Chapter 5 A Sin-Blackened Soul #2
But this version of her? Jeans that hug her generous hips and ass, a simple tee, sturdy boots, a biker jacket, no makeup, hair braided?
She's real. Still elegant and breathtaking, but…
I don't know. The polish and hauteur of a wealthy white-collar executive are gone.
In her place? A woman who, despite the unexpectedness and terror of the whole situation, kept her head and stayed calm.
This is a woman who doesn't panic when shit hits the fan.
My mind wanders as I drive steadily north and west.
She wanted to hold my hand.
I'm still not sure what to do with that, how to feel about it. It was strange, at first, holding her hand. I wasn't lying or making things up when I told her I’d never held a woman’s hand in that fashion before.
I never had a childhood girlfriend. I was educated at home by a dour, hard-faced, unforgiving, cold-hearted tutor.
I had no friends—my social circle consisted of my mother, father, nanny, and my tutor.
I was, in a very real sense, isolated from the world.
Looking back, I've often wondered why—what were my parents hiding me from? I’ll never get an answer, I know. Doesn't stop me from wondering.
And then my mother died. My father killed himself.
And I was sent here, to America, to NYC.
When you're a sheltered rich kid from Prague, to call America the New World doesn't feel all that archaic or anachronistic. It feels accurate. It is a whole new world. A strange and scary one. And I was here for about five minutes before I was thrown to the wolves by my father’s cousin.
God, why am I maundering through all that old, awful mess?
Because Brys wanted to hold my hand.
Why?
Comfort? I'm the reason she's in this situation, so why would she expect me to comfort her?
Why would holding my hand be that comfort?
Yet, despite the questions ricocheting around my brainpan, I can't help but acknowledge that holding her hand was…
pleasant—more than pleasant. Simply holding her hand made me feel grounded.
Connected, somehow. To her, to something indefinable.
I'm overthinking the whole thing, probably. She was scared and reached for the only source of comfort available—me.
But that doesn't explain the kiss. The tension—sexual, emotional, psychological. It doesn’t explain the way she looks at me sometimes—with heat, with interest, with…
I'm not sure. She's got a hell of a poker face, for the most part, and it's not always easy to read what she's thinking or feeling from her facial expressions.
Passing through a midsize town—the kind of place that's almost indistinguishable from pretty much any other midsize town anywhere in the US, with identical strip malls and department stores and fast food restaurants and gas stations—I spot a Kohl’s set back from the highway that runs through the town, the out-lots packed with the usual suspects.
When I pull into the yawning lot and park near the back, Brys stirs. "Mmm?"
Watching her stretch and yawn is distracting—but then, everything about the woman is. "Where are we?"
I shrug, shutting off the motor. "Not sure exactly. Upstate New York somewhere."
Brys scrubs her face with both hands. "Kohl’s?”
I tap the front of my shirt, and my fingernail clicks audibly against the dried blood. "Need some new clothes."
She makes a disgusted face. "Ew." Then a concerned face. "I just realized I assumed none of it was yours."
I snort. "It's not. But I appreciate your concern."
She gives me a sheepish look. "Sorry, my first time running for my life."
I wave her off. "Forget it. What you can do is take that cash I gave you and go buy me some clothes. Jeans, tee, maybe a hoodie, and some sneakers. Cross trainers, running shoes, I don't care."
"A hundred and sixty bucks isn't gonna go all that far, Jakob."
I shrug. "Then scour the sales racks. Do the best you can."
She pauses with her hand on the door handle and looks at me with fear written on her features. "What if they find me while I'm in there by myself?"
"I can see the door from here," I tell her. “I’ll be watching. And you keep your head on a swivel. Watch for lone adult males."
She snorts. "I'm a single woman who lives in Manhattan. I'm always watching out for lone adult males. There's no creature on this earth as dangerous as a lonely adult male."
"Lone and lonely are slightly different," I say, "But point taken. Just keep your eyes open, and if you feel like your gut is telling you to run, you listen."
She grins at this. "Oh, I know. I've made a career out of listening to my gut."
"Sounds like the start to an interesting conversation,” I say, “considering what I know about your father."
She frowns. "Not sure what you mean by that."
I wave her off. "Forget it for now. I haven't seen any signs of our pursuers, so I think we're good, but I want to keep putting miles between them and us.”
She exits the car and heads into Kohl’s. To my shock, she emerges barely twenty minutes later with a big plastic bag in one hand. Yet, instead of returning to me, she heads toward Target next door.
"Really?" I say out loud.
I'm less annoyed, however, when she comes back to the car with her purchases, pushing a red Target shopping cart—jeans, socks, underwear, a 3pack of T-shirts in black, white, and gray, a black hoodie, a ballcap with the Yankees logo, and a pair of sneakers all from Kohls; From target she got snacks, an emergency medical kit, a case of water bottles, and a case of Diet Coke.
I watch her toss the items into the back seat, return the cart to a corral, and buckle back in beside me. "Not gonna go that far, huh?"
"There was a sale, so the clothes were all like fifty percent off, and the last time I wore these jeans, I apparently left cash in my back pocket." She shrugs. "That was actually kind of fun."
I look at her, bemused. "What was?"
She gestures vaguely at the stores. "That. Shopping like that."
"Not following."
A sigh. "I'm embarrassed to explain."
I snort. "Brys, I think of all the people in the world, I'm best positioned to understand what you might mean. I once bought an entire company just so I could fire one person.”
She laughs. "You did not."
"I did. I went into a store in Dumbo, and one of the employees was incredibly rude. Even for New York."
"That's really saying something," she mutters."
"Exactly. Instead of complaining to the management, I bought the company with a single phone call while standing in front of the woman who insulted me. Signed a few documents via email, and fired her on the spot. And then got her blacklisted from everywhere I knew in all of New York."
"Damn. She must have really pissed you off. That's some next-level vindictiveness."
"I've never been of the mind that the customer is always right," I say.
"It's a toxic mindset. I do believe the customer should be treated with respect; however, this woman was snarky, sarcastic, and rude.
When I called her on it, she got in my face, called me names, and was generally just a massive bitch. So yes, I taught her a lesson."
"Sounds valid to me." Brys reaches back, twisting in her seat, opens the case of soda, and snags one, opening it with a crack-hiss. "I don't shop like that," she says after taking a sip. "Just…go into stores like that."
I cover my amused smirk with a hand. "So then how do you shop?"
"Personal shopper. Private offerings from my favorite designers brought to my home or office.”
"And for plebeian things like food and non-clothing essentials?"
"Delivery service. I send them a list of what I need, and someone gets it, brings it to my place, and puts it away while I'm at work."
I shake my head. "I see."
She eyes me. "You were a billionaire, as you like to point out. You're telling me you just went into a department store and bought your suits off the rack at Macy's?"
"God, no. My tailor came to me. But I do enjoy spending money, and I'm quite good at it. So I do, in fact, go shopping. I like twenty-four-hour supermarkets. I do my best shopping at three in the morning when I've got the place to myself."
She frowns at me. "Sorry, I just have a hard time picturing you pushing a cart through the aisles of a supermarket."
What I'm not saying is that since I'm technically dead—Caleb Indigo is dead, and Jakob Kasparek legally vanished long, long ago—I have to be extraordinarily careful about appearing in public.
Caleb Indigo was a public persona. My face is out there—Jakob was less public, being who and what I was.
During the years I was building Club Sin and recruiting my Arrows, Inez handled almost everything I needed from out in the world, allowing me to stay hidden in my penthouse above the club.
But then things got spicy, Pugli and that fucking bloodthirsty monster Mercado sent men to assault my home, and I had to go on the run.
And then it was just Thomas and me. I couldn't have him do everything. I had to learn how to disguise myself without looking like I'm wearing one, how to avoid showing my face to cameras, and how to shop like a normal person while staying incognito.
"I feel like that silence said a lot," Brys says.
"I'm not judging, I promise,” I tell her. "I get it, believe me."
We leave the nameless town behind, and Brys alternates between staring out her window and giving me curious looks.
"It's tempting to think this is just a road trip," Brys says, eventually.
"It is," I agree. "Until we stop paying attention and wake up with guns in our faces."
"Assuming we wake up at all."
"Exactly." I reach over and pat her thigh. "That's not going to happen."
"You can't promise that," she says.
"No, I can't. All I can promise is that I'll do anything and everything in my power to keep you safe and return you to your life as soon as possible. And I really am sorry I got you involved in this."