Mercy Denied (Steele Standing 2)

By Jacqueline M. Sinclair

Merrick

She and her friend set me up. Then they sent those pictures to my wife. Little did they know that she’d already left me and that I was devastated and ready to self-destruct. Because of her, I lost everything I ever wanted ... the only hope I had. Now I will risk everything I have left to destroy her. It doesn't matter why she did it, that she was hurting, or even that she was drunk. It doesn't matter that she looks at me like she sees into my soul. Does it?

Trinity

Melanie was the one that’d sent those pictures to his wife, but it was me who’d told her to get her camera ready. I’d been angry at my ex-fiance and took it out on Merrick, wanting to expose him for the cheater I thought he was. I never dreamed it would go this far - that he would vow to destroy me. I’d take it all back if I could, but the damage is done. My mother’s life’s work is at his mercy and he’s determined to make me feel the loss that I caused him. Still, the way he looks at me I have to ask myself, did my poor choices wake the monster...or the man?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jacqueline M. Sinclair
• Release date: Oct 7, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370098378

Jacqueline M. Sinclair

Jacqueline grew up in the rural southeast and is the youngest child of a large and rowdy family. Reading was an escape when there wasn't much else around to do. She loves everything from classical literature to true crime and everything in between. With her two children grown and gone, she's surrounded by a menagerie of adopted pets and a two-legged thief who refused to give her heart back after a night of karaoke. With a day job and a dream job, her writing is a steamy combination of real life and seeking to answer the age-old question of what would happen if...and then characters come along and completely derail the plan. Letting them have their say provides plenty of sleepless nights and an endless combination of coffee and wine, but she hopes you enjoy their stories.

Book preview

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Quote

Prologue - Merrick

Chapter 1 - Trinity

Chapter 2 - Merrick

Chapter 3 - Trinity

Chapter 4 - Merrick

Chapter 5 - Trinity

Chapter 6 - Merrick

Chapter 7 - Trinity

Chapter 8 - Merrick

Chapter 9 - Trinity

Chapter 10 - Merrick

Chapter 11 - Trinity

Chapter 12 - Merrick

Chapter 13 - Trinity

Chapter 14 - Merrick

Chapter 15 - Trinity

Chapter 16 - Merrick

Chapter 17 - Trinity

Chapter 18 - Merrick

Chapter 19 - Trinity

Chapter 20 - Merrick

Chapter 21 - Trinity

Chapter 22 - Merrick

Chapter 23 - Trinity

Chapter 24 - Merrick

Chapter 25 - Trinity

Chapter 26 - Merrick

Chapter 27 - Trinity

Chapter 28 - Merrick

Chapter 29 - Trinity

Chapter 30 - Merrick

Chapter 31 - Trinity

Chapter 32 - Merrick

Chapter 33 - Trinity

Chapter 34 - Merrick

Chapter 35 - Trinity

Epilogue - Merrick

A Note to Readers

Trinity

Jacqueline M. Sinclair

Mercy Denied

© 2016 by Jacqueline M. Sinclair

All rights reserved.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters and events are products of the author’s imagination and any similarity to true events is purely coincidental.

Cover photo by:

Andrei Vishnyakov

Cover design:

Wicked by Design

Editor:

Ave’s Editing Services

Formatting:

Shanoff Formats

Dedication

To THE Bad Ass Bitches in my life. Every one of you rock!

That includes you, mom.

Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinions of others, for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth.

Katherine Mansfield

I THOUGHT THE flowers were a nice touch, but Ella was ignoring the overflowing bouquet and looking at the cut crystal vase like it was the perfect weapon.

An apology?

The look of disbelief on her face warned me I was pissing in the wind. I winced and braced myself for more. I'd known this wasn't going to be easy.

From the great Merrick Kincaid? she spat, twisting the knife again.

I had expected anger. Lord knows I’d given her enough reasons over the last few months to take my apology and shove it back in my face. The blatant sarcasm had me worried. It was unlike her to be so cold. The indifference almost made her vicious.

I’m trying here, Ella.

Her eyes widened and her mouth opened, but whatever response she had died on her lips. Disgusted, my wife shoved her chair back from the table, snatched up her plate, and stomped to the sink. She dropped it in, sandwich and all, letting it clang against the stainless steel with such force, I was surprised it didn’t break.

Spinning around, she crossed her arms over her chest, and leaned against the counter. In the stark light of the kitchen, the stance only accentuated how painfully thin she was, how tired and vulnerable she looked. It was almost like her growing belly was pulling her skin taunt, stretching it over her boney frame in a distorted version of her former self.

"Let me tell you what I’m trying to do, Merrick."

My grip tightened around the arm of the overstuffed teddy bear that hung at my side, my nails digging into the flesh of my palm. I ignored it. The pain was a fraction of the punishment I deserved. 

I’m listening, I gritted, trying to keep my mind open and my temper in check. My delay in facing this situation had just about destroyed our ability to be civil to each other.

As soon as this baby is born, she unfolded her arms and pointed to her bulging stomach with both index fingers, I’m going back to Louisiana.

I blinked, shocked. No.

Ella laughed at my dazed response, a tired, lonesome sound that mocked me and my sudden distress.

"Yes, Merrick. She flicked a strand of her brown bob behind her ear and drew in a deep breath. Look, she said, holding her palms to me. You’re angry and I’m trying hard not to be. I’m sick to death of being angry all the time. Marriage was not the answer for us. I know that now. I tried, but you haven’t helped make it bearable."

My hands flew up in frustration, but I choked on the words. Would there be no absolution for the choices I’d made? The words I’d said? I was shooting for forgiveness here, and she was ripping my heart out.

"I wasn’t angry with you, Ella, I was just angry." That was the truth, but even the soft admission brought no hint of redemption to her demeanor. She crossed her arms again, hugging herself.

We’d been so close. She’d been my best friend; loyal, attentive, and knew me better than most. My anger about the baby…it had been the blade that had severed all that.

I was angry at myself because, even though I knew there was no future for us, I had continued to seek Ella out. We’d played this game for years. Being a normal, hormonal boy, as in thinking with my cock, I hadn’t thought twice about sex with Ella. We’d been constantly thrust together at events, on vacations, and the frequent visits her family made to Georgia from Louisiana. It was logical to my teenage mind that we should be together. Ella had been responsive to my advances, if not enthusiastic, and I took full advantage of having her at my disposal, and the distance that separated us. It had been ideal having someone to spend time with, but we were far enough apart that I didn’t feel obligated to her.

We can work through this. My desperation was lost on her. She shook her head, refusing to even consider it.

This was wrong from the beginning, Merrick.

I felt myself wilt under her response. She was right. Even our parents had picked up on and played into our quasi relationship. They’d expected a happily ever after, had loved how our purported marriage would be a legal, if not familial way to seal our fathers’ fraternal bond. What had started out as a convenient fuck had become a living, breathing nightmare and Ella and I had played right in to it.

The first time I realized we had dug ourselves into a hole was when I off-handedly mentioned that I had asked Kelly McPhearson to my senior prom. My dad had shut his laptop, laced his hands together and laid them on his desk. How do you think Ella is going to feel about that? he asked.

In the span of one comment, Ella had gone from being a fun and reliable fuck to poisoned fruit. I hadn’t really given a damn how Ella felt and I had told him so. A full blown argument ensued and I ended up sneaking off with not just Kelly, but every other girl that caught my attention. The older I got, the easier it was.

The teenager in me had no issues with taking a bite from the forbidden. Being with Ella wasn’t exactly meteor showers and exploding rockets, but she was no chore either. In my life, where accolades surrounded me like oxygen, my father always seemed to be the one announcing his disappointment and strangling my self-worth. Ella saw this and had been his polar opposite, the only one to call bullshit on my father’s opinion of how I never measured up.

As I got older, started college and began thinking about where I was going with my career, it occurred to me that my relationship with Ella seemed to be the only area of my life that my dad approved. He would ramble on, bruising my ego at how my success, in his eyes at least, seemed to be linked to her. Those moments from her had been a breath of life for my drowning ego and I had clung to them like a scared little boy. I could see that now.

Can we talk about this? I was one breath away from begging when Ella tossed her hands in the air and sat down.

What do you have to say that you haven’t already said a hundred times?

The blow hit its mark and I stepped back. ‘I’m sorry’ just wasn’t going to be a fix-all for the shit I’d done, the things I’d said. It hurt, but I was sure it was no less painful than the horrible things I’d spat off to her when I’d found out she was pregnant. This whole fiasco should have been brought to a screeching halt years ago.

It had seemed so easy then. Once I’d put college behind me, I had the freedom to travel the world while handling Kincaid Property’s business. To the business world I was the prodigal son. Smart, efficient, hard-working, and took no prisoners when it came to moving KP, Inc. forward. Ella was still in college then and had plans for law school. With the distance between us, it had been easy to ignore the growing interest our parents had in our future. In my mind I guessed our family’s expectation would change with time, but then, Ella and I had given them little reason to think it would. Habits and hormones die hard, and each time our families came together, I sought her out like a predatory cat too long caged from its prey.

It all seemed manageable at first. I had the adoration, or at least the attention, of my father for the first time in my life. None of the rest seemed real as I took on more and more responsibility, my father feeding me his approval with a fucking baby spoon. While his faith in me seemed to grow, so did the opportunities to be away from his vigilant eyes. It was all very tolerable, right up until the Bradford Business Journal put me on their cover and the article mentioned my bachelor status. Two days later, news of my engagement to Ella was leaked to the papers. It was news to me and suddenly, shit got real.

I shook my head, trying to reconcile all those months of anger with the man I was now, standing in front of Ella. This is not what I want.

What isn’t, Merrick? Me? Our marriage? We already know how you feel about the baby.

It was a devastating blow. It didn’t matter that the shock of Ella’s pregnancy had worn off, that the new reality that was to be my life had begun to bring a smile to my face. Images of parks, little league playoffs, and championship trophies filled my imagination. All the things my childhood had lacked. My father raised a successor, not a son, and I was desperate for a chance to show I was nothing like him. I wanted...no, I needed this baby...more than I needed to breathe. Hell, I would be happy with tutus and princess parties.

Searching for an answer, Ella took advantage of my hesitation. I get it, she said, holding her palms out to me. I wasn’t happy about this either, Merrick. Not after we had agreed to tell our parents to fuck off.

Pulling a chair out from the small breakfast table, I collapsed into it, pulling the bear into my lap. I abandoned the flowers on the table and pushed them as far away as I could. I had been hoping to come home and make some peace with Ella about our marriage, about our baby. It had been a long few months, but I had come to terms with it and now she was destroying my newfound state of mind.

What about the baby? I asked quietly. I had felt it move and now it wasn’t unusual to see some body part bulge against Ella’s belly and zoom against her skin as the baby moved. Freaky as hell at first, but the visual and physical moving of my child had brought on a powerful shift in my thinking.

Ella folded her arms on the table. I’m not trying to keep the baby from you, Merrick. If you’ve decided you want to be a father, then we’ll just have to figure out how to make this work from a distance. It’s the best I can do.

I didn’t have to think about how I felt. My nuts had dropped and I was leaving my father’s company. I had grown, in more ways than one, and I found that I no longer needed the attention or approval by which I had judged my self-worth for so long. It was time to acknowledge that my father’s problems were just that…his fucking problems. I wanted to dedicate my life to being the kind of man Ella and our child could be proud of. I’d even approved renovations for updating my grandmother’s farmhouse. It had seemed imperative to move my growing family out of the city and the farm was the perfect place to raise our child. My grandmother had a passion for horses and though I kept a few, I had my eye on a stud that just might make a name for himself, and the farm. Even if he didn’t, I had my trust fund and I’d inherited my mother’s half of Kincaid Properties.

Ella wasn’t a city girl and I had felt that moving away from the chaos would improve her disposition. I had hoped to give Ella time to recuperate when she had the baby and then surprise her. I could put a stop to all that and move to Louisiana if it meant being close to our child.

My heart splintered at the thought. Why don’t you stay? We can make this work, Ella. It’s not like I don’t care for you.

An unmistakable shadow crossed over her. Merrick, I’ll die if I stay here. She swept her arms around her and I took in the environment that surrounded us. It was plain, void of color and warmth. No artwork decorated the walls of our home, no smiling pictures to remind us of the important things in life. Still, I knew in my heart, all of that wasn’t what she meant.

I’ve known you since I was born, but I don’t want to grow to hate you. This just isn’t what I want.

She let the words sink in.

But Ella… Words escaped me.

Don’t, Merrick. I enjoyed being your friend, but we don’t even have that, anymore. I love you, probably the same way you love me, but, the truth is, this isn’t where I’m supposed to be.

Without another word, she stood and left the room, letting the weight of her words shove me further into my despair.

What the fuck just happened? I came home today intent on starting over, making amends and setting our marriage on the right road. For the benefit of our child, yes, but no one would ever convince me that it was for anything but the right reasons.

My stomach twisted as I thought back on the horrific things I’d said to Ella, back when I was panicking because I’d been suffocating with responsibility…the now unthinkable suggestions I’d made. Maybe doing the ‘right thing’ had been an outdated and unrealistic approach to doing the right thing, but my mind couldn’t, wouldn’t, reconcile that with Ella’s admission.

With my mind still spinning, I went to the nursery and sat the bear in the corner of the crib. There was little I could do to change Ella’s mind, situation being what it was, but I had some time to try. This day may not have played out like I would have had it, but if it came down to it, distance would not deter me from being a kick ass father.

I GROANED AT the sound of the doorbell echoing through my apartment. I had hoped Melanie would forget our plans to go out…that a better offer would come along and distract her…or a freakishly early snow storm would bring the city to a halt. No such luck. I opened the door and stepped aside as my best friend stormed in.

You’re not ready. She turned, hands on her hips and glared at me.

Nope. I pushed the door shut from where I stood and wondered if pain in the ass friends would make a suitable murder defense. Marching across the hardwood floor to the couch, I snatched up my hot pink blanket and settled back into the warm black leather. I was hoping you wouldn’t come.

Hurt, Melanie threw her arms out to the side and her mouth dropped in sync like a programmed toy. You have been moping around here for weeks. No more.

Nobody is moping; I just don’t want to go to that hole-in-the-wall you’re trying to drag me to. I fluffed the matching hot pink pillow and adjusted it as I laid back down, cuddling further under my blanket and wishing she would just go away.

Melanie and I were complete opposites. She was usually quiet, introverted and thoughtful. The fact that she even liked the grunge band playing at Simon’s was something I still had a hard time wrapping my head around. I was the outgoing one, the outspoken one. It was usually Melanie who was pulling my arm to shush me when I was having an inappropriate moment. On the up side, she was the quintessential tall, blonde bombshell…I was not. In fact, I was short with red, corkscrew curls. And, while Melanie had the ability to roll with life’s punches and recover with a firm, ‘fuck it,’ I tended to brood over things. Imagine that, a Steele being broody.

We’d met in college during our obligatory freshman year on campus. We were assigned as roommates and Melanie’s eclectic taste in music had clashed with my strictly country playlist. We had both bitched and bragged about getting an apartment and getting away from each other as soon as we put that first year behind us, and we did. But, we had also become and remained the best of friends. Melanie wasn’t going to ditch me. I could hope, but it wasn’t going to happen.

Melanie took a seat at the opposite end of the couch. You’re really not going to go? If this is about Tim, don’t think he’s sitting at home crying over you. Not when he was having such a dandy time getting his dick wet in Daytona.

My insides cringed at the mention of Tim. Thank you, Melanie, for pouring salt into my gaping wound. Christ, you’d think you were still a psychology major.

She snatched away my cover. Get up. We have a date.

Can’t we just make it a night in? I groaned.

Melanie kicked off her shoes and tucked her feet under her. Her demeanor softened, but her tone remained firm and uncompromising.

"Look, I get you’re hurt, but I’m about to lose you to this whole foundation business and I’m not going to let Tim, or anyone else, ruin what’s left of our summer.