Rebel’s pen freezes on the paper. He turns, then, towering over me, my face level with his belt buckle. It’s as though I can literally feel the heat rolling off his body. He’s intimidating and overwhelming, his presence a powerful force to be reckoned with. “Oh, Sophia. I use my brain. Every time I sleep with a woman, I’m using my head to figure out what she likes. How she likes it. What I can do to have her screaming my name until her throat’s raw.” He takes a step closer, his perfect fucking abs pretty much filling my eye line. He knows how he looks. He knows how perfect all of him is. “I’m also thinking up ways for my partner in crime to make me happy, too. How she can defer to me, hand herself over to me, let me use her body for my own pleasure.” Gently brushing a wet strand of my hair from my face, Rebel makes a low humming sound. It sends shivers through me, making me feel shame for the first time in my life. I shouldn’t be reacting this way to him. I just told myself I wasn’t stupid enough to fall for my captor, and yet right now…
It’s so fitting that he just referred to his sexual conquests as his partners in crime; I get the feeling sex with Rebel really would be criminal. “If the guys you’ve been sleeping with haven’t been using every single part of their bodies when they’re fucking you, Sophia, including their heads, then they haven’t been doing it right.” He takes a drink from the whiskey bottle, and then he offers it to me. “Is Matthew the boyfriend not a very good lover, Soph?”
“That is seriously none of your business.”
“What you mean to say is, you’re a virgin.”
I feel like my face is on fire. “I am not a virgin!”
Rebel’s expression hardens a little, almost imperceptibly, but I catch it. “Didn’t Hector check you?”
“Yes, he did. And he wanted me gone, so he told Raphael I was a virgin. He said he couldn’t afford the attention I’d bring with me.” I shiver at the memory of Hector’s fingers inside me. That disgusting look on his face. Suddenly, I feel very sick. I snatch the bottle from him and drink. I drink deep, lighting up from the inside out as the explosive alcohol tears through me. Surprisingly, the burn dulls down after the first few mouthfuls. Rebel folds his arms across his chest, watching me swallow once, twice, three more times. I let my eyes drift a little, catching brief flashes of the ink that marks his skin. A skull sits over his ribcage, crowned in thorns, flocked by birds. A banner runs through the design, and on it, the text: Forgive Me Father, For I Have Sinned. Two full sleeves, bursting with color, scroll down his arms. The designs are filled with dragons and water lilies, Japanese designs mostly. The lines of them are harsh and dark, but they’re beautiful. On his chest, more birds—two swallows perching on top of the handles of two crossed guns, their barrels pointed downward. In the center of the design, a heart, bright red and bleeding. Live For Something runs along the top of the ink. Or Die For Nothing is written in cursive underneath. As he lifts his left arm, leaning against the wall, I see something else that catches my attention: Arabic script tracing up the inside of his bicep, leading toward his heart.
“You getting a good look there, sugar?” Rebel asks. Amusement colors his tone, to the point where I feel like kicking myself for being busted checking him out. And I was checking him out. I’ve seen Matt naked a thousand times, but I’ve never felt this intrigued by his body. Not even the first time we had sex. Our bodies just came together without any fireworks, whereas right now I feel like it’s the fourth of July inside my head and I haven’t even touched this guy. I resent that he can produce such a reaction from me. It makes me feel weak.
“Just looking for the prison tattoos,” I snap.
“Haven’t been to prison. Sorry to disappoint. Been arrested enough times, but they’ve never been able to pin anything bad enough on me to warrant jail time.”
“Until now.”
“Yeah, well. Maybe so.” He doesn’t seem to like me pointing that out. His shoulders are tense when he returns his attention back to his unsolvable mathematical squiggles. I drink more whiskey, trying not to feel anything. Not panic or terror or hope. Or the faint glimmer of interest I seem to be showing in this man, who I should fear with every bone in my body.
Now that I have the opportunity to look properly without him mocking me, I check out the ink on his back. I anticipate it to be the Widow Makers’ patch, but yet again I’m surprised. The ink Rebel has tattooed into his back has absolutely nothing to do with the Widow Makers, as far as I can tell. It’s a depiction of the Virgin Mary, hands clasped in prayer, head bowed low. She’s not what I would have expected from a man like Rebel. She’s beautiful.
And she’s weeping.
REBEL
Unsurprisingly, I don’t solve Legendre’s Conjecture. I make zero headway on it, in fact, just like I always do. It serves its purpose, though. It’s around two in the morning by the time the solution to my Maria Rosa problem reveals itself to me. Sophia sat and watched television for a couple of hours, drinking the whiskey I offered to her every once in a while, half pretending to watch the TV, half hiding the fact that she was actually watching me. Eventually she passed out at eleven thirty on my bed—a lesser man would have considered that an invitation and crawled up there with her—but I kept on working, feeling like I was on the brink of some conclusion and that at any moment it would come to me. And then it did.
I need to kill Maria Rosa.