Chapter Twenty-Six

Nina

I gasped for breath and felt dizzy, even though we had taken a cab all the way back to Toasty’s instead of running. It felt as if we had run, and my mind roiled with all the activity of the past few hours. I’d seen my dad almost murdered by my boyfriend. I’d seen one of my old employees knocked unconscious by a can of cleaner. I’d been the one to give Eli the order to put Will in a sleeper hold.

Eli slammed the door and slid and twisted several locks into place.

“Let’s get this bitch live,” Eli said, leading me to his personal desktop computer. It was in a shadowy alcove with some random door.

It looked like it hadn’t even been turned on in weeks. I skated my finger over the monitor and collected a film of dust on my finger, leaving behind a clear trail of black in my wake.

Meanwhile, Eli worked to connect the hard drive to his desktop. I was impressed with how quickly and confidently he moved. I never felt comfortable handling electronics.

“Is there anything you don’t know how to do?” I asked, stepping back so that I could give him a little more space. “You drive motorcycles. You mix cocktails. You run a business. You fight like a black belt. You do charity around the neighborhood. You’re running your own private investigation into gang violence. Like, seriously, Eli. What don’t you do?”

“Haven’t learned how to play the guitar,” he confessed ruefully. “Yet,” he added.

I smirked and went quiet, letting Eli work as the computer grumbled and fizzled, booting up as if we had all the sweet time in the world.

I couldn’t bear to think about what would happen to all of Eli’s effort if Dad discovered what we had taken from his office, and if he had the time to move those files. We needed to act quickly, but I trusted Eli. I was starting to think that he could do anything.

I glanced at the random door, which I had never entered, even though I’d spent the night here before.

With a tilt to my head, I wrapped my palm around the doorknob and twisted it. Inside was a room, roughly the size of a closet, and it was dark. I fumbled for the light switch and a dim blue light cast only a few shadows away.

“Oh, wow,” I breathed, amazed yet again. He was also a skilled photographer? I stepped into the dark room, mind spinning at how much this man did. I closed the door behind me, not wanting to damage the images that still hung, suspended, developed earlier. The images looked classy and professional on black-and-white glossy paper.

My lips fell open, and I couldn’t help but smile a little.

There were pictures of Will and Mikey and Dad and Laurence, all interacting together at various points around Montclair Square, but it wasn’t that.

It was me. He had taken pictures of me.

My face smiling up at my father.

My pearl necklace dangling above the low neckline on my favorite cardigan.

My ass in tight, dark jeans.

I laughed a little bit, an incredulous blush rising on my cheeks.

Behind me, a sliver of light spilled into the room. “Before I download some expensive-ass equipment,” Eli whispered to me, “do you want to try your hand at guessing Marvin’s passcode?”

I glanced over my shoulder at Eli and laughed. I pointed at the black-and-white glossy photograph of my ass.

“Purely investigative?” I asked with one cocked eyebrow.

Eli’s lips spread his beard open with a grin. “Purely,” he whispered, drawing me out of the dark room with his hands. “Come on, bright eyes. We’ve got work to do.”

Twenty minutes later, I told Eli to go ahead and purchase that damn passcode-cracking software, because I couldn’t do it.

“Come on,” Eli whispered to me. His hand pressed hard into my kneecap, begging me to keep thinking. “You know this man. You can do this.”

I tried again—a combination of his initials, birthdate, and the symbols $$$—and the computer dinged. The screen opened. We were inside Redman Corporation files.

I opened window after window, cascading copy and paste from Marvin’s computer to my account within the Cloud. Even Dad didn’t know about my Cloud account. I never thought he would need to know, and it was something I set up by myself. It was my perfect secret, and now, it was slowly filling with all of Dad’s private files. All of his dirtiest secrets.

Unable to resist, I did double-click on some files and open them, finding codenames like “Denise Hardstone” from Pink Dragon cross-referenced with identities, product orders and receipts and emails with other traffickers in other cities.

“This information could go to the state government,” I suggested to Eli. “It concerns several different jurisdictions, doesn’t it?”

“I still don’t know if I trust it,” Eli said. “I know you want to believe that we can make sense out of all this bullshit, Nina.” He looked up at me and rubbed his tired eyes, weary from so many files popping up on the screen. It was after midnight now, and I knew he had to be tired. My feet ached, and I wasn’t even wearing heels for once. “I know you want to think that we can give this to someone and it’ll be taken care of, because we were told that the world did work that way. But ever since we were told that, I’ve seen again and again that it doesn’t work that way at all.”

“We’ve got to figure out something, Eli,” I snapped at him without meaning to. My every nerve was frazzled. My old life was in shambles. Why couldn’t anything be easy with him? “We can’t take care of everything by ourselves. We’re two people. One and a half, practically.”

Eli pulled me down into his lap, his golden eyes warm with sympathy. “Come here,” he said, and his big shovel of a hand scooped against the back of my head, stroking my hair. “It’s going to be okay. I know everything is crazy tonight. But it will be over soon. And when it’s all over, I’m going to take care of you. I’m going to make sure that I can still give you everything you ask for. You’ll still be a princess.”

I gazed down at him, stroking his bristly beard and wanting to believe that it was true. I wanted him to be the one to give me that world my father always promised me.

“I’m so tired, Eli,” I confessed to him. “I want a bubble bath and some fucking mellow music. I’m a simple girl. I really am.”

“You’re much more than all that,” Eli whispered up to me, his fingers threading through my hair, dragging all the way through to my throat. I felt his dick thrum to life in his pants and, even though my bones ached with exhaustion, my body responded to him. My hips tilted against his stiffness and idly rubbed my pussy along his length. His eyelashes fluttered. I caught a glimpse of the whites of his eyes, and he let a breath rattle from his lips. “You’re such a giver, Nina.” His mouth captured the soft crook of my throat, and I shivered. Was I tingling this hard for real, or did he let loose a million tiny fireflies all over my skin? “You’re such a giver, and god help me, I want to be a taker.”

His mouth lifted up to mine and moved with me, burned with me, dragging us both closer. Our bodies moved in instant synergy, ready for satisfaction in this computer chair.

Ding, the computer chimed.

“Mm, Nina,” Eli groaned, his hands shoving up into my black turtleneck and groping my breasts. “I want you right now.”

“Me, too,” I whimpered, and it was all I needed to say. His hands went between my legs and pumped at me, coaxing my pussy to flower open and let him in. I ground myself against him. I didn’t need to be touched too much. I was ready to go right now. “Oh, Eli,” I breathed as his lips roved over my ear. All the little hairs on my arm stood on end and my eyes opened, but they were glassy and fogged. I felt high. “Oh, Eli—”

There was a loud snapping sound, and a thick blanket of darkness fell across the apartment. I froze, still straddling Eli. He froze, his breath still stirring the hair at the nape of my neck, his hands still cupping my tits.

“Eli,” I reminded him in a hiss.

“They relax me,” Eli pouted, but he reluctantly drew them away.

“I think the power is out throughout the entire building.” I shoved my turtleneck back down, unable to think about sex anymore at a time like this. I brought myself to a stand and glared out the window at the entire city block.

It was all pure blackness.

“It’s not the building,” I whispered. A special, child-like kind of terror opened up in my heart like a toxic flower. “It’s all of Montclair.” I swallowed and backed away from the window. “It really is Darkmont now,” I hissed. “He’s coming for us. Did you see if the files transferred to the Cloud or not?”