Veiled Obsession(35)

“Who?” I managed to let out.

“Thought you’d never ask.” He stood behind me, too close.

One woman? A whole wall for just one woman? The longer I looked at the individual photos of a beautiful brunette with what seemed to be waist-length hair and a spattering of freckles on her nose, the bright blue eyes. In all the photos she wore a silver necklace with what looked to be a diamond infinity pendant.

She looked familiar. And her presence was so strong she could have been in the room. Then it clicked. In a way, she was.

“That’s the bitch that left me first.”





CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

I used the back of my hand to wipe the blurring from my eyes. “Your … your mother.” She had to be. Jude had inherited so many of her almost exotic features.

“That’s right. The whore ran off with her pimp. Didn’t care where I ended up, whether I went to bed hungry or slept in rat-infested beds. She never gave a fuck what anyone did to me.”

“I’m sorry.” A vision of Jude as a scared small boy appeared in my mind. I now understood where his obsession that drove him to hold on to someone he loved came from. “Did you see her again?” I wanted to know. Jude had never talked about his family before. Ever. And he had never shown me photos of them, saying they were all dead and he didn’t feel the need to talk about them.

He stepped closer to my back and whispered into my ear. “When the little coward boy finally grew up and lifted himself out of poverty, he went on the search for her.”

I turned to him, feigning sympathy. He must have had a crappy childhood, but after what he did to me, I couldn’t care less. But I had to pretend to care, to understand him. “You found her?”

He grinned and his face suddenly brightened. For a flash of a second, he was the handsome man I had married again. “Yes, I found her all right.” He smirked. “Then I killed the bitch.”

Bile shot up my throat and, before I could stop it, exploded out of my mouth and splashed all over the front of the shirt, the wall and the floor.

I whirled around to face him, a string of fear running down my spine. “Sor …” I retched again and this time the vomit landed on his shoes.

“Fuck,” he said and pushed me away and shook his feet, trying to rid them of the yellow liquid. The stench swirled around us like an unwelcome scent. “Look what you’ve done.” For a moment, I thought he was going to strike me, but he didn’t.

Instead he moved on to another wall.

“Come and see this.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out something resembling a small remote control. He pointed it to another wall and what seemed to be two white sheets parted in the middle and slid open, revealing more photos of his mother. “What are you waiting for?”

My whole body was still trembling, fear swirling around in my body. I couldn’t get the words he’d just said out of my mind. He had killed his mother? Was it the truth or was he just trying to scare me? I moved over to where he stood and forced myself to look.

This was another woman who looked very much like his mother. As she smiled into the camera, her blue eyes twinkled.

“This,” Jude traced a finger along a photo of the woman on the beach, the wind blowing her hair across her shoulders. “This is the second whore that tried to leave me.”

I blinked, dreaded his next words. My whole body was numb.

“This is Lorea, my first wife.” He turned and was obviously pleased to see the surprise on my face. “Yes, darling, there was someone before you.”

As I digested the information that my husband had been married before and didn’t think it important to tell me, he spun around to the wall again and punched it, punched her straight in the face. “After five years of marriage, the bitch tried to run off with another man.” He laughed again, shaking his head. “Her reason for running was the same lie you told me. She was afraid of me. After everything I did for her, after all the love I showered her with.” He rubbed the knuckles of his hand. “Just like you.”

“Oh my God.” I shook my head slowly, ignoring the headache creeping up on me. “What did you do, Jude?”

He breathed in and out, his shoulders rising and falling. “I did what I had to do. No one leaves me. Anyone who tries ends up six feet under.”

I crumbled then, dropped to the floor, my knees hitting the wood. My body folded as I wept. What had I gotten myself into? Why did I have to end up in a murderer’s path? He let me cry until I was exhausted and empty. Then I saw his vomit-stained feet come to stand in front of me. I looked up. A smile had softened his face.