Chapter 5 – BELLS #2
That's when I hear it.
A slight scraping noise, so quiet I almost miss it over my own ragged breathing.
And it's coming from behind the standing mirror.
My blood turns to ice water. I grab my binder and shirt, yanking them over my head. I grab the mirror and shove it aside, nearly toppling it, revealing a maintenance door the same industrial beige as the walls. And the door is cracked open.
Someone's been watching me this entire time from the tunnel through the gap between the mirror and the wall. I can feel it in my fucking bones.
Someone saw me.
Terror-fueled adrenaline surges through my body, momentarily driving out my exhaustion and the pain in my ribs.
I shove my hand into my pocket and grab the treasured knife I keep against my thigh.
The blade flicks open with a satisfying snick and I'm through the door.
The tunnel beyond is narrow, lit by emergency lighting that casts everything in a sick green glow.
It smells like mold and rust and… cologne.
A male alpha.
Oh, someone's getting stabbed tonight.
Footsteps echo ahead of me, unhurried. Like whoever it is doesn't know I'm following. Or doesn't care.
I move forward on silent feet, a skill I learned young when I had to sneak past drunk handlers after late-night shows. The tunnel curves ahead and I round the corner with my blade raised, ready to fucking gut whoever's been violating my privacy—
It's Rex Steele.
"Were you watching me?" I snarl, and before he can answer, before I can think, I'm lunging, the blade arcing through the air.
His hand deflects my wrist, the blade scraping harmlessly against the leather of his jacket, and suddenly I'm spun around and pressed against the cold concrete wall with his hand gripping my collar. Not squeezing, not yet, just pinning me.
And I press the tip of my knife against his chest, right over his heart.
This close, I can smell him. Leather and smoke, but not cigarette smoke. Smoke like the burning remains of a forest after a raging fire. A dark, dangerous scent that makes my skin prickle with heat despite the suppressants.
Fuck.
Even through the chemical haze of too many suppressants, my body notices him.
His scent. The way his height makes me have to tilt my head back.
The controlled strength in the hand holding my collar.
The heat radiating off him where his body cages mine against the wall.
The dyed black hair falling into his one visible ice blue eye.
He's fucking beautiful. The kind of beautiful that makes you understand why fans lose their minds over him despite never seeing his full face.
My suppressants really must be failing after all.
His thumb shifts, pressing against my incomplete mating mark through the leather of my collar. I grit my teeth and press the blade harder against his chest, channeling my frustration into anger.
Of all the alphas in the world, why does this masked asshole have to smell so good? And why is his gaze flicking over my face like he's wondering the same thing?
"Getting your sick kicks watching me change?" I grit out. "Did you take fucking pictures too?"
His visible eye narrows. "I'm not a fucking creep, Bells."
"Right," I spit. "Because stalking me and watching me from behind my dressing room mirror isn't creepy at all. Even if you didn't know I'm a girl."
"So you're not a trans guy, then?" he demands.
"What?" I blink, thrown by the sudden question. "No, I—"
"Good. Then you're fair game." His visible eye bores into mine, but there's something else there now—a flicker of heat he's trying to suppress.
"Here's what's going to happen, Bells. You're going to get your own music.
Tell Stephen whatever lie you want—creative differences, vocal problems, sudden case of integrity—I don't care.
But you're done robbing graves to build your brand. "
"I have no fucking clue what you're talking about!" The words explode out of me. "Why are you being so fucking vague?"
He blows a puff of air through his nose.
He's so close, I feel it on my throat. "Alright.
Let's say you don't know," he says in a low tone.
"Let's say you're perfectly innocent and this is all Stephen Hughes' fucking fault.
That you had no clue he's stealing music from the dead.
But you know now." His lip curls into a sneer.
"So it will be your fault if you don't stop. "
"I can't just tell him the band won't perform what he—"
"Not. My. Problem." Each word is punctuated by his thumb pressing harder against the scar through my collar.
"Or what?" I manage to rasp.
"Or I tell everyone exactly what you are. Your career as Bells? Dead. Your fanbase? Gone. The Reverie? They'll drop you so fast you'll get whiplash." He leans in closer, his breath whispering against my ear. "Everything you've built as Bells goes up in flames."
That's it. That's fucking it.
I bring my knee up hard, aiming for his balls, but he twists at the last second and it catches his thigh instead. Still enough to make him grunt and loosen his grip. I slash with the knife and the blade catches the edge of his mask where the leather strap attaches by his ear.
The strap tears.
Time slows to nothing as Rex's mask shifts, sliding sideways like a door opening on something that was never meant to be seen. My blade catches flesh, warm blood sprays my hand. But it's what I see in that split second before his hand flies up that freezes me in my tracks.
Scars. Not just scars, total destruction. I don't fully process what I'm seeing before his hand flies up, covering the right side of his face with fingers splayed wide like he's trying to hold his face together.
The sound he makes isn't human.
It's raw animal rage mixed with terror. His visible eye goes wide, the ice blue turning almost black with dilated pupil, and I know with absolute certainty that I've just crossed a line that can't be uncrossed.
"Don't—" I start, but he's already moving.
He lunges in my direction with the force of a freight train, letting out an inhuman snarl that says he's beyond pain now, operating on pure instinct, and that instinct is telling him to destroy the threat.
To destroy me.
I scramble backward, my knife—no, wait, where's my knife?
My hand is empty, slick with his blood but empty, and I don't have time to look for it because he's coming at me again.
His hand is still pressed to his face, but he moves like a predator, using his body to block my escape routes, herding me deeper into the maintenance tunnel.
I run.
The tunnel stretches ahead, branching off into darkness. The surreal glow of those fucking emergency lights makes distances hard to judge. My boots slam against the concrete floor, echoing like gunshots, but his footsteps are right behind me.
Heavy. Relentless. Getting closer.
A door appears on my left and I grab the handle, yanking hard.
Locked. Of course it's fucking locked. I keep running, my lungs burning, ribs screaming where the binder left its marks.
Another door—this one opens, and I throw myself through it into what looks like a storage area.
Metal shelving units tower toward the ceiling, forming narrow shadowed aisles.
I can hear him behind me, breathing hard, and when I dare a glance back, that hand is still pressed to his face like he's holding himself together. The door slams open so hard it bounces off the wall, and his silhouette fills the frame.
"Is this what you wanted?" His voice is different now, lower, rougher, like he's talking through broken glass. "To see the monster beneath the mask?"
My hands search the shelves blindly, finding boxes of paper, cleaning supplies, nothing useful—wait. There. A crowbar, probably left by maintenance. My fingers wrap around the cold metal and I grip it like a baseball bat, ready to cave his head in if he gets too close.
A poor substitute for my knife. The one my grandpa gave me before he died, engraved with a simple scripted letter B for Bella. Now for Bells. "Every girl needs fangs," he'd said, the only person in my family who ever gave a shit about me as a person instead of a meal ticket.
And it's gone. Somewhere in that tunnel with Rex's blood on it.
Fuck. Fuck.
The crowbar feels wrong in my hands, too heavy, too impersonal. That knife was the last piece of the only person who ever saw me, and now that psycho has it.
Rex's footsteps echo through the storage room, measured and deliberate. Not rushing anymore. He knows I'm trapped in here with him, knows there's only one door and he's blocking it. The crowbar feels slippery in my sweaty grip as I press myself deeper into the shadows between two shelving units.
Fuck. I'm going to have to kill Rex fucking Steele.
"I know you're in here." His voice carries through the maze of metal shelves, that roughness from before mixed with something else. Exhaustion. Pain. "So I'm going to make one thing perfectly clear."
He's three rows over. Then two. I can't see him in the shadows, but I can track him by the sound of his breathing. Harsh. Controlled. His hand must still be pressed to his face because his growled words come out slightly muffled.
"This is war, Bells. You tell a single soul about my face and I'll destroy you. I'll release everything. Your career, your life—everything burns. If I go down, you're going with me. Straight to fucking hell."
The words hang in the air long after he slips out of the room, long after his scent and footsteps fade away.
He knows I'm a girl. Maybe not an omega, but a girl. And he hates my guts. There would be no reason for him to keep that discovery to himself.
But I know what he's hiding, too.
And now we're both holding loaded guns to each other's heads.