Pretty Vicious

CONTENT WARNING

Pretty Vicious is a dark romance intended for mature adult readers. This story contains morally gray characters, disturbing subject matter, graphic violence, obsessive behavior, and explicit sexual content. Please read with care.

Content includes:

Murder and death of a loved one • grief • blood and graphic violence • physical assault • fighting • torture and interrogation • threats of violence and death • stalking and obsessive behavior • extreme possessiveness and jealousy • controlling behavior • manipulation • intimidation • bullying • blackmail • criminal activity • concealment of crimes and evidence • invasion of privacy and surveillance • alcohol and drug use • underage drinking • intoxication • explicit sexual content • rough sex • consensual dominance and submission • restraints/bondage • spanking and impact play • hair pulling • biting and marking • degradation and praise • consensual humiliation • possessive sexual behavior • and other mature themes.

This book depicts an intentionally unhealthy and obsessive fictional relationship. Kaden Moretti is not written as a model for a healthy real-world romantic partner, and his actions are not always intended to be defensible or redeemable.

Some content may be added to this warning as the story develops.

Please prioritize your comfort and reading experience.

Welcome to Pretty Vicious.

You have been warned. 🖤

Alexandra

The last time I saw my sister alive, she checked the lock on our front door three times.

I didn’t notice the first time. Allison had always been the kind of person who moved while she talked, incapable of standing still when there was something she could be doing with her hands. She’d come home from college that Friday afternoon without warning, dumped an overstuffed duffel bag at the bottom of the stairs, complained that Mom had changed the Wi-Fi password again, and immediately started stealing food from the refrigerator like she hadn’t spent the last two years insisting she was an independent adult with her own apartment and grocery money. By dinner, she’d already argued with Dad about parking behind his truck, stolen half the fries off my plate, and told Mom three separate times that no, she wasn’t too skinny and yes, she was eating enough.

She looked like Allison.

She sounded like Allison.

She laughed like Allison.

So when she walked past the front door and pressed her hand against the dead bolt, I didn’t think anything of it.

The second time, I noticed.

The third time, I stopped talking.

Allison had been standing at the window beside the door, one hand curled around the edge of the curtain as she looked through the narrow gap between the fabric and the glass. It was dark outside. Our porch light illuminated the driveway, Dad’s truck, my shitty little Honda, and the mailbox I’d backed into six months earlier and never successfully straightened. Nothing moved. Nobody stood beneath the streetlights. There was nothing outside that should have interested her.

Still, she watched.

“Allie?”

The curtain dropped immediately.

She turned toward me. “What?”

I was sprawled across the couch with my feet tucked beneath me, half watching some terrible reality show we’d both spent the last hour pretending we hated. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing.”

“You’ve checked the door like three times.”

Her eyes flicked toward it.

It was quick.

So quick that if I hadn’t known Allison as well as I did, I probably wouldn’t have caught it.

Then she shrugged. “Habit.”

“Since when?”

“Since my apartment has shitty locks.”

“You’re at home.”

“Very observant.”

I rolled my eyes. “You’re weird.”

“And you’re annoying.”

“Mom says I’m charming.”

“Mom lies to you because she loves you.”

She walked back toward the couch and dropped beside me, immediately shoving her freezing feet beneath my thigh.

“Jesus Christ.” I jerked away. “Why are you always so fucking cold?”

“Poor circulation.”

“Get a blanket.”

“You are a blanket.”

“I’m going to punch you.”

She smiled at the television. “Violence isn’t the answer, Alexandra.”

“Says the woman who broke my nose when I was nine.”

“You walked into the swing.”

“You kicked me in the face.”

“Semantics.”

I laughed and shoved her feet away, and just like that, whatever strange feeling had settled in my stomach disappeared.

That’s what I hate most when I think about that weekend.

Not that I didn’t notice anything.

I did.

I noticed plenty.

I just let Allison explain it all away.

At seventeen, I still believed that knowing someone your entire life meant you knew everything about them. I believed there couldn’t possibly be an important part of my sister that I hadn’t seen because Allison had been mine before she belonged to anyone else. Before college. Before boyfriends. Before friends whose names I didn’t know. Before late-night parties and locked doors and whatever the hell had taught her to check windows when she thought nobody was watching.

Allison was four years older than me, but somehow the age difference had never mattered.

When I was six and she was ten, I followed her everywhere. When I was eight and she was twelve, I sat on the bathroom counter while she tried to teach herself eyeliner and laughed so hard when she stabbed herself in the eye that she threatened to flush my favorite stuffed animal down the toilet. When I was eleven, she taught me how to ride a bike because Dad lost his patience after the third afternoon. When I fell hard enough to tear open my knee, she carried me almost half a block home even though my legs dragged against the sidewalk every few steps and she spent the entire walk telling me I was heavy as shit.

When she was sixteen, Mom finally told her she didn’t have to bring her little sister everywhere.

I wasn’t supposed to hear that conversation.

I was sitting at the kitchen table pretending to struggle through math homework I’d already finished because Allison had plans that night, and I wanted to know if she’d let me come along. Mom had taken one look at me and apparently realized exactly what I was doing.

“Alex, go upstairs.”

“I have homework.”

“You’ve been staring at the same equation for fifteen minutes.”

“It’s difficult.”

Allison snorted from the counter.

I glared at her.

“Upstairs,” Mom repeated.

I’d packed my notebook with all the dramatic suffering of a child being sent to prison and stomped upstairs, but the air vent beside my bedroom carried voices from the kitchen almost perfectly.

“You don’t have to take her everywhere, Allie.”

“She doesn’t bother me.”

“That’s not what I’m saying. You’re sixteen. You’re allowed to have your own friends and your own life.”

“I do.”

“You know what I mean.”

There was a pause.

Then Allison said, as though Mom was the one making things complicated, “She’s my sister.”

“And?”

“And I like having her around.”

That sentence stayed with me for years.

Not because it was particularly profound. Allison wasn’t sentimental enough for profound. She didn’t give speeches about sisterhood or tell me I was her favorite person every morning. Half the time she greeted me by insulting whatever I was wearing.

But she liked having me around.

At twelve years old, I couldn’t imagine being loved any better than that.

As we got older, four years became less important. I stopped being the little sister she dragged along and became the person she called when something happened. She knew when I was lying before I’d finished the sentence. She knew I picked at the skin beside my thumbnail when I was nervous and that I couldn’t sleep if my closet door was open. She knew I hated tomatoes but liked ketchup, which she insisted was proof I had something neurologically wrong with me. She knew which boys I liked, which girls at school I couldn’t stand, which fights with Mom had actually hurt my feelings even when I pretended they hadn’t.

And I knew her.

At least, I thought I did.

I knew Allison cried when she got angry and absolutely hated herself for it. I knew she loved winter and hated thunderstorms. I knew she couldn’t keep a houseplant alive longer than two weeks. I knew she secretly watched trashy reality television and would deny it even with the remote in her hand. I knew she couldn’t cook anything more complicated than grilled cheese, and even those were usually burned. I knew she talked in her sleep after she’d been drinking and became embarrassingly affectionate when she was tired.

I knew the sound of her footsteps in the hallway.

I knew the perfume she wore.

I knew her laugh from another room.

There are things about a person you don’t realize you’ve memorized until they’re dead.

Then suddenly you’d give anything to hear them coming down the stairs again.

When Allison left for college, I cried the night before.

Not cute crying, either. I was sixteen years old, face shoved into my pillow, genuinely pissed at myself because I knew I was being ridiculous and couldn’t seem to stop anyway. Allison was moving a few hours away, not disappearing off the face of the earth, but our entire lives had been built around knowing the other person was somewhere nearby.

She climbed into my bed sometime after midnight.

“You’re acting like I’m dying.”

I rolled over so fast I nearly elbowed her in the mouth. “Don’t say that.”

“What?”

“That you’re dying.”

“I didn’t say I’m dying. I said you’re acting like I’m dying.”

“Same thing.”

“It is literally not the same thing.”

“Go away.”

“No.”

“You’re leaving tomorrow anyway.”

“For college, you dramatic little shit. Not war.”

I pulled the comforter over my head.

She ripped it back down.

“Stop.”

“Leave me alone.”

“Alexandra.”

I hated when she used my whole name because it almost always meant she was about to make me have a conversation I didn’t want to have.

I finally looked at her.

She was lying on her side beside me, blonde hair tangled around her shoulders, staring at me like I’d personally offended her.

“You’re not getting rid of me.”

“You’ll make cooler friends.”

“Obviously.”

I shoved her shoulder.

She laughed. “What? You walked into that one.”

“You’ll forget about me.”

That wiped the smile from her face.

For a moment, she just looked at me.

Then she reached over and flicked my forehead hard enough to hurt.

“Ow. What the fuck?”

“I couldn’t forget about you if I suffered severe brain damage.”

I rubbed my forehead. “That’s not comforting.”

“It’s incredibly comforting.”

“You hate talking on the phone.”

“I’ll text you.”

“You forget to answer.”

“Then I’ll call.”

“You just said—”

“Jesus Christ.” She groaned. “Fine. I’ll send you a carrier pigeon every morning so you know I haven’t replaced you.”

I tried not to smile. “What’s his name?”

“Gregory.”

“That’s a stupid name.”

“You don’t get to name my pigeon.”

“Why is it your pigeon if he’s delivering messages to me?”

“Because I’m buying him.”

“Where are you buying a pigeon?”

“I don’t fucking know, Alex. It’s one in the morning.”

I laughed.

She did too.

Then she wrapped an arm around me and squeezed until I complained that I couldn’t breathe.

For a while, she kept her promise.

Not about Gregory. That asshole never showed up.

But Allison called.

She texted constantly. She sent pictures of her dorm room and complained about the communal showers. She FaceTimed me while walking to class, sometimes turning the camera around so I could see the campus. She told me about professors she hated and assignments she procrastinated until the night before. She sent me drunk pictures at two in the morning that I wouldn’t see until I woke up, usually with her grinning into the camera beneath flashing lights.

I knew she partied.

I knew she drank.

I knew she’d made friends.

What I didn’t know was who those friends were.

That didn’t seem strange then.

It does now.

There were people who existed at the edges of Allison’s life but somehow never made it into the stories she told me. A man’s shoulder cropped from a photograph. A tattooed forearm resting on the table beside her. Someone’s black sweatshirt hanging over the back of her desk chair. Hockey playing on a television behind her even though Allison had never cared about hockey at home.

Once, while we were FaceTiming, I’d heard men laughing somewhere in her apartment.

Not one.

Several.

“Who are you with?”

Allison glanced over her shoulder.

“Friends.”

“What friends?”

“My friends.”

“Wow. Helpful.”

She smiled. “Glad I could clear that up.”

“Do these mysterious friends have names?”

“Unfortunately.”

“Are they hot?”

“Alex.”

“What? That’s a reasonable question.”

“You’re seventeen.”

“And I have eyes.”

Someone shouted something behind her.

I couldn’t make out the words, but Allison’s head turned sharply.

Her smile disappeared.

Only for a second.

Then she looked back at me.

“I have to go.”

“What? Why?”

“Because unlike you, I have a life.”

“Bitch.”

“Love you too.”

The call ended.

At the time, I thought nothing of it.

Why would I?

She was in college.

Of course there were people I didn’t know.

Of course she was entitled to a life that didn’t include me in every corner of it.

But slowly, there were more corners.

She called less.

Sometimes my texts went unanswered until the next morning.

Then until the next night.

Sometimes she’d answer immediately and whisper because she said her roommate was asleep, except I could hear traffic outside and knew she wasn’t in her apartment.

Once she FaceTimed me with a bruise high on her arm.

“What happened?”

Her hand immediately covered it.

“What?”

“Your arm.”

She glanced down. “Oh. Nothing.”

“That doesn’t look like nothing.”

“I walked into a door.”

I stared at her.

She stared back.

Then we both started laughing because it was such a fucking cliché.

“Seriously,” I said.

“I fell at a party.”

“You just said you walked into a door.”

“I fell into a door at a party.”

“You’re a terrible liar.”

“I’m an excellent liar.”

“No, you’re not.”

She smiled.

I didn’t.

Eventually hers faded.

“I’m fine, Alex.”

That became her favorite sentence.

I’m fine.

When she sounded exhausted.

I’m fine.

When she stopped coming home as often.

I’m fine.

When I called and she rejected it twice before texting that she couldn’t talk.

I’m fine.

The first time I seriously asked if something was wrong, she laughed at me.

The second time, she got irritated.

The third time, she went silent.

I was sitting on my bedroom floor with my back against the side of my bed, phone pressed to my ear.

“Allison.”

“I said I’m fine.”

“You’ve been saying that for months.”

“Because I am.”

“You sound weird.”

“Thank you.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I’m tired.”

“You’re always tired now.”

“That’s college.”

“Bullshit.”

“Alex.”

“What?”

“Drop it.”

My fingers stilled against the loose thread I’d been picking on my jeans.

That wasn’t us.

We didn’t tell each other to drop things.

Not important things.

“You’d tell me if something happened, right?”

Silence.

Two seconds.

Maybe three.

I’ve replayed those seconds enough times that they’ve stretched into hours in my memory.

Then Allison exhaled.

“Nothing happened.”

“You promise?”

Another pause.

“Yeah.”

She lied.

I know that now.

Maybe part of me knew it then.

I simply didn’t know what to do with the knowledge.

The last time Allison came home, she arrived unexpectedly on a Friday.

She looked thinner.

Mom noticed that.

She had dark circles beneath her eyes.

Dad blamed studying.

She kept checking her phone.

Nobody mentioned it.

But I noticed something else.

Allison startled easily.

A car door slammed outside during dinner and her fork stopped halfway to her mouth.

Dad dropped something in the garage and she flinched.

Her phone buzzed against the kitchen counter and she stared at the screen for several seconds before turning it facedown.

Then there were the locks.

Three times.

Later that night, she came into my bedroom without knocking.

She’d changed into an old sweatshirt and sleep shorts, her face scrubbed clean of makeup. For the first time all day, she looked more like the sister I remembered.

I was halfway through an episode on my laptop when she crawled into my bed and shoved her freezing feet against my legs.

I recoiled. “What the fuck?”

“I’m cold.”

“Then put socks on.”

“Your legs are warmer.”

“You have your own bed.”

“I like yours.”

“You’re twenty-two years old.”

“And?”

“And stop touching me with your corpse feet.”

She laughed.

God, I remember that laugh.

I remember everything about that night because my brain has spent the last two years dissecting it, searching for something I missed.

We talked until almost three in the morning.

About Mom reorganizing the kitchen again. About a guy at my school who wouldn’t stop texting me. About some hideous tattoo one of Allison’s friends had gotten while drunk. She told me about a professor who pronounced her last name wrong despite having her in class for an entire semester.

Normal things.

Painfully normal things.

At some point she went quiet.

I was lying on my side, half asleep, when she spoke.

“Alex?”

“Hmm?”

“If I ever told you not to come looking for me, would you listen?”

My eyes opened.

I turned my head toward her.

She was staring at the ceiling.

“What?”

“If something happened and I told you to stay out of it.”

Sleep disappeared from my head.

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“Nothing.”

“No.” I pushed myself onto my elbow. “You don’t get to ask something like that and then say nothing.”

She turned toward me.

There was something in her expression I’d never seen before.

Fear.

Real fear.

It was gone almost immediately.

Allison smiled and reached up to shove my hair away from my face. “It was hypothetical.”

“That’s a fucked-up hypothetical.”

“I know.”

“Is something happening?”

“No.”

“Are you in trouble?”

“No.”

“Did somebody hurt you?”

Her expression changed.

Barely.

But I saw it.

“Allie.”

“No one hurt me.”

“Then why would I ever need to come looking for you?”

“You wouldn’t.”

“Then why did you ask?”

She looked at me for a long moment.

“Because you’re fucking nosy.”

I frowned. “I’m serious.”

“So am I.” She poked my forehead. “You have absolutely no survival instincts when you think you’re right about something.”

“That’s not true.”

“You climbed onto the roof last summer because you thought you could get a better picture of a thunderstorm.”

“That was different.”

“You’re afraid of thunderstorms.”

“I wanted the picture.”

“You’re proving my point.”

I shoved her hand away, but I didn’t laugh.

“Allison.”

Her smile faded.

Then she reached for me and pulled me against her.

I resisted for half a second before settling beside her.

“Just promise me something,” she murmured.

“What?”

“If somebody ever tells you there’s something you don’t need to know, maybe for once in your life, believe them.”

I pulled back enough to look at her. “That’s the stupidest advice you’ve ever given me.”

A quiet laugh escaped her.

“Yeah,” she whispered. “I figured you’d say that.”

“What aren’t you telling me?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re lying.”

“I know.”

That stopped me.

Allison stared at me.

Then she seemed to realize what she’d admitted.

“I’m kidding.”

“You’re not.”

“Alex—”

“Tell me.”

“I can’t.”

Two words.

Quiet.

Immediate.

The room suddenly felt colder.

“Why?”

She swallowed.

“I just can’t.”

“Is it bad?”

Her eyes dropped.

That was my answer.

I sat up completely. “Allison, what the fuck?”

“Keep your voice down.”

“No. If you’re in trouble—”

“I’m not.”

“You just said—”

“I said I can’t tell you something. That’s not the same thing.”

“You’re scared.”

“I am not scared.”

“You checked the fucking front door three times tonight.”

Her entire body went still.

I knew then.

Not what was happening.

Not who was involved.

Not what she had done or what had been done to her.

But I knew my sister was afraid.

“Who are you scared of?”

“Nobody.”

“Bullshit.”

“Alexandra.”

“Who?”

She stared at me.

For one horrible second, I thought she might actually answer.

Instead, she reached for my hand.

Her fingers were cold.

“Listen to me.”

I did.

“If anything ever happens, you stay here.”

My chest tightened. “What does that mean?”

“You stay away from my school. You stay away from my friends. You don’t go looking for answers because you think you know better than everyone else.”

“What friends?”

She ignored me.

“Allison.”

“Promise me.”

“No.”

Her jaw tightened. “Alex.”

“No. You’re freaking me the fuck out.”

“Good. Maybe you’ll listen.”

“Tell me what’s happening.”

“I can’t.”

“Then I’m not promising shit.”

She stared at me with obvious frustration.

I stared right back.

Eventually, something in her expression softened.

“You’re such a pain in my ass.”

“You raised me.”

“That was my first mistake.”

“Your first mistake was those bangs in eighth grade.”

“They were fashionable.”

“They were criminal.”

She laughed.

And because I was seventeen, because she was my big sister, because she was sitting safely in my bed and our parents were sleeping down the hall, I let the conversation become normal again.

That is the part I will never forgive myself for.

Not because I could have saved her.

Everyone tells me I couldn’t have.

But because she tried to tell me something without telling me.

And I let her stop.

Eventually, I lay back down.

Minutes passed.

Maybe longer.

I was drifting toward sleep when I realized Allison was looking at me.

“What?” I mumbled.

“Nothing.”

“Why are you staring at me?”

“Because you’re ugly.”

“Fuck you.”

She smiled.

But her eyes didn’t.

She reached over and pushed a strand of hair away from my cheek.

“I love you, Alex.”

Something about the way she said it made my stomach hurt.

“I love you too.”

“Good.”

“Allie?”

“Hmm?”

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

Silence.

Then she kissed my forehead.

“Go to sleep.”

I did.

For two years, I’ve hated myself for that.

Four days later, my mother screamed downstairs.

There are sounds your brain doesn’t keep as memories.

It keeps them as wounds.

My mother’s scream is one of mine.

I remember throwing back my comforter. I remember running into the hallway barefoot and nearly slipping on the stairs because I was moving too quickly. I remember reaching the kitchen and seeing Dad standing beside the counter with one hand braced against the granite as though the house had tilted beneath him.

Mom’s phone was on the floor.

She was crying so hard she couldn’t speak.

“What happened?”

Neither of them answered.

I looked from one to the other.

“What’s wrong?”

Dad closed his eyes.

Something cold moved through me.

“Where’s Allison?”

Mom made a sound that didn’t sound human.

I looked at Dad.

“Where is she?”

His face answered before his mouth did.

“No.”

He stepped toward me.

I backed away.

“No.”

“Alex—”

“No. Where is she?”

He said my name again.

I screamed hers.

I don’t remember hitting the floor, but I remember the tile against my knees. I remember my father trying to hold me and me fighting him so hard that my elbow struck his chest. I remember demanding somebody give me Mom’s phone because there had been a mistake. There had obviously been a mistake. Allison was twenty-two. Allison was at college. Allison was probably sleeping. Allison was going to wake up and see thirty missed calls from us and call me a psychopath.

I called her.

Once.

Twice.

Five times.

Ten.

Her voicemail became unbearable.

For weeks afterward, people used softer words around me.

We lost her.

She passed.

It was a tragedy.

As if prettier language could make a dead girl less dead.

Then the police started using different words.

Timeline.

Evidence.

Witnesses.

Homicide.

Suspects.

I learned that my sister’s last months were filled with things I knew nothing about.

People she had never named.

Places she’d lied about being.

Messages nobody could find.

Phone calls she hadn’t told anyone about.

Friends who apparently knew pieces of Allison that her own family didn’t.

There were gaps everywhere.

And whenever I asked questions, people told me the same thing.

Let the police handle it.

You don’t need to know every detail.

This isn’t something you should involve yourself in.

The more they told me not to look, the more certain I became that there was something they didn’t want me to see.

Someone knew what happened to Allison Davenport.

Someone knew why she’d started checking locks.

Someone knew why she’d been afraid.

Someone knew why my sister had looked me in the eye four days before she died and told me to stay away from her school, her friends, and whatever she’d gotten herself involved in.

Maybe Allison had known exactly how much danger she was in.

Maybe she’d known who was coming for her.

Maybe that was why she’d come home.

Maybe she’d been saying goodbye.

I have spent two years wondering.

Two years replaying every phone call, every photograph, every unexplained bruise, every cropped shoulder and unfamiliar male voice. Two years thinking about the secrets Allison had kept from me and the people she’d apparently trusted enough to share them with instead.

People I still didn’t know.

People who had been there.

People who had survived whatever Allison hadn’t.

Allison Davenport was twenty-two years old.

She was the person who taught me how to ride a bike and lie to our mother. She was the person who climbed into my bed when I cried and named an imaginary carrier pigeon Gregory because she couldn’t stand seeing me sad. She was the person who knew me better than anyone in the world.

She was my sister.

She was my best friend.

She told me not to look.

She should have known me well enough to know I would.

And then she was murdered.