Kill Game: The Devious Games Duet Part 1 Read online

  Kill

  Game

  Devious Games Duet Part 1

  by DD Prince

  ©Copyright 2021 by DD Prince – ddprince.com

  All rights reserved. This book is the intellectual property of the author and may not be copied, distributed, or stored for sharing without expressed permission from the author. Please respect the author’s work and purchase or subscribe to read this content from an authorized source. Thank you. http://ddprince.com has details about availability of all books by this author.

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  Dedication

  For those of you who have found that you have trouble recognizing yourself because of what you’ve been through.

  I hope you try to find yourself again.

  Maybe you’ll never be the same as you used to be, but I hope you can somehow begin to feel pride, strength, and love for yourself when you look in the mirror – even if it takes time.

  xoxo

  DD Prince

  About The Devious Games Duet

  This book deals with difficult subject matters, such as domestic abuse and gaslighting/manipulation.

  This story is intended for adults only. It contains sexually explicit scenes and mature language.

  Kill Game is not an insta-love story. It is book one of two in a duet. This is the first part of a journey you’ll take with Killian and Violet.

  Prologue

  “You lied,” I say.

  “Yes, I did,” he replies matter-of-factly.

  I’m in shock. I can’t process this, especially not with his green eyes cutting through me, showing me what looks like the epitome of I give no fucks.

  He has zero remorse. Zero.

  Is that possible?

  “I can’t believe you did that.”

  Without hesitation, he replies.

  “Believe it. I would lie; I would say anything to protect you. I’ll lie to anybody, you included, to keep you safe. To keep you happy and carefree. To protect you from how I know you feel right now.”

  “Killian.”

  His name sounds like pain. Agony. Like shock.

  “Violet,” he replies coolly.

  It’s true.

  He did this.

  He actually did this.

  1

  Violet

  I’m Violet Rose Gates. I’m twenty-six years old, and I don’t know when I lost myself, but somehow, it happened.

  I live with a narcissistic, lazy, abusive man. And I can’t figure out how to leave or make him go. Am I too scared of what he’ll do? Am I just too broken?

  How has this become my life?

  I can only explain it like that slow-boiling a frog analogy because it’s the only thing that makes sense to me as I look at the girl in the mirror, looking like me but not feeling like me – not feeling like me for a long time.

  I have trouble looking into that girl’s eyes because I’ve let her down.

  The slow boiling? Things got hotter and hotter, but by the time the water started to exceed 100 degrees, I was already conditioned, accustomed to being in hot water all the time.

  I adapted. I changed.

  I went from fun-loving and extroverted to quiet and reserved. Because I had to.

  I went from chatty and sociable to quiet and timid. I don’t know at which point I began to shrink away, at which point I started trying to be incognito so that I wouldn’t do something to trigger an outburst from him, trigger hard questions from other people.

  Over time, I devolved into a wannabe chameleon, trying hard to blend, doing whatever I could to avoid standing out. I try to hover under the radar with everyone, especially him.

  I don’t know exactly when it happened, but somehow I lost myself.

  I guess it started by me going on high alert whenever Ray was around. Eventually, I became that way with everybody else, too.

  I’d go out of my way to avoid his outbursts. They’re always explosive, sometimes verbally abusive. And when a mood strikes him extra hard, he’ll corner me.

  He specializes in intimidation. And I’m convinced that bad things will happen if I try to leave. Very bad things. Murder-suicide headlines. Him sending the nudes I let him take of me when we were first together to my parents, posting them on the internet, talking to his friends that are mafia-connected about ruining my parents’ lives – that kind of thing.

  He told me the nudes were missing when I asked about them over a year ago, which freaked me out. I’ve torn the apartment apart five times looking for them.

  He was drunk one night a few months later and joked that he was holding them in a safe place as insurance in case I try to leave him. He then said he was joking, but I don’t believe him.

  The last big fight we had was the end for me; the last of my feelings burnt to ash that night. I just haven’t figured out how to get rid of him. I’m also just… broken. I’ve become this meek, weak person filled with self-loathing.

  Our first year together, I fell madly in love with him and was sure he’d someday become the father of my children. Fast forward to year two and every time he’d get in my face, I’d think, “Give me a reason.”

  A few times he’d be an inch from my face screaming and it’d cross my mind…

  Just do it. Get it over with.

  Of course I shouldn’t need a physical cue to leave. Why would I wait until he causes me physical pain when he’s traumatized me to the degree I don’t recognize myself?

  My brain knows all this, logically, but somehow I’ve become someone who ignores logic. Someone who has no voice. And if all the other things he did do didn’t amount to me leaving there was a good chance that a slap or a punch might not do it either. I’d probably come up with some excuse. Fear he’d hurt me. Fear he’d release those nudes. Worry that he’d hurt my family, stalk me. I don’t know why it happened, how I allowed it, but he’s systematically broken me. I do nothing. I stay. My life is just… paused.

  I’m so angry with myself.

  Do I stay to punish myself because I’ve allowed this to happen?

  Is it because I know, bone deep, that he will become my stalker, my worst nightmare if I try to go? Why have I allowed him to reduce me to this weak, pathetic person?

  My thought processes are all screwed up.

  If the old me were on the outside looking in, I’d try to help that poor, pathetic girl get out of this situation. Talk to her one-on-one and if that didn’t work, maybe even stage an intervention. But there was no one to help me, no one to talk me into just doing it, because nobody knows how bad it is.

  Why?

  I’ve withdrawn from everyone in my life other than him. And I’ve withdrawn from him, too. Withdrawn from who I was, into myself I guess.

  And I hate that I’ve allowed it to happen. I chastise myself for it – which isn’t good because if I wasn’t chastising myself, I was listening to him do it and over time with all the voices internal and external, I just feel… less.

  No, it didn’t just happen overnight. A frog dropped in boiling water will jump out. This frog let herself get boiled slowly instead.

  The first months with him drew me in and in hindsight, it was methodical. He had me making promises. Promises th
at he now reminds me of when we fight.

  Ray has pale blue eyes that are so smoldering – in the early days I told myself I’d be willing to drown in them. I wish I could go back and warn myself that drowning is a torturous demise.

  Now? Now I hate even looking him in the eyes as they’re a reminder of what I allowed to happen. A reminder of all the times he used them to cut me down, bit by bit, making me become less and less.

  In the beginning, those eyes melted me.

  These days, they pierce me. They’ve pierced so many times, I feel like Swiss cheese.

  Ray has demons, so he told me early on; I just didn’t know that his demons would haunt me as much as him.

  Back in the early days, I was a goner. Swept off my feet. But when the crap started, I tried to handle him with care, be supportive, be what he needed. I’d be there through the all-night talks we had as we held one another, touched that he trusted me with his secrets, talking about his demons, about his childhood, his abusive parents, about the fact that people always gave up on him.

  Those early days set the tone for our relationship. I allowed him to emotionally blackmail me and eventually break me down.

  I made promises at his urging, no – at his pleading. I wasn’t going to desert him. No way would I abandon him like his mother, his father, like his other girlfriends. We’d be together forever; blissfully happy. Grow gray and wrinkly together. Have everything together because he swore he would give me the world. He knew when he met his dream girl, he’d move mountains to give her everything. He told me I was her. He’d spend his life giving me everything.

  Or so he said. And so I believed. For too long.

  Over time it became evident that the relationship was all about Ray’s needs and never about me.

  He’d throw my promises in my face if I got angry or impatient with him and twist my words up to make himself the victim. What happened back then was what I now know to be gaslighting. Ray tried to manipulate me from the beginning.

  He gambles. He lies. He screws up all the time. Forgets appointments or interviews. Sleeps in. Gets fired. Loses money. Overspends. His temper feels like a ticking time bomb grenade, and anything can pull the pin. Illogical things even. He blows up over the slightest little thing, gets right in my face until I cower. And then he apologizes and begs me to forgive him. In the beginning, he’d beg me to give him another chance, beg me to be what I’d promised, not to ever, ever leave him, not to give up on him. In the beginning, it worked. He’d tug on my heart strings with excuses for his outbursts and I’d forgive him.

  But over time, the bad moods became the norm. Threats almost always simmered below the surface. And he chipped away at my heart a little bit with each blow-up. I let myself become lost, became his emotional punching bag doormat.

  On our second anniversary, we had a terrible argument over something stupid and I told him we needed a break, told him to leave and give me some space.

  He looked me right in the eyes and told me he’d never leave.

  “You made promises, Violet. Forever, you said. And forever it’s gonna be.”

  The next day, he looked me dead in the eye and told me, “I had a dream that you tried to leave me. In the dream, I slit your throat and watched you bleed out. Not that I’d ever do that in a million years, but…yeah… weird dream. I know you’d never leave me.”

  When I reacted by telling him he needed psychiatric help, he tackled me to the bed and held me for hours, pleading with me to love him, pleading with me to keep my promises, swearing he’d never ever hurt me.

  I withdrew into myself and tried to figure out how to handle things. What to do next.

  A week later, he went off on a random tangent while watching an old mobster movie about knowing people in the mafia from his old neighborhood who could kill someone without leaving a trace. Who could systematically destroy peoples’ livelihoods and lives.

  The big fight a couple months ago when I snapped, telling him to go when he was screaming in my face, that was the last big one. He was losing it on me, in hysterics over the smell of our fabric softener giving him a headache, telling me that he told me a hundred times not to buy that one when he’d never complained about it even once, me crying out that enough was enough - I couldn’t take it anymore, telling him that he needed to go on medication for his mood swings, to leave me alone before he made me go crazy, too.

  His reaction was to punch the wall beside my face and destroy something precious to me, the last gift I received from my deceased grandmother. When he destroyed that pretty antique china doll, it burnt what little feelings I had left for Ray to ash.

  She gave me it for my twelfth birthday, the pretty doll in the purple dress. Purple for my name. I treasured it.

  Seeing it broken on the floor, the doll’s face smashed, was a turning point, a twisting one. When he smashed it in a fit of rage and looked me right in the eye I demanded, “Go.”

  He refused, so I tried to go. My world was rocked, and not in a good way, when my back was slammed into a wall, put there by his hand circling my throat. He told me in no uncertain terms that I wasn’t leaving.

  “You made promises to me and you’re gonna keep ‘em. You leaving me, Vi? Only happens if I’m a rotting corpse. Or if you are.”

  He then stared at me for ten seconds without blinking.

  I didn’t look away. I didn’t cower. I looked at him with hate. I know I did.

  His face changed. It crumbled.

  “I’d never hit you, baby. Never. Never.” He cried into my hair.

  I shriveled into myself.

  “Vi, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I’m such an asshole. I don’t deserve you. I’ll get help. I promise. I promise I’ll get help fighting my demons. I promise, promise, promise.”

  I stared at the broken china doll on the floor and while my eyes were locked on it he begged me to mean more to him than an object. I said nothing. It was too late.

  I don’t think I’ve come back out of the shrivel. It’s been a couple months.

  Three days later, he was tired of my ‘attitude’; he was angry I hadn’t snapped out of it yet.

  “It’s because you threatened me that I acted like that. Don’t ever threaten me, Violet. You know that whole thing is on you.”

  I didn’t threaten to leave, I told him to go and then I headed for the door myself and was stopped.

  I didn’t bother to correct him; I had nothing more to say.

  A few days after that, he leaned over me late at night, reeking of beer while I pretended to sleep and said, “Should I have knocked some sense into you instead of the wall? You act like I did. Should I do it next time, since I’m being treated like I did, anyway? Should I try to hurt you the way you keep hurting me?”

  I did not reply.

  He hasn’t gotten help. Though, even if he did, I know I’m done.

  Instead of making a run for it as soon as his back was turned, I retreated even farther into myself, because… because why? I’ve asked myself that question repeatedly.

  Do I feel trapped? Am I embarrassed about what I’ve allowed to happen? Am I just afraid of how ugly it’ll get to split with him? Of the things he might do to get revenge?

  Am I simply broken, like my little china doll?

  I’ve become like an inmate, trying to keep my head down. Just doing my time. But the ‘just doing my time’ mindset really isn’t a well-thought-out plan because I have no inkling of what my release date is. I should tuck enough money away to make an escape but there’s never any extra. Not enough, anyway. He has taken control over my money and he overspends. I have a hundred dollars in the bottom of my tea canister that I saved four months ago; that’s it.

  I don’t know how my life became this; I feel just… hopeless.

  Just go? Figure it out later? I don’t know why I can’t just make myself do that. Go to my parents? Call up old friends and ask if I can sleep on their couch?

  I’ve got a decent job; do I just give that up and go into hiding? Start o
ver in a new city, maybe? Leave everything and everyone just to get away from him? I don’t have anyone but him because I allowed it.

  I’ve thought about it. All of it. I just don’t have any solutions yet.

  What if I go and he sends those pictures to my parents or hurts someone I love to get back at me?

  Ray said he lost his bank card and kept making excuses for why he couldn’t go in and get a new one. Instead, he carries mine and gives me cash for the bus and groceries. It’s no accident. He wants me reliant on him.

  I have no real friends anymore; Ray has seen to that. I’m no longer close with my family, either.

  Today is the third anniversary of the night we met. He hasn’t mentioned it, so it’s obvious he doesn’t remember. It’s not like I’d expect a gift. I haven’t bought him one. Though, in the past I did.

  In my mind, we’re no longer in a relationship. I’m just stuck with him in my apartment, in my bed, and in my bank account until I figure out how to pull the cord on an escape hatch I haven’t found yet.

  ***

  It’s just after 7:30 when he comes in. The sound of his keys now leaves a familiar unpleasant feeling in my chest and my stomach.

  I didn’t think I’d even see him tonight because there’s some sports game on that he wants to watch at a bar in our neighborhood and that would typically mean he’d get in after I’m asleep. Why is he early?

  “Brought a buddy home, babe,” Ray calls out, “Dinner almost ready?”

  I’m at the counter, making dinner for me. Only me. Because Ray wasn’t here when I started cooking and I didn’t expect him to be here. Not only that, but I also know he hates the dish I’m making and I’m making it because I figured he’d be out.

  He steps up behind me and pulls me against his body, but I cringe before I realize there’s another set of eyes on me as I’m turned around by my shoulders. Ray plants a kiss on my mouth. He tries to slip in the tongue, even, and my head jerks back in shock. And that’s when I get a glimpse of who he brought with him, standing just inside the doorway, watching me cringe, looking at me with rapt attention.