Fracture (Blood & Roses #2)

by Callie Hart

  Zeth.

  Leaning against the wall opposite me.

  Staring.

  “What the fuck, Zeth!”

  “You’re upset. Why are you upset?”

  At that moment the door to the locker room swings open and out walks Oliver. He stumbles to a halt as soon as he sees me and Zeth. “Hey.” With a stiff smile and a brief nod he skirts by me, his gaze lingering a second too long on the strange, dark-haired man loitering in the staffing corridor. Did he recognize him? A tremor of panic lurches through me, but Oliver keeps on walking. No way would he leave me alone with Zeth if he recalled his face from the mug shots. He’d been too busy asking questions to take in those faces properly, anyway.

  Zeth doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t shift an inch. Nothing about him has changed from a moment ago, but I can tell he is boiling mad. “I’ve had a really bad day, okay,” I tell him.

  “Why?” he grinds out.

  “Because a little girl nearly died and her parents are nowhere to be found, and I don’t know whether I’m supposed to call Child Protection Services on them or wait until they show up looking for her. If they ever do. Now I really just want to go home and have a shower and go to bed, okay? I don’t need—”

  “Call them.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “What’s to think about? Call CPS,” he says. His voice is deep and intense, betraying a surprising ferocity. “Some people,” he says, prowling forward, “don’t deserve to have children. In fact, some people should be chemically castrated to ensure they are never allowed the privilege.”

  He reaches up and I think he’s going to tuck the messy strand of hair that’s fallen from my ponytail back behind my ear. He doesn’t, though. He rubs it between the pads of his thumb and forefinger. “Blood in your hair,” he rumbles.

  “I’m used to it.” I hike my purse back onto my shoulder, doing anything to keep myself moving.

  “You have a violent job,” he tells me. A bark of hysterical laughter erupts out of me, echoing off the corridor walls.

  “You have got to be kidding me right now? Zeth, you can’t be here. You need to leave. Right now.”

  “Why? What’s going on?”

  I spin around and jab my index into his chest. “Your face is plastered all over the third floor of this hospital is what’s going on. Archie Monterello, some Italian mob guy, was shot the other night and the cops think some fucking crime lord they’re investigating has something to do with it. And you, apparently, are one of this crime boss’s ‘guys.’ They’re practically expecting you to drop on by, and voilà!” I scowl at him. “Here you are.”

  Zeth looks a little puzzled. Nowhere near bothered enough by what I’m telling him. “Archie’s been shot?”

  “Yeah. He’s been enrolled in WITSEC or he’s under police protection or something.”

  “If he were under the witness protection program he’d be long gone by now. Different name, different history, different life.”

  “Huh. That sounds pleasant. I should look into it, see if I can get enrolled in the program.”

  “You’re being dramatic.”

  “Dramatic? Dramatic? Really?” The pitch of my voice is reaching hysterical levels. He just stands there, watching me, taking in my expression and my body language like he can read the truth of things—the truth of me—that way. We glare fiercely at each other for a moment, neither of us backing down. And then he reaches out and takes both my hands, drawing them together behind my back. He does it so slowly and methodically that I don’t even think about struggling until he has me firmly restrained.

  “The fuck do you think you’re doing, Zeth?”

  “This isn’t about Archie Monterello. Or about some little girl whose parents haven’t taken care of her.”

  “And how the hell would you know what this is about?” I snap. With our bodies drawn together, I can feel the heat flowing off him, see the heartbeat pulsing in the hollow of his neck. I try to pull back but he shakes his head at me, his face a mask of blank control.

  “This is about the fact that you kissed me and I got mad at you. And now you’re mad at me. And,” he adds, his voice deep and low, yet unbearably quiet, “then I disappeared for two weeks and haven’t called or come to see you.”

  I try to snatch my hands back, pulling against him, but this only leads to him crushing me to his chest. I pant in two infuriated breaths, then hiss, “Like I care if you haven’t been to see me, Zeth! Like I give a fuck!”

  A low sound, half hum, half growl, builds in his throat. “Of course you give a fuck.”

  I scoff at that, but I don’t think I’m very successful in convincing him that he’s wrong. “So you’re telling me you do at least know you’ve been a dick, then?”

  “I know you’re upset.”

  I want to cover my face, but I can’t. I do the next best thing and close my eyes. Once I’ve given myself a second to breathe, I open them, fixing him with a stony gaze. “Let me go, Zeth.”

  “No.”

  I just can’t believe this guy. “What the hell do you want from me? You’ve made it abundantly clear that you don’t want to be around me, so why—”

  He makes a derisive sound at the back of his throat. Couples the sound with a crooked eyebrow. “How have I made that abundantly clear?”

  “I think the whole, don’t ever fucking kiss me again, thing and then vanishing for two weeks speaks for itself, don’t you? Your attitude speaks for itself.”

  This whole conversation seems to be entertaining him greatly. He battles the beginnings of a smirk as he says, “I don’t have an attitude. I just have me.” This statement doesn’t makes things any better. I consider hitting him with my purse. “Ask me where I’ve been the last two weeks,” he says.

  Damn him. I exhale, trying to keep my temper under wraps. “Where have you been?”

  “I’ve been making the necessary arrangements to go and collect your sister.”

  Oh. I stop struggling a little.

  Alexis.

  A deep wave of grief washes over me. It’s like a small part of me has convinced itself that she’s dead and every time he says her name, it’s preparing me for the moment he returns without her. The moment when he tells me he was mistaken. That this person he’s found isn’t her at all, and that Alexis is already dead. I let the grief sink deep, back into my bones, and then say the only thing I can say, since he’s been working to help me. “Well. Thank you. I guess.”

  “You’re welcome. Now ask me why I stayed away.”

  I really don’t want to play this game anymore. I don’t want to feel so powerless, crushed up against him, unable to get away, either. I also don’t like how, thus far, he’s coming out of this smelling of roses. “Fine.” I fix defiant eyes on him. “Why have you stayed away?”

  “I stayed away because you needed time to not feel stupid over me rejecting you.”

  Whoa! What. The. Fuck? He is…he is un-fucking-believable! “You did not reject me. You’d just screwed me, asshole!”

  “I know that. But you felt rejected at the time, right? If I’d come to see you two weeks ago, you still would have felt like that.”

  “So you wait two weeks until I’m fucking furious at you instead?”

  He shrugs. “Furious is easier to fix.”

  I want to castrate the motherfucker. I want to literally kick him in the balls repeatedly until there’s no chance he’ll ever reproduce. At least that way the future of younger female generations will be safe from the possibility that there will ever be anyone as dangerously manipulative and clever as him.

  He’s right. I hate that he is, but he’s right. I did feel rejected, and I would have hated to see him fourteen days ago. Urgh. I’m suddenly gripped by an extreme exhaustion that turns my limbs to lead.

  “I need to go home, Zeth. I can’t do this with you right now.”

  He doesn’t say another word. He releases me from his grip, keeping hold of one hand so that he can guide me through the maze of hallways
on the ground floor; the ease with which he does this makes me think he knows this place. Knows it a little better than I might like. He keeps his head down at least, eyes to the floor until we reach the exit. Gracie, the head nurse on shift, gives me a wave as we leave but apart from that we aren’t stopped.

  Outside, Zeth leads me away from the brightly lit area of the lot where I parked my Volvo to the far back section. The shady, dark corner of the lot where the security cameras don’t work.

  “What are you doing?” I try to pull my hand free but he has a solid grip on me. “Zeth. Zeth!” He stops. Turns. When I have his attention, I ask for the information I need to know before I can go a single step farther with him. “Did you shoot that kid?”

  “No.”

  “But you do work for a crime boss, don’t you? Don’t you!”

  Zeth doesn’t reply. He gives me a worn look. “Sloane, I need you to look after Lacey.” We glare at one another for a long time while I try to work out if I should be trying to hide with him or calling for help. This feels like a pivotal moment right now. He’s denied shooting someone, yes, but he hasn’t denied being on a seriously dangerous criminal’s payroll. I know what that means. Whatever this man may be—murderer, thug, criminal—he is honest. With me, I know he is honest. Our bizarre little conversation in the hallway has only highlighted that. By not giving me an answer, he’s found a way around lying to me. He gives me a loaded look; it’s almost pleading. And then he actually does plead.

  “Just…please. Please, Sloane. I’m going to fetch your sister. You can do this for me.”

  “Yeah. About that. Where is she? I should come with you. She’s shy, Zeth, she won’t just leave with you.”

  He shakes his head. “She’s somewhere you can’t come. Somewhere dangerous. I want you and Lacey here, where I can have people keep an eye on you.”

  “Zeth! She’s my sister!”

  “You wanna fight me on this, I won’t bother fucking going at all,” he growls. “Either I get her outta there alone, or I stay put and you can keep on missing your sister.”

  Oh my God. He knows. He knows how badly I want to get her back and he’s using that to get his own damn way. “Okay. Fine!”

  He looks away quickly. No expression of relief. No thank you. No nothing. Walking briskly, he brings me to a gleaming, matte-black Camaro, parked in perhaps the darkest corner of the entire lot. Through the window on the back seat Lacey stares worriedly back at us, knees tucked up under her chin.

  “You brought her with you?”

  “I’m leaving now, Sloane. If the cops think I had something to do with Archie being shot, then it sounds like I’m due a trip out of Seattle, anyway.”

  I could kill him. I could literally wrap my hands around his neck—they probably wouldn’t reach the whole way around, but who the hell cares?—and throttle him to death. “You’re a piece of work, you know that?”

  Zeth opens the door to the souped-up muscle car, leaning inside to scoop Lacey out. She looks even paler than when I last saw her in the hospital, although her eyes seem brighter, quicker, more responsive. He stands, holding her, her arms wrapped tightly around his neck, and for a moment he looks torn. He cares for this girl. Loves her in his way. For the fifteen millionth time I wonder who the hell she is to him. But now isn’t the right time to ask.

  “I’m tired, Zeth,” Lacey mumbles. “Just take me home.”

  “Can’t, kiddo. Gotta leave you with the doc for a while, okay?”

  Lacey eyes me surreptitiously and then buries her face into Zeth’s chest. He gives me a hard look. “Which way to your car?”

  I feel like being a dick about it. You tell me. You’re a psycho, right? You’ve been watching me. You should know where my car is. But what purpose would that serve? The purpose of fuck you, that’s what. Still, I turn around and set off in the direction of my car. When we reach it I open the passenger door but Zeth shakes his head.

  “She can’t. She won’t,” he says.

  Okay. I guess I should remember that. He places her carefully onto the back seat and a small rucksack, that I didn’t even realize he’d grabbed, goes in there after her. Once he shuts the door, he places his hands on my shoulders. “She needs to see Pippa.”

  I nod, at least not arguing with him on that front. “I’ll make that happen.” I open my car door, fully intent on getting inside and driving away as fast as I can—perhaps if karma is on my side, I’ll be able to spin up a few puddles of rainwater into his face—but he grabs hold of my arm, stopping me. The door makes a repetitive ding, ding, ding, sound as he stares down at me.

  “I’m sorry, Sloane.”

  I blink up at him, trying to read his expression. It’s a number of things mixed together, making it hard to decipher

  “You’re sorry?”

  An apology? Coming from his mouth? I’m so stunned I can barely believe my ears. Just seems like something he would never do.

  He looks away, back across the car lot, clenching his jaw. “I don’t ask anyone for help. But I know I can trust you,” he rumbles.

  “Of course you know you can trust me. You’re holding me an emotional hostage with my sister. You know I’ll do anything you tell me to in order to get her back. The question is can I trust you?”

  A deep, slow smile draws one side of his mouth upward, his eyes sparking with sudden amusement. “Should you trust me? Absolutely not. Can you trust me?” he lets me wait a moment, still smiling down at me. Ding, ding, ding. The car persists in its chiming, announcing that the door is still open. Zeth steps forward, lifting a hand to carefully cup my cheek in his palm. He softly brushes his fingertips against my temple, leaning into me a little. He tilts his head at an angle so he can dip down to inhale deeply from my hair. “Yes,” he exhales. “You can trust me. You gave yourself to me back at my apartment; I’ve never done it before, but I gave myself in return. I may not have wanted to, Sloane, but I didn’t have a fucking choice in the matter. That means we belong to each other now. And it means I’ll come back for you soon. I’ll do my best to find your sister, and I’ll do whatever I can to make those bastards pay for what they’ve done to her.”

  Zeth’s words plague me until I give myself a migraine from overthinking them. I wake before dawn and lay there, turning them over and over in my head, wondering what the hell he meant by what he said—I gave myself in return. I may not have wanted to, Sloane, but I didn’t have a fucking choice in the matter. From the mouth of absolutely anyone else on the face of this planet, it would be fairly obvious what they meant. And yet, from Zeth Mayfair, they could mean everything and then again nothing at all. I want to ask him. I want to pick up the phone and demand to know what the hell he was thinking, saying that to me. I can’t do that, though; my pride just won’t let me. And I shouldn’t want to know, either. I get the impression the sound of the dial tone in my ear as I’d wait for him to pick up would be like sitting with a sealed envelope in my hands. One that contains the results to some terrible blood test that will tell me if I’m going to survive something or succumb instead. Because it seems that drastic to me—this whole having Zeth in my life and how he is in my life. And I still essentially know nothing about the man.

  Fuck. I need to stop thinking about him. As soon as the first rays of daylight sneak over the horizon and craftily work their way through the blinds of my room, I get up and shower, mentally tidying the whole mess away to deal with another time. I’m good at that.

  Instead, I have a houseguest to focus on. Lacey is an enigma. She’s up before me, sitting at the breakfast bar, spooning Lucky Charms (I don’t own any Lucky Charms) into her mouth when I come downstairs. Out of the floor-to-ceiling windows, she is watching the city slowly come to life, a lumbering, grey machine seemingly defrosting, remembering its purpose. When she sees me cautiously approaching, her slight body tenses, spoon clattering into her bowl.

  “I’m sorry. I used your milk. I was hungry. I brought my own cereal, though,” she tells me softly.

 
“That’s okay. You’re welcome to make yourself at home here, Lacey. Help yourself to anything you want.” I smile to back up this statement. I mean it. I don’t have a clue what she’s been through but I know it was enough to make her want to die. Repeatedly, in fact, given the scars I witnessed on her wrists. She slowly picks up the spoon again, like I’ve given her the permission she needs to continue eating.

  “You’re just a resident, aren’t you?” she asks me.

  Half in the cupboard, reaching for a cereal bowl of my own, I stiffen. Just a resident is a strange thing to say. Becoming a resident is perhaps one of the hardest things a person can do, and yet the way Lacey says it makes it sound like I’m an underachiever. “Yeah, well, I guess I am,” I tell her.

  “How much money do you earn in a year?” She hoists her Lucky Charms to her mouth; her teeth clack on the metal of the spoon.

  “Just over forty-seven thousand,” I tell her. I would probably kick the ass of another person who asked me that question in that particular tone of voice, but when you’re mentally damaged you get special privileges. Lacey appears to understand this privilege as she continues with her abrupt line of questioning.

  “So how come you can afford this place? Up on the hill, out of the city. Killer view.”

  “My grandmother left me an inheritance. A lot of money, I guess. I sank it all into this place.”

  Lacey mulls this over. Eats some more of her Lucky Charms. “Are you working today?”

  “No. We’re going to see my friend Pippa. You remember, the woman I told you about?”

  “The shrink?”

  “Yeah. She’s lovely. You’ll really like her, Lacey, I promise.” She doesn’t look too convinced. She sulks into her cereal while I rinse a spoon, trying to think of something to say to her. I feel like I’m walking on eggshells. I need some common ground with this girl. I catch sight of the cereal box and an idea forms—yeah, I’m pathetic, but what else am I supposed to do?