17. Laszlo
I’d gone back to that horrible place to be reminded of my mission.
To let the fires of my vengeance burn back high and give me the willpower to continue on this path.
I hadn’t been counting on finding the place being renovated, restored.
It made everything I did from here on out that much more urgent.
It had got me running too hot. My nerves were shaken.
I’d been driving circles around Arkham, just burning gas, burning time. Letting my madness dim a little before I could face Evelyn again. She couldn’t see me like this. Weak and small, trapped in a teenage body I’d long outgrown, but never escaped. Filled with inert rage with no outlet.
I couldn’t protect her like this, and knowing she was at my home, safe, was what put me at ease.
I parked next to the river. When had it gotten late? Time had bled together, and I accessed my home security feed. There was an alert for someone leaving at 5:47pm. It must have pinged when I was in the tunnels where there was no service.
Damn it!
She wasn’t in any of the rooms. I didn’t have a camera in the bedrooms, though. I started the recordings back after I left. Watched her go from room to room. Vomit. Fail to make tea. Come into the hallway, dressed in a long gown I bought her.
Leave the penthouse.
Rurik put her in the backseat of his vehicle.
I called him. No answer.
The footage kept going, but there was nothing else. She hadn’t returned home.
The tracker I put in her purse said she was at the Gilt and Gloam, but I checked the camera I’d placed in the club, and I couldn’t see her. Skipping back a few hours, she was behind the bar with Gorky, the slimeball bartender.
I couldn’t believe it. She went back to work, after everything she’d been through. Everything I put her through!
The club was a few blocks away. It was a good thing there were no cops on the prowl, because the V12 howled beneath me as it spooled up. I tore off down the road, forgetting my earlier caution. Rain battered my windshield.
I was wearing the same clothes from the night before, a bit crinkled and damp from the grass as I entered the Gilt and Gloam.
“Where’s Belle?” I barked at Fiona. She smiled, sharp and cruel.
“Ask Gorky. They were getting real close earlier.”
Blood blurred my vision, my temples pulsing with rage. She gestured towards him, and decades of practicing restraint allowed me to not slug him on sight.
“Where is she?” I seethed, and his forehead dampened.
“Who?”
“Belle. Where. Is. Belle?”
“That bitch stormed out of here twenty minutes ago! Kneed me in the balls! That fucking cunt can’t take a joke.”
The bar separated us. I jumped over it, and he didn’t have time to recoil. My ringed fist served as brass knuckles, and when they connected with his face, he went down hard. I leaned over him, all venom, as blood spurt from his nose.
“If I ever hear you talk about my girl like that again, I will gut you. If you lay hands on her? I’ll make you choke on your own cock first.”
I waited long enough for him to nod.
“Where’s her purse?”
He lifted his chin in the direction, beneath the bar. I grabbed it, then stormed out.
Fuck.
I would have to put a tracker under her skin at this rate.
What had he said to her to make her attack him? She wouldn’t have done that without a good reason. That filthy fucker would die. I’d find an opportunity, and I’d take it.
The rain was coming down harder now. I checked my security feed, and still no sign of her. No sign of Rurik, either. I fucking told him to watch her!
Evelyn didn’t have a cellphone, so I called Rurik again.
No answer.
Her studio wasn’t far. I’d check there first on my way to the penthouse.
It didn’t make sense why she would want to go back to the Gilt and Gloam.
But then, I’d spent all day visiting the scene of my nightmares.
So did she.
Maybe I understood after all.
Cruising down the road, I kept my eyes peeled for some sign of her. If Rurik wasn’t driving her, she was walking.
In the gloam, the mist hovered above the concrete roads, ghostly and still. There was no breeze, and the orange streetlights cast an unnatural light over it all. Parked cars crowded the narrow streets, and I had to step hard on my brakes to avoid hitting a mangy animal.
It was too large to be a cat, and hobbled oddly, disappearing between two buildings before I could get a good look.
I made it to the end of the street, then doubled back.
Opening my windows, the wet-cold night air spilled in, and in the distance, a garbage can clattered to the ground. Taking the next right, the street looked the same as the last, another quiet, residential area.
Peering eyes from one window disappeared behind heavy drapery. Down the road, a truck’s old V8 engine rumbled.
I was going in circles, passing one other vehicle on the road. She was nowhere near her old neighbourhood. I pulled over to the side of the road, checking the feed of my penthouse. There was no movement.
Fuck.
Fuck.
I was about to circle again when a truck’s lights flashed into my car, and I saw a woman in a long pink dress racing along the sidewalk.
Evelyn!
I opened the door and dashed to catch up to her, but I was too slow. Panic had her in its grip, and she was sprinting. I watched, helpless, as her foot caught on the floor-length gown. Her legs went out beneath her and she buckled forward, away from me.
There was the loud crack of her body hitting concrete.
Don’t be her head. Please don’t be her head.
I closed the distance in a half-dozen paces, dropping to her side, my panicked eyes scanning her.
She had broken her own fall, luckily. Scratched palms, ripped dress, some blood. I pushed wet, blonde hair away from her face to take a closer look, my large hand gently exploring her forehead.
“Belle, oh fuck, Belle. Are you okay?”
The sputter of a truck muffler filled the air, followed by rubber screeching as it tore off into the fog. The mist swallowed the noise in the distance, and she stared at me, fresh tears in her eyes.
“Someone was following me,” she sobbed, avoiding my question. My blood crystalized in my veins, chilling me to the marrow.
“In the truck?”
She nodded, and I reached out, my hands grasping her arms. She pushed herself into me, clinging to me like a child. Her breathing was buckled, her body shaking as she cried. I held her against my chest.
My guilt for leaving her would be reckoned with later.
Helping her was all that mattered.
“Stay with me, Belle. Breathe with me.”
I demonstrated, taking deep, calming breaths. Her ragged ones struggled to match them, but she kept trying, and then she took her first long inhale without a sob.
Her hair was soaked, so long that it pooled around us both as I held her in the rainy street. I stroked her back, kissed her forehead, waiting for her nerves to settle.
A cat screamed in the distance, fighting with another. There was a clatter of something falling to the ground. Time passed, and the rain eased, and only then did she find the strength to try to stand.
Her left heel caught in her skirt, piercing a hole through it. She stumbled into me again with a cry. “Help me.” Her voice was soft and pleading, desperate and ashamed.
It made me feel thirteen-years-old again.
Maybe it was visiting the old estate that was playing tricks on me, making me hear Lilien in her voice. I shrugged the feeling off, working her high heel free of the fabric. I thought a long gown would make her feel comfortable. Like she could have all her skin covered but still be stunning.
She was shaking, but she let me hold her steady, until she found her footing. She didn’t cringe from my touch, and I relaxed.
“God dammit you can’t catch a break,” I said, as I put an arm around her, another on her wrist, to keep her steady. I walked her back to the car. “What happened at the club?”
She didn’t resist me as I opened the door, letting her slide into the seat. She looked nearly as defeated as she had the night before. The memory was a punch in the gut, and seeing she wasn’t about to answer, I joined her in the driver’s seat.
“Should I take you to the hospital?”
“No. I want to go home.”
“Belle, I can’t take care of you there,” I protested, and she shook her head. Slowly, she turned to face me, the shadow of a wry smile in the edges of her lips. With the overhead street lights hiding her eyes, it was a haunting expression.
“Your place. That’s what you want, right?” she said.
She should hate me. I deserved for her to hate me.
“Yes, that’s what I want.”
I pulled onto the road, making the familiar journey. In my rear-view window, I noted we picked up a tail; Rurik. Why hadn’t he been watching her like I’d told him? This never would have happened if he’d been doing his job.
“I was moved to the bar. I won’t have to work the floor anymore.”
“You won’t be working there at all.”
Her lips were set, hard. Before she could argue, Rurik called, and I answered on speaker phone.
“Your girl isn’t at the club. You have her?”
“Yes.” My voice was clipped and there was a pause.
“She left early,” he said, a pathetic excuse.
“Mmm.”
Getting into it with Evelyn in the passenger seat wouldn’t help. She was distraught enough, and didn’t need me to get into another dick swinging contest. I’d have to replace him, start looking into my own guards for her. He couldn’t be trusted.
“Alright, I’ll be posted outside tonight,” he said, and I ended the call.
Evelyn’s thumb stroked the sharp edge of my kneecap. Hot anger left me on the next exhale, and she withdrew her hand. I was surprised to find myself disappointed. I hated to be touched, but it was different with her.
The houses grew more spacious, the lawns manicured despite the near constant rain we’d been having the past few weeks.
“Belle, why did you go back to work?” My voice was level, free from the exasperation I felt.
“I didn’t want to be alone, and I hoped Roxy would be there. Besides, if I’m your girl, then nothing was wrong about last night. That wasn’t our first time, remember?”
How could she be thinking about things like that already?