by Julie Kriss
“How?”
“I’m figuring that out. But this is not going to stand. I’m telling you that.”
She looked at me for a moment, and I had the uncanny feeling she could see the fire inside me, the flames of rage that were consuming me from the inside out. Then she said something that surprised me. “If you hurt someone, I’ll never forgive you. Never.”
“Olivia,” I said. “Someone just pushed you down the stairs. Whoever he is, I’m going to break his fucking bones.”
Her voice was shaking but strong. “If you do, it will be over between us. Forever.”
I gripped the wheel. Fuck. All I wanted was to find Craig Bastien and bash his creepy white teeth in. But she was serious. She would end us. And there was nothing, absolutely nothing, I was willing to do to push her away from me—even if I didn’t deserve her. “Okay,” I said. “I won’t hurt anyone.”
“Do you promise?”
“I promise.”
“You should go to the police,” she said. “Report this drug deal. Give them all the details you know.”
And then you won’t be pushed down the stairs. You’ll be dumped in a ditch with a bullet in you, I thought, but instead I said, “I’m going to handle it.” I glanced at her. “Without hurting anyone. Leave it to me.”
She rubbed her forehead. She suddenly looked close to tears.
If she cried, I would lose my shit. “Babe,” I managed.
“It’s okay. It’s just been a long night.” She scrubbed at her skin as if trying to wake it up. “Do you know I used to draw you?”
I blinked, trying to follow. “What?”
“Before I met you.” Her voice had gone quiet, a little dreamy. “I used to see you coming and going from your place out my window. And I used to draw you. I think I must have two dozen sketches in my apartment somewhere.”
I didn’t know what to make of that. I’d never known anyone to draw me before. “I noticed you too,” I said. “But I didn’t want to creep you out. And I can’t draw.”
That got me a smile, though it was faint. “You’re easy to draw. So easy. Your lines are perfect. From every angle, in every light. It’s a pleasure to draw you because you never look bad. If you wanted to be an artist’s model, you’d be in high demand. I never got tired of it. You’re perfect.”
We were pulling into my driveway in Diablo. The house sat in front of us, patiently waiting in the dark. What she’d said to me, offbeat as it was, was beautiful. A compliment. And at the same time it made me feel like something was crushing my throat. Like something was ending.
“You should have found a nice guy in art school,” I said. I pictured him. Some guy who didn’t have a tattoo on his hand and a prison record. A guy who would take her to the art galleries she liked and be nice in bed. A little boring, maybe, but at least she’d be safe.
She didn’t answer me. She didn’t agree. But she didn’t contradict me, either.
I led her inside. In the bedroom, I pulled off her clothes gently and gave her one of my t-shirts, and then I tucked her in. She had bruises on her hip, her shoulder, around the sprain on her wrist where she’d tried to break her fall as she fell down the stairs. Bruises on her knees, the soft flesh of her upper arms. I got in bed next to her and put my arm around her, gingerly, trying not to touch any of her bruises. She was asleep in minutes.
I wasn’t. I was awake.
He said it was a warning.
Three million. Call it an investment.
He said it was a warning.
You’re perfect.
I watched the darkness and listened to her breathe. Inside me, the fire blazed and the flames spiraled hotter, higher, higher.
Someone was going to burn.
Chapter 22
Olivia
I woke up sore and aching and alone in the bed. I rolled over to see that there was morning sunlight coming through the window, muffled by dark gray clouds. The room was dim except for light coming from the walk-in closet, the door to which was open.
I ran a hand through my hair, over my face. My skin felt tender to the touch, the bruises slightly swollen. My ribs hurt and my wrist ached. I may have made a small sound, because there was movement from within the closet and Devon appeared in the doorway, his silhouette huge against the light.
“There’s aspirin and water on the table next to you,” he said.
I took the aspirin from the bedside table and swallowed it down, propping up my aching head. Still he stood, watching me.
“Are you okay?” he said.
I couldn’t see him clearly, but I could see he was dressed. And not in his usual style. He wore dress pants that were cut slim to his hips and legs and a button-down dress shirt that fit him like a second skin. As I watched he moved across the room toward me, lithe as a cat, and sat on the edge of the bed.
“I’m okay,” I said. “I’m just bruised.”
He bent down, and I realized he was putting on his shoes. I watched his profile. It was blank, impersonal. He’d driven at record speed to come get me last night, and he’d been frantic, but now he seemed almost distracted. His face, his body were shut down. We hadn’t had sex last night—understandable, considering how shaken and tired I’d been, but still. This was Devon. The man had a sex drive that could probably power most of California, at least—I hoped—when it came to me. But it hadn’t even been on the table. And suddenly, in the cloudy morning light, that gave me a twinge of alarm. When Devon looked at me with his green eyes full of pure lust, when he prowled over me and told me to spread my legs, at least I knew what he was thinking.
“Are you going somewhere?” I asked him.
He shoved on his other shoe. “I have work to do.”
My panic rose a notch. “What work?”
Still he didn’t look at me, his profile beautiful and impassive. “Don’t worry, Olivia.”
No. Oh, no. There was nothing guaranteed to make me worry more than the words don’t worry out of his mouth. “This has to do with me, doesn’t it? With last night.”
He finished with his shoe and put his hands on his thighs. For the first time he turned his head and looked at me. I’d never seen his eyes like that—flat and dead and unfeeling. Devon was a lot of things—complicated, secretive, passionate, tough, twisted, raunchy, sometimes funny—but one thing he wasn’t was cold. He could be impassive, playing it close, keeping his thoughts behind his eyes, but the thoughts were always there. He’d never just looked like they were frozen out of existence. Like there was nothing going on inside him at all.
“I’m not leaving you alone today,” he said, as if I hadn’t asked him a question. “It isn’t safe. I called my lawyer. He’s coming by to make sure you’re protected. His name is Ben.”
I frowned, picturing some old, bald man in a suit. Was I just a piece of business for his legal team to take care of? “Your lawyer?”
For the first time, a flicker of a smile touched the corner of his mouth, but it didn’t warm his expression, and then it was gone again. “He doesn’t look like a lawyer. No one would mess with him. He’ll be here in an hour. He has the code to the front door, so don’t freak out.”
I pulled my knees up under the covers and hugged them. I was wearing one of his t-shirts, and my body heat had brought out his scent in the fabric. Something about this conversation, about his whole demeanor, was terrifying me. “You promised,” I reminded him. “You said you wouldn’t hurt anyone. You promised me.”
He looked at me for a long moment, his expression still utterly unreadable. “It doesn’t end here,” he said quietly. “You understand that? This isn’t just one incident that will go away. Even if I do this deal—and I won’t, but even if I did, there would be another one after that, and another, and another. Until we’re both dead. You get that?”
I thought I might be sick, but I did. That man last night had had no problem throwing me down a flight of stairs. No hesitation. If his job had been to kidnap me, or to rape me, or to shoot me, I knew deep dow
n that he would have done any of those things with the same businesslike focus. But what the hell was Devon going to do about it? “I meant what I said last night,” I said. “I won’t have someone getting killed, or close to it, because of me. I won’t be with a man who hurts people. I waited two years for you to get out of prison, Devon. We can’t go anywhere with this, be anything, if you go back in.”
He watched me for a long minute, but he didn’t touch me. He had trimmed his beard almost down to stubble, and it looked dark and handsome on his skin, framing his mouth. He was freshly showered, his hair clean and tousled. He looked like a beautiful man in a nice bedroom wearing quietly gorgeous, expensive clothes. Less like the con who had found me at my office and more like the rich man he’d suddenly become. Except for the tattoo on his left hand. Always visible, always a reminder of where he’d come from, who he was. The tattoo, I knew now, that was about the death of his mother.
I couldn’t read his reaction. I had no idea whether I was getting through, or if he was going to walk out the door and do whatever he wanted anyway.
God, what was I doing here? In this situation? I was an art school dropout, a junior graphic designer at an advertising firm. I was just an average woman. There was nothing special about me, nothing important. I wasn’t one of those women who was destined for a big, dramatic life. Devon Wilder made me feel different, but what if it was all an illusion? I’d just mentioned him and me becoming something real, going somewhere, and he was looking at me as if he’d barely even heard.
You should have found a nice guy in art school.
That was wrong. I knew it when he said it, and I knew it now. I wasn’t the right woman for a nice guy in art school. I wasn’t the right woman for any man I’d met until him—that was why I’d hated dating, why I’d only had sex when the loneliness was too much, why I hadn’t bothered with sex at all for a year and a half. There was nothing to second guess about my past. Until Devon Wilder, I’d been adrift, not really fitting in anywhere, not finding men who understood me.
Then Devon happened. That spaceship hatch that blew my life apart. He not only bothered to understand me, he’d seen past even the lies I told myself, straight to the truth. Or part of it.
The problem was that I still didn’t know what that truth was. Who I was. What I wanted.
Did I want Devon? Part of me—most of me—wanted him so desperately I could barely breathe. But I hadn’t been lying. A man who could go out and beat another man, hurt him or kill him, was a man who could do that to me someday. Who was capable of hurting me, or our future kids. And if I took on a man who was capable of inflicting pain, I was taking a risk I knew from the very first. So part of my future would be decided by what he did today.
He was still watching me, his hands on his thighs. “Do you trust me?” he asked.
I swallowed. I wanted to say that I didn’t, but I’d gotten into his car that night in the rain, and I’d trusted him ever since. “Yes.”
“You don’t,” he said, still calm. “Not really. That’s just your body.” His gaze moved over my body, hidden under the covers. “Your body trusts me. It always has. But right now the rest of you doesn’t.”
I stared at him. I felt like I’d been slapped.
“I get it,” he said. “I haven’t earned it. Not from you. Not deep down. I went and got myself put away, like a fucking idiot, but sometimes things happen so fast we can’t control them. You got shut out for two years. You didn’t know where I was. You thought when I got out that I was living with some other woman. Why the hell would you trust me?”
It stung. “I do,” I argued. “You’re just so angry right now. I’ve never seen you angry, and it’s scary.”
His eyes flashed, and I felt it all the way deep into my gut. A mixture of fear and reluctant admiration that was almost awe. “I am very fucking angry,” he agreed, his voice still calm. “Make no mistake. I am very, very fucking angry. But I am not going to prison, Olivia. There is no fucking way.”
“That doesn’t answer my question,” I said. “I don’t know what you’re going to do. And I’ve asked and asked about what’s going on with you. So maybe, Devon, you don’t trust me.”
He flinched just slightly, and I realized, with surprise, that I’d hurt him. “I have to go,” he said, his voice colder than ever. “I’ll see you later.”
“Devon,” I said.
But he walked out the door, and he was gone.
Chapter 23
Devon
Amy was late. I sat in the shitty dockside pub in Oakland, across the bay and far from the tourist center of San Francisco, and stared out at the water for nearly half an hour before she showed up.
The stripper from Pure Gold wasn’t wearing one of her sexy outfits at eleven o’clock in the morning. She had on worn jeans and a loose peasant top that flowed down over her hips and hid her figure, though nothing could fully hide the tits underneath the fabric. Her hair was thrown back into a messy ponytail and she had no makeup on. She was still a good-looking woman, but I didn’t think I’d ever seen a woman so bone-tired.
Still, she mustered up a spark when she took the seat across from me. “Shit, Devon, you clean up nice,” she said.
I gave her half a smile. I was still churned up over the conversation with Olivia. The way she’d looked at me. Like I was a stranger, and I didn’t entirely blame her. I felt like a stranger right now. “Does anyone know you’re here?” I asked her.
“Of course not. I can’t stay long, though. My kid’s with a sitter.” When I looked surprised, she said, “I guess you wouldn’t know. I had a kid while you were inside. He’s a year old now.”
Some people might ask where the father was, but I knew better. The map of exhaustion on her face told me he was nowhere around. Though she still lit up a little when she mentioned the kid himself.
“You took a risk doing this,” I said to her. “I appreciate it.”
She scratched her temple with nails covered in chipped polish. “You saw what it was like in that meeting, Devon. You missed some things while you were inside, but Craig Bastien—he’s practically taken over the club. And the girls. It’s no picnic.”
“He seemed particularly interested in you,” I said.
She bit her lip, and I knew she was holding back a shudder of revulsion. “There’s nothing I can do about it. He likes to have me around, like a piece of furniture. He likes to put his hands on me. Sometimes, when I make him happy, there’s money in it. But even when he doesn’t pay me, if I don’t make him happy, he knows I have a son.”
And there was that fire inside me again. Licking up, up. “I get it,” I said. “I’m not judging you.”
“You never were that type.” She smiled at me through her tired haze. “You always were a good guy, Devon. I’m glad you got all that money. If you can get away from Bastien, you can turn around and do good.”
Starting now, I thought but didn’t say. “I need some information,” I told her. “In fact, I need everything you have. Everything about Bastien that you’ve heard, that you’ve seen. Everything you’ve overheard in these meetings of his.”
She bit her lip. “You gonna do something to him?”
I watched her. “Amy,” I said, “don’t you worry. I’m going to set him on fire.”
“He’ll kill me if he finds out I was talking.”
I shook my head. “He isn’t going to get the chance.”
She looked at me, and then she grinned. She always had guts, Amy had. “Okay,” she said. “Here goes.”
I’d noticed, in our little meeting, that Craig Bastien liked to treat Amy as if she wasn’t there. He liked to fondle her like she wasn’t a real woman, like she was a possession. It turned out he liked to do that a lot. Which meant Amy had sat in on a lot of meetings, getting her tits and her hips grabbed, and she’d learned a hell of a lot of things.
And now she told me all of it.
I asked her questions sometimes—names, mostly—but other than that I let her talk
. For a guy who thought he was smart, treating a woman like a lamp was a fucking stupid idea, and now Bastien was going to find out just how stupid. By the time Amy finished, I knew everything I needed to know.
“Okay,” I said. I reached into the inside pocket of my jacket and pulled out an envelope of money. “This is payment for everything you’ve just told me.”
Her eyes went wide and she reached for it, prying open the flap. She went silent when she saw what was inside.
“And this,” I said, taking out a second, even thicker envelope, “is payment for you being quiet about this meeting and never telling anyone it happened.”
She paused for a minute, and then she reached out and put her fingertips on the second envelope, her hand shaking. “Devon,” she said. “Holy shit.”
“Take it,” I told her. “Go home and pay your sitter, then pack your bags and your kid’s bags and get on a one-way ticket out of town. You don’t want to be around for what happens next.”
She was shocked, amazed, but I could already see the calculations starting up behind her eyes. “You think I should go?”
“I know you should,” I said. “Fuck Pure Gold. Fuck Craig Bastien. Fuck stripping. You see my tattoo? You’ve got no time, Amy. None of us have any time. Take your money and go raise your kid. Starting now.”
She was still in shock, but she put her hands on both of the envelopes and pulled them across the table toward her. “You’re really going to do him in, aren’t you?” she asked.
“Read it in the news,” was my answer.
She put the money somewhere inside the peasant blouse and looked at me, her gaze suddenly knowing in the way only a woman can be knowing. “You wouldn’t do this just for yourself. Whoever she is, she’s fucking lucky.”
I felt a stab to my gut, but the fire was still burning. “I’d kill for her,” I said, “but she doesn’t want me to. So I have to be creative.”
That made her smile. She pushed back her chair and stood up. “So long, Devon,” she said. “It’s been nice knowing you.”
