He crossed his arms in front of him. “I didn’t earn the title until much later, but our relationship began when we were thirteen.”
Thirteen.
“You met at camp.”
His lips curled with disgust. “Yes. A camp designed to purge the wickedness from our souls. Most kids got a summer filled with swimming, hiking, and praying, but the reverend always chose one or two special girls whom he felt needed more of his attention.”
“What did he do to them?”
“Whatever he wanted.” He played with the knife, unfolding it and then folding it, over and over, the clicking sound of it making her jump. “Then he’d blame the demon temptress inside her for enticing him to sin.”
She tried to ignore the subtle threat of the knife and trained her eyes on his face. “He molested Alyssa and beat her?”
He dropped his hands to his sides and clenched his fists. “After he raped her, he’d chain her to the floor and make her kneel as he eulogized for hours. He brainwashed her into believing it was her fault.”
“How did you get involved?” she asked gently, hoping to soothe him with her voice.
“I found her crying hysterically on the docks one day, and nothing I said got through to her until I slapped her across her face. She calmed and thanked me for it. I tried to get her to tell me what was wrong, but she refused.” He spoke matter-of-factly. “After that day, she sought me out almost daily and asked me to hit her. At first I was horrified. I was a thirteen-year-old kid. I’d been taught to never lay a hand on a girl. But she needed it so badly from me. It was a heady feeling to be her hero. We decided spankings would work best since she could hide the bruises. By the end of the summer, I was using a switch I’d carved from a branch.”
She eyed the room, looking for another way out. She couldn’t remember. Was there a window in the bathroom? “When did she tell you she’d been raped?”
He took a few steps toward her, still blocking the exit. “Not until a couple years later when we ran into each other at a party. As soon as she got home from camp, she told her parents about the rape, and instead of supporting her, they took the reverend’s side. When I ran into her at the party, she was high on cocaine and dancing half-naked on the couch to a room full of teenage boys. I grabbed her and took her to one of the bedrooms where I punished her for her behavior. That’s when I became her Master and got her off the drugs. When she needed it, I’d beat her.”
“Were you lovers?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“Never?”
He smiled, a stark contrast to the rigidness of his body and the knife in his hand. “Not once. It was never about sex for us. I was the only person in the world she could rely on.”
It didn’t make sense. If he’d truly cared about her, why hadn’t he gotten her to report the rapes to the police or explained to her parents that she’d been telling the truth about Reverend Pierce? It was as if he’d enjoyed her dependency on him.
She swallowed, her throat so dry it felt as though she’d walked through a desert. “Why Jaxon? Why did you have them meet?”
He shrugged, still playing with that damned knife, almost as if he were doing it unconsciously. “I loved her. She deserved a man who’d take care of all of her needs, sexual and otherwise. When I met Jaxon, I recognized the dominance in him. I liked him. He became my best friend, and I wanted good things for him. Alyssa was wealthy, beautiful, and submissive. She was perfect for him. Once he took over as her Dom, I removed my collar.”
Which was why Alyssa still wore it in the picture. She’d hid her submissive nature from Jaxon until he’d broken up with her. Only then had she come to him with the paddle, asking him to hit her. Nick had manipulated Jaxon’s life. What kind of a friend did that?
She trembled, her fingers digging into the leather of her purse. “If you loved her, why did you kill her?”
He stalked to her, and she instinctively backed up, only stopping when her legs hit the bed. “It was a mercy killing. She wanted to die.”
She sucked in a breath, aware of the knife, which was now only inches away from her. “And you just decided to set up Joseph for it?”
Nick’s eyes bulged, and his skin turned red from rage. “Joseph deserved to be punished for killing Stephanie.”
“That’s how you got your internship back. How you became a senior partner so quickly. You blackmailed him with that videotape the police found in Miles Joseph’s storage locker.”
He tsked. “Kate, come on. You should know better. That was my storage locker.” He laughed, the sound of it frightening her almost more than the knife. “You can always count on the police to take everything at face value. Thanks to your search of Joseph’s office, they found everything they needed to wrap up two murder cases, and with today’s election looming like a dark storm cloud over District Attorney Savage’s head, there wasn’t a chance in hell he’d do anything to jeopardize his perceived success. But to answer your question, yes, that videotape forced Joseph to reinstate my internship.” He clenched his jaw and his eyes narrowed. “I. Deserved. It.”