Broken Cheaters by Lacey Silks Read Free Book Online Page B

can’t.” I lifted my head higher.
    “If you don’t, you’ll find your friend in the dumpster at the back,” he threatened. “Shredded to pieces.”
    I felt my eyes well up. He growled and his nostrils flared. I knew the kind of trouble Brad was capable of; he bragged about it enough. I didn’t want to be the reason Julia got hurt, and I sure as hell couldn’t do anything to stop him on my own.
    “It’s okay, Trish. I’ll be fine.” Julia tried to ease my worry. Well, if I couldn’t help her here, then I had to do it from elsewhere. I walked out of the café without looking back and dialed the new number in my phone. I might have deserved Brad’s wrath, but she didn’t.
    “Trish?” Axel’s voice did something funny to my throat. Why did I want this man to be the man in my life? I barely knew him. I didn’t even know where he lived.
    “I need your help. Actually, it’s for myself and a friend. My fiancé, Brad, is here, and he’s mad. Like, really mad, Axel. I’m afraid he may hurt her.”
    “Where are you?”
    I gave him the address.
    “I’m five minutes away.”
    He hung up. I stood across the street, watching as Brad and Julia walked to the back of the café, his body almost pressing against hers from behind. I found that gross – disgusting, actually – because I knew that Julia wasn’t Brad’s type, so the forceful way in which he was guiding her scared me.
    What if he hurts her? I’d never forgive myself. I’d let one man hurt my sister, and promised myself to never let another one hurt any other woman I knew, but this was different. I wasn’t at a university frat party where drinks and drugs swayed men to be braver— this was the real world. And Brad didn’t need any drugs to be gruesome.
    The passing minutes before an expensive sports car pulled up in front of the café lasted too long. I might not have known a lot about cars, but I knew this one was unique. Axel jumped out the front door before the engine got a chance to shut down.
    “What’s the matter?” he asked.
    “He took my friend to the back. They’ve been there for a couple of minutes now.”
    Axel turned to run, but I grabbed his wrist, “Axel, he’s dangerous.”
    His eyes darkened as he replied, “So am I.”
    My heart pounded as Axel ran inside the café. Minutes later, the screech of car wheels echoed from the back alley, and Brad’s SUV pulled out. His tight grip on the steering wheel and look of hate in his eyes reminded me of the man who had used and abused me over the past year that I’d been with him. For the first time ever, as I remembered what he’d put me through, a sickening feeling filled my stomach.
    I ran into the alley. Axel was holding Julia’s limp body in his arms, look of fear and desperation covering his eyes. His hands and light gray shirt were covered in the blood that was still dripping from Julia’s hand. I removed the summer scarf from my purse and wrapped it around her palm.
    “I can’t let her die,” he kept repeating. “She can’t die.” Pain flourished on his face, tremors vibrated through his body, and fear flowed in his eyes. Axel was looking at me, but it felt like he was looking through me, as if searching for a miracle. He was somewhere else, in a different place and time, completely lost.
    Sirens sounded in the distance, and I assumed that Axel had already called 911. Everything happened so fast that the next thing I knew, I was sitting in the passenger seat of Axel’s luxurious car, following the ambulance to the hospital.
    “I wanted to break it off with him officially. I wanted to make sure he was out of my life.”
    “Well, let me make it easier for you, Trish. You’re officially not dating that asshole. How did someone like you end up with Bradley Watson?”
    “You know him?”
    “You could say that. He’s a nutcase, Trish. Fuck!” He hit the steering wheel with his hands before resuming his grip. “Brad is a man who lives by his own rules, and that’s