The Starkest Truth (A Breaking Insanity Novel Book 2) (34 page)

Upon sight of me, the corner of Eric’s mouth curled up, crushing me with its devious nature. I suddenly felt stark naked with the way the men all turned to ogle me. One of the gentleman in attendance licked his lips as though he expected me to be dessert.

Pressing down on my stomach, I tried to keep the pit from spreading. Shaking my head at the unsaid, but inferred, I walked backward, Eric’s last words to me played constantly in my head. The heat rushed up my spine as a fire would spread once exposed to a sudden burst of oxygen. The anger was unbearable and consuming.
 

Lurching forward, I grabbed the half empty bottle of wine on the table and chucked it at Eric’s head. He dodged it at the perfect time. The glass shattered upon impact once it hit the wall behind him, staining it with red wine. The chiming sound of the glass shattering made a measured and eerie sound on the floor.
 

“You sick bastard,” I spat at him, having trouble finding the volume and conviction in my voice. “I’m not Estelle. I will never let you make me into her. I will never fuck a bunch of men so you can get off, so I can prove something to you. I’m not going to pay for something I had no control over. Not this way. Not anyway you fucking choose. You will not steal what’s left of my sanity…” My mouth continued to spout off venomous words.

Effortlessly and smoothly, Eric stood slowly from the head of the table. As he leisurely walked toward me, his expression never changed, nor did he show any distress at the threats and derogatory terms I hurled at him. My mouth was a separate entity that spilled all of his secrets. I mentioned the names of the people he killed and exactly how he killed them, amongst many other things he preferred in the bedroom that made the entire table gasp.

My words grew quiet when I heard a commotion from the guest bathroom. Two women were present and fell still when they saw me.
 

It was then I noticed the rings on their fingers and the rings of the men at the table. It was then I recognized one of the doctors that tended to me in the E.R. before I was transferred to a private room.

Eric’s actions were so abrupt, I jumped. Now standing beside me, he linked his arm into mine and jerked me toward him. “In the kitchen,” he pressed against my ear with a bridled anger. When I didn’t move, he barked, “Now!”

I fought with silent resistance, causing him to yank me inside the kitchen with his harsh grip on my arm.
 

The minute my foot slid against the divide between the kitchen and the hallway, he grabbed me by the shoulders and slammed me against the door of the refrigerator.
 

Leaning down toward my face, his heated breath splayed across my lips as his eyes searched mine with a controlled, menacing stare. “You…have two choices right now,” he started in a whisper, “you can either go back in the dining room, apologize, and sit at the dinner table like a civilized human being—or I can think of a more colorful way to make you do what any sane person should do. The question is, do you want to be made to scream your apology, or are you going to be a good girl and do anything and everything I tell you to do?”
 

He took in a long, delayed breath as his hand slipped across my neck. “Your decision?”

The longer I remained quiet, the tighter his grip on my neck became. He pressed his last question again without a hint of kindness.
 

“I’ll apologize,” I relented, my submission stated begrudgingly through my teeth.

A slow comfort-stealing grin spread across his lips. His eyes held onto a coldness I hadn’t witnessed in a long time. “Get to it.” He let me go and nodded in the direction of the dining room.

When I reached the head of the table, I fiddled with the back of the chair at the other end as all eyes fell on me. I remained silent until Eric returned to his seat. He looked at me with expectancy. It was apparent in his demeanor that he was seconds away from crossing the table and performing the things he promised to do to me only minutes earlier.
 

The Nikki who was vulnerable over having lost her mother would’ve done anything Eric asked of her only to get along. When I allowed Eric in, I unsheathed a secret I pretended didn’t exist. I wanted so desperately to cure my loneliness. Eric became my cure for everything I thought I needed to fix. None of it mattered when I slept beside the man almost every night and felt the division I’d lived with—for far too many years—return to me.
 

Beyond it all, I knew Eric purposely provoked me. He did this on purpose. He held a dinner almost in a celebration after I’d lost our first-born. I was still bleeding from the miscarriage, and he showed no semblance of sympathy for me.

He knew I would react this way. He had to have. He wanted me to react this way and embarrass me. The monster inside him resurfaced and Eric’s steel-plated exterior returned, hardening his heart and shutting down his ascension into the man he claimed I made him become.

Love. Addiction. Obsession. Need. All of it was tossed aside in an instant, because I was mourning the loss of my first child. The tangible loss trumped all. I no longer wanted to bow my head and get on my knees to appease him because I was afraid of losing him.

In the moments I stared at him, everything I felt for him was pushed down for something much stronger.

“I hope you know”—I gestured grandly to the table—“all of you are celebrating the miscarriage of a broken woman. You are also amongst the company of a sick bastard who gets off on making his wife feel like less than she is.
 

“I’m sure he shows you the charm at work, maybe he doesn’t. Either way, if you knew all the things I knew about Dr. Eric Brenton, none of you would sit comfortably in his company. My outburst earlier, wasn’t just a delusional woman spouting lies. Eric Brenton isn’t Eric Brenton. His real name is Ethan Brae. And Ethan Brae…” I locked eyes with Eric from across the table. “…is a serial-killer.”

He lowered his lids over his eyes, casting a shadow over his light brown eyes. The smugness in his expression was completely wiped away for a scowl so severe, it created tiny lines around his mouth.
 

He didn’t need to warn me away from the table, I was done. Before turning on my heels, and heading upstairs, I snuck a steak knife from the table and hid it on my person. Panting and oblivious, Kifo followed closely behind me while I navigated my way to the bedroom.

I sprawled out on the bed, trying to find comfort in my discomfort. Kifo jumped up on the bed. Nesting, she decided to take her nap while lying partially on top of me. Too emotionally and physically exhausted to chastise her, I rested my hand on top of her head and closed my eyes.
 

The hushed conversations emanating from the open door, down the stairs, served as the only noise that filled the bedroom.

Eventually, things grew quiet.
 

His steady, measured footsteps echoed from the stairwell, and continued down the hall, nearing my bedroom.

Nearest the opposing wall inside my room, his steps paused.

I opened my eyes, unable to find Kifo anywhere on the bed.
 

Eric stood opposite the bed, resting against the wall. With his chin touching his chest, he stared at me from underneath his thick eyelashes. There was an empty bottle of wine in his hand, dangling just beside the outside of his thigh.

“If you’re wondering where your dog is, she’s with someone else until you can prove to me that you have some goddamn sense. Tell you what, Nik. I’ll give you a chance to fix this: I’ll forgive you and get your dog back if you apologize to me, and…be very convincing about how sorry you are.”

Unyielding, I glared at him.

His tongue darted inside his cheek before his jaw clenched. We remained that way, glowering at one another for many moments of silence. “This is your last chance. Still want to forgo the apology, Nik?” The timbre of his voice was calm, controlled, and almost fringed upon stoicism.

I slipped up and hugged my legs, propping my chin on my knees. “I have nothing to apologize for. You did this to make me out to look like the crazy one. Is this the start of the punishment you promised me in the hospital? Did you think I would lie down and take it? Fuck. You. Eric. I want you out of my house.” It was the first time I’d called it my home and felt comfortable with the term. It was clear from the glimmer of moderate surprise in his eyes, he was fully aware of the shift inside me. It was no longer my mother’s house. It was mine, and on this day, I didn’t want him here.

He pushed his back off the wall. With heavy footsteps he crossed the floor, making my heart pound a little faster with every loud echo of his steps. I could barely see his eyes from underneath his furrowed dark brows. “Are you really fucking sure you want to make things worse for yourself right now?” His voice held onto the quiet rasp before the storm of depraved actions occurred.

“How could they be any worse? Being that I have this”—I pulled a steak knife from behind my back, casually showing it to him—“you should stay the hell away from me.”

“What are you going to do?” The corner of his mouth spasmed into a half-smile. “Poke me to death? It barely covers enough inches to puncture a vital organ. That’s only if you had the strength to do anything with it, which we both know you don’t. Because—correct me if I’m wrong, which I know I’m not—but weren’t we here before? In the end, I was the one with the knife in my hand while you came repeatedly on my cock, like a very, very dirty girl hungry for a fuck…remember?”

“Do you think history will repeat itself?”

“Nikki,” he growled, “the more you piss me off, the worse your payback will be. Keep that in mind, because if I have to make one more step toward the bed because you’re being a spiteful bitch, it won’t be pretty for you.”

“Bitch?” I asked in incredulity.

“I take that back,” he said with his eyes smiling. “A crazy cunt sounds…better.”

“If I’m a crazy cunt, you’re a psychotic asshole whose only saving grace is his huge dick and pretty face. What a tragedy it would be if you no longer had either one.”

He bit into his lip and any hint of emotion he held, disappeared from his eyes. “Last fucking warning.”

“Go fuck yourself, Ethan, you psychotic asshole.”

He pursed his lips together as his cheeks puffed out. The hold he had on the bottle tightened, turning his knuckles a shade devoid of color. “In less than the few seconds it takes you to disrespect me again, this bottle I’m holding…will be jammed inside your pussy.”
 

Alerted, I stared at him in astonishment.
He…wouldn’t, would he?
My hold on the knife firmed. “I’m still bleeding. You wouldn’t risk giving me an infection—”

“At this point, do you think I give an iota of shit? Lie after lie, Nikki. Now you’re trying to go behind my back and see Victor? I don’t even want to know how the hell you got to him. What the fuck are you playing at?”

I blinked up at him in awe. I wanted to scream out,
“What are you talking about?”
but my mind was too busy with the possibilities. Something wasn’t right. Something was far from right. Eric was being steered away from me with outright lies. Worst of all, he believed the deceptive statements against me.

“Nothing to say, huh?” He cocked his head to the side, staring me down, attempting to intimidate and dominate me simultaneously with the intensity of his gaze.
 

Standing, I remained on the other side of the bed and arched a brow, daring him to move forward with his threats. My grip on the steak knife strengthened.

Moving around the bed, his feet shuffled forward, closing in on my position. Without warning, he reached across, grabbing a fistful of my hair. He attempted to thrust me stomach down on the bed. I swung my arm up, plunging the knife into a tough fleshy part of his body. It made a slight slushing sound as it sank into his flesh.

“FUCK!” he shouted to the ceiling, sputtering in his stance. Letting me go, we both glanced at where the blade implanted itself. The hilt broke off, but the stub of the metal blade protruded from where it was embedded; his shoulder.

He released a low guttural growl and lunged for me. I swung my arms around, trying to hit and kick his softest parts. He used the full extent of his weight to throw me on the bed. I landed back on the mattress, stomach down. He crawled on top of the bed, placing his foot on my spine. The bulk of my hair was held strongly in his tightening grip, holding my head firmly against the mattress.
 

I struggled and screamed. Pulling at my scalp in a taut manner to keep my head constrained, he pushed me against the mattress. The duvet cover nearly suffocated me. My bottoms were unceremoniously removed from me and my legs were spread. He placed a knee between my legs, forcing them to remain apart. He hocked up a spit that landed in the cleft of my behind. Something cold and hollow toyed with my opening.
 

My cries were muffled into the sheets. My tears soaked the high thread count linens and clung to my face and mouth. He pushed me farther down until I could barely breathe.
 

“Do you feel this, Nikki? What I could do to you? What I
can
do to you? Think about it the next time you think you have any control or power in this relationship. Don’t you ever fucking cross me again.” He completely withdrew and flogged the thickest part of my behind with a harsh open-handed slap over and over again in the same area.