“But you said—”
“Fuck what I said!” I roared, and she flinched. Great. Just great. I tried calming my racing heart, and the way her wide eyes penetrated to the darkest places my conscience still somehow existed. “Just… sleep. Please.”
She snorted. “It’s too big.”
“The room?”
She nodded. “I’ll just grab a pillow for the pantry in case people come by again… and guns—” She gulped. “—guns g-go off and—”
“Why me?” I muttered before grabbing her hand for the second time that night, and leading her back down the hall to my room.
I slammed the door louder than usual once we were inside, stripped out of my shirt, and climbed into bed, leaving her standing there like a statue.
I closed my eyes and murmured, “Either sleep with the monster who can slay all ten dragons, or go sleep alone in the pantry where I guarantee they’ll hear you shaking first.”
I smirked as I heard fumbling, a few stumbles, shoes flying, and then the weight of someone climbing into bed next to me.
I froze.
It was too familiar.
Too close to home.
I squeezed my eyes shut.
Never again.
Never. Again.
She fell asleep an hour later, while I prayed to whatever God still cared for me to end my life so I wouldn’t have to live in this purgatory anymore.
And when sleep finally did come, and I woke up, I did the one thing I swore I’d never do again…I turned around and looked for dark hair splayed across the pillow next to me.
And found it.
And fucking hated my treacherous body for sighing in relief.
There would be no relief.
Not anymore.
Never again.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“I give you the Italians. You let me keep my shit.” I held out my hand, and the dumb bastard shook it as if we were in a business deal where he wouldn’t end up dead, where I wouldn’t end up killing every single person in that room.
— Notes from interview with Agent P, FBI
Luciana
I startled awake and fell off the mattress and onto the floor. It was only a short drop, but it was enough to jar me conscious in a really unpleasant way.
I rubbed my elbow and sat upright.
The bed was empty.
Except for a small indent on the far left side where the killer had slept for God knew how long.
I told myself not to hyperventilate.
It was either hide in the pantry and keep getting yelled at, or sleep next to the only human in the house who knew how to use a gun. I just wasn’t sure if he would rather point it at me than the men who came flying at him last night.
He’d said De Lange.
But I refused to believe it was the same last name.
This was America; millions of people had similar last names that had nothing to do with one another. My best friend from high school was from Norway, and when they migrated they changed their name from Ghjangsto to Jacobsen, because the first was too hard to pronounce for the Americans, and she had absolutely no relation to the other Jacobsens who owned a contracting company, or even that one director in Hollywood.
Coincidence.
That was all it was.
I stared at the empty space. The space of a killer, one I had voluntarily slept next to last night. I’d convinced myself I’d had no choice, that I was safer in the arms of someone who would kill me painlessly than downstairs waiting for the ones who’d rape me and make me suffer.
Not the best odds on either end.
I gulped and tried to calm my racing heart.
I just needed to finish this stupid job and move on.
I stood and stared down at the bed, at the imprint and the way he kept at least two feet of space between us, as if I was the crazy one with a gun.
As if he was using every inch of space to put invisible walls between our bodies. And I’d done the same.
I was staring at a chasm.
Separating me and him.
And for some reason, it made me stare harder.
Made me pause.
It made me wonder, what caused a man that beautiful, a man that strong, to turn into a murderer? He could walk down the street and get a modeling job by simply breathing. And he was in a crumbling mansion, on a mattress, on the floor, sleeping as far away from me as possible.
I don’t know why I did it.
Months later, I’d realize.
But in that moment, the moment where he’d given me safety when I’d needed it most, I felt like I owed him something, even if he was a scary son of a bitch.
I knelt on the mattress and carefully made the bed as best I could then smoothed the pillows down and stood and surveyed my work.
“What the hell are you doing?” his voice croaked from the door. Chase was shirtless, his jeans were so low-slung it was almost indecent, and his smile didn’t reach his eyes; it was mocking, not welcoming. Tattoos ran deep across his abs and into the lower part of his stomach.
I looked away. “Sorry, I was, just making the bed.”
He snorted out a laugh. “Unnecessary, I’ll just be in it again.”
“I know.” Why was I arguing? “But it’s nice to get into a clean bed and—”
“Nice?” he interrupted. “Does it look like I care about nice?”
At one time. Yes, I wanted to say. Because he didn’t seem like the type of guy who lived in filth, broken glass, and blood.
He reminded me of Nikolai in so many ways.
“Maybe,” I whispered before I could stop myself.
“Just because I let you sleep on an inch of my mattress doesn’t mean you know jack shit about me,” he sneered. “Shouldn’t you be working?”
“Yeah.” I tucked my hair behind my ear. “I’ll just be… going over… the files…”
“Great.” His eyes narrowed in on the bed and then me.
I stopped breathing altogether when he eyed my no doubt disheveled hair and state of disarray. I probably looked like hell.
Chase took steps toward me until I could taste the whiskey on his breath. “Then go.”
I side-stepped him and ran as fast as I could out of the room. He was the devil.
I didn’t understand him.
And I hated that I wanted to.
He made me curious.
And that was a terrifying feeling to have in my situation.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“Come out, come out wherever you are,” I whispered as I left the room, then gave one parting middle finger to the camera.
— Notes from interview with Agent P, FBI
Chase
I stared at that damn bed longer than I should have.
Maybe because it seemed so foreign to me.
Having something done for me, rather than I doing it for someone else.
I was a creature of habit. I’d always been that way, so I’d been irritated as hell when she didn’t get up at six like I always did, and then even more angered to realize that I was watching her sleep, a woman I still wasn’t sure should stay living.
So, disgusted with myself, I ran downstairs and made coffee, poured a healthy dose of whiskey in mine, and managed to clean up the rest of the glass in the living room before going to kick her out of my bed.
But she was up.
And she was… fluffing the damn pillows as if she owned them!
Rage took over.
Simmering into anger.
And then, such a deep-rooted sadness that it hurt to breathe.
“I’m like your bitch.” I laughed when Mil ran around the bed and grabbed her gun, strapping it to her chest and pulling her sweater over it. She looked so sexy when she was serious, which was almost all the time now that she was boss. “Why am I doing the chores again?”
She winked and then kissed me on the mouth. “Because… Mama’s gotta go bring home the bacon.”
Normally I’d laugh, but it hit a
nerve. I grabbed her wrist and pulled her back. “You realize we have millions upon millions of pounds of bacon, right?”
Her smile was forced as she jerked away. “You do. I don’t. My family doesn’t. This is my responsibility.”
“And what about us?” I challenged. “Our responsibility to each other? What’s mine is yours?”
“Not this again,” she muttered.
“The hell?” Now I was pissed.
“This!” She waved her arms wide. “Chase, I’m a boss I can’t just take a—”
I felt as if I’d just been punched in the gut. “A what? A made man’s money? A cousin to the boss’s money? What? What were you going to say?”
“Nothing.” She looked down. “Look, I’ll be back later tonight. I love you, okay?”
Her smile was back.
God, I hated that smile.
The one meant to make me think about sex, about how good it was between us in bed, when I’d never felt so much distance between us, outside the physical relationship.
“Yeah,” I whispered. “Go.”
And I made the bed.
Again.
I washed the blood out of her clothes.
Again.
I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror.
Again.
I shoved the memory away and kicked one of the pillows askew. I hadn’t needed shit from Mil, and I didn’t need shit from Luciana.
I walked out of the room with a purpose and was quickly halted in my tracks when Luciana screamed.
I reached back and grabbed the gun from the back of my jeans and slowly made my way down the hall until I stopped at the bedroom she was in.
It was the one where I’d tried to convince her to sleep last night.
She was completely naked except for a blanket she held in front of her olive skin.
I dropped my gun to my side.
And then she pointed a shaking hand at a mouse.
Was there anything this woman wasn’t scared of?
I sighed and hung my head. “You screamed because of a mouse?”
“It ran over my foot!” she yelled at me, showing spunk for the first time since she’d made her way into my house, my life.
I tilted my head. “You were trapped in a pantry for God knows how long, slept with an assassin last night, and you’re screaming over… a mouse?”
“You’re an assassin?” she repeated in a weak voice.
“What the hell did you think I did? Shoot people for my own personal enjoyment?”
“I-I thought that was a one-time thing… like terrorists.”
I burst out laughing; it wasn’t pretty sounding.
And it didn’t sound the way I remembered, easy.
Her eyes narrowed. “What?”
“Finally,” I mumbled. “Get angry, never get sad.”
She frowned as I nodded toward the mouse. “Sadness doesn’t beat the fear, princess.”
The mouse moved.
She ran behind me.
I tensed when she put her hands on my biceps.
I stared straight ahead, well aware that the blanket she’d been holding was still within eyesight, which made her completely naked.
I sucked in a breath through my teeth and pointed my gun at the mouse. “Sadness gets you stuck. Fear does the exact same thing. If you’re fearful, you run. If you’re sad, you’re paralyzed… and nobody wants that life. It’s better to get angry, to charge straight ahead, guns blazing.” I fired a clean shot into the mouse and turned to face her, my eyes straight ahead. “You should get dressed now.”
She looked down, covered her breasts, and then closed her eyes as crimson washed over her face. I might have been dead inside, but I still had some semblance of life in me, because I wanted to look.
I didn’t.
But I wanted to.
And I hated that want.
The feeling it brought.
The memories right along with it.
“Scream again over a fucking mouse, and the next gunshot goes here.” I put the gun to her head and winked. “When I hear you scream next time, I’m going to assume someone’s trying to kill you. Got it?”
She nodded, her eyes still clenched shut, as I walked toward the door and slammed it behind me.
Memories of her soft lips punished me the entire walk back to the kitchen for more whiskey.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
“I could justify anything. I would justify anything. I lost my soul a long time ago. I have no fucking desire to find it.”
— Ex-FBI Agent P
Luciana
I squeezed my eyes shut as his heavy footsteps echoed down the hall. When the sound finally went away, and I knew I was safe, I opened them and slowly reached down and grabbed my blanket.
Mortified.
Terrified.
He’d just threatened to shoot me for being afraid of a mouse, which made me wonder if he realized how petrified I was of him, what would he do?
I shuddered at the thought and purposefully started to mentally prepare myself for whatever nightmare lay ahead of me for the rest of the day.
I’d finally calmed myself down.
My breathing returned to normal, and I’d managed to ignore the mouse guts in the corner of the bedroom.
The sound of something shattering against the ground had my pulse skyrocketing to an alarming level, followed by another shatter, and then a loud boom.
And then yelling.
So. Much. Yelling
Followed by silence.
Had one of the guys come back from the dead?
Or had more been sent?
I was torn between wanting to jump out the window to make my escape and doing the decent human thing and making sure Chase was still alive.
I finished getting ready and greedily searched or any sort of weapon, just in case the bad guys were back and I had to make a run for it. My eyes landed on a vase in the corner. I grabbed it with shaking hands and slowly made the dreaded trek down the hall, managing to find every freaking creak in the floorboards as I did it.
His room was empty.
I exhaled and peeked down the stairs.
Nothing.
Silence.
I took the stairs slowly, ready for someone to pop out at any time, then turned the corner and walked into the kitchen just as a shadowy figure loomed in the doorway right in front of me, backlit by sunshine streaming in from the kitchen window.
“Aghhhh!!” I just reacted, sending the vase across his face so hard it split in my hands then fell to the ground in pieces.
“Shit!” Chase stumbled into me then braced himself against the wall. “What the hell are you doing?”
“I-I thought you were one of the bad guys from last night.”
He scowled. “At least you got part of it right. I am bad, but not from last night.” He winced as blood trickled down the side of his head by his right ear.
Tears filled my eyes. “Are you going to kill me now?”
He didn’t even blink when he whispered, “Maybe.” And then he leaned in closer. “I don’t like when others make me bleed.”
“It was an accident! I thought something happened to you, and then I thought—”
Was it my imagination or did his face soften a bit? Just enough for the permanent angry scowl to diminish.
More blood fell, and my guilt tripled. He wasn’t nice. Not by a long shot. And he was rude.
Mean.
Angry.
But he was still a person.
And I’d grown up in a home that put human decency above all else; it was probably why I hated violence so much. I felt it was unnecessary and always bred more violence, so why encourage it? Support it?
He pressed a palm to his head and turned around. “Do your job, Luciana.”
I sucked in a breath.
The way he said my name.
The way my stomach fluttered when my body had no damn business reacting to anything that murderer was doing.
Cursing, he sta
rted rummaging through one of the cabinets and jerked out a first-aid kit.
I hung my head, stepped over the broken glass, and made my way over to him, then wet one of the cloths by the sink and held it to the side of his face.
He jerked away so fast you’d think I’d shot him. “What the hell?”
“Geez, you’re like the Beast from Beauty and the Beast. It’s just a little cut.”
His eyebrows shot up. “You hit me with a fucking vase.”
Man had a point.
“‘Tis but a flesh wound,” I tried joking.
It fell completely flat.
My cheeks heated as I held the cloth out to him. He eyed it, then me, then it. “What’s your game here?”
“Game?” I repeated, completely lost. “What do you mean game?”
“Four times.” His eyes locked onto me with that same intense look I didn’t think a person could ever get used to. “Four times I’ve offered to shoot you.”
“Three,” I corrected like an idiot who was begging to stay on his bad side.
“Huh, must have just thought it that last time.”
Comforting.
I gulped as he took a step closer and then another, until he was inches from my face, until I could see the flecks of gold in his bright blue eyes and see the faint scar on his chin, the ink from a chest tattoo peeking out from his t-shirt.
“So I’ll ask again, what’s your game here? You don’t know me. You don’t like me…” His eyebrows rose a fraction of an inch.
I slowly reached across the small space between us and grabbed the wet cloth from his hand and then, very gently, placed it on the side of his head. I held it there while he stared me down with nothing but confusion and anger in his eyes. I didn’t back down.
I probably should have.
Any rational human would back down, stop poking the bear, but my conscience wouldn’t let me. I’d been the one to injure him; it was my job to heal him, right?
No words were said between us as I held it there; a full minute went by, then finally, he pressed his palm against the back of my hand.
I hadn’t realized I was shaking until I drew back and grabbed the antiseptic. I pulled the cap off, dabbed a bit on the cotton ball, and moved his hand away.
He winced at the first contact, and part of me wondered if it was the antiseptic or my touch; both seemed to garner the same reaction from him, as if he either wasn’t used to being touched or just greatly despised any sort of human contact. Maybe that was how all murderers were?