Page 88 of Voracious

“Awesome,” I mutter under my breath, but when a sting hits my cheek, I grit my teeth and count to three. No, ten, until I look up at the wanker who just slapped me. “One day, I’m going to rip that moustache off and scrub the ground with your fucking face.”

“Keep threatening me and you’ll see what happens.”

I spit at his feet.

Archie tries to come for me but his wife puts her hand out – him being the little bitch he is, he halts and scowls at me as he hands Bernie a few folders. “Your days are numbered, kid.”

She shakes her head. “Enough. Both of you.”

I’d snap him with one hand if he wasn’t such a threat. I wouldn’t even need to open my eyes while I dislocated his spinal cord from his fucking brain, ripped the spine out and shoved it down his wife’s throat until she choked and died.

The image in my head is a dream.

Bernie stares at me. Cassie looks on the verge of a mental breakdown.

“I don’t know what you want me to say. Congrats on getting that info, but it still means nothing to me.”

With narrowing eyes, Bernie gently opens the first folder and tosses the contents one by one to the floor at my feet. “Someone by the name of Christopher Fields tried to hack into our systems, and my team backfired it and downloaded some of his files. Pictures, videos, you name it. Very incriminating.”

I look down, and my lungs stop working. In front of me, there are images of Stacey. Some of her sleeping in bed, eating at the dining table, scowling at the camera as she pulls down her underwear. There are also some of her out in a club, sitting on a guy’s lap.

He seems familiar, but the pictures aren’t clear enough.

She doesn’t look happy in any of them, and once Bernie opens the second folder, I try not to burst out of my cuffs and wreck the place.

Screengrabs from CCTV footage show the guy punching her across the face, both her hands up to try to protect herself. She’s wearing a Guns N’ Roses top she used to wear when we were together, and her hair is a lot shorter.

Another is him slamming a car door on her arm, then one of him yelling at her in public and gripping her hand so hard she’s wincing in the picture.

Pictures of her everywhere.

Swimming in their pool. Sunbathing. Crying. Covered in blood. Practising her dance routine in their ballroom.

There are images of the guy forcing pills into her mouth. Drinks. And making her dance in the club for him. And as my eyes land on the last picture, him gripping her face in a close-up, her nose bleeding and eye swollen, I notice him.

I pull so hard at my cuffs, my skin splits.

He’s the one that tried to get her out of the manor months ago. He was sparkled at my gate and told her to go home. The same fucking prick who was at the party – he sold her to those guys and slipped her the blade.

He’s her stepbrother. He’s Christopher Fields.

She tried to tell me about him, and I walked away.

“This isn’t half of the stuff we found between the two.”

My throat tightens. “There’s more?” I shouldn’t be asking, or even conversing with Bernadette, but I need to know more. It seems that after we split up, Stacey’s abuse escalated.

Bernie smirks at my anger, but I grit out, “Fucking tell me.”

“Stacey Rhodes was your girlfriend. She was the one you were with in America. She was the one you fucked behind the club and then again on the bike. She was the one you rushed out of the country. She cheated on you, am I right? From the information I’ve gathered, that’s why you split up.”

I pale.

She chuckles.

“I don’t find this fucking funny.”

I need Stacey to get the fuck out of town – and fast. If I wasn’t cuffed, I’d stab Bernadette in the eye with a pen and take her gun to shoot my way out of here.

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