Right?
And while the town and the police had already asked him their fair share of questions, I wasn’t about to let him off the hook from mine. I had waited long enough and damned if I was going to wait any longer.
I found him exactly where I thought I would: at the first place I had ever seen him—the bottom of the stairwell leading to The Castle’s entrance. He stood there, his back to me, arms folded, staring at The Castle’s door from the bottom of the stairs. His black slacks matched a t-shirt that hugged his arms, chest, and shoulders in a way that made him look impossibly large and defined.
“Be careful,” he said without looking up at me. “I’m not in the mood to catch you today.”
Gritting my teeth, I padded my way down the steps. “Don’t worry,” I answered, infusing a light tone in my voice that I didn’t really feel. “I think I’ve got this much under control.”
“Really?” He swerved to face me, cutting those dark eyes right in my direction. The stubble on his cheeks had been shortened since last I saw him, but there was still a hint of darkness in his expression, which matched his eyes perfectly.
“What is that supposed to mean?” I asked, settling next to him.
“It means it would be the first thing you had under control.” He sounded more tired than angry, but that didn’t stop the rage from bubbling up in my chest.
“You can’t be serious.” I pitted my hands on my hips. “You’re not seriously going to blame this on me!”
“No,” he said, raising a mitt-like hand to shush me. “You didn’t kill that girl.”
“Carla,” I said, moving closer. “The paper said her name was Carla Rogers.”
“I know her name, Ms. Bellamy. Trust me, in the last few days, I’ve learned more about that girl than I ever cared to know.” One of his hands balled into a fist at his chest. “She was a graduate student, she came here from Anchorage, and according to her friends, she had just went through a bad breakup with her boyfriend and wanted to go out that night to ‘relax a little’.” He shook his head morosely. “She was a baby.”
His words broke at the end, and my heart ached to tell him everything would be okay.
“Abram, I—”
“Stop,” he said, his voice sharp enough to silence me. “You didn’t kill her, but that doesn’t mean you didn’t facilitate the tragedy. Make no mistake, that girl is dead because of your actions.”
If I could have seen my own face, it would have no doubt been a trip. What the hell was he talking about?
“My actions?” I balked. “I didn’t do anything.”
“Precisely.” He growled, turning to me, his arms crossing across his massive chest. God, why was I always looking at his chest? I forced my attention up to his face as he continued. “The upstairs was supposed to be closed off, Ms. Bellamy. No one—no one—was supposed to be up there! I made that explicitly clear to you many times!”
He was closer to me now, his mammoth chest heaving in huge, infuriated breathes. His teeth ground together, his lips curled back, and there was a fire in his eyes that would have scared me if it didn’t intrigue me so much.
“So how did it happen, Ms. Bellamy? How did that poor girl end up in a place inside my club that you ensured me no one would enter?”
Maybe I should have been afraid. Maybe I should have been repentant. He had, after all, made it crystal clear to me that upstairs was off limits to everyone but me, employees included.
But I wasn’t repentant, and I sure as hell wasn’t afraid. I was angry, I was outraged, and what was more, I was right.
“She fell through the roof, Abram,” I said. “Not over the balcony.”
A vein pulsed along his temple. “You can’t get to the roof without access through the second floor,” he said through gritted teeth. “So I ask you again—How. Did. This. Happen?
“You know what?” I jabbed his chest with my index finger. His pecs were firm and unyielding, which I probably would have paid more attention to if I wasn’t enraged. “None of this would have happened if you”—I poked him again for good measure—“would have done your job!”
His dark eyes widened, but I didn’t let him respond. I had too much to say. “That’s right, you arrogant asshole.” Jab, jab, jab. The last poke of his chest hurt one of the knuckles in my pointer finger, so I finally dropped my hand away. “If you would have actually taken the time to be where you were supposed to be instead of laying it all on my lap, then maybe things would have turned out differently.”
“Don’t you dare,” he said. He stepped so close to me that our chests pressed together. His head had to crane down to look at me, and I think I trembled a little then, but not out of fear. “I’m not the one who allowed a murderer through the front door.”