CHAPTER 11
DESSERT AND DISASTER
GRIMM
To say that her apartment was in poor condition would have been an understatement. I could have sworn it had never been this bad. Sure, she had lost patients over the years, and while she mourned each loss, it had never caused her to care so little about her surroundings.
It had never made her stop eating.
I thought of all the men I’d driven away, every cheater who treated her like a side piece, not that my angel could be a side anything. Arella was the appetizer, the main course, and the fucking dessert to any meal. I could have had her for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and every snack in between and still never be completely satiated.
I wondered how she felt when those I killed stopped answering her texts, and if my actions somehow played a part in how she felt about herself. I wondered if I was to blame for her falling into depression, if I was the one who filled her with insecurities because none of them called her again.
~ Of course you’re to blame, you idiot.
~ I thought I was rid of you.
~ You wish.
When I heard the water running, I started cleaning up to stop myself from storming into her bathroom. I searched through her drawers for a trash bag and collected the half full takeout boxes, my heart cracking when I saw that from everything that I’d sent her last time, she only ate the dumplings.
~ At least we know she can’t resist those.
I picked up the clothes off the floor and sorted them into white, black, and colored piles on the couch, then emptied the ashtrays and collected the cups that were scattered around the entire space.
Just as I was about to start vacuuming, she came out of the bathroom, wrapped in a pink towel, her hair pinned in a messy bun at the top of her head, offering me a mesmerizing view of her neck and the marks I’d left on it.
I assumed it before I even saw her face, because I could hear the soft rasp in her voice as she apologized for the second time in an hour. But when she admitted she hadn’t notice what I did, considering how much attention she usually paid to everything going on around her, I was sure she had been crying.
Again.
~ Why is she crying so much lately? I don’t like it.
~ First thing we can agree on today.
I wanted to get her to open up to me, to tell me why she seemed to be crying more than the acceptable level lately. The acceptable level being fucking zero, of course.
I remembered her sobbing the night I came back from Italy, how she’d smoked cigarette after cigarette on her balcony while drowning in tears. But as her towel fell in slow motion before my eyes and she bent down to pull on a pair of white lace panties, all those thoughts about talking vanished into thin air as I snuck up behind her, my hand grasping her wrist just before the fabric went over her knees.
Her skin burned, almost as if she had bathed in boiling hot water.
~ Call me crazy, but I think she did it on purpose.
~ She wouldn’t.
~ Wake the fuck up, the woman is fucking depressed.
~ No, she’s not.
~ What about that cut on her arm, huh? She did that to herself.
~ Shut up, she didn’t.
She fucking didn’t. My
Snezhinka
would never try to take her own life. She just wouldn’t. She loved life too much, she worked to protect lives. She wouldn’t destroy the very thing that allowed her to save other people.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” I hissed, my lips brushing the back of her neck as the lingerie fell over the towel.
“I thought we were going for breakfast,” she said as I spun her around to face me.
I wasn’t sure if her blushing had to do with me or with the torture that she appeared to have inflicted upon herself, but I didn’t care when I saw how her pupils dilated, desire burning beneath her eyes. Unable to bear the agony of having her naked next to me any longer, and overcome with a need to punish her for crying so much, I lifted her up and threw her onto the mattress.
A short scream broke out of her throat as her full breasts bounced with the sudden movement, and I licked my lips as her thighs pressed together. I removed my boots and climbed onto the bed, then sat on my knees as I wrapped my palms around her ankles and yanked her closer to me, pushing her legs apart.
“We are, but I’m having dessert first,” I said, pulling her leg up, propping her heel on my shoulder and turning my head to the side to press a kiss to her ankle.
The scent of lemons invaded my senses, and I fought myself to take this slow.
I was dying for a taste, and the monster was downright drooling.
~ We’re devouring her.
~ Me! I’m the one devouring her. She’s mine
.
~ She’s ours.
~ Mine.
I huffed out a breath as I looked at her for a moment, imagining all the ways I wanted her to squirm, and whimper, and beg before allowing my lips to reach that spot that I was sure was begging for attention.
My fingers traveled up the leg still resting on the bed as my mouth made its way up her calf, reaching the side of her knee as a strangled moan left her.
“Grimm,” she moaned.
Shoot me dead, what a melody.
“What is it, Snezhinka?” I asked as my teeth grazed the inside of her thigh and I leaned over her, sinking them into her soft flesh as she pushed her head into the pillow, eyelids fluttering. “What do you need?”
I blew air over her core, watching with morbid fascination as her skin became covered in goosebumps. I deliberately avoided direct contact with her pussy, switched to the other leg and gave it the same treatment before I sat up and looked at her.
Her chest rose and fell with frantic movements as her feet struggled to stay on the mattress. A pink blush crept up her chest and reached her neck as small beads of sweat formed on her skin. Those rosewood-colored nipples tightened, begging for attention while she watched me through her lashes, fingers clawing at her white sheets.
I licked my lips, admiring the flawless, stainless beauty that lay before my eyes. I touched, caressed and kneaded every inch of her legs before I moved closer and rolled my hips into her once, just to let her feel how much she affected me, and that gesture elicited another whimper from her.
I could see the struggle in her, how hard she was resisting the urge to cover herself, and it made me angry.
Why would she do that? Why did she want to hide?
I had been watching this woman for the past six years, seen her interact with countless people, and her confidence was unmatched. It was one of the things I obsessed over when it came to her. She didn’t belittle herself, so what the fuck happened in the last twenty minutes that pushed her into this state? Did I do something wrong? Did I say something to trigger this?
Fuck. What did I do?
I secured her legs around my hips and lifted her up so that no part of her touched the bed anymore, then glued her to me, searching for her eyes, silently begging her to let me see them.
“Why were you crying, little angel?” I pulled the elastic out of her hair and groaned as her blonde curls fell in waves down her back and shoulders.
“I wasn’t,” she whispered, lying through her teeth as she avoided looking at me.
I grinned as I gathered her hair in my palm and wrapped it around my fist, then pulled her head back, making her grit her teeth. It wasn’t brutal enough to hurt, but hard enough to pull the submissiveness out of her, enough to stir that side that begged to be dominated.
“Remember when I told you not to lie to me?” I asked, allowing her to fall back on the bed and leaning over her.
“Yes.” She bit her lip when I greedily took one nipple into my mouth and moaned as I bit down on it.
Her back arched as she tried to close her legs, but my body between them prevented it. I sucked on her skin until it turned a deep shade of red, then moved to her other breast and exerted the same punishment as Arella’s hips kept pushing against me to get some friction — friction I denied her.
Her palms pressed on my shoulders, and I sat up, admiring the marks I left on her as I ran a finger through her folds, feeling how wet she was for me.
God, for a second I almost forgot about the point I was trying to make, but she lied to me, so I avoided looking into her eyes to give her a taste of her own medicine and I concentrated on the way my fingers glistened with her arousal.
“Grimm, please.” But I still didn’t look at her.
It hurt me as much as it hurt her.
“Doesn’t feel good, does it?” I sank two fingers into her throbbing core once, just enough to make her needier, then pulled them out and continued to lazily circle her clit. “Why were you crying, Arella?” I repeated myself.
“I wasn’t,” she lied again, trying to push her hips up to intensify the pressure, but every time they moved up, I withdrew my fingers.
“You don’t get to come after lying to me,” I stopped and licked my fingers, then finally looked into her eyes.
She was unraveling.
Storms raged beneath those raw greens, and I wanted all the wind, all the rain, and every lightning bolt. I wanted her to pour down on me, to give me all that pain she kept buried, all the fucked-up thoughts that dimmed her light.
Arella gritted her teeth when I wrapped my palm around her throat. “I’m going to ask you one more time,” I said as I took her bottom lip between my teeth and bit down on it. “Why the fuck were you crying?”
She gulped audibly, but not because she was scared, but because I could see how her eyes sparkled with something much more rancid than simple fear.
There it was, staring back at me with contempt, fucking insecurity.
A rapid fire that scorched every cell in her body, one that broke through her walls and burned every barrier she put up before she came out of the bathroom.
A single tear fell from the corner of her eye before she closed them and finally gave up the fight.
“Sometimes I feel like I’m not…” she started, and stopped to swallow.
“Like you’re not… what?” I rasped over her face.
“Pretty enough,” she whispered so low I barely heard it.
What the fuck?
I froze for a second.
~ Did she just say she wasn’t pretty enough?
~ I believe she did, yeah.
~ This calls for a spanking.
My whole body tensed as I tried to suppress the urge of hitting the side of my head and the rage that was burning in my veins, wreaking havoc inside me, begging to be let out to destroy those demons that made Arella put herself down.
“Not pretty…” I repeated the word incredulously, immediately letting go of her neck. “You think you’re not pretty enough?”
~ If you keep repeating it, it won’t make it go away, genius.
“Baby,” I hugged her, and surprisingly, she didn’t push me away.
I expected her to slap me for manipulating the truth out of her like that, but she clung to me as though I was her last breath. Her arms wrapped around my neck as she started to whimper, but these weren’t the pleasure-filled whimpers I wanted to hear.
These were pure pain.
She was crying, seeking comfort in my arms, and I wondered what I could do to prevent it from happening again in the future.
I was prepared for a sob story about a patient, for disappointment in her insignificant, low life exes, but I wasn’t prepared for the hatred she was directing towards herself.
Sure, she wasn’t stick-thin, but she sure as fuck was the most beautiful, mouth-watering woman I had ever laid eyes on. Those curves of hers, my God, what I wanted to do to those curves.
Not pretty enough…
Fuck that right off. When did having a little muffin top and some stretch marks equate to being anything but fucking gorgeous? I wanted to burn every magazine producer, then step on their ashes.
~ Are we adding war against society to our to-do list?
I pressed a kiss to her forehead as the whimpers subsided, then I turned us around and sat her on top of me, searching for her eyes, silently begging every entity to make her open them and allow me to see her.
“Baby,” I whispered again, and she finally opened.
I smiled the softest smile I could muster and tucked a few strands behind her ears, brushing my thumbs over her cheeks to wipe away the tears, while allowing myself a brief moment to take her in.
Even with teary eyes, she was still the most beautiful woman I ever laid eyes on, and I knew she must feel beautiful most of the time, because that type of insecurity didn’t go hand in hand with the way she exposed herself to me on her balcony, nor with the confidence she used to boss Boris around only hours ago.
This was triggered by something, but somehow, I couldn’t bring myself to ask what.
~ It’s obviously because of you.
I pinched the bridge of my nose and closed my eyes for a second, trying to shake off the anger as I opened them again.
“You’re not pretty, no. Pretty is not the right word to use because it doesn’t describe you, not even a little bit. You’re fucking beautiful.”
“But…”
I pressed my finger to her lips to stop her.
“I admire every inch of you, from top to bottom,” I paused for a moment. “I admire the little freckle here,” I stroked the spot right above her cupid’s bow with my fingertip. “This little cut here,” my finger traced the linear scar on her collarbone. “These are certainly in the top ten.” I gently squeezed her breasts in my hands, and a raspy moan left her. “And I have a soft spot for this part of you.”
I gripped her hips and pulled her closer to my face, so that she was now sitting on my chest, then pressed a kiss on her lower abdomen, biting the soft skin there. She winced as I continued to brush my lips all over her stomach, my eyes open and fixed on her face.
I could see the chaos in her, how much she wanted to move away from me, to hide herself, but there wasn’t a crevice of hers that I didn’t want to discover.
“Do you want to know why?”
“Yes,” she swallowed, biting down on her finger as she looked down at me.
“Because here is where our baby will grow,” I shrugged, baffled by my own words as I bit her again.
~ Children? Really? You couldn’t find something better?
I internally rolled my eyes, stopping the impulse of smacking myself over the head, but the thought shocked me too, and I shivered in sync with her. I never gave much thought to having kids, even though my father kept pestering me about needing an heir, but I didn’t want to bring life into our world, not after the way I had been brought up. But somehow, when I looked at her, God, my head was picturing all types of scenarios. Even parenthood.
“Don’t get ahead of yourself,” she murmured, biting her lip.
“If you really think there’s another man out there for you, Arella, you’re sorely mistaken,” I narrowed my eyes at her, my voice low and thick, almost like a growl.
~ Are you turning into a dog now?
She rolled her eyes at me, and I sank my teeth into her thigh. Partly because I didn’t like it when she did that, partly because I couldn’t help touching and tasting her.
“But apart from the physical things that wither with time anyway and bear no relevance what-so-fucking-ever to our conversation, I admire you as a whole. Your strength, and how you take care of people, even those who don’t deserve it, including me. I admire how your first instinct is to help, even if it means putting your own safety at risk.”
“I’m not putting my safety at risk,” she contradicted me.
“Remember when you came to a warehouse filled with criminals in the middle of the night wearing panties and a T-shirt?”
“Oh,” she munched on her lips, pouting.
“And while I don’t particularly like the fact that you sometimes lack self-preservation, I still admire that part of you, because you’re the most selfless person I know, Snezhinka. Angels and fucking saints should bow down to you.”
She shivered on top of me, a shy blush creeping up her cheeks as she bit down on her lip, her hand coming up to my face. When she touched my cheek, ever so gently, a wave of heat traveled through me, an emptiness settling in my stomach as her thumb brushed over my skin.
How could she carry such softness in her touch and offer it to me?
“There’s this voice in my head that keeps telling me you’re lying,” she whispered, “that you’re just indulging your curiosity, and I’m just an itch you want to scratch, one that you’ll eventually get sick of.”
I rolled us over so that I was on top of her again and made space for myself between her legs, then captured her lips in a soft kiss that contradicted my next words.
“How about I slaughter that fucking voice?” I asked over her lips as I slowly thrust two fingers into her, this time without stopping.
I swallowed her moans, absorbed them like a sponge as my mouth claimed hers. It didn’t take long for the orgasm to ripple through her body, her insides clenching around my fingers, holding them tight as she writhed beneath me. Her body vibrated under my touch, and fuck if I wasn’t going to remember that moment for the rest of my life.
I couldn’t help the impulse to taste her, and when I lowered my head between her legs, I allowed myself one brief look, nearly drooling over her before wrapping my lips around her clit.
She cried out as it was far too soon for further stimulation, but fuck me, I wanted more, and I was going to take it. I wanted to push her deeper, break her and glue her back together, make her dizzy with pleasure. If she was able to stand up immediately after, I was definitely doing something wrong.
“Grimm, stop,” she pleaded, her nails digging into my scalp as she tried to push my head away. “It’s too much…”
“Let it happen,” I whispered over her skin. “Give me one more.” I pulled my fingers out and wrapped my arms around her thighs to hold her open for me. “Allow yourself the fall,
Snezhinka
.” I squeezed her thighs. “I promise to catch you.”
She listened, and fuck if that wasn’t the most mesmerizing thing I had ever seen.
Arella, on the heights of absolute pleasure, as she came all over my face, was the movie I wanted to keep under lock and key.
The way her eyelids fluttered, how her eyes rolled to the back of her head, how her perfect lips parted as she breathed in and out, how her chest rose and fell in sync with those breaths, the way her perfect breasts bounced with every movement, how the heatwave traveled up her body and reddened her pale skin, how she let out a scream that broke off as she fell over the edge and her mouth stayed open as if the sound wanted to continue but her body was too overwhelmed to do so.
I was left speechless, on my knees between her legs, swallowing her essence as if it was my only source of sustenance.
After the high passed and her breathing settled, we laid in silence for a while, her leg sprawled over my thighs, arm thrown over my abdomen and her head laying on my chest. She was naked, covered by a thin white sheet, while I was still fully dressed, but it didn’t seem to bother her.
“May I ask you something?” I asked as I brushed my finger over her spine, and she tilted her head up to look at me, but my eyes were fixed on the scar staining her arm, right above the tattoo she had of my words.
“You can ask me anything,” she whispered as her fingers toyed with the hem of my T-shirt.
I bit the inside of my cheek and slowly took her hand in mine, bringing it up to my mouth, pressing a kiss on the cut.
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to talk about it, but I’m curious about how you got this scar. What happened?” I asked, moving my eyes to hers, and a flash of darkness seemed to cross her features.
Her body tensed and she averted her eyes for a second, clamping her bottom lip between her teeth. I had no idea how long I waited for her to answer my question, how long I watched her mentally battle herself.
“Um, my mother died when I was a teenager,” she began, fixing her gaze on the wall across from the bed. “I had never felt pain like that before, and I didn’t know how to handle it. I took it out on the people around me for a while, and when that didn’t fill this void inside me anymore, I started to take it out on myself too,” she gulped, her eyes welling with tears. “It started slow at first, a pinch here, a scratch there, but that pain wasn’t enough to numb the one I felt in my chest, so I started… cutting. Most of them healed with time, they weren’t deep enough to scar, but this one…” she sniffled, looking down at her arm. “This one was supposed to be the last, because I wasn’t supposed to wake up from it. I was supposed to die.”
My entire body stiffened at that point, my arm wrapping tighter around her waist, almost as if I was trying to convince myself that she was still real, still alive, still in my arms.
I looked for the right words to say, but every sentence in my head seemed stupid.
“You didn’t,” I whispered, bringing her hand back to my mouth to kiss along the scar.
Her bottom lip trembled as she tried to speak again, but couldn’t, and I could almost see the lump in her throat and how much it hurt her. More tears streamed down her face, soaking through my T-shirt as she held me tighter.
A part of me wanted to push further, to ask more about her past, about those nineteen years, but I didn’t.
“It’s okay,
Snezhinka
,” I whispered as I turned on my side and took her face in my palms, kissing away the tears. “You’re here. You’re okay. It’s over.”
She nodded frantically, pushing herself more into my body, her head buried in my chest as she clung to me again. My heart twisted and ached, and I hugged her, pressing my lips to the top of her head.
She would tell me all of it someday, but for the moment, all she needed was a shoulder to cry on.
A shoulder I would always offer.
*
She looked at the menu for the last eleven minutes and forty-five seconds.
Forty-six, forty-seven, forty-eight. Alright, fuck that.
“What are you doing?” I took the booklet from her hand and looked at the page, raising an eyebrow when I saw what she was looking at. “You’re joking, right?”
“I’m not that hungry.” She hugged herself and turned her head to the side to avoid my gaze like she always did when she was lying.
“Bullshit,” I said without elaborating and waved the waiter over. “We’d like eight egg muffins with bacon, pancakes for two with extra syrup, two slices of banana bread, a blueberry smoothie and two coffees, one black, the other with cream and sugar.” I handed him the menus, then crossed my arms and leaned back in my chair as I watched her fuss in front of me.
“I wanted a fruit cup,” she said, copying my position.
“And I wanted to stay in bed and fuck you until you passed out, but we can’t always get what we want, can we?” I scowled as she widened her eyes and looked around to make sure nobody else heard me.
“Don’t be so crude,” she scolded, pouting in the most adorable way possible.
“You love it.”
“Don’t be so sure,” she said, clearing her throat.
“Why were you crying on the night Justin tragically bit the dust?”
Her eyes widened, and I almost slapped myself because the words came out before I could stop them. I waited for the disgust to cross her features, for her to get up and make a scene, or simply leave, but she only seemed thoughtful for a second before raising her head to look at me.
“Why did you do it?” she whispered.
I took out my phone and searched my gallery for the photo Hannibal sent me, then pushed it on the table towards her.
When her eyes fell over the image, I saw it. The disgust I waited for earlier, only it wasn’t directed at me, and my heart clenched inside my chest.
~ You really need to get that shit checked out.
“Did you,” she mouthed ‘kill,’ “any of the other guys I’ve dated?”
“Yes.”
“How many?”
“Fourteen,” I answered honestly. “Justin was lucky number fifteen.”
The waiter approached us with the food and drinks, setting everything on the table, then went on his way without giving us a second glance.
“Why?” she asked as she took a sip of her coffee.
I reached for an egg muffin and shoved the whole thing in my mouth at once. I chewed, swallowed, then took another one off the plate while she played with the fork in the pancakes.
“They touched you,” I shrugged. “But they were also worse than Justin. I couldn’t let them continue, especially since you were involved.”
“Do you ever feel remorse?”
“No,” I propped my elbows on the table and brought my hands together under my chin. “Eat the fucking pancakes, Arella, or I’ll tie you to the chair and feed them to you.”
“You can’t make me eat if I don’t want to,” she argued, but kept her voice down.
“Your stomach has been screaming for food since last night when you passed out in my arms, so stop lying to me. I know you’re hungry, so eat. We’re not leaving here until you finish that plate and the smoothie.”
She angrily cut into the pancakes, muttering to herself as she took the first bite, and the second, and the third.
I almost laughed at how upset she was, and how utterly adorable she looked as she pouted and kept rolling her eyes with each mouthful.
“Good girl,” I praised, and her cheeks caught fire as she kicked my leg under the table.
“You’re an asshole.”
“Thanks for pointing that out.”
I winked at her, and she opened her mouth to say something but her phone buzzed on the table, and when she looked at it, a hint of worry crossed her face as she swallowed without chewing and wiped her mouth before answering.
“Hello?”
Her face went from peaceful and serene to scared in a matter of seconds, and I frowned.
“Did you call anyone else?” Pause. “I’ll be right there, Fleur, everything will be okay, I promise.” She looked at me briefly. “Lock the door and wait for me, okay?” Another pause. “I’m on my way,” she said before hanging up and getting up from the table.
“What’s wrong?” I pulled out my wallet and threw a hundred-dollar bill on the table.
She shook her head, then grabbed my arm, pulling me after her out of the restaurant and towards my car.
When we got in and I was already shaking with worry, she finally answered:
“My friend just killed her husband.
CHAPTER 12
TRUTH
ARELLA
Grimm didn’t say anything as he turned the car around and drove to the address I gave him. He seemed unaffected by what I told him, but then again, he just admitted to killing fifteen people in my name, sixteen if we count the guy who tried to rob me in the park, and probably many more.
I wondered why I wasn’t running for the hills, but one look at him was enough to answer my question. I couldn’t. Even if I fought the unmistakable attraction between us and ran, he would have found me.
He would have found me anywhere.
The way he looked at me told me that he would have turned the entire earth upside down and burned entire cities to ashes for me.
Fleur Delacroix had been my friend ever since I moved to Chicago three years ago. We both volunteered at the same shelter for homeless children and teens, and we bonded over our wish to help everyone, up until she went from helper to victim.
She came to my door at three in the morning one night with a broken brow bone and covered in bruises, but that was the easiest of her beatings, as those that followed were so much worse.
I’d begged her to go to the police and report him. I’d begged her to leave him and move in with me for a while. I fucking begged.
Her husband was a police officer, not of the highest rank, but a man of the law, nonetheless. A piece of shit, a corrupt and aggressive man, who lost his respect for the woman he married, the same woman who’d showed him nothing but kindness.
She tried to press charges twice, and twice her statements magically disappeared as if they were never there to begin with. Both times she came to me worse than before, more bruises, more cuts, more violence.
Once she ran away and stayed at my place for two days before that animal came and dragged her back.
Somehow, Fleur was always the one person I couldn’t help, no matter how hard I tried.
The memory of seeing his brutality on her made me clench my fists over my thighs, my teeth grinding together as I felt my nails dig into my palm.
I even went to the police myself, reporting the fact that he came into my house without permission, and I asked for him to be removed from the force, telling them about how his wife always came to me covered in wounds, but they said I shouldn’t believe the lies of a former drug addict and sent me away.
The next day I received a threat from an unknown number.
While it was true that Fleur struggled with substance abuse for many years, she’d been eight months clean when I met her, and she never touched drugs again. The woman was so determined to get her life back on track that she didn’t even drink a glass of wine on special occasions, and his excuse was always that she relapsed and came home like that. He blamed dealers and played the part of the worried husband, but his excuse could have been proved a lie had they made her take a drug test.
They never did.
Shouldn’t believe her, my ass.
Who would have believed her if I didn’t?
I stitched her up so many times, cleaned her wounds, and even bathed her when she was so broken she could barely walk. Me, not the man who was supposed to protect her and be her safe haven. Me, not the man who turned her into a wreck of the woman she’d struggled so hard to become.
I took a deep breath and closed my eyes for a few seconds, feeling Grimm’s stare on me, and somehow, I only calmed down when he slowly grabbed my hand and pried my fist open, intertwining his fingers with mine. A deep exhale later, I opened my eyes to look at him, but his gaze was settled on the road ahead while his thumb brushed soothing circles on my skin.
“What are you thinking about?” Grimm asked as he turned and looked at me for a moment.
“I’m glad he’s dead,” I admitted, not recognizing my own voice as I continued to clench my fists in my lap.
An ugly side of me was asking to come out, a side I kept buried so deep, one I swore to not remember or ever speak about. I thought she was dead, but as it turned out, she was only dormant, and now she was scratching at my walls, begging to come out and unleash a little hell.
I ignored it.
“Why did she kill him?” he asked without emotion, probably trying to understand the situation better, but his lack of empathy made me want to punch him.
“I didn’t exactly ask my friend for details when she was bawling her eyes out, Grimm,” I snapped at him, and he seemed unfazed by my tantrum.
“I’m just trying to understand what we’re walking into.”
I had to remind myself that I was in a car with a criminal who didn’t have a drop of compassion for victims, one who judged murder differently than most people. I was sure that the few drops of empathy he had were reserved for me, and while that was endearing, for a single moment I wished he was a little more in touch with his feelings. A wish that would never come true due to his disposition, and as I looked at him from the passenger seat, I realized that my wish was stupid, because I didn’t want him to change. Not really.
Monsters didn’t love, at least not like normal people did.
Monsters obsessed, chased and possessed.
That’s what he did with me.
He became obsessed after he noticed me, chased me around for six years, and he was now on his quest to possess me. And I wanted the obsession, the chase, and the possession.
All three of them.
I wanted him to be so obsessed with me that a minute without me would be a minute of agony for him.
As I thought about Fleur’s situation, I finally admitted to myself that I wanted him to be cold, calm, monstrous, even. I loved that he had no moral compass and that he would have done anything to protect me, and although I assumed he was capable of terrible things, I knew in my core that those terrible things would never be directed at me.
My own thoughts scared me, and I didn’t say anything else during the drive.
When he stopped the car in front of Fleur’s house, he looked at me for a few moments, then sighed.
Thankfully, it was remote enough, as it was situated in an area that wasn’t very populated, where houses were distanced from each other, but the risk of being seen was still there, especially since we were in broad daylight.
I munched on my lips nervously, sinking my nails into my palms, and Grimm reached for something in the back seat, which he placed on my lap before lighting a cigarette.
“Put this on and pull the hood over your head when we get out of the car,” he said without looking at me.
“What about you?”
“They can’t get to me,” he said confidently. “Even if someone sees me and testifies against me,” he turned to me, blowing the smoke up. “But they could easily get to you, and I would rather die than let that happen.”
I nodded and pulled on the hoodie, then got out of the car while he followed behind me. He smoked casually and looked around, analyzing the surroundings as I walked up the four steps leading up Fleur’s porch.
I knocked and kept my head down.
“Fleur, it’s me,” I reassured her before she opened the door a crack.
Her eyes glanced quickly at the man standing behind me like a dark cloud, shielding me from view if anyone were to pass, protecting me like body armor.
“It’s okay, he’s here to help.”
She nodded briefly, then let us in, and as soon as we entered the house, she closed the door and locked it, then slowly turned to us.
“I’m so sorry, Ari, I didn’t know who else to call,” she whimpered, and my soul cracked.
When I looked at her, my heart twisted in my chest. She was wearing a gray, flimsy T-shirt that was torn from the hem up to her chest, her bare legs covered in cuts, dried blood mixed with fresh blood, scratches, and brutal bruises. One of her arms was full of small circular scars, reminiscent of old cigarette burns, while the other hung unnaturally, and her wrists seemed to have been tied.
I covered my mouth when I noticed the finger marks on her neck, then her split lip and the cut on her right cheekbone. Her right eye was almost black, and some of her red hair had been cut in jagged lines. She walked with a limp and was so malnourished that every bone in her body stood out, and I wondered when she’d last eaten.
Guilt took over me because I didn’t insist on seeing her in the last few months, and every time we spoke on the phone, she told me that she was alright, that things were settling down.
Apparently, the only thing settling down was her fight for freedom.
Grimm pressed a palm to my back and gave me a gentle shove in her direction, and that’s when I realized I was stuck in place, staring at her as if she were a ghost.
I was so glad she killed him.
“It’s okay.” I hesitantly put an arm around her shoulders and led her to the couch.
“Where is he?” Grimm asked, and I could hear the anger boiling in his voice.
“In…t-t-the k-it-kitchen,” she stuttered, trying to point towards the door at the end of the corridor. “I t-tried to calm him, but he wouldn’t stop, Ari,” she cried, shoving her nails into her thighs. “I just wanted him to stop,” she took a sharp breath, saliva gathering at the corners of her mouth.
Fleur coughed, her face reddening as she choked on air.
“Shh, it’s alright.” I slowly pushed her hair back, slowly caressing it. “Could you lie down for me so I can take a look at your arm, please?” I tried sounding calm, mindlessly biting my lips as I struggled not to cry with her.
She nodded, her body shivering as she laid down laboriously while I bent over her and slowly palpated her arm to see if it was broken or just dislocated. Fortunately, it was the latter.
“I’ll fix it,” I said as I handed her a pillow. “bite into this, okay?”
She did as I asked.
I was sure that the pain of snapping her shoulder back into place was nothing compared to the pain she felt through the rest of her body. I pressed a palm to her collarbone and looked at her face, sorrow bubbling out of me.
“Alright, take a deep breath,” I said before pulling on her arm with all my might.
She screamed so loud a piece of my soul chipped away. It was such an agonizing scream, and it was as if all the grief inside her flooded out with it. She struggled to sit up and buried her head in the pillow, crying and breathing heavily, until Grimm came out of the kitchen. He stopped at the threshold of the living room, watching us with a stern expression.
Cold.
I frowned for a moment before I heard glass breaking, and when I turned towards the sound, Fleur had thrown the cushion at a vase of dead flowers, which fell to the floor and shattered to pieces, then she screamed again.
Those screams would echo in my head until the day I died.
She stood up and limped to the fireplace as if she was in a trance, then took the poker out of its holder with her good hand, and she let out another howl of anger as she pounded on the frames that were sitting on top of the fireplace, knocking them to the floor.
“Fleur,” I whispered.
I wanted to go and stop her, but Grimm put his hand on my shoulder and held me down.
“Let her get it all out,” he said.
Another scream made me flinch.
Fleur stood next to the desk in the corner as she took the poker to his computer, sobbing as she smashed everything else he kept on it. She pushed down the books on the shelves, broke the frame that held his diploma, then ripped the jacket that was thrown over the backrest of his chair.
By the time she was done destroying the room, she was also done crying, and I felt I had just witnessed an episode of pure female rage.
In a way, I knew we all experienced Fleur’s pain, helplessness, and inner war at least once in our lifetime, in different ways, but with the same intensity.
She sat back down beside me and threw away the poker as if it burned her, then when she opened her eyes and looked at me, a hint of relief sparkled in their depths.
“It’s all good now,” I hugged her to my chest. “You’re going to be okay.”
Grimm sat down on the coffee table in front of the couch and remained still for a moment while he watched us as if we were two children playing with fire without knowing what the rules were.
“Look at me,” he tried to sound gentle, but his voice was so thick that it was hard to read the intention.
Still, Fleur looked at him.
“You did nothing wrong; you were just defending yourself,” he reached an arm out to her, but when he saw her flinch, he immediately dropped it.
“He’s right Fleur, the bastard had it coming.”
Grimm took out a cigarette and lit it, but instead of smoking, he handed it to me and pulled out his phone.
I only took one drag before Fleur took it out of my hand. I didn’t have time to stop her and tell her that her lungs were probably going to burn, because she put it between her lips and inhaled the smoke as if she was using an inhaler. She coughed at first, violently, then she got used to it, and Grimm lit another one for me.
“What am I going to do now?” she asked calmly.
“You’re going to lie low for a while,” Grimm replied, his eyes staring at the phone for a second before lifting it to his ear.
“Yeah, you can stay with me as long as you want and…”
“No,” he interrupted me, raising his index as he turned his attention to his call, “I’d like a laundry pickup.”
I frowned as he typed something, lighting a cigarette for himself as well.
Laundry pickup?
What did that mean?
He gave the person on the other end of the line the address we were at, then hung up. I was about to ask what was going on, but he spoke before me.
“She can’t stay with you, and even if I can make this go away, we’re still dealing with a dead police officer. She will be a person of interest in his disappearance, and every person she’s ever come into contact with will be questioned about her whereabouts, and since you’re her friend, your apartment will be the first place they’ll look,” he explained.
“Okay, so where do you want her to stay until they get bored of looking?”
“Klaus is on his way.”
“What does Klaus have to do with…”
“The warehouse is the safest place for her right now, until I can pull the right strings to sweep this under the rug,” he stubbed out the cigarette and lit a new one. “Don’t argue with me.”
“Grimm, Klaus was stabbed last night,” I argued. “He should stay home and rest, not come here to help you pick up a body.”
“You don’t know him,” he grinned, dismissing my concern.
“And you don’t know medicine,” I rolled my eyes, a vein in his temple pulsing.
“Arella,” he spoke through clenched teeth, glancing at Fleur.
The way he looked at me told me to shut up, and for the first time, I listened, because this wasn’t the man who spoke about children and kissed my insecurities away. This was the criminal, the man who operated outside the law, and I dug my nails into my palm as I stared into his eyes.
Ice cold, and I shivered.
I looked at my tattoos briefly, running my fingers over the sentence on my left wrist, and started to understand why he’d told me I could never be ice. It was because he was cold enough for the both of us, and my eyes welled with tears as the second sentence gained new meaning.
Too much warmth.
Did he see me as his warmth? Did he hope I could melt away the ice?
“What’s a laundry pickup?” I blurted.
His head snapped up, his eyes narrowing as he sighed.
“Laundry is code for dead body,” he explained, “Klaus is our cleaner.”
I got an answer that only raised more questions, but I wasn’t sure if it was the right time to ask them. He had people who cleaned after murder. He’d killed sixteen people - that I knew of - and never been caught.
Was he part of the mafia or something? How could he get away with so much? Why weren’t the police a threat to him?
“Who’s ‘we’?”
He shook his head, then stared at me. “Not now,” he gave Fleur a quick glance, then got up from the coffee table and went to the window.
My friend seemed to fall into a trance. She was sinking deeper into shock and there was nothing I could do to help her, so I contented myself with holding her while we waited for Klaus. I wondered how he would pick up a corpse in his condition, but then I remembered all the guards at the warehouse and realized he probably had help with his “cleaning” business.
Three successive knocks echoed in the silence, and I watched as Grimm went to the door and opened it, then blinked a few times as I saw four men come in. They didn’t even look at us, just walked straight towards the kitchen after Grimm pointed in that direction.
Klaus appeared in the threshold like a colorful cloud, a little slow on his feet because of his wound, but otherwise unfazed by his condition.
He was a few inches taller than Grimm, but where Grimm was all muscle, Klaus was leaner.
It was the first time I allowed myself to look at them together and notice the differences between the two brothers. One was covered in black tattoos and appeared to be a dark sky, threatening to unleash unending storms, while the other had only one sleeve full of tattoos and looked more colorful than a bag of Skittles. Grimm had short black hair and blue eyes, while Klaus had a slightly lighter shade of hair and eyes as black as coal.
They had similarities, but not as many as brothers usually did, and I wondered if they had the same mother. Probably not.
Klaus looked at me briefly with that cheeky grin that seemed to be his permanent expression, but any hint of mischief was gone when his gaze fell on Fleur. His jaw clenched, and his whole body stiffened at the sight.
He looked at her for a long time, in the same way Grimm looked at me, with longing and recognition, as if he knew her, but when I moved my eyes to the woman next to me, she wasn’t looking at him.
“Tell me the fucker who did that to her is fucking dead,” he glared at Grimm.
I frowned, confused by his reaction, wondering why both of them seemed to have a weakness for battered women. Interesting.
More questions stirred my mind when Klaus approached us and dropped to his knees in front of her. He made no move to touch her, but his presence seemed to snap her out of her trance, because she raised her eyes from her lap and finally looked at him.
“It’s okay,
Kukolka
[6]
,” he whispered in the gentlest tone, one that Grimm could never master, and held out his hand to her. “I’m Klaus,” he introduced himself.
My eyes widened and my skin covered in goosebumps when I heard the Russian nickname. I looked at Grimm, whose eyes were also settled on the two of them, seemingly as shocked as me. I wanted to know what ran through his mind, but he was too closed off, too focused on keeping his feelings shackled.
“Fleur,” my friend answered and hesitantly held out her hand to him, which he surprisingly didn’t shake.
No, he tenderly took it between his fingers and flipped it around, then kissed the back of her palm and each of her knuckles before pressing his forehead to her hand in a gesture that was supposed to show… respect?
Submissiveness?
I couldn’t figure out what was on his mind, but I understood as soon as he raised his head to her and spoke.
“
Otnyne ya budu oberegat’ tebya
[7]
,” he whispered, barely audible as his eyes held hers for a few moments before he gently pushed a strand of hair behind her ear, a faint smile curving his lips.
I expected Fleur to reject him and panic, or at least flinch as when Grimm tried to touch her, but she seemed to lean into that touch, resting her bruised cheek into his palm for a few seconds before Klaus stood up from the floor, his movements measured and unhurried, so as not to startle her.
He turned to Grimm, who seemed as perplexed as I was by what he’d just witnessed.
“What’s the plan?”
*
We were back at the warehouse, and I was pacing in Klaus’ kitchen, which was much nicer than the one downstairs, where Grimm had cooked the saltiest eggs in human history. I was making tea while my friend sat on the red couch in his living room, hugging her knees to her chest, vehemently refusing Klaus’ attempts to make her eat something.
I felt as though everything spun out of control, especially my thoughts, and the smell of bleach was still very present in my nostrils, pungent, the smell that spread all over my friend’s house after the cleaning.
Her husband’s body was now burning to dust somewhere beneath us, in a crematorium that wasn’t in the yellow pages, and I couldn’t believe that I made myself an accomplice to all of this.
Grimm was leaning against the counter, seemingly as lost in his own thoughts as I was, unsure about what to say about the things I witnessed. Obviously, he wanted to give me space to process it all, but it was impossible for me to process anything without all the pieces.
It seemed to eat at him, as if he was afraid I would start judging him after having all the facts.
But who was I to judge him about his life when I was hiding half of mine from him and everyone else around me?
He wasn’t hiding at the moment, just withholding information, and he had been truthful from the start, with the kind of work he did, with the fact that he killed people, with the fact that he had stalked me, and I wondered if he found anything about my past in these past six years.
No. He couldn’t have.
The first eighteen years of my life had been completely erased. It was impossible for anyone to find anything.
Why did it make me feel guilty, though?
I gave him a quick glance and my eyes fell on a tattoo that stood out in the sea of black on his skin, because it was made in red ink, and I wondered how I didn’t notice it before. I frowned, wondering what could be so special as to disturb his monochromatic self, and because I couldn’t make it out from a distance, my legs carried me towards him without my permission, as if I was in a trance.
When I raised his arm and noticed the name engraved on his skin, I froze. My name, written in clear, beautiful calligraphy, tangled in detailed snowflakes, cut by some red jagged lines that looked like actual scratches.
They were the marks my nails left on his forearm three years ago, when I was so scared by the turbulence that I’d clutched his arm as if that would have saved me from a possible crash.
“This is…” I began,
“Scary?”
I shook my head.
“Terrifying?” He raised an eyebrow.
I shook my head faster.
“Disgus…”
“Overwhelmingly beautiful,” I whispered as I brushed my fingers over the tattoo.
I aggressively bit my lip, caught in the clutches of the art, and I mimicked the movement I made all those years ago, without any pressure. Tears blurred my vision as I looked back up at him, and he seemed mesmerized by my reaction, almost as if he thought I would be horrified by it instead.
Maybe I should have been, but I wasn’t. I was frozen in veneration, overwhelmed by him and the feelings running through my body, captive in the memory of that action, one of the many that sealed our fate.
“Why did you stay away so long?” I whispered through my tears, wrapping my arms around his neck, and he immediately encircled my waist and pulled me close.
“I didn’t want you involved in all of this,” he sighed, pressing his forehead against mine.
“What is all this?” I asked again, hoping that this time he would answer.
He sucked in a breath and shook his head, seemingly unsure about what he was about to admit, almost as if he was thinking about lying to me.
But he wouldn’t lie, because he promised the truth, and while Grimm was many things, a man who broke his promises wasn’t one of them.
As his breath fanned across my face, a cold shiver ran down my spine.
“
Bratva
.”