“I never wanted this life for you.”
Every time he said something like that, so brutally honest and from the gut, it flayed me until I was raw. Maybe that was why we didn’t speak honestly with each other.
“Come on. I’ll drive you.” He straightened and opened his door.
“You don’t need to come. Just give me a lift back to the office where I’m parked.”
“Not tonight.” His voice was soft. He wasn’t just asking me to let him do this, he was asking me to not fight him on it, and it revealed more than anything he’d said to me tonight. He wanted to drive me.
He wasn’t going to budge and he was probably right. I might not have been in shock but I wasn’t great, either. A ride wouldn’t be the worst idea.
I got in the car, letting him drive me away from the place I’d been attacked. That wasn’t how I’d remember it though. I had a frightening feeling that from this point on, I’d remember it as the place I’d lost yet another chunk of my humanity. I just wished I knew how many pieces you could lose before you had none left.
Chapter Ten
We didn’t speak as we drove. I wasn’t sure what kept him silent. For me, the scene kept replaying in my mind. If I kept accumulating moments like these, I’d be able to run an entire movie theatre’s worth of traumatizing images soon. Murder, torture, beatings—I had a plethora of horrible memories to draw from next time I was staring down one of the numbers on my bucket list and trying to find the magnitude of strength I needed to pull that trigger. Thinking of it that way, a near rape wasn’t such a big deal. I’d shown more skin on the beach, I’d just been more selective about the parts.
I redid my warrior ponytail, as I’d come to think of it, and set my mind to a more useful purpose than dwelling on what might have happened. It hadn’t and there were plenty of things that were happening I needed to concern myself with.
But I couldn’t let the scene go completely. “He was really strong.”
“I’d suspected as much,” Fate said, without any question.
“Why?”
“Because I didn’t see any bruises on them. You were overpowered too easily, and I know you wouldn’t have gone down without a fight.”
“Was that…”
“What?”
“Nothing.”
Fate had just paid me the first compliment I’d ever heard him utter, and it made me feel like I was glowing and not just from my tattoo. First he saved me, then he helped me vent when I would’ve swallowed all those horrible feelings, now a compliment? That was a big problem. I could feel myself getting dragged down further into the quicksand of emotions that were Fate.
I wanted to smack myself upside the head and might have done it if I wouldn’t have had to then explain it to him.
Work—world is falling apart, need to concentrate on work.
“So Malokin is tapping into a human’s natural inclinations.”
He nodded.
“If you knew, you could’ve mentioned it to me.”
“Sorry. I thought you knew that that’s how it works. I forgot you were a transfer.”
“Don’t flatter me so.” I lifted my head and took a deep breath. “Do you smell that? The air smells weird.”
“I do.”
I hit the down button on the window so I could get a better sense if it was coming from the car or outside and that was when I knew something was wrong. This time, it had nothing to do with gut instinct.
We were a mile or so from my condo when I saw it. Smoke was billowing up into the night sky over the area of my building like an ominous cloud of dread or, maybe more accurately, a personalized billboard from Malokin. It might as well have had the words you fucked with me carved into the smoke.
That there’d be retaliation wasn’t surprising. There was no way Malokin would let the death of his men—and a break of the truce—go unanswered. Not for a second had I ever believed his southern charm act or doubted his ruthlessness; not even before Kitty’s torture or that first offer of a drink. But I hadn’t expected payback to come so swiftly. The shit was about to hit the fan in a very large way and I was pretty sure we weren’t prepared.
Fate hit the gas, giving the work car as much juice as he could, which was quite substantial since it wasn’t the wreck he’d promised to buy.
Traffic choked up the streets when we got a couple of blocks away. Without having to discuss it, we abandoned the car and ran the rest of the way on foot.
The fire department, or the skeleton crew who were still reporting for work, was trying to put out a raging fire that looked like it had been burning for a while from the amount of damage already done. Or more likely, had gotten some help in the way of gasoline. Half the building was blackened and half was in sticks. My condo looked like it wasn’t fully gone yet, as if Malokin had orchestrated the fire to burn in just the perfect way that I’d be able to witness its destruction in person.
My condo didn’t matter right now. All I could think of was Smoke, my cat. If that bastard had killed my cat…
I didn’t think of the fire, or Fate, or anything but Smoke as I took off toward the building. A fireman blocked me immediately.
“Ma’am, you can’t go in there,” he said, but I was pushing past him before he’d finished the sentence.
He screamed something along the lines of crazy bitch after me, but I ignored him and ran for the stairs that led to my floor. He didn’t know what crazy was if my cat wasn’t okay.
I barged through my door, flames creeping closer as the fire burned through the cedar siding like it was a book of matches. “Smoke!” I screamed.
A howling preceded Smoke leaping into my arms and digging into me with a clawed death grip. I ignored the discomfort as I hugged her closer, feeling utter relief. The overhang in front of the door fell, blocking the way. The deck was in flames at the back.
I turned, with Smoke in my arms and howling up a tirade like I’d never heard before. Both doors were burning flames. And then sheet rock started crumbling from above. I thought the ceiling was collapsing until I looked up to see Fate leaning over the new hole in the ceiling. That’s where he’d gone.
I reached up toward him before he had to ask and was quickly pulled up through the hole in the ceiling he’d made that went through the rafters of the attic to the roof.
There was only one clear path but it led to a deck on the side and we were able to climb down. We hit the beach where a different fireman thought we’d escaped the fire.
“You okay?” he yelled after us as we gained some distance from the burning building.
“Fine,” Fate yelled back.
I wasn’t sure what the guy would’ve done if we’d said no. There wasn’t an ambulance to be seen.
Standing on the beach with Smoke safe in my arms, as a crowd gathered to watch my home burn to the ground, the impact of what happened hit. “My stuff.”
“Is all replaceable. Nothing in there would be salvageable anyway.”
He was right. Even if something did survive, which was becoming more and more doubtful, it would all be smoke damaged.
For the second time in less than six months, I’d lost all my possessions, and it felt every bit as bad as the first, maybe even worse. Smoke let out a howl and I loosened my grip.
It hadn’t taken long for the truce to fall apart and the gloves to come off.
***
Morning light had just started to disrupt the dark sky as we met in the office for an impromptu meeting to discuss the latest development. My fingers pushed the hair from my face and a fluttering of ashes floated to the floor. Then there was the smell of eau d’ ashtray that permeated the air in a ten foot radius around where I sat in the middle of the office, Smoke on my lap, even stinker than I was.