Chapter 10 #2
He moves to the shower, opens the glass door, and turns it on. The inside is gray-and-white marble accented with brass, and it’s big enough to fit a family of four. I struggle to control myself, but my breath is hitching and I can’t catch it.
Priest turns back to me. He’s still wearing his black tux, a fine smatter of rusty red flecking the white shirt. My father’s blood. Nausea claws at me. I’m going to be sick.
I barely make it to the toilet and sink to my knees, throwing up the freshly cut fruit I ate for breakfast this morning, courtesy of Maria. When the last of the violent heaves subsides, I see Priest’s elegant, tattooed fingers flushing the toilet and realize he’s holding back my hair.
“I’m s-sorry,” I choke out, embarrassed that he’s not only just witnessed me puking my guts out, but was there to take care of me.
“Don’t be. It’s your body’s natural reaction. Can you stand?”
I nod.
Priest hooks an arm around me and helps me to my feet. Tenderly, he guides me to the sink before opening a medicine cabinet that’s flush with the wall. Inside, I see a shelf of small glasses. He grabs one, fills it with water from the tap, and offers it to me.
“Rinse out your mouth.”
I take the glass and our fingers brush. “I don’t need to be looked after like a ch-child.”
But my chattering teeth aren’t particularly convincing, I know. Or the fact that I probably look like something dragged out of the maws of hell. Or all the puking I just did.
“Rinse,” he repeats.
And I do. There’s an eerie calm in his voice, and it’s deep and low and somehow soothing, even though I know it shouldn’t be. What I should be doing is smashing this glass on the marble counter and using it to cut Priest’s jugular.
Was he responsible for my father’s assassination?
Oh God. It doesn’t feel like he was.
But who?
My cousin Amedeo? The Russians? Other families?
And whoever it was, will they come after me next?
My hand trembles as I bring the glass to my lips and take a tentative draw from the water. Slowly, as if I’m performing each task for the first time, I slosh the liquid in my mouth and then discreetly spit into the sink.
“Again.”
I do it a second time, not even bothering to use a guest towel to wipe the dampness from my mouth but swiping the back of my hand across my lips instead.
He watches me, patient but intense, radiating that raw sense of barely leashed power I’ve only ever felt from him.
I still feel sick, like I’m trapped in a nightmare and can’t wake up.
I take a sip of the water to distract myself and then swallow harder than necessary. “Where are we?”
“You don’t need to worry about that.”
“Why aren’t there any windows?”
“Why do you think?”
“This is a s-safe house of some sort.” The lingering hitch in my breath is as annoying as my body’s reaction to his proximity.
“Smart girl. Now let me help you out of that dress.”
I cross my arms over my chest like they’re a shield that will keep him from me. “No.”
“We’ve been over this.” His voice gentles again, and there’s a new expression on his handsome face that looks almost like pity.
Except it couldn’t be.
Priest Andriani is a heartless, ruthless, stone-cold killer.
“I’ll do it on my own.”
But Priest clamps his hands on my waist and spins me, so quickly that I don’t even have time to react. The sound of the zipper being undone zings through the silence. I instinctively hold the dress to me, keeping it from falling, but then I see the blood and my stomach lurches and I let go.
The once gorgeous Oscar de la Renta falls to the floor, ruined.
I’m standing there in a lacy bra and panties, feeling far too exposed. It’s getting warm and steamy in the shower, thanks to the running water. I feel hot and slightly light-headed. I’m still panicked, but now there’s an added element of something I can’t define.
“You don’t need to do it on your own,” he says at my back. “You have me now.”
And then I feel his fingertips grazing my back as he unclasps my bra with one deft move. It gapes, leaving me more exposed. I flatten an arm over my breasts and the lacy demi cups, keeping it from dropping to the tile like my dress.
“I’ll take it from here,” I protest.
“You’re in shock, baby. I don’t want you to hurt yourself.”
I don’t understand what he means. Does he think I’m suicidal after my father’s murder?
“You could pass out,” he adds.
“I’m not going to shower with you.”
“Take off the bra and the panties, or I will.”
Panic rises, clawing at my throat. I can’t do this.
“Priest, no.”
“Fuck.” He blows out a breath. “We’re going to wash the blood off the both of us. That’s all. You’ll feel better when you’re not covered in it. Trust me.”
I almost ask him how he knows, but then I remember. He’s a murderer. Killing people is how he made his living as the top Andriani confessor until he became don.
“Do you promise you’re not g-going to try anything?” I demand, the chill coming back to me now that I’m thinking about death again.
Death.
Blood.
My father.
The limp way he fell into me, the screams. Mine and others’. The terror.
Around me, the room suddenly spins.
Priest is there to catch me against him, to keep me from falling with an arm banded around my waist. He grunts.
“You see? Don’t be stubborn. I’m not going to fuck you in the shower. I’m going to get you cleaned up.”
His crude words light something inside me on fire. The dichotomy is so strange that if someone else tried to describe it, I wouldn’t believe them. I’m freezing cold and completely aflame at the same time.
I give up, letting go of the bra just in time for him to hook his thumbs in my panties and pull them down. His hands glide over me, a caress that somehow, strangely, isn’t sexual. He’s all business as he helps me into the shower.
The door closes softly, and I’m engulfed in the hot spray.
I lower my forehead to the cool marble wall, feeling the water sluice down my spine, and start sobbing yet again.
I hear another low curse from his direction, followed by the hasty rustling of fabric that suggests he’s also taking off his clothes.
Then the door opens and I’m not alone. He draws me into him, and we’re both standing under the spray of the showerhead, the water washing the blood from our bare skin.
Dimly, I register that he’s still wearing his boxer briefs.
His embrace is platonic. There’s nothing suggestive about the way he holds me.
I tuck my head into his wet chest and wrap my arms around him, too fucked up to care that Priest is the one offering me the comfort I so desperately need.
And as he slowly, gently washes me like I’m a child, I don’t even put up a protest. I just close my eyes and let him pass the soapy cloth all over my body, taking away the lingering traces of death and destruction I’ve witnessed today.