3. Alex

CHAPTER 3

God, it smells, I thought as I wrinkled my nose. Kase shifted slightly with his arm still draped across me, then turned his face away. I always thought that I had been so lucky that he chose me because I never thought I was someone that would end up with a guy like him. The first time I met him, his serious light brown eyes softened slightly when they locked on mine. He slowly slicked his messy black hair back with his hand, and his lips curved up into a smile. I remember looking to my left and right. Behind me, then in front of me, so sure that he had been looking at someone else. Then when he started to make his way toward me, the smile still on his boyish, handsome face, skin as white as pallor and as smooth as porcelain, his eyes still locked on mine, I knew that he had picked me. Out of all the women gathered at Club Escape that night, desperately trying to get the attention of men, writhing against their bodies as the music pulsated through the dance floor. He had picked me.

The following days were a haze of lust, the high life, and being made to feel like the only girl in the world. He spoiled me rotten with his affection until lust finally turned to love. Mine, not his. Kase Stokes never loved anyone but himself, though some nights as he lay sleeping next to me, I liked to pretend that he did. And that it was me that he loved most of all.

More than himself.

More than money.

More than his father.

Until she came.

Until he started to treat her the same way, he treated me when he first chose me to be his. I hated him for it, but I hated her even more, so I changed his mind. I knew that Kase had a plan because he told me about it in a moment of rage. Apparently, the whore's father had caused some kind of business merger to go south, causing his father's life to be put on the line by people that he answered to. Men who belonged to a dangerous organization of criminals that didn't like to lose, as he put it. No matter how desperately he wanted to be just like those men, he always had a crack in his armor, and his soft heart sometimes beat through it. At first, she was nothing more than a chore to house. She was made to keep the house clean, cook the meals, sleep outside in a shed that was barely standing, and was never left inside longer than her duties required.

I think it was the night that he stood in the bedroom window, jaw tightened so much I was afraid that he'd break his teeth, that he heard her crying outside. She was under our window, pulling weeds from the garden because I had ordered her to do so. Her hands were bloodied, scraped, and bruised, and I told her not to stop until the entire yard had been weeded. I didn't care that she was tired and desperate for sleep. Kase had been the same way since his father had been killed.

But then I noticed, he wasn't sticking to his plan to use and destroy her, and I had to remind him of what her father had done to his family. His father's death led to his mother's suicide. His father's death led to his brother getting hooked on drugs and overdosing. His father's death made him an orphan at sixteen years old, and someone had to pay the price. And even though he had suffered so many fucking losses, I couldn't help but think that they all led him to me.

Where he always belonged, I thought as I glanced at him. A soft sigh escaped Kase as he smacked his lips together in his sleep, causing me to smile. It was his little quirks that made me love him so damn much, and I wondered if I would ever have one of my own that would finally root his soul to mine. I reached over and gently caressed his hair until he fell soundly back to sleep again, thinking of the stinking bitch beneath us. She was his enemy—our enemy—and I was going to make damn sure that he remembered that when the sun rose in the morning.