The Deception series boxset: FaCade, Cadence, Beneath Innocence (25 page)

I picked up his pen holder in frustration and threw it across the room, watching as it fell by the window. Counting to ten I calmed myself and walked across the room to pick it up. The moss covered building I saw him leave that day came into view, making my heart jump.

I snatched up his letter opener and rushed through the house, across the distance separating us and tried the lock. It was locked. Trying to pick a lock was harder than it looked on TV.

I tried again, digging the sharp end into the keyhole and twitching it… nothing. Screw it! I looked around for a stone or rock and found a plant pot. There was no way I could make an excuse for this to him but I would take the repercussions. Something inside told me I needed to get into that damn building if I was to ever find out who I was… who Dante was.

I lifted the stone, took a deep breath, and with as much strength as I could muster I launched it through the window. The shattering sound splintered the silence. My nerves vibrated through my entire body.

I pushed the rest of the glass out of the way and climbed through the panel, cutting my palm as I hooked my fingers around the frame to give me some leverage inside.

It looked like an office. A desk and office equipment was tucked away neatly against each wall; numerous pictures hung from the walls and a plush carpet covered the floor. Adjoining doors led to another room but none of this filtered inside my head. None of these things registered as my gaze fell to a table and my body slammed to a halt.

A suitcase was flipped open, a few items of clothing still folded neatly inside. Toiletries and even a camera sat idly inside. I recognized it. Like a snapshot of pictures, some memories filtered in. The suitcase belonged to me… I was traveling on a plane.

Taking small steps over to it, I brushed my fingers over the leather and picked up the label.

Faye Avery
.

Tears dropped to my cheek. My scent. Cherry blossom… my old scent filled my senses. I picked up the notes laid on top.

It didn’t make sense. Nothing did. I wasn’t supposed to be there.

My chest throbbed reading those messages. The hole expanding in my chest grew ever wider, the cold seeping free. I couldn’t reach the most important memory, the one that would answer this lonely feeling inside me.

Panicking I was going to run out of time, I quickly slipped the notes into my jeans and rushed back to the house to wait out Malik’s return.

I GRIPPED MY HAIR, TUGGING frantically at my soft curls as memory after memory assaulted me. For the previous hour, they had been slamming into me; old ones, new ones, devastating ones, confusing ones, happy ones, all of them one after the other, minute after minute. I felt dizzy with them all, nauseous, as each one destroyed me a little more inside.

I had prayed for the return of my memories, but now, now I wasn’t sure I wanted them back. They were annihilating me, burning my mind under the chaos of them all and breaking my heart little by little after each one.

Dante loved me. He was caring and so utterly gentle that each vision of him clashed with what my heart now knew of him.

I couldn’t understand, or find the memory that had changed him into the bitter and twisted man he was now. All that came to me were recollections of our teenage years and very early twenties; school days, day trips, happy moments, erotic time spent buried in each other. None of them, not one, was of him angry, or forceful in bed. He was besotted with me, completely worshipped me.

What the hell had happened between then and now? I needed this memory more than any of the other ones. Although they were enlightening, none of them told me anything new, all of them virtually the same as the previous, each one showing me the love Dante and I had shared.

“Hey.” Malik’s gentle voice filtered through my muddled brain.

I blinked up at him, forcing away another painful memory. “Did you get it?”

He nodded and held a small white paper bag in front of him and away from the camera in the corner of the ceiling. We exchanged a look for a moment. Both of us pained by what we knew was to come.

I pushed off the couch and walked over to him, coming to stand directly in front of him, his body blocking the camera. Taking the bag from him, I snatched a pen from the bureau.

What the hell is going on?

He stared at my writing scrawled over the paper bag. He blinked at it, his brow creased. Lifting his eyes to mine, he swallowed. “Nothing.” I narrowed my eyes at his lie.

“Fair enough.”

His eyes closed, denying me access to the guilt in his gaze. “Star…”

“Faye!” I whispered, correcting him.

His jaw dropped. I didn’t give him chance to answer as I pushed past him and fled up the stairs, anger surging through me with his reticence, however it came as no great shock. Dante owned Malik just as much as he owned me. We weren’t his family or his friends. We were possessions, things to control and manipulate for his own sick, perverted desires.

The bathroom walls seemed to close in on me when I shut and locked the door behind me. Staring at the bag, I wasn’t sure I wanted to do the test. I already knew what it would say. Tears sprung from my eyes before I had even peed on the damn thing.

I couldn’t have a baby with Dante, not the Dante he was now. The old one, hell yes, very much so, but not now. This baby had been created from nothing more than a vicious and cruel fetish of his, one he had blamed me for. He had said it was my fantasy, but I knew there was no way this was me. I had no proof, only my own gut feeling deep down this wasn’t an experiment gone wrong.

Dante had told me he was being used as a guinea pig for the lovely Doc, and I wondered if that was what this was, an experiment gone wrong, me as the guinea pig this time. I was nothing more than a lab rat.

Pulling the box from the bag, I ran my thumb over the writing as another memory flooded in.

“I can’t do this.”

“You have to,” he said sternly beside me. “You need to know, as he does… as I do.”

I frowned at him. How would the result affect him? I shook off his words and turned, disappearing into the bathroom, the long pink box weighing heavy in my hands.

He stood waiting for me when I came back out, wringing his hands together nervously. He took one look at my ashen face, the tears that fell, and opened his arms to me.

“Ssh,” he whispered when I fell into him and sobbed. “It will be okay, Faye. I promise.”

I gasped, pulling much needed air into my lungs as a shudder shot through me. That had been the most confusing memory of them all. My thoughts at wondering how the results would affect him.

I shook my head, pushing them away, knowing I would go crazy if I dwelled on them. Taking another deep breath, I pulled the test from the box and nodded to myself sternly.

I was surprised to see Malik staring at me when I slowly opened the bathroom door and walked back into the bedroom, my legs trembling as my heart beat too fast.

“Well?”

I shook my head rapidly, sweat from the despair flowing through me flicking off my forehead. I knew what it would say, but the proof was too much. A long high pitched wail left me as my life changed so very swiftly with the appearance of one pale blue cross.

“Star,” Malik whispered, his expression one of utter desolation. “Star.” He took a step towards me but I stepped back and hissed.