Chase
I’d worked alongside her for a full week, answering more questions than I’d ever answered in my entire life, and still, she never asked what we did.
It was Monday. My body ached from being on my hands and knees going through old family records like it was actual fun, but she needed to see everything, to know everything, to freaking file everything.
“What’s this?” She pulled out my black folder.
I jerked it out of her hands. “Nothing you want to read, trust me.”
“But it has your name on it?”
“Right.” She was wearing red lipstick. Why was she wearing red lipstick? I shook my head. “Which means I know everything inside it. It’s not relevant.”
She finally relented when she found my birth certificate.
Seriously? How much shit was in these old filing cabinets that Phoenix had dropped off? It was like he wanted my suffering to know no end.
I jerked the paper away from her. “Also irrelevant since it doesn’t matter anymore.”
“Your father?”
Ha! I made a mental note to shoot Phoenix in the toe later. “Not much of a father, trust me.”
“Was he cruel?”
“Cruel?” I repeated incredulously. “He wasn’t even my real father. He groomed me as second-in-command to a dynasty I was supposed to fucking lead, and when it came time to lead it, I said no, I stepped down, and I wonder, every day, if she’d still be here if I’d had taken my position as her equal.”
I stopped talking.
What the hell kind of air was I breathing?
Truth serum?
I quickly jumped to my feet, needing an escape. “I’m going to go into town. Did you want to take a break and go with me?”
Luc stood and straightened her white blouse; I looked away when a part of her bra showed through, and she retouched the front and pulled on her long cardigan. Everything about her was the opposite of Mil.
Every. Damn. Thing.
Mil wouldn’t have been caught dead in a sweater.
It was leather.
Gucci.
Prada.
Everything that told people she had power, and she’d wield it however she wanted.
And then there was Luc in a cream sweater and a Burberry headband.
I almost laughed.
Almost.
She was the type of woman who went to PTA meetings and wanted seven children. The kind I could see wanting to start a family right away so she could get started on all those fun art projects with fingerpaints.
A familiar ache filled me.
I shut it the hell down.
“So?” I asked in a gruff voice, needing to leave more than my next breath.
“Sure, let me just get my purse.”
“No need.” I was already leading her out of the room. “Whenever you’re with me, your money’s no good anyway.”
“But—”
“It’s in your job description. Trust me.”
She was silent as we got into the car and drove into town, past the marketplace we’d visited earlier, and toward the Whole Foods close by.
It used to be rare for me to be out without security.
And now it just felt normal.
I’d like to see someone try to attack me. On my worst day, I could end them with a simple snap of my fingers.
I shook off the uneasy feeling creeping along my skin as I touched the small of her back and led her into the store.
She grabbed a grocery cart as if it was normal to go shopping with me, and then, very strategically, wiped it down with an anti-bacterial wipe.
I watched in complete shock and amusement as she even cleaned the buckle for the invisible child that would be sitting there.
“It clean now?” I mused at least three minutes later.
She made a face, her tawny brown eyes focused in on the cart as she lifted her chin in a challenging look. “It’s always good to be safe.”
“Safe.” I snorted, walking next to her. “Safe isn’t real. You know that, right? It’s just what we tell people so they feel better about their shitty lives and actions. You will never truly be safe. You’re already dying.”
“Wow…” She patted me on the arm. “…you should have been a life coach.”
“Are you…” I stopped walking. “…teasing me?”
She stuck out her tongue. “I do have a sense of humor. I just choose not to demonstrate it with the man who has a gun.”
“How very… safe of you.” I grinned.
She rolled her eyes, but she was smiling, and again, so was I. It felt good, to smile more than once a day, to talk with someone who wanted nothing from me, who looked at me like I was basically one second away from hurting her but trusted me anyway.
I didn’t know that kind of trust.
Wasn’t even sure if it really existed.
And yet she gave it to me day in and day out, without reservation.
It made no sense whatsoever.
And the more I thought about it, the more confused I became.
“Is it okay if we get grapes, or is that going to offend your delicate sensibilities?”
I stared after her. “Get the color right, and we’ll see.”
She scrunched up her nose. “Who eats green grapes?”
“Good answer.” It was my turn to pat her on the arm. She was making it too easy to talk with her, too easy to exist when I’d been doing nothing but living in hell.
She made me feel like I could breathe without feeling angry, guilty, bitter. But it only lasted so long before it crept back, reaching down into the deepest parts of me, demanding to be set free.
“Are you… okay?” She reached out.
I jerked back, like an ass. “Yeah.” I gave my head a shake. “I’ll take the cart and meet you back here in a few minutes.”
I needed to get away.
It wasn’t real.
She was a paid employee and petrified of me.
That was why she was a nice person. She literally had no other option. God, I was stupid.
I weaved my way down the aisle aimlessly, grabbing cereal and a few other things that interested me.
I was about five aisles away from produce when I felt it.
My body went on high alert as I jerked around.
Empty.
Nobody was watching; nobody was following.
I discarded the cart and reached into the back of my jeans for my Glock, slowly making my way down the aisles, pointing, looking, pointing, looking.
And then I heard it.
“Where the fuck is he?” a man’s gruff voice called out.
And then crying.
Sobbing, actually.
“I-I don’t know who you’re talking about!” Luc cried.
I rounded the corner. A man was holding her at gunpoint next to the grapes. Bad idea, such a bad idea. I almost felt sorry for him, and then I locked eyes with her and nodded.
“Look at me!” he demanded. “You have five seconds to change your tune before I shoot you in the head.”
More tears fell.
And he started counting.
“One. Two. Three…”
She stilled.
Her eyes closed.
“Four. Five.”
He didn’t shoot.
I knew he wouldn’t, but she didn’t.
He needed information.
And he’d torture her, before killing her for it.
I very slowly walked up behind him and knocked him in the back of the head. He fell to the ground with a grunt. I sighed and grabbed him by the ankles and pulled him into the nearest employee entrance.
Luc followed me in stunned silence.
Once we rounded the corner, and there was nobody in sight, I pulled him into one of the large freezers.
“Keep the door semi-open, Luc.” I didn’t look at her, couldn’t focus on anything other than ending this guy’s life without anyone hearing the gunshots.
I fired two rounds into his chest; head would be too messy, and I didn’t want blood everywhere.
I quickly covered him with some blood from the meat, and then tossed the meat around him so it looked like he stumbled in there and either froze to death, or was drunk.
I didn’t necessarily need to stage the scene, but I had been told to stop killing until the commission, and my guys knew that I didn’t care about cleaning up my own shit, so if they got wind of this, they’d wrongly assume it was another dispute, not me.
I refused to chance it.
My right to kill them all.
I grabbed Luc’s trembling hand and shut the freezer door behind us then started pulling her back toward the main employee door, only it flew open the minute I reached for it.
I turned Luc in my arms and slammed my mouth against hers. She jerked in response as I kissed down her neck. “Help me out here.”
She clung to me, wrapping her arms around my neck as she slowly parted her lips. Her body was cold, like she was seconds away from passing out, but her mouth? Red hot.
I had never planned on kissing another woman again.
Plans changed.
I just didn’t know my reaction would be so swift.
So violently unreal that I was the one having trouble selling the kiss because I wasn’t used to being kissed in that way.
With hopeless fucking abandon.
As if it was a goodbye.
She tasted like cherries, her tongue smooth against mine, not dominant, just subtle as if she was taking her time exploring every inch of my mouth, taking the opportunity and running with it.
So I let her. I braced her against the wall and moaned when she dug her fingers into my hair and grabbed hold.
“Um, sorry, sir. Sir!” A young guy tapped my shoulder. “You guys can’t be back here.”
Tap, tap, tap. Where the hell was my gun again? Tap, tap, tap.
I finally pulled back only to see Luc’s lips a swollen red, her headband askew, and her chest rising and falling so hard you’d think I’d just challenged her to a race.
“Got it,” I said hoarsely. “Sorry, we just… got carried away.”
“Newlyweds?” He said the absolute wrong thing I needed to hear in that moment.
I completely shut down and muttered, “Something like that.”
I didn’t reach for her hand.
I didn’t comfort her. Even though her skin was pale, her lips bruised, her entire demeanor shaking with fear.
I didn’t have anything left but confession and a hell of a lot of anger that her one kiss…
One innocent kiss…
Had undone me so completely.
That I almost hated her more than I loved the kiss.
Hate was easier for me.
Resentment came second.
I resented it all.
The way she responded.
And the way my heart finally soared to life after taking a direct hit so many months ago.
I hated that, for the first time since letting go of Trace, embracing my life with Mil, my soul decided to jumpstart and point out the obvious.
That Mil would always love herself more than she loved me.
And that I had allowed it.
Because I’d been so desperate for love.
Not real. Not real. Not real.
I was silent the entire way home.