Trusting Nicole Read online

  TRUSTING Nicole

  Copyright © 2015 by Muriel Garcia

  All rights reserved.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The author makes no claims to, but instead acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the word marks mentioned in this work of fiction.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Editing & blurb by Ellie Aspill

  Proofreading by Stephanie Lewis

  Formatting by Muriel Garcia/Rebel Rebel author services

  Cover design by The Final Wrap

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  DEDICATION

  For my Mom for always supporting me

  and believing in me.

  Thank you for everything.

  I love you.

  For anyone who’s been through tough times.

  Surround yourself with the people you love

  and who love you.

  They make things that much sweeter.

  TABLE OF CONTENT

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  EPILOGUE

  FORGIVING BENNETT PREVIEW

  FALLING FOR KALLI PREVIEW

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  COMING SOON

  CONNECT WITH MURIEL

  AUTHOR’S BIO

  PROLOGUE

  Jason

  March 23, 2015

  I lost my wife a month ago to the hands of a fucking scumbag excuse of a human being. No, he doesn’t even deserve to be called a human being. He’s the shit of the earth.

  My life has been fucking hell since that day. Well, that’s not entirely true. My life has been hell since I was four years old and it’s only gotten worse. It got a lot worse. Going through another loss isn’t something I had anticipated this early in life.

  I was going through the motions, numb to everything but hate and disgust. I had loved once and it left me scarred for life. I didn’t want to put myself in that position again, but I did care for her. I didn’t love her¸ but I cared enough for her death to turn my world upside down.

  Between mourning for Jenny and work, I haven’t had a single second for myself. I buried myself in my work, hoping it would take away the pent up rage that’s been building inside me and the image of her dead body, but no, if anything, it’s only made it worse. When I’m all alone in bed at night, that’s when the real nightmare begins. Every single demon from my past comes back to haunt me. All those emotions I had buried deep down claw their way to the surface and I don’t know how to get past any of this, how to escape.

  Nothing makes me feel alive anymore, well nothing except for one person who still manages to lift my spirits. I don’t know how it happened, but it did and I’m both grateful for it and hate it. She is my one weakness but nothing will ever happen with her. It’s not the memory of Jenny that is stopping me, which makes me sound like a total fucking asshole, but the fact that she’s the sister of one of the Last Hangman. She’s off limits, but I just can’t seem to stop myself from gravitating towards her. Our story is unusual. We met in the worst circumstances and I wish we met under other circumstances, but the reality is, we were doomed from the beginning yet, we seem to need each other. She’s my saving grace.

  Gabe knows me and knows I would never hurt her, but he’s not exactly the understanding type when it comes to his baby sister. The fact that I’m a cop and he’s part of a notorious motorcycle club is the cause of a lot of problems already. To be honest, I don’t know if she even does want me, she could be helping me out of survivor’s guilt. I’m a damaged widower who doesn’t deserve someone like her, not after the darkness I’ve created. She is the light to my darkness and I’m afraid my darkness would eat her alive. She deserves someone who’d be able to love her and treat her properly. I know I’m the polar opposite of the type of man she deserves, but she’s all I’ve been thinking about for these past few years, I’m aware that makes me a total asshole because of my marriage, but I can’t help the way I feel. Things aren’t always what they seem.

  Everybody thinks I’ve had it easy all my life but they’re all so fucking wrong. My past would make these bikers look like saints. I can’t bring myself to confess all the shit I have done, all the things I had to do to survive and then, because I started to enjoy doing it. They would never believe a detective would be capable of all that shit. What the Last Hangman don’t know, is that there’s a good reason why I played my part so well when taking down the Kings and where all my intel I was coming form.

  My entire life has been a fucking lie and it’s time for the truth to come out. Nothing will ever be the same once they learn who I really am. I’m their worst nightmare and their saving grace all wrapped into one. I’m the missing piece to the equation. I’ve been lurking in the shadow for years and now, it’s time to come out and play.

  Something far more evil than me is coming and it’s going to destroy everything. I’ll have to tell them to truth sooner rather than later, they need to be prepared for the shit storm that’s heading our way. The worst part is that the bastards are coming because of me, because of my actions, because I surrounded myself with the wrong people, not out of choice but necessity. It was a life and death decision and I decided to live. Sometimes I wonder how different things would have been had I not been a part of all of this shit.

  January 10, 2015

  Today has not been my day.

  I had yet another fight with Jenny this morning about me working alongside the Last Hangman. She doesn’t understand why I have to do it but I can’t give her any details, the less she knows, the better. I’m afraid what her reaction will be when she learns that I’ve grown close to them. They are slowly becoming the closest thing I have to a family. Jenny should be my family, but she feels more like a roommate than my wife. Hell, I feel more at home at the compound than here.

  Jenny doesn’t know what I’ve been through, only what little I’ve told her. She deserves to know the whole truth, but I can’t bring myself to tell her, I don’t want to subject her to all the deranged things I’ve had to do and continue to do for her safety. I might not love her anymore, but I don’t want anything to happen to her, she’s innocent in all of this and some people with bad intentions could use her for revenge. It’s happened in the past and it is happening again now. It nearly broke our marriage the first time and if it happens again, it’ll be for good this time. As unhappy as I am in this relationship, this is the only way I can keep her
safe.

  I park in front of our house. Our nice house in a nice neighborhood where nothing bad ever happens, where she deserves to live with someone who makes her happy, not someone who causes her nothing but sadness. She should have someone who would be able to give her all that her heart desires and not leave her living in fear every time he leaves the house.

  I stay seated in my car as my mind takes me back to a couple of years ago. A psychopath decided to target me and was pretending to live my life for a couple of months. It started innocently with someone sending flowers to Jenny and forging my signature on the note. Initially, I thought she was sending them to herself for attention because I was too busy with work, but the more often it happened, the warier I got. I wasn’t sure what to make of it. If she wanted to send flowers to herself to make herself happy, I wasn’t going to burst her bubble and be a dick about it. I just didn’t understand why she had to make it look like I was the one sending them to her.

  When the notes became menacing it all turned to shit. They kept asking her why she was seeing another man when she was happily married. The idea of her seeing someone else had briefly crossed my mind, so I got a couple of my men to look into it and that’s how we found out the whole sordid truth.

  A couple of months prior, I had been working on a stalker case and whilst we managed to catch the son of a bitch, at trial the judge let him go. It caused outrage; no one understood why the case had been dismissed since we had uncovered enough incriminating evidence to lock him up for a long time. The judge had a problem with me since I put his uncle away the previous year. So with me being the arresting officer, we guessed that it was the reason why the bastard was freed after stalking and tormenting several young women, that and a big bribe.

  It turns out that he had been spying on me since the moment he walked out of jail and over the months had become obsessed with Jenny. The sick fuck had convinced himself that she was his wife and she was cheating on him with me. We only managed to stop him when he physically attacked Jenny. I’ll never forget hearing him shout that he was going to kill her so she would be with him forever.

  Thank God I installed a panic button that sent alerts directly to my phone when the notes became threatening. I managed to get there before he caused her any real harm. I shot him in the head without an ounce of regret.

  Afterwards, she struggled to trust that I could protect her and she left for a couple of weeks to stay with her parents. She claimed it was "to heal" but a part of me thinks there was more to it than that. Her parents have never really been fond of me and after the attack, their animosity only grew. They tried to convince her to divorce me but I guess she really did love me because she came back to me and gave us another chance. We had successfully put everything behind us and were ‘happy’ until a couple of weeks ago.

  Then she started receiving more notes and threats in the mail. Once again, I was the cause of it. A rival motorcycle club had some issues with the Last Hangman and since I was and still am working with them, with me. I hate that she’s the one getting the backlash, but I have a job to do. I wish everyone would leave her be and let her live her life, but life is a cruel bitch. I know someday soon she’s going to ask me for a divorce. I wouldn’t blame her. I’m rarely home and when I am, I’m either too preoccupied to pay her any attention or I’m shutting her out. She keeps asking questions she knows she shouldn’t about the cases I’m working on or my whereabouts. Again, the less she knows, the better and safer it is for her, but she doesn’t seem to understand that, she wants to know every single detail about what I’m doing when I’m not at home. Sometimes I think she worries that I’m cheating on her. She’s withdrawing from me and I think it’d be the best for both of us if she would leave me. At least that way she wouldn’t be a target for those assholes anymore. As much as I want to protect her, she’d be safer without me in her life.

  Her parents blame me for her becoming a shell of her former self. I know she’s distanced herself from her friends and her family. I never wanted that and don’t understand why she did it. I’m sure she has a good reason for it, or maybe it’s my fault and all my secrecy has driven her to stay at home and wait for me, seeing if I’d come home to her or stay out again. The truth is that I spend more time out of the house than in it, especially at night. I’m not cheating on her but I’m also not doing my duty as a husband to keep her safe, protected and loved. She probably resents me for wasting six years of her life.

  Today I have to tell her that she has to move into protective custody because the Kings are making their move. We’re going to fight, again, and no matter how much I don’t want to, it’s inevitable. It’s not like I have a choice. I have to do everything I can to make sure she stays alive and safe, even if it means sending her away. I wish I could show her that I still care for her, but I can’t. Something has changed within me and I’m not sure how I feel about her anymore.

  I take a deep breath and get out of the car, locking it behind me. I open the front door and lock it behind me, making sure to rearm the alarm. I take off my holster and gun, jacket and badge before making my way into the living room. She’s sat on the big armchair with her iPad on her lap, looking blankly out the window, no doubt having seen me park there twenty minutes ago.

  “Are you alright, Honey?” I ask her as I kiss the top of her head and pour myself a much needed glass of whiskey.

  “I’m fine.” she replies quietly. Now, I’m not an expert with women, but I do know that when a woman says they are "fine", it usually means the exact opposite.

  “Are you sure? You know you can talk to me.” I sit on the couch across from her, hoping she’ll open up to me.

  “Yes, why would I not be fine? I mean we fight almost on a daily basis, well when you dare come home. We never talk anymore, you spend more time with those outlaws than with me, you’re around their whores who are probably constantly offering you sex and I’m sure you are too much of a gentleman to decline, should I go on?” she asks keeping her voice levelled and completely shutting me up. She’s never been one to speak her mind this openly. I don’t know what’s happened to her in the last couple of hours. Maybe she talked to her parents and they finally managed to convince her to leave me.

  “Where did that come from? You knew from the start that my job isn’t easy and that I wouldn’t be home every single night.” I try not to raise my voice, but truth is, this has fucking pissed me off. I might not be here a lot, but I do all I can to make sure we have a roof over our heads, food in the fridge, money to pay the bills and still have enough left over for a couple of luxuries I’m sure she’s only too happy to have. I work my ass off to get her everything she wants and yet, she still busts my balls. I don’t completely blame her, but I just can’t handle this shit tonight. Those accusations, when all I want is to keep her safe, are a serious downer on my already shitty mood.

  “Just a daily observation. I might not speak a lot, but I do see that you’ve changed, your behavior has changed. Why?” She looks at me intently.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about, I’m still the same.” I know what changed.

  “No, Jason, you’re not the same. You’re not the Jason I fell in love with years ago. I barely recognize you anymore,” she sighs sadly.

  “We all change, we all grow up.” I down my whiskey in one gulp, enjoying the burning sensation as it makes its way down my throat.

  “Sure, people change with the years, but they don’t become a completely different person. You’re like a stranger to me. I don’t see the man I met or fell in love with anymore. I’m tired of waiting for you to come home or for the next person to threaten or attack me. I want to live a normal life again,” she says clearly upset.

  “I know, and I promise things will get better after this case.” I try to reassure her, but to no avail.

  “You always say that. You said that after that psycho pretended to be you and came after me but here we are months later and I’m getting notes all over again. I don’t know
what you’re working on or when it will be over, but I can’t live like this anymore. I’m moving back in with my parents until I can find a place.” she argues, her face void of any emotion.

  I sigh and rub my face. I know what this means, she’s finally leaving me and bizarrely, I’m okay with it, partly because it means she’ll be away from here and safe. I should be angry that I’m losing my wife but I’m not, I’m relieved and that’s what’s pissing me off.

  “That’s a good idea, you’ll be safe with them.”

  “That’s it? You won’t even put up a fight?” She stands up and starts to pace the room.

  “It’s for the best, Jen. You’ll be safer far away from here, from me. Your father will be able to protect you better than I have.”

  “That’s for sure. You did a fucking lousy job of it before.” She snarls at me and stalks towards me. She comes to a stop in front of me and slaps me hard across the cheek before rushing towards the stairs. She turns around and points at me with a perfectly manicured finger.

  “The Jason I met would have fought and never would let me go. I don’t know what’s happened to you or what you’ve witnessed that has caused this change in you, but I feel sorry for you.” She shakes her head at me before heading upstairs.

  If only she knew the reason why I changed so much. I sigh to myself and pour another glass of whiskey before calling one of my men to follow her to her parents’ house.

  Twenty minutes and three glasses of whiskey later, Jenny comes back down the stairs with two suitcases and puts them in her car. She comes back in one last time and looks at me with a hopeful expression. I knew she’s hoping that I’ll beg her to stay, but I can’t bring myself to do it.

  “Nothing? Really?” She glares at me and puts her hands on her hips looking at me impatiently.

  “Drive safely.” I tell her, my voice empty. I can’t even look at her.

  She scoffs. “I was a fool for ever loving you, Jason Sanders. You’ve ruined the past six years of my life.” She shouts as she storms out the front door, slamming it shut behind her. I hear her car start and the wheels screech as she speeds away.