Page 93 of Poisoned Promise
“Felix, i-it wasn’t?—.”
“Don’t lie to me!” He yells in my face and a wet sheen builds in his eyes. “You broke my heart! You almost killed me and poor Caterina! She lost her only fucking son fornothing,according to you!”
“Fuck Caterina.” Anger curls hot in my aching gut. “I don’t g-give a shit about her.”
“Well I do! But then that’s on par with you, isn’t it? Hurting the people I care about?”
“No, I?—.”
“You destroyed me,” Felix continues in rage. “You destroyed me and then you left and shacked up with another fucking man. Went on to live your perfect little life with your son like nothing ever happened!”
He’s wrong. He’s so wrong but he’s so deep in his hurt and his anger that nothing I say will derail him.
“Let go?—.”
“Tell me why! Was none of it real? Was I just a fucking joke to you?”
“Let me go?—!”
“Was it all some twisted game? I bet you don’t even have a heart in there, do you? Just cold emptiness like a fucking void because who else kills people for fun, huh? No wonder Alex was so angry at you!”
The anger in me turns into an inferno and energy surges through me. I jerk away from him, wrestling against his hold. “Don’t you dare talk about my son.”
“I bet he hates you! I bet he knows exactly what kind of cold, heartless woman you are because only monsters can destroy people and leave carnage in their wake and then fuck off a perfect life without a thought to those she left behind!”
I slap him as hard as I can, barely feeling the pain it ignites in my shoulder or wrist. The impact is strong enough to send Felix stumbling back slightly and his grip releases my arms.
“Don’t you fucking dare!” I yell back, my voice cracking. “I loved you. I loved you with all my fucking heart but that bastard friend of yours wasn’t a friend! Nico was a monster!”
“Shut up!”
“He was a fucking psychopath, okay? He was a twisted fucking bastard and he tried to rape me, okay? He tried to rape me and I killed him for it and I’d do it again, you hear me! I’d do it again!”
Felix’s advancement toward me pauses and his eyes widen. “What did you just say?”
27
FELIX
Nico tried to rape me.
Dove’s words hang in the air between us, taking up so much room that I can’t breathe.
Everything freezes.
I’m completely caught between the utter fury that she would say such a heinous lie and the horror that it might actually be true.
“No,” I choke out once air returns to my lungs in a rush. “He would never. Nico would never. He was a kind, decent man. He was one of the best men I ever fucking knew. He would never do something like that!”
Not to the woman I loved.
Not to any woman as a matter of fact.
There are dark things in our world.
Lives on the line every single day.
All it takes is a scale to tip in the wrong direction and we face down some of the worst, darkest decisions of our entire lives. But Nico always came out of that darkness with his head held high that he’d done the right thing.
