her car back later.

She closes her eyes tight and blows out a long breath before moving outside to my car, getting inside, and folding her arms.

***

An hour and a half later, we’re back home, no further conversation between us. It was a silent ninety minutes, other than the sound of the wipers. It rained the whole journey, hard, like the sky was weeping for us.

Silence? Loaded silence is more like it. Loaded with distrust and accusations from her. Loaded with anger on my side. She stared out the window, but sadness rolled off her in waves that made me almost seasick.

I need to sleep. Or get drunk. Or go back and beat Raymond Iadanza until he’s an unrecognizable pulp of tepid flesh. Something.

When we get in, she goes to the powder room and I go directly to my home office and open my laptop to get lost in some work while I also fire off a quick text to Tony, telling him to stop in there tomorrow and feed the dickhead. I tell him to pick up a bunch of ricotta cheese and water chestnuts. The fucker can eat that the next three days. I also tell him to change his bandages again and get Violet’s Land Rover here.

Ass-wipe is still listening to country music, still with the lights on. I checked on him first thing this morning and he was beating off.

He now lies there catatonic, eyes open, staring at the ceiling while a country ballad plays. I close the app and go back to my laptop screen.