Echo (Black Lotus #2)(25)

Shaking his head, Declan mutters, “Doesn’t make sense. None of this makes sense.”

“It was his fault,” I press, but his response is sharp when he moves on, “I don’t want to argue your f*cked up rationalizations. Tell me . . . what was I?”

“Declan, please . . . ”

“Tell me. Tell me what I was!” his voice booms off the walls, demanding to know.

“In the beginning . . . in the beginning you were the pawn,” I confess.

“More,” he urges.

“Declan, you have to understand that it changed and—”

“More!”

“Okay!” I blurt out and then repeat in a softer, defeated tone, “Okay. Yes, you started as the pawn. I was going to use you to kill Bennett.”

“Why not you?”

“Because I was afraid of getting caught if I got my hands too dirty.”

His teeth grind as he begins to clench and unclench his fists.

“I’m sorry,” I breathe. “But when I got to know you, and we connected so easily, I fell for you. You make me feel something that no one has ever been able to do. No one has ever looked at me the way you do—the way you did. I’ve had a hard life, but—”

“Don’t you dare do that. Don’t you excuse your f*cked ways because of the life you’ve had.”

“I need you to know that what we had, the feelings that I had for you, were genuine. I truly loved you. I still do. I was trying to find a way out of the scam. I was giving it all up so we could be together.”

Pinching the bridge of his nose, he takes a moment before speaking. “I need to know something . . . ”

“Anything. I’ll tell you anything to make this right.”

“Was it true? Bennett beating the shit out of you, was that true?” His voice strains on those words, and I hate the witch I am and having to admit, “No. Bennett never hurt me.”

“You f*cking bitch!” he scathes through a severed cry.

I see how deeply I’ve hurt him. It’s all over his face and it cuts through his voice. He rests his head on his tightly fisted hands, shaking in horror.

“Tell me what to do. Tell me,” I beg, needing to take his anguish away. Needing to make this whole situation just disappear.

“You can’t do shit, Nina.” And the instant he says my name, he winces, squeezing his eyes shut and then asking, “What the hell do I even call you?”

A muted stillness lengthens between us as we look into each other’s eyes—completely demolished. Seconds that feel like hours pass.

And for the first time, although he already knows it from the file, I give him my name.

“Elizabeth Rose Archer.”





“ELIZABETH ROSE ARCHER,” she tells me on soft words after a long span of silence.

How could Satan own such a beautiful name?

I keep my hands fisted tightly so she can’t see them shaking, but the roiling fury that runs thick through my blood has me on the verge of detonation. It’s all I can do to hold myself together right now. This woman, the one I loved not so long ago, is like gasoline dripping on my burning heart.

Her name was already known to me. I read it in the file I found on her husband’s desk after I shot and killed him. Seeing her pictures covered in a spray of his blood destroyed all my trust in the world. It was only a couple hours later after getting home and digging into that file when I soon realized I’d been scammed. Scammed by the only person who had ever been able to seep into my heart so entirely. I’ve never loved the way I loved her. And to know it was all a lie, the deceit of being played, was more than I could take.

I know I murdered an innocent man, and now, hearing her crazy explanation has my mind so f*cked up. How could I have been in love with someone as psychotic as her?

What the f*ck is wrong with me?

“Declan, please. Say something. Anything,” her tiny voice requests.

My body is a mass of tense muscles I refuse to relax for fear of what I’ll do. So I keep myself locked and stern when I speak. “So he never hurt you?”

“No.”

“Never mean to you?”

“No. Bennett loved me. He didn’t know who I was.”

“How’d you get the bruises then?” I ask, remembering how God-awful she would look, covered in horrifically grotesque bruises. Sometimes her skin would split from the swelling and bleed. The battered blood that pooled beneath her skin’s surface always stained her body. It f*cked me up. Rage and fury for a man I believed was inflicting the abuse, lamenting heartache for the woman I loved, and guilt from not being able to protect her. The emasculating position she put me in, knowing damn well she had me fooled. And now I sit here feeling like a * that got manipulated by nothing more than a runaway street kid.

“My brother.”

“Brother?”

“He was in on it too. I would go to him to get the bruises.”

“It was your brother who beat the shit out of you? On purpose to fool me?”

She nods her head shamefully in response.

“Jesus Christ, you’re sick.”

I watch while tears drip from her chin and wish they were the acid she filled my heart with so connivingly.

“I know. But—”