Page 15 of Merciless Wager
It dawned on me that he had to have looked into my cell phone. The invasion of privacy only irritated me more. I couldn’t wait to watch this bastard being led away in handcuffs and thrown into a cell where he belonged. I was getting ahead of myself, so I forced my thoughts to stay focused.
“My b-boyfriend, too. Drake was supposed to meet me last night, so he’s probably already?—”
“Smythe isn’t worried about you at all.”
“Of course he is. The two of us will one day be married,” I told him, even if Drake had yet to propose to me. It was certainly only a matter of time, but Zarren didn’t need to know otherwise.
“Is that right?” he asked, and the amusement on his face was something I wanted to desperately knock off him.
“Yes. We were supposed to leave last night for a romantic trip. If you think he’ll just forget that, then you don’t know him at all.”
Zarren advanced toward me and I took a step back. He then advanced and the cat-and-mouse routine lasted only a few more seconds. The moment the back of my legs hit the couch, I had to brace myself so I didn’t fall back onto it.
I remembered the feel of his body hovering over mine last night, and I did not want, or need, a repeat of that. Standing tall, I kept my small shoulders squared. He reached out, and I forced my body not to react the moment he stroked the side of my face. It was only when he dropped that large, calloused hand lower that my body tensed of its own volition.
“Or maybe you are the one who doesn’t know him at all, Bellezza.”
There was that word again. An endearment, I assumed. I focused less on it, however, and more on what he said right before it. “Of course I know, Drake.”
“So you’d know that he has been cheating on you for years.”
Before I even realized what I was doing, I slapped him. It made my palm sting, and while I wanted to shake my hand to alleviate the pain, my blow had done little to him. At least until I saw him wipe a droplet of blood off his lips.
He then brought that thumb to my cheek and swiped the bloody drop across it. “And you probably also know that he’d gone to enjoy the rest of last night with some dancers after he’d turned you over to me.”
“Y-you’re lying,” I said to him.
You have to be. Drake is a lot of things, and has done a lot of things, but this was too unfathomable. This man was lying. He had to be.
I refused to entertain anything else, so I tried to keep my cool, all while a small voice inside of me reminded me of the few times over the last two years that I’d had similar doubts about him. Nothing had ever been proven then, as I was sure it would not be now, either.
Aurora was trying her hardest to remain unaffected, but I saw a flicker or two of realization in her eyes as she briefly entertained that my words might be true. They were, and I had the evidence to prove it, but I knew she didn’t want to admit that she might’ve actually suspected something similar over the years.
True to what I was quickly realizing, she huffed softly. “You’re lying, and I won’t stand here and listen to?—”
“I did say a picture was worth a thousand words.” As she stared up at me with a stupefied expression, I retrieved my cell phone from my pocket, then pulled up a photograph of her precious Drake on Halloween night with another woman.
I’d been watching her for a few weeks as I’d tried to come up with a foolproof way to get my hands on her, and in doing so, I’d anticipated having to show her the truth about her life at some point. As I stared down at the redhead in a French maid’s outfit, I held my cell phone up to her, but not close enough to where she could grab it.
She turned her head with such irritation, then gasped as she stared at the picture of the redhead riding her boyfriend, or wanna be fiancé. Her bottom lip slightly quivered as she was presented with the proof. It was a similar look that others would have once they were taken prisoner and thrown into a Brannington dungeon.
Her head shook slightly, and the moment she went to touch my cell phone, I pulled it back out of her reach. She stared up at me with wounded, but not broken eyes.
“That could’ve been doctored. There’s no way Brae would ever have sex with him. She doesn’t even like him.”
Brae, as in Braelynn. The girl was supposed to be Aurora’s best friend, but with ones like that, who needed enemies.
“You don’t have to like someone to have sex, Aurora,” I pointed out to her.
“Yes, you do because?—”
“I’d fuck you where we stand, audience included, and I don’t like you. And on the contrary, you’d ride my fucking cock while not liking me. But, I digress...” I said and returned to my cell phone as she stared open-mouthed at me.
I flipped to another picture, this time from the strip club Drake often frequented. It wasn’t one of the more exclusive ones, and, in fact, was even located outside the city limits. It allowed a lot more than most clubs did, and when she seemed unaffected by that, I flipped to the next, which happened to be a video.
I’d watched the various video clips quite a few times, which was the reason I knew Drake would allow Aurora to be used as a chip during that poker game. He might’ve cared about her, but he certainly didn’t love her. If he had, he wouldn’t have had one dancer on her knees between his legs as she sucked him off and another grinding bottomless against his mouth.
The quivering of those fuckable lips increased, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she started to cry. To her credit, she didn’t.Instead, she turned away from it and stared angrily at me. The look in her eyes betrayed the “I don’t believe you” energy she was trying her hardest to put off.
