Finding Him Read online

  Finding Him

  Unleashing Hell, Volume 1

  Viola Tempest

  Published by Independently Published, 2022.

  Finding Him

  UNLEASHING HELL BOOK ONE

  VIOLA TEMPEST

  Finding Him

  Unleashing Hell Book One

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  © Copyright 2022 Viola Tempest

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  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Names, characters, and places are products of the author’s imagination.

  Cover Design by Burning Phoenix Covers

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 1

  My name is Bella Nova, and my family and I just moved from Astoria, Oregon to Ojai, California. Why? Because six months ago, I killed someone. Now, before you start judging me, calling me names like a “monster” or a “criminal,” know that it wasn’t my fault. Turned out, shooting someone in the name of self-defense isn’t legal in all counties, and I had to find out the hard way.

  But let me take a few steps back. I’m just your normal average seventeen-year-old high school student, nothing more, nothing less. I went to school, got good grades, hung out with my friends, and on weekends, I volunteered at the local animal shelter, where I fed and groomed the animals, preparing them for their new home. All in all, I was the good child, the one who followed all the rules and did as I was told. Unlike my brother, Ace, who ran with all the potheads and stayed out for days at a time.

  So, how did I end up in the back of a man’s pickup truck? Bound and tied like a chicken ready to be chopped and served? Let’s just say, I’m not exactly the smartest grape in the bunch. I excelled when it came to exams and standardized tests, but in the outside world, in reality, my intense lust for any guy who bats his eyes at me, and dreadful fear of ending up alone, usually put me in positions I shouldn’t be in.

  And Brick Cannon was just too delicious to resist. He came into my high school like a blazing fire, captivating the hearts of everyone he encountered, everyone except for me. And I hated it! I’d watch with envy as he flirted with my best friend, Chelsea Miller, and it drove me insane whenever he’d just brush right past me to get to her. Like I didn’t even exist!

  I resented Chelsea for it. Though it wasn’t her fault, it also didn’t help that she flirted back with him whenever she got the chance, much like all the other girls in my school. He was the most handsome boy I had ever seen in my life, and I’m sure they all thought the same.

  But then my luck started to change. Whenever I’d turn around, I’d catch Brick staring at me for a quick second before turning his head away. Was he really looking at me? Or were those eyes just for Chelsea? I second guessed myself for weeks, assuming a boy like him would never be with a girl like me, until he came up to me one day as I was walking home.

  “Hey, Bella,” he said, flashing me that charming smile, enough to make me swoon. “Whatcha up to?”

  I froze. Of course, I did. I’d never spoken to Brick before, always lusting after him from afar, so when he finally came up to me, I didn’t know what else to do.

  “Hey…,” I answered back. “Um, Chelsea isn’t here.”

  He laughed, so heartily that I was sure the entire neighborhood heard.

  “Chelsea?” he exclaimed. “Forget about her. It’s you I wanna talk to, silly.”

  My mouth hung open as I pointed to myself. “Me?”

  I wasn’t sure whether to cheer or faint. After all this time, Brick Cannon, the Brick Cannon, actually wanted to talk to me!

  “Of course! Why’d you think I hung around Chelsea so much? Because I was too scared to talk to you.”

  My eyes lit up. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. It was everything I’d always wanted, and I wanted, right then and there, to leap up and throw my arms around his neck.

  Brick Cannon. He was interested in me. And I couldn’t ask for more.

  But although Brick was the greatest, he was definitely not my first… crush, that is. Before my parents met, my mother used to be a bit of a… promiscuous damsel, hitting up clubs every night and bringing home a different boy. I’ve heard all the stories of her wild teenage years. So have the rest of my family, each one less enthusiastic about my mother’s sexuality than I was.

  Growing up, I told myself that I would never end up like her, that I would meet the one man of my dreams, get married, and that was it. And I held myself to that promise, until I entered middle school. And everything changed. I had hit puberty and became a woman, and I instantly became hooked on every troublemaker who crossed my path.

  At first, it was Billy Styles, my sixth-grade crush whom everyone wanted, and he knew it. It amazed me how much of an ego was able to fit inside such a small package. The girls in my class were just getting over their “cooties” stage, and they all threw themselves at the new “bad boy” who had recently enrolled in our school. And I was no different.

  Of course, like all the boys during that time, Billy wanted nothing to do with any of us. Video games and soccer were his calling, not dating, and that only made us all want him that much more.

  But that obsession quickly faded when Alex Shaw came into my life two years later. His blonde hair and beautiful blue eyes were enough to make me shiver in all the right places. I wanted nothing more than to be his girlfriend, to lock my arm around his as we stroll to class together.

  Unfortunately, his eyes were on Becky Miller, the most popular girl in class, and the one all the boys wanted to date. I didn’t stand a chance. I watched in the shadows as Alex and Becky locked their arms together and walked by me every day down the hall. And whenever they kissed, their lips locking and tongues intertwining, I wanted to puke.

  I wasn’t ugly, per se. I just didn’t have the look that boys seemed to want. I was just your average girl next door with high standards. I had plenty of suitors knocking on my door, but I wanted the best of the best, the cream of the crop, and I wasn’t about to settle for anything less. I’d rather be alone than stoop myself to such level.

  Lucky enough for me, Becky Miller’s father eventually received an offer he couldn’t refuse, and moved his entire family to Chicago, Illinois, forcing Alex and Becky to break up. I smirked as I watched them break it off, making promises to continue their relationship long distant even though everyone knew it wouldn’t last, and Alex was in tears as he watched Becky hop in her dad’s car and drive away.

  And I was right. Less than a week later, Alex turned into a wreck when he saw a picture of his girlfriend on social media with another guy, smiling and laughing as if Alex didn’t exist. And guess who was right there to comfort him? Me. No one ever told me that the best time to snag a man is during his lowest point, but that’s exactly how I became Alex Shaw’s new girlfriend just days later.

  We did everything that he and Becky used to do, locking arms as we walked to class, and locking lips while our tongues entangled in a dance. After two months of dating, we even made love for the first time. I’d felt nervous at first, reserved and shy, but he managed to convince me that, if I really loved him, I had to do it for him.

  And so, I did, letting my sexual fantasies run wild as he claimed my virginity for himself. I finally had everything I’d ever wanted, and it felt magical.

  But maybe all that lust and desire clouded my judgment, because soon, I began to realize that Alex Shaw wasn’t who I thought he was. Not at all.

  It was our Sophomore year in high school when I finally discovered that my boyfriend had been cheating on me the entire time of our relationship. He had started dating Virginia Wilde soon after Becky left, and was only with me because Virginia refused to put out. “The Middle School Slut,” I was known as, and I wanted to die when I found out, overhearing a conversation that Alex was having with his group of friends, bragging about how he’d had sex over thirty-six times.

  And I couldn’t take it anymore. It was too much. Everywhere I went, guys came up to me, asking me to fuck them, and girls all avoided me, thinking that I’d somehow spread whatever disease I had to them. I felt so alone, so suicidal, that I convinced my parents to transfer me to a new school, in a different county, where no one knew who I was or my past. And that’s where I met Brick.

  “You like me?” I asked before realizing how awkward and stupid I probably sounded.

  All he said was that he wanted to talk to me, and here I was throwing myself at him and expecting something much more.

  But he didn’t laugh. He didn’t point his finger at me and call me an “idiot” like I had expected.

  Instead, he rubbed the back of his neck and nodded. “Yeah, I kinda do. Do you maybe wanna grab a soda with me? And it can just be as friends! I don’t want to pressure you into anything you’re uncomfortable with.”

  I quickly nodded. “As friends,” I said.

  I couldn’t have him knowing that those few words had already made my panties wet, and I wanted to just tear his clothes off and lick those abs that I imagined he had.

  I barely got to kno
w Brick during our date. I was too busy staring into his beautiful eyes, and he was too busy running his fingers up and down my inner thigh. We both wanted each other. Not just as boyfriend and girlfriend, but we both wanted to grab each other by the shirt and make out right then and there in the booth of the diner. And it became much more obvious when he leaned in and kissed me, running his hand up the skirt of my dress and pulling down my cheeky.

  “Wait! Not here,” I hissed. “There are people here.”

  Brick looked around and saw three elders slurping on their bowl of soup. Probably all here for the early bird special. His face fell when he tried to persuade me again but was stopped instead.

  “I know somewhere we can go. It’s old, abandoned, and no one will be there to bother us,” he whispered into my ear while nibbling on it.

  I eagerly agreed, and he took my hand and led me into his pickup truck. I hesitated and winced when his hand made its way down my underwear, but I really wanted him to like me, so I didn’t stop his fingers from exploring. I could feel my body falling for his touch, his sensual touch that made me the wettest I’d ever been. He eventually stopped in front of an old barn that looked like it hadn’t been touched in nearly a century and asked me if the place was fine.

  But my body had already caved in, and I couldn’t even make it out the door of the car before climbing on top of him and unzipping his pants, feeling the girth of him inside of me while I smashed my face against his.

  Our wild sexual adventure continued for months, fucking everywhere we could, whenever we could, and I had become so head over heels in love with him that I threw all my reserves and common sense right out the window.

  Chelsea tried to warn me about Brick, but I refused to listen.

  “He’s not a good person,” she said. “Why do you think I stopped talking to him? All he wants is sex, controlling and manipulating women into giving him what he wants. Don’t you see it? Doesn’t it seem odd to you that he only ever wants to be around you if you put out?”

  But I just rolled my eyes at her. Chelsea had been my best friend ever since I transfer to Astoria High, but there was no chance in Hell that I was going to let her come between me and the boy of my dreams.

  “You’re just jealous that he wants me and not you. Brick loves me,” I said back to her. “I love him, and we’re going to be together forever.”

  I should’ve listened to Chelsea when I had the chance. Even my mother, the Queen of Lust, tried to warn me about Brick Cannon. There was a certain sense of evil in his eyes that I’d failed to notice until it was too late.

  He had killed before, he told me when I ultimately found myself being held captive in that abandoned barn. And I wouldn’t be his last, just another pawn to satisfy his craving as he made his way across the country. And here I was thinking Alex Shaw was bad. Never did I imagine being manipulated and kidnapped by a fucking serial killer.

  And that’s how I ended up in California. On the run for shooting a man before he had a chance to shoot me first. They may come after me. After all, I had committed a crime. But they might not. I had played the role of a vigilante, and shooting Brick Cannon only meant sparing the lives of many other women he had planned on conquering.

  I could sit here and think about all the possibilities of my fate, but I’d much rather tune them all out and forget about my past. I have a new life now in Ojai, and though it seems like I’m always running from one problem to another, these were all life-or-death situations. I had no other choice.

  Chapter 2

  Ojai, California is a small valley just north of Los Angeles, where people are both friendly and superstitious. Although they’d do anything, even things out of their way, to help a newcomer settle in and make this town their home, they’d never refrain from telling their own tales of how Ojai is haunted. No one knows why or what it’s haunted by; they just know that once every thousand years, something strange happens to the town of Ojai, a sort of vibration, followed by an aura that many of the elders deem as “evil.”

  Some of the more superstitious folks think it’s a sign from God, his way of warning the residents that the end is near and to get their shit together before the whole world collapses. Others just brush it off as another earthquake, something that’s common to residents of California, given how it resides on the San Andreas Fault.

  But whatever it is, no one has ever lived long enough after the incident to carry on the message. Maybe the world really does end once every thousand years. Maybe God does open the Gate of Heaven and sends the good ones up. Or maybe, everyone in this town is full of nonsense and bullshit.

  “You folks better be careful,” one of our neighbors warns us as my father pulls into the driveway of our new home. “It’s another thousand years again. Who knows what, or who, will come upon us this year? My husband, Charlie, and I have been preparing for over a year now.”

  “Preparing?” my mother asks, pulling a suitcase from the trunk.

  “For the apocalypse!”

  That’s when the husband walks out. “Oh, don’t listen to Betsy. It’s all just nonsense. There’s no apocalypse. It’s just a little vibration, nothing to be too concerned about.”

  “But we do have that bomb shelter, you know, just in case.” Betsy points out to Charlie.

  “That’s true, we do. I doubt we’ll need it, but it never hurts to have a backup.”

  “Thanks for the heads up,” my father says as he walks into the home.

  “Anytime, neighbors!” Betsy calls out after him. “And if you folks need a place to stay during the apocalypse, our shelter has plenty of room!”

  “It’s not an apocalypse, Betsy!” Charlie angrily storms inside and slams the door behind him.

  Betsy turns to the rest of us and apologizes. “Oh, don’t mind him. Charlie’s always cranky in the morning, but you’ll get used to him. Anyway, welcome to Ojai, and be safe out there. If the apocalypse doesn’t kill us, some of the weirdos who cross through here from LA most likely will. It’s a dangerous, dangerous world.” She finishes and proceeds to walk back into her home.

  “Is there really an apocalypse coming?” Ace asks our parents, plopping his ass down on the couch, still wrapped and sealed.

  “Nah,” my father says. “Don’t mind them. They’re old. They don’t know what they’re talking about. An apocalypse every thousand years? A sign from God? Come on, it’s all a bunch of rumors. Probably to scare away newcomers.” He sits down beside Ace. “Ojai’s a great town. I’ve heard nothing but good things about this place. Don’t let our crazy neighbors get to you.”

  “Your father’s right, kids. Nothing’s going to happen. The apocalypse is nothing but a rumor. Now, go set up your rooms. You both start school tomorrow,” Mom chimes in.

  I pick up my bags and head up to my room. The stairs creak as I walk, and the flimsy railing makes me wonder whether I’m safer skipping it altogether. The house is old, a Victorian-style home, probably from the early 1800s. It smells of dust and old people, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I find several rats living up in the attic.

  Ace had already claimed his room by the time I make my way upstairs, belly flopped on his floor mattress while playing on his phone. I have no choice but to choose the other one, the smaller, much smaller, bedroom. It’s always the same wherever we go. Ace would get the better option. Perks of being the older one, I guess.

  I never liked change, but this is one I desperately needed. I can’t go back to Astoria. Too much history back there that I’d rather forget. And Chelsea, I never got the chance to tell her that I was moving. But it wasn’t like we’d really spoken since I ignored her for Brick. I sigh. That’s my life, always making bad choices and screwing everything up.

  After throwing my suitcase onto the carpeted floor, I walk over to the windowsill, twisting the pentagram ring on my right ring finger. Brick had given it to me on our third date, said it suited my style, and for me to cherish it forever. Now, I keep thinking whether he just swiped it off a dead girl. But still, it holds sentimental value. I think I’ll keep it for now.