Page 2 of Crazy Rich Monsters (Necessary Evils 1)

My heart races, threatening to beat out of my chest. My breathing becomes hitched, the telling signs that a panic attack is imminent. My temperature rises, the hoodie I’m wearing for a fleeting feeling of anonymity now becoming a furnace that threatens to roast me alive. I force my eyes to a close and work to calm myself down by taking long, shallow breaths.

The darkness behind closed eyes is my safe place. It’s where I can pretend that I’m not sitting in a bar that’s right down the beach from where I killed that boy. It’s where I can see my father, smiling like he always did. When I open my eyes again, I still see him, standing behind the bar in jeans and a rolled-up denim button up. I was always his little girl, and he was always my guardian, in both life and death. He’s the angel watching over me and it offers the smallest bit of comfort until I realize the truth.

The irrevocable truth.

It can’t be changed or erased.

And the truth is that when I killed that boy, my father was watching over me.

And I wonder if he’d look at me the same way everyone else did, the same way everyone still does. I wonder if he’d have that same look of shame or fear in his eyes. It’s always on my mind, the idea that if he was still alive, that things would be different.

All I know is that I wouldn’t have been with Carter Calloway on the beach that night and he’d still be alive.

ChapterTwo

NICK

I’d recognize that face anywhere. It’s unmistakable. She’s sitting at the bar, a hoodie cropped over her head with mid-length dark brown hair spilling out the sides of the hood.

She’d be too easy to mistake for a criminal, out of place and on the run. A glass of whiskey neat sits neglected in front of her. She wants to indulge, but there’s something else on her mind, something occupying the part of the brain that tells her to lift the glass to her lips.

Could be guilt, could be something far more sinister. It’s impossible to navigate the mind of a killer when you’re not a killer yourself. I could be though, if pushed too far by the right person or as an act of revenge to punish those who’ve hurt the people I love.

I’m a fighter.

Not a lover.

She cocks her head over one shoulder, her gaze searching the room. This is the last place she wants to be. Her fingers dance around the rim of the glass, flirting with taking a quick sip or shooting the entirety in one go. She chooses the latter, throwing her head back in a quick flash, the whiskey swimming down the back of her throat. I’m mesmerized, my focus shattering when she slams the glass back down onto the counter. She drags the back of her hoodie-covered hand across her lips, wiping away the remnants of alcohol.

And then she looks my way, stares me straight into the eyes. She’s caught me watching her. The way she looks at me in short flashes tells me that she doesn’t know who I am. If she knew, her gaze would linger a little too long, as if the guilt was eating her alive. Her mind would be reeling, trying to figure out if I knew who she was. Her stomach would sink, her throat would tense. A part of me wants to walk straight up to her and greet her with a welcoming smile, a shake of my hand, and the words, “Hi, Addison. I’m Nick Calloway and I’m pretty sure you killed my brother.”

That’s too direct. I wager she wouldn’t even make enough of a scene to elicit the reaction I crave. She’s simply stumbling over her own clumsiness on her way out the door, not able to get away from the ghost of my family fast enough. She doesn’t know me, at least I don’t think she does. Surely, she knows Carter had an older brother, but God knows she can’t match a face to a name because otherwise, she’d already be out the door. She has to know that some people want to watch her suffer.

It’d serve her right.

Everyone knows what she did.

Nobody has proof.

But what kind of girl just skips out of town without saying goodbye two weeks after letting everyone know that some guy died saving her worthless life? Carter wasn’t selfless. He was the exact opposite. He was selfish. He was a fucking prick and there’s no way in hell he’d sacrifice his life for some Montauk trash. He was my brother, and I knew him better than anyone on this earth.

There’s something fishy about why she left. I’m going to get to the bottom of that mystery first, and then I’m going to figure out why the hell she’s back in town, and then I just might fuck her until she sees the same stars my brother saw as he gasped his last breaths that fateful night four years ago.

She’s pretty enough, her sexiness gifted by the exotic way her bones frame her face. Her eyes are small, her nose too, but her lying lips could wrap snugly enough around a cock. It’s a thought–-those lips on my dick–that forces my cock to twitch against denim.

It can’t be natural to hunger for the girl that killed your brother, but I’m not normal. Not anymore. Not since I got the call that my brother was dead. I was passed out, my naked body tangled with a co-ed in a too-expensive hotel room, when the phone rang. It took everything in me to peel open heavy eyes from a night of binge-drinking and drugs. I was so fucking gone that I couldn’t even cry. And now I’m sitting in a bar craving the feeling of my cock buried deep in the twat of the girl that killed him.

Fucking hell, I could use a drink, but I can’t be bothered to open a tab.

Addison slaps some cash onto the bar before whisking herself out the front door, as if she’s realized who I am, as if she can’t get away from me fast enough. I take a glance around the bar. Nobody paid much attention to her leaving. She’s forgettable and uninteresting to most. Nobody seems to be paying much attention to me either. I could follow her straight out that door, creep up on her, and choke her to death. I could drop her cold body into the cruel, crashing waves of the sea and nobody would be any the wiser. That’s what some people say she did to Carter. I could do all that and more, but I’m more interested in torturing her first.

I want to dig the figurative knife deep into her chest and twist. I want her heart to bleed. There’s no suffering in death. Remorse is felt the sharpest when we’re forced to live with our sins. I can live with mine. Can she live with hers? She’s surviving so far, the weight of that guilt hunkering over her, weighing her shoulders down. She should really work on her damn posture.

I take measure of the people in the bar. They don’t seem to notice me, either. People in Montauk have a weird habit of minding their own business. It’s not the same from where I’m from, just up the shore. In the Hamptons proper, you can’t walk around without the invasive, uncomfortable feeling of someone’s nose in your asshole.

It’s good that nobody notices me, and I say that as a man that likes to be noticed. Women flock to me, wanting a taste of Hamptons royalty. Most of them are interested in one thing and one thing only. Money. Without the trust fund, I’d just be another meaty jock. Women would still be lining up to suck my cock, they just wouldn’t be sticking around long enough in hopes that I’ll stick a ring on their finger.

Nobody in this trashy bar watches as I depart. They don’t even bat an eye at a strange man dressed in a grey hoodie chasing a fragile woman out the front door. There would be no witnesses, nobody to report the facts to the police. I’d wager there wouldn’t even be surveillance footage.

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