Chapter 6 Poinsettia
SIX
POINSETTIA
NOELLE
Patrick’s mouth curves. It’s not a smile, though, not really. It’s too sharp to be one.
“I think you already know,” he says. “And I think that’s why you came up here. Because you figured it out, and I’m glad because I don’t want to play pretend anymore, Starling.”
Starling again.
No.
I shake my head. “No. I—” My voice cracks, and I’m instantly pissed that he can see me losing control.
I shouldn’t care, yet I do, and he’s lucky that I don’t start screaming since that’s what I really feel like doing at the moment.
“You’re a guest. I let you in because there was a storm and they fucked up the rental. That’s it. You don’t get to—”
“Call you by your name?” he asks mildly. “Your real one, plus the one I gave you when I decided you would be mine?”
My heart skips a beat. My head thrums to a harsher one, brain slamming into my damn skull. The champagne… it has to be messing with me because there’s no way in hell I heard what I think I just heard… right?
Just like this man I’ve never met before couldn’t possibly know my name or be able to echo one of the thoughts in my private diary…
Right?
Shit. I can’t explain how much I hate the way he’s standing there so calmly, almost as though he’s giving me a minute to catch up to this new and unexpected reality. He’s not a cop, but a member of the local mafia. He’s not a stranger, not really, but a man who knows more about me than he should.
“You quoted me,” I tell him, voice trembling. “You said something I wrote. Something no one knows. That’s why I’m up here. Because it doesn’t make sense… none of this makes any fucking sense!”
Patrick’s gaze doesn’t waver from my panicked face.
“Is that so? The idea that life isn’t fair has been inside your pretty head for years, Noelle,” he murmurs. “You think you can pretend it doesn’t matter because there’s a Christmas tree in the corner? Christmas started this. It’s only fitting that we finish it this Christmas.”
Finish it? Finish what?
My throat burns as the one question I should’ve already asked explodes out of me: “Who are you? What do you want with me?”
Holding tightly to the towel around his waist, Patrick steps toward me.
Not close enough to touch me, but close enough that the heat of him reaches me through the last of the quickly evaporating steam. Close enough that I can smell soap and something else beneath it. Something sharp and clean and dangerous.
Something that is undeniably—
“Patrick North,” he says. “I didn’t lie about that. So I’m not a cop. Honestly, considering you don’t trust the pigs, I would’ve thought you’d be relieved that I’m not.”
I look pointedly at his dragonfly tattoo. “Is that any better?”
He shrugs. “Depends on your perspective, sweetheart. I’d rather a loyal soldier like me to watch over you than a cop whose badge and gun is sold to the highest bidder.”
I don’t want him to watch over me. I didn’t want a guest at all, and now that I know he’s a fucking liar…
I swallow hard, forcing my voice to go steady. “Get out.”
Patrick’s eyes flick over my face with clinical focus. The earlier affability is gone. In its place, a man who is practiced at reading one’s expression and taking their measure. He’s gauging how much I mean it, and I guess I fail because all he says is one word.
“No.”
My pulse spikes. “You can’t just—”
“I can,” he interrupts, still so damn calm. “The snow’s on my side, Starling, and so is the solitude of our chalet. But, please… understand this: I’m not here to frighten you.”
I let out a high-pitched laugh that doesn’t sound like me at all. “That’s funny because I’m pretty much terrified.”
Like before, my confession comes out on its own. I didn’t mean to tell him that, though it’s true, and maybe it’s good that Patrick knows I’m seconds away from losing my shit.
He studies me for a further moment, then starts to reach for the waist of the towel with his other hand. My whole body locks, totally freezing instead of fleeing like I should probably be doing, as Patrick starts to open it.
I jerk back instinctively. “Don’t.”
He pauses, cocking an eyebrow at me. For the first time, there’s something like… restraint in his expression. Something deliberate.
“I’m not going to touch you without permission,” he says quietly. “Not tonight.”
Not tonight…
Oh, Lord. The way he says that, as though him touching me is inevitable… I don’t know whether that’s for my comfort or simply another kind of control that he wants me to understand he suddenly has over me.
“I just wanted to show you something.”
This time, when I laugh, it’s more hollow than anything. “No, thanks. I’m sure I’ve seen what you’ve got under your towel before. I’m good.”
There’s that amused expression again. He huffs out his own laugh, then trails his right hand over the bulge behind the towel that I can’t pretend isn’t there.
“Not quite what I meant, Starling, but I’m sure my pretty songbird will be changing her tune soon enough.
Especially when she sees what I have on my back. ”
Back? I can handle back. At least, I think I can—especially when all I’m thinking is that, the second he turns his back on me, I’m gonna get the nerve to bolt—but that’s before Patrick does just that.
He turns on his heel, presenting me with his muscled backside, and I’m back to being a Noelle statue.
I’m frozen, stunned, staring. Not only is his back a thing of beauty in and of itself, but he has another tattoo taking up most of his left shoulder.
It’s a poinsettia.
Five blood-red leaves spread wide, vivid even against his damp skin. Each one is a slightly different shade, as though the whole piece was done at different times, including one that seems too fresh to be real.
Oh, no…
I’d heard that Dragonfly killers—their enforcers—tattoo themselves with green leaves to memorialize special kills. And here I’m looking at a stranger who is wearing five red leaves on his back.
The same man who seems to think that they should mean something to me.
They don’t. They can’t. And yet… that doesn’t stop me from asking, “What is that?”
“A record,” Patrick says before turning his head just enough that he can watch me over his shoulder. “And a gift.”
My stomach goes tight. “A gift for who?”
“For you,” he replies.
I was afraid of that. “But I… I don’t know you.”
His expression shadows, going dark, like I’ve said something silly and na?ve.
“Yes,” he argues. “You do.”
I press my palm to my sternum like I can hold my pounding heart in place. “Why would you… I mean, it’s a poinsettia—”
Another quirk of his lips, a hint of pleasure returning now that I recognized his ink.
“Why, Noelle? Because you made a Christmas wish list last year,” he says, and his voice is almost gentle. “And you marked it with a poinsettia. A hint of beauty added to a list that covered up so much ugliness… I want to give you that beauty back, Starling. I want to give you everything.”
My stomach twists. For a million different reasons, I feel like I’m going to hurl on the floor without any cranberry to trigger me.
Five minutes ago, Patrick North was a handsome cop I was getting to know over champagne.
Now I’m supposed to believe that he’s still Patrick North, but he’s not a cop.
He’s a… a Dragonfly, and he thinks he knows me, and, shit, he knows about my list.
No one knew about my list. I made sure of it.
It was a release I needed, and a plea to any higher power who would listen because, up until last year, no one ever did.
But then, one by one, the men who hurt me started to fall—and I think I’m supposed to believe that this man standing in a towel in front of me is the reason they did.
I can’t. I just can’t.
And that’s when I whisper, “This is insane.”
Patrick turns fully again, towel still secure, shoulders squared. He looks like a man built for absolute certainty. I might not believe it, but confronted with that expression on his face and the reminder of the poinsettia on his back, I think he’s going to make me.
“Not insane,” he corrects. “Precise.”
I don’t know if I feel flattered or revolted.
Then again, maybe I’m thinking too highly of myself. The world sure as fuck doesn’t revolve around Noelle Halliday, and I must be jumping to conclusions. To think that a man I never met—gangster with a gun or not—would go out of his way to avenge me… this might be nuts, but so am I.
Still, I have to ask. Just like when it came to my own words being repeated back to me, I have to know.
“Why does the poinsettia only have five leaves?”
His eyes hold mine, a small, encouraging smile tugging on his lips.
“Think, Noelle. Trust me. You’re a smart girl.
I know you are. And you… you already know the answer to that.
I told you. No more pretending. And the sooner you understand the lengths I’ve gone for you already, the sooner you’ll understand that this… this is just the beginning.”
It sounds like a promise, though my frantic brain only interprets it as a threat. At the same time, my mind flashes back to my phone screen yesterday morning. To the news article I couldn’t focus on. To the word accidental and the way it just didn’t fit.
Five names on my list.
Five men who hurt me.
Five deaths to avenge me.
Five red leaves on a mafia man’s back.
My breath catches. I swallow, trying again, and my voice is barely audible as I gasp out, “No.”
“Oh, Starling,” he murmurs, like he’s almost fond of my denial. “Yes.”
My knees feel unsteady. I almost want to drop, but I’m stronger than that. I’ve worked so goddamn hard to be stronger than that. And that’s why, as Patrick waits for me to tell him what I already figured out, I finally find it in me to straighten up and dash out the bathroom door.
I don’t think. With a half-naked Dragonfly telling me, without saying so, that he’s the reason the five men who hurt me are dead, my brain goes offline.
What makes it worse is that I’m not sure what affects me more: his aforementioned half-naked state, the fact that some stranger I never met killed for me and marked the occasion in ink on his back, or that he somehow found his way to the same chalet as me so that he could let me know.
It’s all of it, plus that knowing smirk that tells me that Patrick—and I’ll call him Patrick until I can prove that’s another lie—expects me to be pleased that he murdered for me.
Maybe if I was part of his mafia instead of a chick with a communications degree and a trauma-filled backstory, I’d be like, gee, thanks.
It’s bad enough that my trauma has me kind of wanting to do that, but the way he was looking at me now…
the way it seemed like he expects something from me now… yeah. I don’t think, but I do run.
The bathroom is two doors down from my borrowed bedroom.
I fly past the one I stupidly gave to Patrick before throwing myself into mine.
I slam the door, locking it before I can even check to see if he came after me.
I’d like to think he wouldn’t. I want to think that this is, like I’ve thought all along, one big, fucking coincidence.
But, nope. As panic gives way to determination, all I’m thinking about now is getting the hell out of here.
Keys. I need my keys.
Fuck snow chains on my tires. Screw the fact that he parked behind me.
I’ll slam into his car until I can get my ride on the path winding down the mountain.
I don’t know if the accumulation has frozen or if I can plow my way through the powder, but when the alternative is staying in this chalet with a killer… with a liar… I’ll do what I have to.
Only one problem. I tear through my room, searching for my purse.
At first, I thought I missed it because I was too spooked to focus.
Uh-uh. I left my bag on top of the dresser.
My wallet was in there, so was my chapstick…
and my keys. It’s gone, though. All of it.
I don’t have any money. No cash. No credit cards.
My keys are missing, and I don’t understand it.
It should all be right here—only it isn’t.
I suck in a breath that makes my lungs ache. Fine. Okay. I still have my phone. I left it downstairs. So maybe there’s no service in the chalet. At this point, I’m ready to grab it, bolt out into the night, and keep going until I get a signal so I can call for help.
Not the cops. Patrick wasn’t wrong when he said that I don’t know how much of the SPD is bought by the local crime syndicates.
Assuming this town is the same, I don’t want them to be involved.
I just want to be safe, and something tells me that handing a Dragonfly over to law enforcement would be a huuuuge mistake.
Besides, as terrified as I am, if Patrick really did take out those guys one by one… well, I do owe him, don’t I? I won’t snitch, but that doesn’t mean I’m sticking around.
With my heart in my throat, I unlock the bedroom door.
I’m prepared to slam it shut and throw my weight against it if Patrick is waiting out in the hall.
It takes me a second to recognize that it’s empty, and that means the coast is clear.
As soon as it does, I yip under my breath, and scurry for the stairs.
I know I left my phone on the four-seater table in the kitchen. After I turned off the fireplace, I placed it down so I could take the last swig from my champagne glass for liquid courage. I never picked it up again, but as I dash into the kitchen, all I see are two glasses: one empty, one full.
No phone.
What the…
My stomach drops as I take a few steps toward the front room where the Christmas tree and the dark fireplace are. Only the fireplace isn’t dark anymore, and while I didn’t absent-mindedly drop my phone on the couch instead of the table, that doesn’t mean the couch is empty.
It isn’t.
Because there he is. Patrick North is sitting on the couch, fully dressed in the same sweater and jeans he’d been wearing before he went into the shower. He has an ankle propped on his thigh, leaning back into the furniture, watching me with the sort of smile a cat wears after it spies a mouse.
Me. I’m the fucking mouse.