Free An Eye For An Eye (The Club #11) by M.C. Cerny Page B

trained to be.
    I rushed getting out of there hunting my target down. Sitting in my car now, Kenneth, rather Ken Halstad, the son of the man I’ve hated and have been hunting all these years is sitting at the outdoor café free as bird with no cares sipping his fucking coffee in the sunshine. He was going to pay, they all were eventually, but today I was going to begin fulfilling my obligation with this man first.

Eleven
     
    JUDE
     
    Ringing filled the silence as I reached a flopping hand outside the shelter of safe covers to shut it off.
    “What?” I answered the phone petulantly but I couldn’t stop smiling either. I finally had my mystery man and he was coming back later today.
    “Jude, oh my God!” Her voice instead turned my stomach to more sour and sobering things.
    “Ella?” I sit up amongst the pillowed down blankets hand chopping the fluffiness out of the way. Anger coursed through me in nuclear heatwaves.
    “I am so sorry. I…”
    Agitation coupled with dread fills me to the brink of overflowing. “No. No. We’re not doing this. We are not having this conversation like you didn’t do anything to put my safety in jeopardy last night.” I’m shaking and the cold feeling of being unable to trust is back again. 
    “Ken, he and I…”
    “I trusted you.” There was no amount of apologies that would fix what she did. I fooled around with Ella to forget about the man I didn’t know. I made a number of bad decisions, but you never knew when a bad decision in the moment would put you irrevocably in danger the way mine did. Lorand never forced me into anything I wasn’t comfortable doing. Sure, he played with me, but I consented and I craved having every part of him that he would give me. I would have offered myself up to be his sacrificial lamb without a second thought.
    It was all so–so very fucked up.
    “I broke that trust. I get it, but for what it’s worth, I am sorry. Nothing I do can fix this and I’m leaving town for a while. The shit Ken got me involved with is crazy.”
    “Well, if coming onto your best friend and taking her to a sex club to be a toy for a whack job without her knowledge isn’t bad…then color me stupid.” Her actions were pretty unforgivable.
    “I know you won’t forgive me, but I wanted to say I was sorry before I left. He said he wasn’t going to hurt you and I thought it would be us with him just watching or something. He said he was a voyeur, you know a watcher.”
    “Still fucking creepy, Ella.”
    “He told me to bring you because that’s all I talked about. He was jealous of my feelings for you.”
    “This isn’t about jealousy, or forgiveness, Ella, I feel sorry for you. I feel sorry that you felt breaking my trust was worth an ounce of his time. If you needed money, a place to stay, anything, I would have given it to you freely. Heck, I could have been into you, but this killed it completely.” I rubbed the flesh above my heart that ached from the betrayal. I would get over this eventually, but the hurt would take some time.
    “Jude?” Ella cried into the phone and I’m glad she didn’t just show up at my house while Lorand was here. There’s something about him that is dangerous and I didn’t know how he would have taken Ella’s apology, meaningless as it was to me.
    “Please don’t ever call me again.” I hit the end button on the phone as she cried and put it down on the nightstand.
    A shower would clear my head and help me with what to do next. Lorand and I had a lot to talk about and I wasn’t sure where to begin.
     
    * * * * *
     
    Stepping out of the shower, my phone was ringing again. It was like Grand Central Station opened up and everyone wanted a piece of me today. I reached for a towel that blended into everything else and stubbed my toe hard against the cabinet. Hobbling and trying to not hit my toe with anything else I hopped into the bedroom thankful I owned no clutter that could otherwise sabotage my walk to the