Once You’re Mine: Chapter 7

Back in my penthouse, far from the delectable Miss Green, I pour myself a glass of cognac. The alcohol goes down smoothly. Unlike my cock.

It’s still hard from watching my target.

That made the trek home irritating.

I scrub my jaw and blow out a breath as if that’ll relieve me. It doesn’t. There’s nothing equal to the sweet cunt of a woman.

If I don’t distract myself, I’ll end up jacking off to the image of Miss Green. The woman has invaded my mind enough as it is. I don’t want to give her more control over me.

After retrieving the hard drive from my coat pocket, I head to my office and sit at my desk. My computer screen flares to life with a keystroke. When I insert the USB, anticipation slithers over my skin, making it itch.

The opportunity to learn more about Miss Green is a temptation I’ve never been able to walk away from.

I grip the mouse, my fingers tight with my excitement, and click on the files under “Calista Green.”

Each one contains a bunch of notes pertaining to different parts of Senator Eric Green’s life. Political, personal, sexual, etc… it’s all there. Along with his trial, eventual murder, and everyone in his life.

Kristen Hall, his secretary.

Just reading her name has the need for violence flaring in my gut. Senator Green killed her. The evidence was there, a low-hanging fruit, ripe and ready to be picked. The woman was found dead in the senator’s house, on his bed, and pregnant with his child for fuck’s sake.

My case was solid.

Yet Green was acquitted.

Despite the overwhelming evidence, the justice system failed me. Therefore, I took the law into my own hands. Kristen Hall deserved to be avenged.

“May you have more peace in the afterlife than you did in this life.”

I lift my glass in salute and down the contents before setting it on my desk. The burning in my chest is welcome, a reminder that I’m alive and the senator is dead. I’m the person who won in the end. No thanks to Robert Davis.

As the senator’s campaign manager, and alibi, he made sure the senator was found innocent when the jury believed him. However, Davis was lying. I knew it that day as surely as I knew my own name. Which is why I visited him privately in the middle of the night.

It’s amazing what people will admit to when you put a gun to their head.

“Tell me what I want to know, and I won’t blow your fucking brains out,” I say. I press the nozzle of the gun into the man’s temple, and he flinches, his tears falling faster, mixing with the sweat trailing down his face. Davis mumbles something unintelligible, and my mouth thins behind my mask. “This isn’t going to work if I can’t understand you.”

“Before he left, the senator was with me that night,” Davis says, his voice quaking like his entire body. The tremors snake along my fingers where I grip him by the throat with his back facing me. “I swear on my mother’s life.”

“What about the daughter?”

“He was with Calista like she said. Her testimony was truthful. She was baking in the kitchen at the shelter where she volunteers every week. For some reason, she felt sick and passed out. When she came to, she called her father for help. That’s where he was at the time of Kristen’s murder.” Davis releases a sob. “That’s all I know.”

I scrub my jaw and blow out a breath. “Calista fucking Green.”

The vision of her races to the forefront of my mind, providing an image of the woman who haunts me every minute of every day. She was beautiful on the stand, a constant distraction that I couldn’t master, regardless of my efforts. As much as I hated to admit it, her testimony as an alibi also fucked me.

I scroll further down the document, my eyes absorbing the words at a rapid pace. The information in front of me is nothing I haven’t already come across. My exhale is loud in the quiet, but disappointment screams within me, demanding answers.

There are none.

However, there’s an image nestled within the file. Although I doubt the questions in my mind can be satisfied by a mere picture, I click on the icon, unable to stifle my curiosity.

Miss Green’s beautiful face fills the screen. In it, she gazes straight at the camera, her expression defeated and vulnerable. However, it’s her eyes that cause a pang to streak through my chest. The hazel within is lackluster and haunted. The ember within carries none of the light or fire that I’m used to seeing. There is one emotion present: stark terror.

My gaze drifts over her features as I search for clues for her stricken expression. The bruises on her throat have the hairs on the back of my neck rising. Splotches of blue and purple are spread across her delicate skin, nature’s temporary tattoos.

Put there by a man’s hands.

Ideas begin to take shape. Pressure builds inside my head as my thoughts trample each other, trying to make sense of what this means. The meta data on the image puts the date and time on the night of Ms. Hall’s murder. Senator Green’s hand, discernible by the Ivy League class ring on his ring finger, was the one holding Calista’s hair back so the bruises could be visible in the photo. He was with his daughter that evening, documenting everything. What happened?

Miss Green is definitely keeping secrets.

This raises more questions: who’s the motherfucker that attacked her? And why?

My intuition nagged at me all throughout the trial, bringing my focus to Miss Green again and again. I’d thought it was due to the fact she was fucking gorgeous. Now I know it’s because there’s more to her story than she told in court.

If her alibi was real, then I killed an innocent man.

“Fucking damn it!”

I reach for the tumbler, my fingers trembling with my rage, right before I hurl it across the room. The high-pitched sound of the glass shattering and the shards hitting the floor barely penetrate my consciousness. How can it when my soul is twisting with the injustice I committed? My moral code is one of the few things I value, and I fucked it up.

I only have myself to blame.

After pulling my cell phone from my pocket, I call the hacker on my payroll, who picks up on the second ring. “Yo, boss man. What can I do for you?” Zack asks.

“I need you to look into something for me. Calista Green might’ve been taken to a hospital on June 24th, and I want to know why and for how long.”

“Sure thing. You want me to call you back?”

“I’ll hold.”

The sound of Zack’s fingers striking the keyboard has me gritting my teeth. Patience is something I’ve exercised every day of my life, but for some reason it eludes me in this moment. Perhaps it’s the foreboding that looms at the edges of my psyche. Or maybe I’m a paranoid fuck.

Whatever the reason, my rage is barely contained.

“Anything yet?”

“No,” Zack says, sounding distracted. “You’re not going to believe this, but I can’t find anything.”

“You can’t find anything?”

Zack releases a sigh. “I know, right? Either this event never happened, or someone covered their tracks so well that I’ll have to dig a lot deeper. That’ll take me some time, assuming I can find it.”

“Keep searching. If you find anything, no matter how insignificant, call me immediately.”

“You got it, el jefe.”

I end the call, my fingers gripping my phone so tightly the plastic elicits a creaking noise. There’s a nagging doubt in my mind that Zack might not find what I’m looking for. And if he does, I’m not sure how long it’ll take him.

Am I willing to wait?

Or should I break my rule and go straight to the source?

I’ve already fucked up my code of ethics, so why not continue to spiral downward into a pit of self-loathing? I release a sardonic laugh, the sound mocking me. The irony of it all makes me want to kill someone.

In the name of revenge.

How can I avenge Miss Green if I’m the cause of her heartache?

Her face rises to the forefront of my mind. Except in my mind’s eyes, she’s her normal self, not the battered woman from the picture. I can’t think about that image without the need for bloodshed. Now, in my fantasy, her hazel eyes are like a beacon of light, the pureness of her soul radiating outward, so contrary to the darkness found in me. I’ve finally recognized this is one of the things that draws me to her.

I suppose opposites attract. A principle in magnetism. Except I should be repelled by her, not wanting to get closer. But I have to.

Even if it ends with her broken.