29. Anastasia #3
“No harm, no foul,” Jacob says, releasing me. “I’m sure I’ll be seeing you soon, Anastasia.”
Rhett’s fingers flex on me at that. I can’t even smile. My feet press forward by Rhett’s gentle coaxing, and I’ve never wanted to be so far from a venue so fast.
Outside, the valet is just bringing our car around when Rhett spins me suddenly into him. His hand slips over my jaw as he leans in close.
“I asked you to wait for me,” he growls. Then he kisses me hard. Possessive. Crushing my body to his as if Jacob could grab me again at any moment.
“I gave the woman with the emerald earrings, Dalia, my phone in the restroom. Can we track it? Maybe find the others with her?”
Rhett’s eyes search me, blazing with something I can’t decipher. Until his lips crash to mine again and passion consumes us both until we’re breathless.
His forehead is on mine as he says, “You’re brilliant. I hope you know it’s because of you we’ll find them easily tonight.”
Relief bursts in me. An ache like nothing I’ve felt before escapes in euphoric laughter from my lips.
Fuck you, Jacob. I win.
Those women will be saved by Xoid, and I’m so damn proud to be a small part of it.
“We should go. Track it now.”
“Rix will track it. My team will intercept the transport of the women tonight.” He kisses me again and I moan in the back of my throat. “You and I are getting the fuck out of here.”
Rhett is about to open the car door for me when something catches his attention over my head. I’ve never seen such a look widen his eyes—like he’s seen a ghost, but it quickly falls to something so glacial and murderous that I shiver as I turn my head.
A man is taking off his mask as he chats to a friend. He’s in his late thirties with several scars over his face.
“Get in the car,” Rhett says with a distant but firm command.
“Who is that?”
“Get in the damn car, Ana.”
That makes my head snap around. Rhett tears his gaze from the man only for a second, and I don’t recognize him behind those familiar blue eyes right now. I do as he says, and Rhett leans into my side for a brief moment.
“Don’t leave until I come back,” he says, and then he slams the door shut.
My heart races from the echoes of his rage. I watch as the man leaves his friend and starts heading down the street. Rhett follows him.
I should not get out of the car.
I promised I’d do as he said.
But this is different. Whatever’s sparked Rhett’s rage right now isn’t to do with the gala. I can’t place it.
Shit.
I chastise myself as I get out the car and follow him. Rhett will be pissed I’ve defied him, but I can’t explain the need to see what’s wrong.
Around the next corner I don’t see either of them. I keep walking until some commotion down the next alleyway makes me stumble to a stop.
They’re only dark silhouettes, but I’d never mistake Rhett’s towering form. What chills my blood is the vicious attack he inflicts upon this man. Rhett punches him again and again, and there’s no way he stands a chance at fighting back against him.
I knew this side of Rhett existed, but it’s a whole new heart-stopping awakening to see it. It’s terrifying. Yet my steps don’t stop advancing.
“Rhett,” I say. It’s barely audible, but somehow he hears me.
Landing one last punch, the sickening crack before his body slumps turns my stomach, and Rhett heaves his breaths.
“I told you to stay in the fucking car,” he snaps, so angry and sharp it pinches my chest.
“Who is he?” I ask.
Rhett’s expression twitches as if he’s acknowledging the man all over again with new wrath. Faster than I can blink, Rhett pulls a gun I didn’t know he was carrying from inside his tux jacket.
“He’s the man who killed Sarah.”
Then it all makes sense. I don’t know what it makes me to look at the man on the ground who was brutally beaten and feel nothing at all.
Rhett crouches suddenly, grabbing the man by his jacket and shoving him against the wall, bearing his full weight against it since the man can’t stand. My mouth dries out at the bloodied mess of his face. I understand Rhett’s violence, but it’s still difficult to witness.
“Where is Alistair Lanshall?” Rhett asks with a chillingly deceptive calm.
“I-I don’t w-work for him any-anymore.”
“Bullshit. Once you sign your soul to Lanshall you’re his for life or dead.” One of Rhett’s hands holds the man up by his throat. He chokes, clawing at his fingers weakly. “You have five seconds or you’re no use to me.”
“P-please.”
Rhett ignores him.
“Four.”
“Are you sure you want to do this?” I whisper, scared to intervene, and it seems ludicrous to ask him that. But I don’t know what else to do.
“Go away, Ana.”
I know he doesn’t want me to see this side of him, but I can’t leave.
His jaw shifts with impatience at my silence, but he doesn’t take his eyes off his target. “Leave!” he shouts, finally shifting those blazing eyes at me, and I wince then.
He’s just hurting. Being confronted with the man who killed his fiancée ... I can weather his pain.
“No.”
His eyes flex at my defiance. This is Rhett Kaiser, the notorious leader of Xoid. This is where our worlds split clear and far.
One from the underworld, and one from the shiny and oblivious topside.
One exposed to every wicked truth of the world, and one who remains ignorant to it.
Rhett lets go of the man’s throat, but the point of his gun follows him to the ground.
I’m trembling from the cold, from fear. Though not fear of him as I gravitate closer. Rhett’s breathing is hard and calculated, like he wants to tell me to stop, but he doesn’t.
When I’m close enough my arms slip around him. He doesn’t break eye contact with me. Those blue eyes are so torn, as though he wants to reel himself back in, to walk away from killing this man, but he can’t.
And I don’t want him to.
“I don’t want you to see this,” he says—a quiet plea as if I’ll run.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I say, resting my cheek to his chest, staring away from the man who’s trying to peel himself off the ground. “He doesn’t get to take someone else from you. I’m staying.”
Rhett’s hand smoothes over my hair before cupping my face over my ear. I tense though I know what’s coming. I don’t close my eyes from staring at the dark brick wall.
Then the gunshot rings out. I hug him tighter with the sound that pierces through me despite my ears being covered by his chest and his hand.
I’ve watched plenty of movies with that sound, but there is something condemning, like a fraction of lost innocence, in hearing it for real knowing the bullet took a life.
An evil, lawless life, but still a final breath all the same.
Rhett peels me from him and scans every inch of my face. I can’t decipher his as it’s still so firm and calculating.
“Don’t look,” he says, then he takes my hand after fitting his gun back in his holster.
I have no desire to look at death, so I let Rhett lead me back to the car. I don’t know how to feel. I look back to the hotel, which is a mistake when I find Jacob Forthson in the window. Staring right at me with a whiskey glass in hand.
Rhett speeds off seconds later and I try to arrange my thoughts from tonight’s events. He doesn’t speak. I wish he would, but what is there to say? His grip is tight on the wheel and I notice his split knuckles.
After a few minutes I spy a gas station.
“Pull over,” I say.
“We’re almost back?—”
“Pull the fuck over, Rhett.”
His eyes slide to mine at the demand, and for a few seconds we’re at war with our stares. Until he concedes and we pull into the empty gas station.
I get out the moment he stops, and of course he’s out a beat later, but I don’t head inside. Instead I cross the street to the small liquor store first. Ignoring his silent, looming presence, I grab a bottle of vodka and head to the counter. I go into the gas station next for one more item.
Back at the car, I open the driver’s side door and Rhett simply watches me.
“Sit,” I order him.
“We should go to?—”
“Do you ever do as you’re told?”
“Not any more than you do.”
That’s a fair point.
“Will you please sit in the car?” I try soft pleading instead. It works. Though not without an eye roll and a grumble of reluctance.
Rhett sits sideways in the car and I kneel, uncaring of the dress I’m ruining against the asphalt. I take out the vodka.
“You don’t have to do this,” he sighs.
“Just let me,” I say.
He gives me his hand and I pour the alcohol over his wounds. Rhett doesn’t utter a sound, but his fingers flex around mine with the sting.
“How did he get away ... the last time?” I can’t help my need to understand what happened that night as if it will bring me closer to Rhett.
He doesn’t answer while I tend to his other hand.
“You don’t have to tell me,” I say. “I’m just trying to figure you out.”
“I didn’t want you to see that. What I’m capable of. And that’s not even close to the worst of what I’ve done in my past.”
“I wanted to be with you. I want to see all of you, Rhett Kaiser.”
He doesn’t look up from watching me tend to his hands by wrapping bandages around them now.
“I killed a man tonight, Ana. After beating the bloody shit of him. You should never have to be comfortable with that—witnessing it or defending it. I let him go three years ago to tell my uncle I was coming for him. Seems fucking pointless now. I should have killed him all that time ago. Who knows what corruption he spread all these years? In my rage and delusion I thought I would have found and killed my uncle long before now and collapsed his precious, twisted empire. I feel nothing for it. I didn’t expect to after all this time, but I knew when I saw him again I’d kill him.
Honestly, if you weren’t there, I can’t say I would have done it so fast. I might have taken him somewhere and strung it out for days, weeks, put him through unimaginable torture.
Had you not been there—” He looks up as if he expects me to be staring at a monster with his confession.
Rhett shakes his head and I don’t know what it means.
“You wouldn’t be so forgiving of me as you are now.
I don’t think you’d even be able to look at me the same again. ”
I finish tying one hand. “I’m not afraid of you,” I say, pouring alcohol on his other hand. “I’m not comfortable, Rhett. Neither are you. None of this is fucking comfortable. That’s what keeps us human. Next time, don’t let it end so quickly on my count.”
“Ana.” He says my name in disbelief. “There will not be a next time.”
“You’re done eradicating bad guys?”
His jaw shifts and his eyes fill with warning. “Around you, yes.”
“You’re always around me. Monsters are always around us. Seems inevitable, Agent.”
“Stop,” he says sharply.
I finish tying his second bandage. “We’re going to find your uncle,” I say fiercely. “Unless you hide from me, I’m not going anywhere.”
“You don’t belong in my world, little bird.”
“I belong with you.”
It slips out of me before I can think about those words. They’re terrifying as I kneel here in the vulnerability of them, waiting for him to reject me.
“You shouldn’t be kneeling in some rundown gas station car park for me. Fuck .” Rhett pinches the bridge of his nose as if he can hardly stand to look at me.
“I’m not some precious princess, Rhett,” I snap. I’m actually insulted. “I can handle it. I can handle you. ”
He drops his hand, taking mine on his lap.
“You shouldn’t have to.”
I stand, boldly slipping into the car onto his lap.
“I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you tonight, but I think sometimes your instructions are bullshit. Say we’re in this together.”
When he shakes his head I grip his chin. It flares a spark in his eyes that I almost smile at.
“You’re something else, Miss Kinsley,” he says as his fingers trace up my bare thigh, exposed with the cut of my gown.
“Shut up and kiss me.”
He doesn’t miss a beat. There’s something loose and unhinged about this kiss. Rhett grips my bare ass unashamedly and groans into my mouth like he’s finally starting to see I’m not breakable—at least I can’t be broken by anything I see or learn about him.
When we part I brush a soft lock of fallen hair over his forehead.
“There would have been a first aid kit at the hotel,” he says.
“If you’re going to participate in street fights, I’m going to patch you up like it.”
He chuckles softly, absentmindedly running his fingers along my thigh. Neither of us is in a hurry to move. “That’s fair.”
“Did you find out any more about Jacob?” I dare to ask. It breaks our small moment of peace, but I can’t stop thinking about it. “Is he the leader of this?”
“He’s not a man you should have ever been in the sights of,” Rhett says.
“Me? What do I have to do with it?”
Rhett sighs, tipping his head back. “I don’t have proof or any leads yet, but just from his interest in you, I have a bad fucking feeling, and it’s taking everything in me right now not to turn around and do something very stupid and reckless.”
“He’s just another arrogant, too-rich asshole.”
“No. He wants you. And someone like Forthson has never not gotten what he wants, and that makes him a threat.”
“He can have any woman he wants. I’m not worth his efforts.”
Rhett cups my cheek, brushing his thumb across my skin so tenderly.
“You are worth war, little bird.”