Over the next week, I spend my nights off work visiting the homeless shelter and my days practicing a Waltz routine for the mayor’s Christmas party with Nikolai. I’m too busy to make use of the space Trace is giving me, but that’s about to change. Tonight was the mayor’s party.
The performance went off without a hitch, and I don’t have another gig lined up until next summer. With the stress of my second job behind me, I should be happy and relieved. But as I step inside my house after the party, carrying the sparkly gown and heels, I feel out of sorts and misplaced, like I don’t know what I’m doing or where I belong.
Cole emerges from the basement as I pass through the hall, and our paths collide.
“How did it go?” He lifts the dance costume from my arms and takes it into the spare room to hang up.
“They want us back again next year.” I lean against the hallway wall, watching him through the doorway.
“That’s great.”
He steps into the hall and stops a few feet away, regarding me with unshakable focus. His expression is cautious, mouth slightly parted and gaze fixed on mine.
I strain to hear the words he doesn’t speak. Whatever he’s thinking is right there, hovering on the pillow of his kissable bottom lip.
His jaw shifts, his head angling imperceptibly to the side. His eyes, so deeply brown they appear black in the dim light, are bordered by dark lashes, giving him a sexy, sleepy look. A baseball cap sits backward on his head, making him appear younger than his thirty years. A gray shirt hangs from his slope-shouldered body, partially tucked into low-slung jeans that fray along the seams. And he’s barefoot, which I find obscenely sexy.
“You’ve only been home a month and a half and you’ve put on weight.” I give him another once-over and shake my head. “Not a single ounce of fat.”
He glances down at his body and rubs the ridges of his chest, as if noticing his physique for the first time.
His mouth crooks up in a lopsided smirk. “I’ve had a lot of time on my hands.”
He works out nonstop. God knows he has to expend all that sexual energy somehow. He’s gorgeous and virile with an off-the-charts libido. He could have any woman he wants in his bed. He could fuck a different beauty every day or several at the same time. Instead, he lingers in this house, comes home every night after work, and waits while I relegate him to the limbo of my indecisiveness.
My fingers tingle to touch his whiskered face, to hold him against me and tell him I’m sorry. I don’t know where we stand anymore. He said he needed time to think, but he hasn’t told me the verdict.
I rest my hands on the backs of my hips and stare at the floor. “I’m ruining us, aren’t I?”
“No.” His soft timbre lifts my head.
“This is…” I gesture between us. “It’s painful. Don’t you feel it?”
“Attachment hurts, Danni.” He inches closer, right up into my personal space, and frames my face in his hands. “It means you’re human, and you love to the point of pain.”
I drag in splintered breath. “Does it hurt to love me?”
“I love you so much it hurts.” He leans his face against mine, his fingers curling around my neck and thumbs stroking my cheeks.
“No matter what I do, someone’s going to get hurt. At the rate I’m going, we’ll all be alone in the end.”
“No.” He clenches his teeth. “You choose him or me. Those are your only options.”
What if I can’t choose? It’s like telling a mother she can only keep one of her children and has to let the other one go.
“I want to be your future.” He kisses my bottom lip, suckling on it before moving to the top one. “But more than that, I want you to be happy.”
I tilt my head up, absorbing the sincerity in his voice.
He stares back at me with the flames of dreams in his eyes. If I braved the fire and peered in, I’d see a beautiful future, our forever, flickering in the depths.
With a dip of his head, he kisses me again, deeper, more passionately, touching his tongue to mine as his fingers twist in my hair. We break apart long enough to move to the bathroom and strip our clothes.
Then he kisses me in the shower. He kisses me while we dry off. Then we spend the rest of the night in bed, lips locked and tongues reaching. Deep and slow. Stoking the passion that hums beneath our skin.
I close my eyes and hold him in the dark, my arms wrapped tight around his back and fingers tracing the taut muscles along his spine. His entire body vibrates with the need to touch and grind and fuck. But he doesn’t.
For now, we simply cherish the moment, with our bodies pressed together, limbs entangled as our love spills into the shared rhythm of our heartbeats.
The next morning, he’s up early, working out to his obnoxious music in the basement. I spend the day in the dance studio, choreographing new belly dance routines while trying to embrace Trace’s advice and just be.
Cole leaves for work thirty minutes before I do. Our hours are the same, but I’m always running late.
I dart through the kitchen, grab my keys, and gulp down an afternoon cup of coffee. Then I’m out the door and tumbling into the Midget. Trace had my car delivered the morning after our confrontation in the rain, but I haven’t seen or heard from him since.
As I shove the key in the ignition, something crinkles beneath my butt. I lift my hip and yank the offending object out from beneath me.
It’s a brown 8x11-sized envelope, sealed with one of those string thingies that wrap around a paper disk. I flip the package over a few times, but there’s no writing, nothing to indicate what it is or why it was left in my car.
I leave the car door unlocked. Anyone could’ve put it here, but I suspect Trace was involved. Last time he left me an envelope, it contained a concert ticket to see Beyoncé.
A grin steals over my lips as I unwind the tie and dump the contents onto my lap. A stack of photos spills out. Huge photos, the size of the envelope. I hold up the first one.
What the tits?
Those are some serious tits. Big, round man-eating knockers. The nude, dark-haired woman in the photo has her head tilted back, her mouth in an O of ecstasy, and her legs straddled around a man’s body on a bed.
My heart hammers as I bring the picture closer to my face, studying the naked man. I don’t have to look very closely. The instant I see the snake tattoos on his arm and neck, my stomach collapses and my airway clamps shut.
NoNoNoNoNo. Cole would never cheat on me. This isn’t real. It can’t be.
I shove it to the bottom of the stack, moving to the next one. It’s the same bed, same lighting, same woman. Different position. And the man… My heart rate skyrockets, chilling my skin. It’s undeniably Cole, his face rigid with tension as he pounds into her from behind.
Tears blur my eyes, and my hands shake violently as I flip through three more pictures.
The only thing that changes from photo to photo is the position in which he fucks her. Her on top, him on top, behind, in front, bent over…when I get to one with his face between her legs, bile hits the back of my throat. I can’t breathe, can’t move. I’m going to be sick.
I roll down the window, gulp down a draft of cold air, and force myself to look again. There’s no time stamp on the photos or calendar on the wall in the background, nothing to place the date. He had the tattoos before he met me. As godawful as it is to see this, the woman could be one of the hundreds he was with before we were together.
This doesn’t mean anything.
He’s not a cheater.
Fighting down panic and nausea, I sift through several more photos before a new scene pops up.
Blood. Pools of it spread out around the gruesome body of a man laid out on the floor. A crimson gash slashes across his throat, his lifeless eyes open and staring at the ceiling.
Dread broils in my stomach as I look closer. There’s another man standing at the edge of the frame with his back to the camera. My mind immediately tells me it’s Cole, but that’s not what I’m seeing.
The image is fuzzy and zoomed in, showing little of the surroundings. But the wood floors… the black suit on the man standing just inside the frame…
My pulse thunders as I flip to the next photo. And I gasp.
The shot is zoomed out, capturing a wider view. The man in the suit is turned to the side, his profile elegant and stern and unmistakably Trace Savoy.
I bite down so hard on my lip I taste iron. The blood-soaked, honey-wood flooring is my flooring. The fireplace, red velvet couch, and orange armchair… This happened in the front room of my house.
Why is Trace in my house with a man I don’t recognize? A man who clearly died from a cut across the throat.
Numb, frozen, I choke on air I can’t seem to pull into my lungs. Did the dead man come for me? Did he break into my house? When?
I skip through more photos, more shots of Trace standing over the body. Now that I’m looking closer, I see the knife clenched in Trace’s fist.
He killed a man.
In my house.
I press a hand over my mouth to stifle my keening noises. No wonder Cole and Trace were always on my ass about locking my doors. They fucking knew I was in danger and never told me.
I feel myself breaking down—runaway heartbeat, erratic breathing, ice-cold skin, sobbing wretched tears. I need to pull it together.
Wiping the moisture from my eyes, I clear my vision and focus on the floor in the pictures. The purple rug isn’t under the coffee table. I bought the shaggy thing at a yard sale about a year after Cole died. That means this photo was taken before I met Trace.
As that realization sinks in, my lungs wheeze, and more tears course down my cheeks.
Trace murdered someone in my house either before Cole left or while he was gone. Does Cole know? Where was I when it happened? What if I’d been home at the time?
I start to hyperventilate with fear and overwhelming paranoia. My lungs slam together, and my body rocks with my heaving gasps as I scan the surroundings and watch the rearview mirror. Am I in danger now?
Someone put this envelope in my car.
An envelope filled with incriminating evidence.
Trace committed a crime, and I’m holding the proof in my hands. Who would give this to me and why? Is there a vendetta against Cole and Trace? Is someone out for revenge? What if I’m the target?
With a sobbing breath, I turn over the ignition and shove the Midget into reverse. I plow through a bush, back over the curb, and hit the street. Then I throw it in first and slam on the gas, tearing through the gears and putting distance between me and my house.
Whoever left the envelope knows where I live. Clearly, they know my connection to Cole and Trace. Whatever this is, it’s connected to their stupid secret jobs.
When I veer onto the main thoroughfare, I glance at the speedometer and yank my foot off the gas pedal. Fuck. If I get pulled over by a cop with these pictures on my lap, Trace would go to prison.
He might be on my shit list—population: 2—but I should probably hear his plea before I have him hauled off in handcuffs.
I slow down the car, keeping my speed under the limit while stuffing the photos into the envelope. Except the last two. I raced out of my driveway so fast I didn’t make it through the stack.
Keeping my eyes on the road, I can’t study the final two photos, but quick glances tell me they’re more of Trace in my sitting room, only these are from a different camera angle. An angle that shows Cole’s motorcycle parked in my dining room.
That narrows down the date. It happened sometime after Cole left and a year before I met Trace. In that two-year time frame I was living alone and clueless as fuck.
As I put away the last two photos, the second camera angle raises more questions.
Was there a cameraman taking the pictures? Or were there multiple cameras hidden in my house? Are there cameras in my house now? If so, how did they get there?
For the next ten minutes, I keep driving, my mind spinning and my entire body painfully stiff and trembling. I have no idea where I’m going. I just can’t go home, and the only two people I can talk to about this are the last two people I trust right now.
Did Cole cheat on me? Or did he fuck that woman before we met? What about Trace? Did he murder a good man? A husband and father with a family that mourns him? Or was the man there to hurt me?
No matter the answers, I’ve been lied to. Deceived. Again. How much more are they keeping from me?
I don’t know where to go, but my subconscious seems to have made the decision for me. The Regal Arch Casino and Hotel looms two blocks ahead, its steel architecture glittering in the sunlight.
I’m supposed to be at work, but that won’t be happening. I park the car and head straight to Trace’s private elevator, hugging the envelope to my chest. I haven’t tried to enter my passcode since the night I drew him out into the sleeting rain.
Hunched over and shaking uncontrollably, I enter the code.
The doors open instantly.
I’m too freaked out to feel relief. I probably look it, too, like a trembling, wild-eyed nutjob with tears splotching my face. Good thing I’m all out of fucks to give.
I hit 30 on the panel of buttons, assuming he’s working. When I arrive on the office floor, I cross the lobby, turn down the hall, pass the receptionist desk, and reach for the door to his office.
“Miss Angelo, wait.” Marilyn, his assistant, rises from her chair. “You can’t go in there. He’s on a call.”
I swing open the door and shut it behind me.
Trace sits behind his desk, typing on his laptop with a phone at his ear. He looks up, scans my trembling, rigid posture, and meets my eyes.
“I’ll call you back.” He hangs up the phone and continues to stare at me, his scowl creasing with worry.
If I open my mouth, I’m going to burst into tears. So I drag my feet across the room and drop the envelope on his desk.
He glares at it like it’s going to bite him. Then his gaze returns to mine, questioning, sharpening. A muscle twitches in his cheek, his hand hesitant as he reaches for the envelope. After an agonizing moment, he lifts it and slides out the photos.
The pictures of Cole are on top. Trace examines each one, his scowl emotionless. But he lifts his eyes repeatedly, checking my reaction. When he flips to the images of the dead man, he stiffens, and his nostrils go wide.
His gaze snaps to mine, and he presses a finger to his lips, wordlessly telling me not to talk.
His entire demeanor changes in a blink. His breaths come hard and fast as he snatches his phone and types something on the screen.
Who is he texting?
Without speaking, he gathers the photos, stacking them and returning them to the envelope.
Is he worried about someone listening? The FBI? He committed a crime, and now I’m wondering if by coming here, it makes me an accomplice.
Or is a different threat putting him on alert? Whoever delivered those pictures is probably not working on the right side of the law.
My scalp tingles, and my muscles are so stiff I struggle to unlock my joints. He darts around the desk, grips my shaking fingers, and guides me toward the door.
He touches his lips again, reminding me to remain silent. Then he leads me out with a hand on my back.
Where are we going? Maybe I shouldn’t follow him. He’s a killer and a liar and hell knows what else? My trust in him is shattered. Except I know, without a shadow of a doubt, if I’m in danger, he’ll protect me.
He ushers me into the elevator and presses the button for his penthouse. Maybe it’s safe to talk there?
When we arrive on the 31st floor, he clasps my hand and pulls me into the open kitchen. Shoulders stiff and back straight with tension, he scans my body with narrowed hawk eyes.
I wrap my arms around myself. “What are—?”
His hand flies to my mouth, his fingers pressing hard as he shakes his head.
Still no talking? What the unholy fuck? I glance around at the kitchen and living room. Does he think his penthouse is bugged?
He reaches for my coat, and I watch in frozen horror as he slides his fingers along the seams, checking the pockets and freeing the buttons to examine the liner.
He thinks I’m bugged.
The gravity of that realization crushes the air from my lungs, and all that remains is the strangling death of a breath.