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“Yeah,” I answered, rubbing a hand over my face. Images of Amberlea and Faelea smiling and laughing flittered through my mind. I was determined to keep them close to warm me during a cold night.
“Should have kicked her ass harder,” Amberlea grumbled, and I stared in shock. Laughter spilt from my lips at the completely disgruntled look on Amberlea’s face.
“Well, jailbird, you certainly learned to kick someone’s butt inside,” Axel boomed from across the room. “Next time, can you wear a bikini and get a mud pit?”
He grunted as Ellen slapped him around the back of the head.
“Sorry, but it had to be said,” Axel retorted as we laughed.
“We need to talk,” I stated to Amberlea, and she nodded. Her confidence faded, and she looked frightened by what she might hear.
“I’ll tell you the truth. If you don’t like it, you can walk away. I promise I won’t hold you or Faelea captive.”
“That’s not your style, but yeah, I want honesty,” Amberlea said. She held my eyes and then walked towards the stairs leading to my room.
Amberlea
This could not be happening. That bitch’s words kept running through my head. Gauntlet had fucked his sister. Surely he hadn’t known about it. He couldn’t have. Even though I’d only known him a short while, I knew him, and to do something so bad wasn’t his style. I’d have to let him find his own way through this explanation and not interrupt, although I was burning with questions.
Faelea had been on the trip Phoe had organised. I’d have been horrified if she’d witnessed my lack of control. Yeah, I had kept my nose clean in prison, but Seraphine had ensured I could defend myself should I ever be cornered again. I owed that woman a lot.
Gauntlet opened his door, and I followed him inside and sat on the bed as he paced back and forth. He ran a hand over his face as he struggled to speak.
“Why not give me some background first?” I asked.
Gauntlet nodded.
“My parents were married and happy. Gran is Dad’s mom. When they died, Father owned his own business, which Gran sold and put the money aside for me with the fortune he’d already left. Dad’s will was clear. He named me as his sole heir, not his children but me. I often thought the wording had been strange, but at seventeen, losing my parents and moving to Grans, shit threw me. I wasn’t interested in what Dad had given me; I just wanted them back.”
“Get that,” I whispered, and I did. Even today, I missed my mother and father.
“When I was seventeen, I met Tinsley. And she was a horny seventeen-year-old boy’s dream. Slim, beautiful, everything a teenager craved. Tinsley and I quickly became a couple, and when I was nineteen, I was working and moved in with her. Then we bought a house, and she decorated with whatever she wanted. Looking back, I realise now that it had all been about her. Anything of mine had been put into storage. Tinsley was modelling the home around her taste.
“Which showed she did not plan to keep me long-term. Tinsley could kick me out and then not need to decorate. Slowly, over time, we started to grow apart. But she kept a tight leash on me. Now I can look back and realise she was manipulating and controlling me. As my only relationship, I didn’t have the experience to fall upon, so I thought everything was normal. Gran did not, but I wouldn’t listen. Tinsley had me by my cock.”
“Until?” I asked.
“Until I walked in and found my best friend giving it to her up the ass. Something that not even I’d done. From there, I realised what Tinsley wanted, and it wasn’t me. It was my inheritance. While we argued, I moved everything out of the account she had access to and back into mine. I left her money alone in there. My clothes all fit into one suitcase. Hers alone would have taken five.
“I grabbed my personal pictures and a few knickknacks and walked away. But that wasn’t the last of it from her. It was a few days later, the cops found me at work and asked me to accompany them to the station. I’d no clue what for. The detective was a complete asshole until he realised I had truly no idea what was happening. Tinsley had applied to the courts for us to get married but forged some documents concerning her.
“I’d taken the documents with me when I left because I thought Tinsley might try to sue me for breach of contract. That was when he hit me with the truth. The judge had noted the documents were false and contacted the police. Dad had been married before, briefly, and a child had been born. He’d tried to get custody and then tried to get contact, but the woman who had his kid disappeared.
“Dad was heartbroken and finally moved on with my mom. That all made sense because I remember my father being paranoid about my whereabouts. Poor fucker was frightened someone would take me away from him too. However, this other lady and her daughter had learned Dad had died and got hold of a copy of the will. When they realised it was rock solid; they came up with another way to get the money….” Gauntlet broke off and heaved a huge sigh.
“By seducing you?” I asked, feeling sick.
“Yeah. My own half-sister inserted herself into my life with the sole intent of fucking my brains out to get a hold of what she thought was hers. That bitch organised everything down to the last detail, even marrying me. She planned to marry me at twenty-three, which means we’d have been together six years. Cleverly, Tinsley planned to wait three years after we married before I died in an ‘accident’ planned by her when I turned twenty-six. That meant people wouldn’t look too closely at her.
“After all, she’d have been with me for nine years before my death and then a year after my passing. What’s to look at? Killing me after being together nine years wouldn’t look like she was after my money. If I hadn’t walked in on her boning my best friend, I’d have stayed with her oblivious. Tinsley tried claiming I’d known, but evidence pointed the other way. Worse, she had been poisoning me slowly with low doses just to cover her tracks, so when I took a huge overdose, well, it would have been in my system.
“Luckily for me, the court ordered a lockdown on my identity. Otherwise, my face would have been splashed across the papers. But the story made nationwide news. He’d organised my protection because when it started, I was a minor, and then the hate mail began flooding in. The judge said I was enough of a victim without my identity being known. He was a decent guy, in truth.”
“Oh, Gauntlet,” I replied with a wealth of empathy in my voice. My poor broken man. And that damn bitch.
“Nobody has any idea how it feels to know you fucked your own sister. That whore destroyed my faith in people, and I wandered for a while and stuck to Gran. Then I came across Rage and applied. I liked the fact it was about brotherhood, and women did not get a say in their life. Of course, I know different now, but at the time, I needed that. I came clean to Drake because he told me they’d run backgrounds. He listened, didn’t judge, and I became a candidate.”
Gauntlet shuffled his feet and looked uncomfortable.
