Chapter 40 - Rurik
Leaving Clem was the most difficult thing I've ever had to do. Nothing compared to the pain as I sat in my car a short distance from her apartment, staring into the rearview mirror at the gate. She believed I had gone, and I should have. She wanted space, and I told her she could have it.
But I needed to be near her, so I waited a little while longer. Did she suspect I was there? Would she run out to tell me she changed her mind? Or would she come out only to make sure I left, suspicious that I was still out there, watching her.
With a groan, I started the car. I had been trying to give her everything she wanted without her asking, but the thing she desired was tearing me apart. Nothing could have improved my mood, but a visit to the place where my guys were keeping her foul ex might give me an outlet for it.
The slimeball was in my cousin’s shed at the back of his property.
Aleks was only aware that Jordan was probably working with the gangs, and so far, hadn’t even sent anyone out to deal with him.
After I told him what little I knew about his history with Clem, and both our imaginations filled in the gaps, he was as eager to get out there as I was.
“We need to get answers first,” he said, cracking his fist into his open palm with barely concealed rage.
He loved Katie every bit as much as I adored Clem, and he had two daughters. There was no space in this world for abusers as far as he was concerned. I felt exactly the same way, and burning anger was a blissful relief from the heartache of leaving Clem.
The gangly, greasy young man was slumped over in the metal chair, his hands tied behind him and his feet bound to the legs that were bolted to the plank wood floor. The place had no windows and only one bare bulb hanging from the ceiling.
A table of implements was always set up along one wall, and various tools hung from a pegboard, like in any other shed. It was spotless save for the stains on the floor, which Aleks, out of some kind of twisted sense of humor, wouldn’t allow to be cleaned.
It kept the proper ambiance.
Our prisoner hadn’t been too roughed up except for the blow I dealt him with his own gun. He had been neatly dispatched, and the fact that he was still alive made him a bit too cocky. He sneered at me, then at Aleks, then spat on the floor.
“You’re both dead,” he rasped, glancing at the implement table, which also held bottles of water. Not for drinking, though, not for this asshole. “You don’t know who you’re dealing with.”
“So why don’t you tell us?” Aleks said, pleasantly enough, keeping up the ruse that Jordan might make it out alive today.
Ignoring him, Jordan turned to me and laughed. “Clementine will never love you the way she loves me,” he said.
“Whoa!” Aleks grabbed my hand, but not before I knocked the little shit into oblivion. “What happened to getting answers first?”
“He’ll come around,” I said. “He doesn’t get to say her name.”
“Fair enough,” Aleks told me, scowling at Jordan’s unconscious form. “You can rest assured he’ll pay for everything he ever did to her, but maybe you’re a little too close to the situation?”
“Are you telling me to get the hell out?” I glared at him, fists clenched.
“I’m suggesting you step back,” he said calmly. “You want him to pay, or do you want to snap his neck in less than two minutes?”
Turning away, I had to concede I had hit him pretty hard. And we did need to learn if he knew anything that could help us get to the top leadership of whatever organization was paying the gangs to bother us.
“I’ll take a breather,” I said.
We both headed back to the house, since Jordan was still out cold, and I was still too riled up to be able to listen to his voice without killing him instantly.
He was the source of Clem’s jumpiness, the reason she wasn’t able to trust me.
He had hurt her; he had to go, but Aleks was right.
Information first, lots and lots of pain second. Jordan didn’t deserve an easy exit.
“What’s going on with Clem?” Aleks asked as we walked through his huge estate. “Is she all right?”
“She’s fine. She’s safe. She doesn’t want anything to do with me.”
He clapped me on the shoulder. “That’s not true. Not from what I saw.”
“You saw an act,” I informed him. “She always thought everything was for that fucking deal. I should have been upfront with her from the beginning.”
“There’s always a chance for a new beginning,” he said with a hopeful shrug. “You managed a secret marriage.”
“First mistake,” I grumbled.
“You don’t believe that.”
“No, I fucking don’t. She’s mine. She’s staying mine. Just… not right now.”
He lightly thumped my head. “You read too much. I’ve always said so, and so has Mat. Your big brain got you in trouble.”
“My brain stepped back a long time ago where Clem’s concerned,” I said, somehow finding it possible to laugh. A fresh surge of pain cut off the rueful sound. “It’s all my damn heart now.”
After a cup of coffee and a much-needed change of subject, we headed back out to deal with my wife’s former problem.
Unfortunately for him and us, he didn’t have the answers we needed.
He might have been making some cash as an errand boy for the gang, but he wasn’t in touch with anyone of any importance.
My fist was raw, but not as bad as Jordan’s face by the time Aleks pulled me out of the shed a while later.
“Let my guys finish him,” he said. “You need a break.”
It was nearly sundown, and he was right. There was no need for me to get my aching hands dirtier over someone so inconsequential, and I wanted to be able to look Clem in the eye and tell her I wasn’t responsible for someone else’s death, no matter how much he might deserve it.
She was as pure as they came, and no matter how angry she might be, no matter how she might think she craved revenge, it would end up whittling away at her tender soul. I’d protect her from that like I protected her from any other evil.
Right now, she only wanted protection from me.
I stopped by her apartment before I went home and called the guard over to my car.
He informed me that she had gone to the grocery store and then hadn’t left her unit the rest of the day.
I hoped she was getting some good rest and that she remembered to put her medicine on her bruises.
I looked down at my own ragged knuckles and laughed to myself. “I’ve got your replacement on the way,” I told him, though he was as alert as when I put him on the job that morning. “Be back tomorrow at the same time. You know the drill.”
Since I had told Clem to take some time off work, I spent the longest week of my life alone in the office.
I had grown used to teasing her every morning over her coffee delivery and peeking into the outer office to see her with her head bent over her work.
I missed her smiles and the stolen moments we shared.
A quick hug in the elevator, secret glances during meetings, the way her hand found a way to brush mine when she handed me a file.
And I freaking missed how efficient she was. My calendar was a mess, I was late to three meetings, and the accountant wanted my head for not getting signatures back to her on time.
How did I run the place before Clem? How did I wake up every morning and get to the office in the first place without her? How was I still standing, walking around, and breathing?
She might have hated it if she knew, but every evening I drove past her place and waited and watched until I couldn’t stand it anymore. Every day, the guards informed me that she barely left the apartment complex except for food, and the only people to go to her door were delivery drivers.
“She always waves or says hello to me,” the current guard on duty said at the end of the first interminable week without her. “She’s as nice as can be.”
I nodded and dismissed him back to his post, not wanting to tip Clem off to my position if she happened to be watching out her windows.
She wasn’t balking at the guards and hadn’t called me to demand I get rid of them.
Hadn’t called to ask about Jordan’s fate, hadn’t called to ask how I was. Hadn’t called at all.
Was I the only one going crazy? All the heat and passion we shared came rushing back to me, not just as a torment, but as a reminder that we were real. I had to continue being patient. That was what she wanted, so that was what she’d get.
The sun was barely dipping below the low buildings when Clem came out of her door.
My heart rate picked up, the first time I had seen her in two days.
She wore a light sundress and rubbed her arms in the cooling evening air as she looked around, her gaze honing in on the guard resting casually against his car.
A moment later, she came down, my eyes hungrily devouring her quick steps, the way her glossy dark hair fell down her back as she tossed it over her shoulder.
She stopped in front of the guard, and I watched as they had a casual conversation.
I expected her to continue down the sidewalk, but today she apparently had more to say to him than a polite greeting.
My phone rang, and I was so mesmerized by the sight of my wife that I could hardly bring myself to look down at it. Then I grabbed it up and answered right away.
“Clem,” I said, waiting impatiently to hear her voice.
“Are you out there?” she asked. “Are you watching me right now?”
Another thing I had promised her was honesty. “Yes,” I said. “Black sedan behind the trees at the corner.”
I put the small binoculars down and watched as she strode across the street and made her way to my car. As soon as I rolled down the passenger window, she leaned into it, taking my breath away with her fresh beauty. And was that a smile?
“Might as well come up,” she said, trying to hide it. “I’ve been suspecting you were watching me. I ordered dinner.”