Lethal Temptations (Tempted #5)(79)

I stopped in front of the door and slowly turned around to meet his gaze.

“I could’ve been your queen. All you had to do was let me,” I whispered through my sobs, before turning back around and walking out the door.

There are two sides in a war and only one winner.

So how come we both lost?





Chapter Twenty-seven





After my wife died I relived her death for six months straight. I’d wake up drenched in a cold sweat from the nightmare of looking into her lifeless eyes and being the one who forced them closed.

Whoever says history doesn’t repeat itself never walked a day in my shoes.

For the last month, since the night I ended things with Lacey, her face has haunted me. I relive the moment I looked into her eyes and told her she was nothing but her father’s daughter and a piece of *. It’s the look reflected in her eyes as she rears her hand back and slaps me that consumes me, night after night—the look of pure defeat and unexplainable heartbreak.

She loved me.

Heard that shit with my own ears.

And she’ll never know how much I love her.

I lived life without fear until I fell for Lacey and, Boots threatened to use her against me. Not once in all my years on this earth, have I been afraid of anything. But after that message came through on my phone, that picture of her at school—I knew fear.

I hurt her.

I bruised her ego and broke her heart.

I wounded her with my words.

I saved her from me.

I saved her life.

I can live with the guilt of my actions as long as she’s breathing.

As long as she’s safe.

If you can even call this shit living.

No, this shit isn’t living.

I know what living is and for a short while I lived and I lived hard.

Living is holding her in my arms.

Living is watching her face light up when I walk into a room.

Living is Lacey’s smile.

Her laugh.

The way she blushes when I tell her she’s beautiful.

Her kiss.

And her touch.

Living is watching the woman you love take what she needs from your body and as she’s doing it, she looks into your eyes and you can see forever.

Living is loving Lace.

This is death.

The death of a man who was never good enough to live and share a memory with someone as pure as her.

I could’ve done it another way but even now, after time has passed, I can’t think of another way where it would’ve worked. Lacey saw through me, she saw passed the demons and the self-destruction. She saw the remnants of my soul and a glimpse of who I wanted to be.

I had to make her hate me.

Take that beautiful love she had for me and turn it into ugly.

I’ll never forgive myself for what I did to her, no matter how much I try to tell myself I had no choice, my angel didn’t deserve to believe she was worthless in my eyes.

She wished for me to live.

She wished for me to smile.

And she wished to be the one who made me smile.

She got her three wishes.

My only wish for her is to know she is everything good left in the world.

She’s beauty, and she’s hope.

She’s strength, and she’s passion.

She’s the light you look for when you’re stuck in the darkness.

She’s just…she’s an angel.

She was my angel.

And now she’s free.

I bent my head, pressed my finger against my left nostril and sucked up the line of coke through the right one.

“Fuck, I didn’t know anyone was in here,” I heard the new guy Stryker mumble. I had been too consumed by my thoughts to hear the door open He stared at the residue on the counter as I straightened up and glanced at him through the mirror.

“I’ll be out in a minute,” I growled, glaring at him through the glass.

Wolf had done his job, found four lost souls willing to join the mayhem, and Stryker was one of them. He was twenty-eight years old, drifting from one charter to the next, looking for his place within the club and thought he’d find it here in Brooklyn. We had just voted these guys in—watched as they cut through the stitching of the patch declaring them each a nomad, replacing it with one that declared them a brother of Brooklyn.

Now, it was time to introduce them to the f*cked up shit they signed up for. It was time to introduce them to Sun Wu and the Red Dragons to give them a taste of blood. Rocco Spinelli gave us the heads up on a shipment Wu was receiving down at the docks. Jack was ready to strike—it was time to send a message back to the Chinese motherf*cker who shot up Pops.

Saddle up, boys because we’re going to intercept their shipment.

“All right, but man, I gotta take a piss and we need to get our asses in gear,” Stryker argued, crossing his arms as he diverted his eyes from the coke back to my face.

“I don’t share,” I ground out.

“Not my thing,” he retorted. “Didn’t know it was yours,” he added as I bent down to rip another line but with his eyes drilling a hole into my back I couldn’t f*cking do it. I grabbed the towel and put it under the water before I soaked up the remaining coke and turned back to him.

“There’s a lot you don’t know kid,” I said, twisting the towel in my hands as I stared at him. “You stick around long enough, you’ll uncover all our secrets and collect a few of your own.”