Chapter Nine
Evelina Bianchi
I expected to go straight from one safe house to another, but Zeke surprised me when he pulled into a public library and parked beside the front doors. I looked between them and him.
“There aren’t many safe places in the city, but this one… well, it has metal detectors and only one entrance. The security cameras are disabled for the next four hours, so it’s as safe as any place could be.”
Zeke’s words went in one ear and out the other as I tried to understand his motivation for this. “Do you have something to do?” I asked.
He glanced between me and the building. “I don’t.”
“Then why are we here.”
“You have been pacing for two days. You don’t seem like you’re doing well in the house, so… I want to give you the chance to do something until this is figured out.”
Until this is figured out.
I was beginning to think that after three weeks of sitting inside various houses with only Zeke and occasionally Jaimie as company, there would never be an end to this madness. I had thought about any way out of it safely, but there simply wasn’t one. Without risking my life and Beatrice’s life, there was nothing I could do.
I sometimes found myself wondering why Zeke couldn’t just kill Clide Newton and get this all over with.
He was definitely right.
I needed a change in scenery.
“Thank you,” I told him sincerely.
He nodded as he parked the car and left his gun in the center console. We walked into the library together, and I found myself scanning every possible face—everyone who walked by us. I wondered if any of them knew what was happening—if any of them were involved.
When we walked into the library, the security guard gave us both a stern nod, and the second we had made it through the doors, Zeke went in another direction and left me alone.
Alone.
I felt like I could finally breathe as I looked around and found myself being unwatched. I could finally be a person again, if only for a few moments. I could read, research, or do whatever I wanted to do with my time here.
But as I glanced toward a row of computers in a closed-off room, I bit my lip and allowed an idea to spring to life. It was foolish, perhaps. But… I reminisced on Jaimie referring to Zeke as “Coleman” when I first met her, and I had clung to that information. A last name that I didn’t know previously.
I didn’t allow myself to think twice before rushing to the computers along the wall and sitting down.
I wouldn’t contact Maggie. Not after what happened last time. But I could learn more about the man I had been living with. He had not been forthcoming about his past or his personal life, but the internet went deep, and with the time he was offering, I knew I could find something.
I just had to look.
I began typing before I thought any more about it, starting with his full name.
I didn’t find anything, so I scanned a handful of different websites to find an online presence. He didn’t have one. It was as if he was a ghost in recent history, and nothing I searched for was creating results. What did I know about him, aside from a brief assumption of his age and his illegal occupation, which would certainly not be plastered across the web. I didn’t have the slightest inkling of how to access the dark web, and doing so on a library computer was off the table, anyway.
My fingers hovered over the keyboard as I thought of any other search criteria I could enter.
I left out his first name and instead searched for only his last name—one that was too common for any substantial results. I scrolled through story after story, finding nothing of substance.
And then, a news article from years ago crossed the desktop, and just like all the others, I read it. This time, though, my heart sank at the devastating story. I had been surrounded by gore and death my entire life, but I would have remembered a serial killer being found and prosecuted in the city.
Andrew Coleman killed a dozen women almost fifteen years ago, and I read the gory details of his arrest. He had been charged for something unrelated—something not disclosed in the document. When they had gone into his house, the decomposed bodies of twelve women were found.
I wanted to puke as I looked into the man’s empty eyes and wondered what kind of psychopath would kill for sadistic reasons like that.
I couldn’t peel my eyes away as I continued reading about the trial where he was eviscerated by the prosecuting attorney, and his own had done little to try to counter the overwhelming evidence. They even brought in his own son to give testimony, a young Zeke Coleman—
I straightened, my eyes scanning the section again.
Zeke.
It couldn’t be him. Zeke was a common enough name…
I searched his father’s name and found a plethora of news articles with his story and the story of his family. Of all the women he had killed. I reverse-searched the name Zeke, and a handful of articles remained highlighted. I skimmed through them, looking for a picture to confirm the sickening theory.
And I found it.
A family photo with Andrew Coleman, his arm around a scrawny Middle Eastern woman in a hijab. In front of them stood a young girl and a teenage boy. That teenage boy was younger, smaller, and far scrawnier than the Zeke I had come to know, but the piercing blue eyes were the same. The smug smile was identical.
I read through the article.
Andrew Coleman had been at home with his family when an argument started, and he used the family gun to attack his wife, Talia. Then he turned his attention to his daughter, Fiona Coleman. The teenage son, Zeke, came in during the commotion and tried to defend his sister. Unfortunately, she succumbed to her wounds before Zeke managed to disarm and incapacitate his father in time for the authorities to arrive.
A tear trailed down my cheek as I continued reading.
When they arrived, they searched the home for more weapons. They discovered the bodies of twelve women in a locked basement. In a continued rage, Andrew admitted to his crimes.
I stared at the keyboard as I tried to process what I had read.
It explained so much.
Everyone close to me ends up dead.
Zeke thought he was a monster. He made a name for himself in a life of crime because his father had been a criminal in the underworld long before him. It had probably been so easy for him to break into this life with his father’s name behind him.
And his father had killed his mother.
He had watched it happen.
It made sense why he wanted no attachment or connection—why he wanted nothing to do with commitment. If the only committed relationship he had ever seen was one where his father had betrayed and killed his mother, it was no wonder he wanted to avoid that kind of attachment. He was a killer, just like his father, so he thought he was his father.
God, this changed everything.
I caught movement in my periphery and immediately exited out of the web browser as I looked up. My hand moved toward the nearest bookshelf, and I picked up the first book and held it open in front of me as I watched Zeke approach.
When I saw him, I wanted to tell him that he was nothing like that monster.
I wanted to tell him that he was different and his future would be different.
I had so much I wanted to say, but I kept my mouth shut as I met his eyes and put on my best innocent expression, holding up the book as if I had been using my time to read.
Zeke stopped in the doorway, looking at me and then trailing his gaze over the book in my hands. His eyes widened slightly before a smirk pulled to his lips.
“I, personally, prefer to experiment in person. Literature doesn’t do it for me.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” I asked with furrowed brows.
He moved toward me and sat in the nearest chair, propping his feet on the desk. “You see, some women are interested in watching it. They get off on it. I didn’t peg you for the reading type.”
“Yeah, reading is fine,” I retorted with a shrug. “Why are you making it a big deal? Why are you acting weird?”
“Princess, if you want to experiment with darker interests , you only have to ask.”
Did he know what I had found? I knew I had cleared the screen before he had a chance to see. I expected he would react entirely differently if he learned what I had truly been doing with his generous gesture of getting me out of the house. He did not want me to know about his father or family, and though I wanted to ask him all the questions, I refrained.
So why was he acting so… unusual?
He reached a hand between us and ran a finger along my knee, then up my thigh slowly.
My breath caught.
“I’ve found from my history that women who read books like that are interested in experimenting in the bedroom.”
I peered down at the book I held and immediately dropped it on the desk as my cheeks heated. On the cover of the paperback, a shirtless man covered in tattoos reclined in a chair, his hips propped up just enough to show his clear sexual intentions. He stared into the camera as if eye-fucking the reader.
Oh no.
I had two options. Admit I wasn’t reading it, or go with it. If I admitted the truth, he would ask what I was doing on the computer, and I would have to lie to him again .
“I thought something different would take my mind off of everything that’s happening.”
The lie felt sour, but his smirk deepened as he dropped his feet from the desk and scooted impossibly close to me, his finger still stroking up my thigh. “A distraction?” he clarified.
“Something like that.”
“Princess, if a distraction is what you’re looking for, you’ve come to the right place.”
He wrapped his hand around both of my legs and pulled me to the edge of my chair. My legs spread around his as I forced myself to sit straight and hold on to the armrests. I met his eyes and found the mischief in them that had first drawn me to him.
“What are you—”
“What kind of ideas did that book put in your head, Evelina?”
I glanced down at the raunchy romance book I had dropped and bit my lip. “I haven’t read enough yet.”
His deep chuckle rumbled down my body and through my core. “How about we check out this little romance novel, and when you get to one of those parts, you come and find me.”
The idea sent exhilaration through me that I didn’t want to admit. Now that I understood why he didn’t want commitment or anything more, I didn’t want to push. He didn’t need to know what had come of our physical relationship.
“That sounds interesting,” I admitted as his finger slid just a little higher…
I gasped as the tip of his knuckle brushed against the place between my legs that most craved his touch.
He stood from his chair, and the lack of his presence was like a bucket of ice water over my senses. Everything that I had learned weighed down on me, and it took a great effort to force a careless smile.
Today seemed like it changed everything, but… did it really change anything at all?