Page 72 of Romeo
Deacon flew back as his chains rattled. He landed on his back on the hardwood floor.
Tito and Rocky did not immediately react as they stared down at the man on the floor.
Logan again turned and went over to sit in his chair.
Liv stood next to him and rubbed his shoulder consolingly as she slowly shook her head.
Laughter rolled out from Deacon as he still laid on the floor.
We all whipped our gazes back over to him.
The man just got punched in the face and he was laughing?
Chapter Nineteen:Jealousy And Lies
Romeo
“Well, I am damned proud of you, Logan,” Deacon stated as he chuckled. “You stepped up and showed me, didn’t you? But I can’t blame either one of you,” he nearly chortled the words. “We three were best friends for almost four years. We partied together. Studied together. Survived many cramming sessions for finals and classes together. I mean I helped you to rehearse your marriage proposal, Logan. I was gonna be your best man. All while I virtually spied on you and finally broke you two apart. Then…” He sat up and swiped the blood from his lip to continue, “I foiled your little undercover gig at that strip club a few months back. I have to admit it Liv, you rocked it in those sexy outfits. And Logan as a bouncer? Priceless! I watched you on those cameras. Man, were you fighting the hots for each other while you were undercover in that club.” He tisked. “But Liv just couldn’t forgive you for dumping her all those years ago, Logan. You were hot together though. I admit it. But in the end… I fooled you all over again! The best the CIA has in Liv and the best Tech Marine of all time in Logan!” He actually laughed hard until tears leaked from his eyes. Then he suddenly stopped and stared at them. His amusement instantly gone, as he spoke in a hard, quiet tone, “And no matter how much time goes by, you can’t reverse any of it. You will never get those years apart back. I won, you lost.”
I raised my brows at his diatribe. Ok, I could see it now. The answer to my previous questions. He was a sociopath, exactly as the Walkers had described. His feelings weren’t based on normal things. He also harbored a lot of resentment for them.He exuded bitterness, despite the mocking devil-may-care act he used to cover it.
“So you were jealous?” Julianna asked.
Blinking in confusion, Deacon peered up at her from his place on the floor.
Everyone in the room looked over at her now.
“You heard me.” She nodded her head at Deacon. “Call me an amateur shrink, if you will.” She shrugged. “It’s a hobby that comes in handy for some cases I take on. But I see it now. At first, I just couldn’t figure you out. You seem so unbothered by all of this. All the crimes you committed. All while you think it’s funny. Then I saw it. It is that little green monster that grew to be a giant hideous green freak namedJealousy. You resented the fact that they all grew up together while you were mostly alone. They had a childhood together. Good times I’ll bet. All while you had no real family.” I looked over at my twin. “So O got you a sister. But still, that wasn’t good enough for you. No. You wanted what you were robbed of. An inheritance of belonging somewhere with family, love, acceptance and a sense of belonging. None of which you ever experienced. You hate them because you did not have what they took for granted.”
Damn, my woman was smart. I hid my smirk and my father failed to hide his, as he snort-laughed. He’d already thought Julianna was clever and quick.
Deacon scoffed as he slowly stood from the floor while rattling his chains. “You don’t know what you're talking about, Ms. Regatta.”
“Don’t I?” she went on, “You wanted to destroy them, their home, their lives. Even their relationships. Just like your mother wanted to do in her own warped world. You inherited her disposition and her sickness apparently. Being overlooked, kicked to the curb. Losing family and your place in life. Itmust have been torturous at times and very lonely as well. So you willingly followed your mother’s instructions. You hated the Walkers as much as she did.”
His eyes seemed to change as he stared at her. They turned to a steely color as his entire expression turned to stone. “Yes! I hate them,” he blurted as his careless demeanour completely fell away. “All of them think they’re better at everything. Then all of the Louisiana Walkers just crumbled after their father died. They walked away from their home, from their own mother. They had all that history and family. But they just threw it away.”
“Because of your mother!” Liv exclaimed. “She murdered our dad!”
“Yeah, that was her best work, I think,” he said as he actually glorified her horrendous crimes. “She was handy with a knife. And no one ever suspected her for his murder. Why? Because the official record had her dead already in that house fire. You gotta admit, she was a mastermind.”
“I don’t understand,” Valencia finally spoke up. “Are you saying that my moth—that O was never raped?”
We all stared at her.
“What?” Jarret asked her as he looked entirely confused.
“When she was a teen, your brother raped her. Liv’s father, Jacob.” Valencia got tears in her eyes and went on to explain, “Then he denied it and got with Bea. She had to keep quiet about what he did to her because he threatened her life. He had gotten her pregnant and when she told him about it, he beat her so badly one night that she lost the baby. She told him that was it, she was gonna warn her sister Bea about him. Then he set her bed on fire while she had been sleeping, so he could get rid of her and that was where she got her scars. You know the ones on her face. She told me that he was an evil man and he got away with it all. Her sister Bea never believed her. No one did. No onesupported her. So she finally moved away. But she never forgot and she did go back to get her revenge.”
The room went absolutely silent.
“All of that is lies.”
We turned our heads to the doorway, where the voice had come from.
Talon stood there and he glared at Deacon. “And he knows it. If anyone knows what O really did and what she was like…He does. As a child, she had been known to kill animals and she knocked a young boy out of a tree, killing him at ten years old. Just because she did not like him. She then burned her childhood house down at twelve while her little sister and her parents were inside asleep. She murdered Deacon’s father, burned him alive too as he slept and all the man had ever done wrong was that he wasn’t his brother Jacob. Olivia Claire only cared about herself. Her feelings were above everyone else's. What she wanted was the only thing that mattered and the lives of her family members didn’t matter at all. Years later, she murdered my father with a knife to his heart and took him from us. Because Jacob turned her down when she asked him to run away with her. There was no rape, no miscarried child, no burning bed, except the one she used to kill an innocent man.” He swung his glare over to V. “Nothing she told you was the truth or reality.”
“Except for the part about revenge,” Liv said. “She attacked, killed, framed, kidnapped anyone she hated. And she admitted most of this on tape. We have the proof. You heard what Rip told her in that video. She never denied any of it.”
