Chapter 16 #3
Phoenix steps forward, all of his movements are calm and controlled.
“Bella, you don’t know these people. They’ve been trying to interfere with everything we do at the clinic.
” He’s only three steps away from Bella.
Fuck, I feel like I’m waiting for a cobra to strike at a baby fawn with a broken leg.
“Willow, whoever the hell you are,” his eyes lock on mine, “I have to ask you to leave. You’re good at being dramatic, but not at healing. ”
Willow’s voice is cold as ice. “You don’t heal, Phoenix. You take.”
He laughs, a sound like shards. “How poetic. Someone playing judge on my doorstep.” He steps closer to Bella, fingers brushing hers like a priest leaning in to bless. “Go sit in the room. Close the door. I’ll be right with you.”
She’s on the edge. Right now, she doesn’t know who to believe.
But then Phoenix makes a move that makes all hell break loose.
He places a hand on Bella’s back, high, almost at her neck. I see it, and Willow is even closer, so of course she sees it when Phoenix’s grip is directive. Too firm. Too deliberate.
I get one glance at Willow before it all goes south. Her eyes narrow on the hand placement. Her jaw tightens. I see her gaze sweep the space for just a moment.
She settles on a book. A big fat one with Phoenix’s smiling face on it.
She grabs it, and she swings for the back of Phoenix’s head.
“Don’t fucking touch her,” Willow snarls, even as the book clocks Phoenix, hard.
It all happens in an instant. Phoenix’s startled, pained cry. Bella’s scream as she darts out of both their grasps. And Phoenix whips around to face Willow.
His face changes like a switch flipped. The showman is gone; the man beneath is cold as steel and primed for violence. I know what’s going to happen, but I’m too far across the space to stop it. My feet are moving, but I watch it happen.
Phoenix grips Willow by the front of her shirt and slams her back against the wall. The sound of flesh and skull breaking the drywall is a sharp, sick crack in the quiet room.
The world stops.
Then everything in me detonates.
I don’t remember crossing the room. One heartbeat, she’s pinned, the next, I’m on him. My shoulder drives into his ribs and sends him crashing backward into a cabinet. Glass shatters. Bottles of supplements explode everywhere.
Bella bolts, her eyes finally opened to the danger surrounding her. She turns and runs straight out the doors she naively walked through.
Phoenix staggers, wide-eyed, but he raises his fists like he stands a chance. I’m taller, heavier, and furious enough to feel fucking bulletproof. I hit him first—a clean cross to the jaw that snaps his head sideways and sprays blood across the polished floor.
“I will end you for touching her,” I snarl as I step forward again.
He lunges away, a sloppy brawler’s move. I block, twist, drive my elbow into his gut. He folds with a grunt but tries to hook my leg. I kick him off, and he slams into the wall, cracking the drywall.
Years of restraint burn away in seconds. Ten years of pretending to be normal, pretending to be civilized—gone. And it feels fucking great to let the beast out once again.
My old man’s voice echoes in my brain: if you can’t scare a man into submission, break him.
So, I do.
He rushes me again, faster this time. I let him get close, then pivot and grab him by the back of the neck, slamming him face-first into the counter. He makes a strangled sound, hands flailing for balance.
Somewhere behind me, I hear Willow’s voice, but I can’t stop. My blood is boiling, vision tunneling red as I remember him slamming her against the wall.
Phoenix swings backward with an elbow but only clips my cheek. I barely feel it. I grab him by the front of his shirt, lift, and drive him to the floor.
His head bounces off the tile.
Good.
“Lucky!” I hear Willow call, but my ears can’t communicate with my brain with this much adrenaline burning through me.
“This is what you do to women, right?” My voice is a deadly whisper. My fingers circle Phoenix’s throat. His hands claw at me. “You take the air out of them. You make them small.”
He wheezes. My pulse is pounding so hard, it shakes my vision. I lean in closer, increasing the pressure on his throat, my face inches from his own. “How does it feel when someone stronger decides you’re done?”
But the world is not a vacuum.
Blue and red explode against the clinic windows, and just two seconds later, the sound of footsteps strides into the lobby.
Oh shit.
Oh, shit.
I look back down at Phoenix, my brain tripping out. I’m going to kill this man. Well, I really, really want to kill this man. But the fucking cops are here.
I freeze. Phoenix freezes. And all three of us watch two cops stride in, each of their hands held in place, hovering over their guns.
“Identify yourselves,” the taller cop barks, his brows furrowed as he glares the law at us like a gun pressed to my forehead.
I’m poised over Phoenix, my knee dug into his chest. Phoenix’s hands are fisted into my shirt. Willow stands just off to the side with the same curtain ties I’d picked as a potential strangulation tool in her hands. There’s glass and blood all over the place.
We all look as guilty as we possibly could.
“I’m Phoenix Marrow,” the man says. And I let him up as he scrambles to his feet. It’s no different than me pulling on my Saint Shade mask. That’s how easily Phoenix turns it off and on. He takes a step toward the cop, extending a hand. “This is my clinic.”
“I recognize you,” the other officer says, and I hate that there’s a little admiration that leaks into his tone. “You’re the one I see online all the time.”
Phoenix flashes a criminally bright smile and shakes hands. “That’s me. How can I help you tonight?”
The taller of the two doesn’t look so instantly enamored. “Your security system was tripped. When they got no response, we were dispatched. Looks like there’s a problem here.”
Eyes flash back to me and Willow, where we’re both still standing here like we weren’t about to end this motherfucker’s life.
“No,” Phoenix says. “No problem. Just a misunderstanding. My niece and her boyfriend were just about to leave.”
“Would you like us to see them out, Mr. Marrow?” The shorter pushover asks.
“Please,” Phoenix says with a hint of a satisfied smile. “I need to close everything up. It’s been an unexpected night.”
In-fucking-deed it has.
“Take it easy, Mr. Marrow,” the cop says, waving me and Willow to them.
And my heart is racing about a thousand miles per minute as I take Willow’s hand in mine and step forward.
I was literally thirty seconds from breaking Phoenix’s neck. My rap sheet before I turned eighteen is two full pages long. And Willow. Willow is a full-fledged serial killer responsible for I don’t even know how many deaths.
And we’re walking through these doors with a couple of police officers.
I get one backward glance before we’re escorted outside. Phoenix watches us leave with a look that isn’t smug—smug would be too small a word. It’s a sort of cold, patient promise. Like a man who’s watched a chessboard and knows that losing a pawn will only set up a later checkmate.
We step out into the night, into the blinding light of their lights flashing blue and red. Bella is long gone. Good. She might have been ignorant, but she didn’t deserve to get caught up in the law.
“You two should probably get out of here before Mr. Marrow changes his mind and says there’s a problem here,” the taller officer says.
He’s staring us down like he just knows we were having more than a misunderstanding.
He’s looking like he’d really like to put us both in handcuffs and haul us down to the station.
Must be a slow night.
“Yes, sir,” I say, not pushing it, not tempting fate. My grip on Willow’s hand tightens slightly as we turn and head down the road to where I parked. Willow breathes so hard I can hear it. My hands are shaking.
We haven’t even reached the car when the flashing lights cease, and we hear the cruiser pull out, driving in the opposite direction.
Silently, we climb into the car, and the engine catches like a heartbeat.
“Holy shit,” I breathe out. My whole body is vibrating right now as I’m wrecked by conflicting chemicals raging through my system. Adrenaline. Relief. Rage. Fear for Willow. It all hits me like a fucking freight train.
“How the hell does he keep slipping through my fingers?” Willow snarls. I look over at her, and she’s the picture of cool, collected, deadly rage. “Every time. Every damn time.”
“Are you okay?” I finally get some words out. Instinctively, I reach out, brushing her cheekbone, my fingers reaching to the back of her skull.
“I’m fine,” she says, her words angry. “You?”
“I’m fine,” I echo.
A tiny hint of a smile twitches in one corner of her mouth. “You’re kind of sexy when you’re feral.”
A laugh rips from my chest, I’m so taken off guard. “You’re fucking unhinged, you know that, Dagger Kitten? I just about killed a man back there. We absolutely should have been arrested. And you’re turned on?”
She just gives another of those little smiles, and shrugs.
I curse as I laugh, shaking my head. “Fucking lunatic,” I say as I pull her in and kiss her like it’s the last thing I’ll do.
Finally, I lick her taste from my lips and check the sideview mirror before I put the car into drive.
My hand stays fixed firmly with Willow’s in mine.
Willow rambles as I drive, plotting how she’s next going to get to Phoenix, how she’s going to savor it as she suffocates him.
But my mind is frozen in place, remembering the sound Willow’s head made as it came into contact with the wall.
The look in Phoenix’s eyes as he attacked her.
The destructive fury that burned through me in a single instant.
Phoenix’s days are numbered. And now I’m not sure I’ll have the patience to let Willow be the one to kill Phoenix.
After seeing him touch Willow, I’d really like to do it myself.
I’ve hurt people in the past. I’ve done what my family told me to do. I’ve stolen, broken in, planted evidence, and watched a mob boss’s back. But I’ve never killed anyone before.
But tonight, I would have done it, and I would have slept like a baby after.
When we finally step into the penthouse, it should feel like a relief. Like a reprieve. We’re safe. We’re home. But adrenaline is still burning my blood.
Willow crosses the space to the kitchen, heading for the fridge like it’s just another Monday night. She pulls her phone from her pocket and holds the button to power it back on.
She’s just slid it back into her back pocket when it begins a firestorm of dings, pings, and vibrations—like a slot machine caught in a hurricane.
“What the hell?” She breathes as she pulls it back out and looks down at the screen. By the second, it’s dinging and vibrating.
She clicks on something. I hear music, some sound that’s been trending for the last week or so.
But it’s Willow’s face going sheet white that freezes me in place.
“Uh, Lucky?” she says, her voice haunted and horrified at the same time.
I’m across the space in one point two seconds. I look down at her phone over her shoulder, and it feels like the world drops out beneath my feet.
It’s us.
Outside the theater. Her arms around my neck, my head bent toward her.
The kiss that grounded me, that made the whole damn world make sense, frozen and captured by a stranger’s camera lens.
My mask is off. My hair gleams like a damn halo.
Thank fuck my back is to the camera. There are only hints of my profile.
But Willow’s face is there, clear as day.
“Fuck.” The word is a gunshot in the penthouse.
My throat goes dry. I swore. I swore I’d never let this happen, that I’d take my identity to the grave.
I built a whole life out of smoke and mirrors just to keep my life my own.
And now—now my profile, my build, my blond fucking hair—are all out there for the whole internet to see, for all the internet sleuths to pick apart.
“It’s gone viral, Lucky,” Willow says as she clicks into this profile who tagged her.
The video has two million views already, and it was just posted two hours ago.
“Like, super fucking viral.” She clicks into another post. Eight hundred thousand views.
Another with sixty thousand. Yet another with three hundred thousand.
And it’s been two damn hours.
The comments are going nuts, obviously.
SAINT SHADE HAS A GIRLFRIEND???
HOLY SHIT, THAT’S @VALETAROT!!
NO WONDER SHE STOPPED HER SAINT SHADE SERIES, SHE’S BEEN FUCKING HIM! JEALOUS!
SS IS BLOND???
“Willow,” I say, my stomach dropping out.
She swallows hard, scrolling through the chaos. Her own face is everywhere, screenshot, zoomed in, dissected. The comments are rabid, thirsty, some of them straight up vile. Her inbox is detonating with strangers demanding answers.
“They already know me,” she whispers, horrified. Her blue eyes rise to meet mine. “Lucky, how long until someone figures out your name?”
The real question hangs unspoken in the air. How long until my family realizes I’m not really dead?