Chapter 9
nine
The moron from the grocery store is worm food.
He had to go. Just the thought of him talking to Melinda, the chance of him ever crossing her path again, has me wishing I could display his body for everyone to see, a warning to others who dare threaten her peace. A message that says: touch what’s mine and you stop existing.
Next on my list is Wyatt if his dumbass doesn’t get his shit together.
I went to Atlas after the grocery store and listened to him recount, in great detail, with way too much pleasure at my discomfort, her horrible lunch.
If Wyatt wanted to be her friend or have a professional co-worker relationship with her, I could probably let that slide.
But, instead he, according to Atlas, flirted with her non-stop and she, also per Atlas, didn’t seem into it at all, thank God, but was very polite. Of course she was.
Atlas gave me the lunch run down, while I scrolled through her emails, both her work one and her personal one.
She doesn’t have many texts, her thread with me sitting at the top, is followed by her mom, dad, brother, and the name Victoria.
I know from Atlas’ report that Victoria is an employee at Silver State Publishing.
My Lindy girl is making friends. Female friends. Good.
But then I see it.
An email from Wyatt. No subject. Just a string of passive-aggressive words that read more like a warning than a joke.
Motherfucker. She’s already opened it.
My pulse spikes as a red haze creeps in. I stare at the words again, jaw clenched, chest tight. That smug little bastard thinks he’s clever. He thinks he’s entitled to her time, her attention. He thinks he can intimidate her into liking him.
My knuckles split open when they meet the nearest wall, cracking drywall, sending a spiderweb of destruction I barely register. The pain is sharp, satisfying. My hand drips blood, but I don’t care. I don’t even look at it.
Adrian’s going to get an earful for not flagging that email the second it came in.
I swipe the message and delete it. Not archived. Not recoverable. Adrian set it up right—no digital trace. Just like the man who sent it will be if he keeps this shit up.
I inhale through my nose, the scent of copper thick from my bleeding knuckles, and text Adrian.
He breathes near her again, I want every frame. If he touches her, I’ll stop his pulse.
I pause, then add:
And be faster next time, she shouldn’t have seen that shit.
Wyatt wants to play at being the possessive type. Cute. He has no idea what that actually looks like. Let him keep smiling at her in the office like a harmless boy. Because when the mask slips for good, I’ll be there, with no mask of my own, no mercy either.
Saying my brothers were unhappy when they found out about spice-rack man is an understatement. Whatever. I’m the only one doing the killing and until they slit some throats, they don’t get veto power on who lives.
Adrian doesn’t call. He storms. The elevator doors barely open before he’s on me in my kitchen, sunglasses on, jaw clenched, cane ticking against the tile like a gavel.
“Sloppy,” he says, calm the way a silencer is calm. “You acted on impulse. We had to scrub three exterior cameras and two license plate readers in a six-block radius. I don’t like spending my mornings laundering your obsession.”
“I cleaned my scene,” I say. “No signature, no problem.”
“Your face is a goddamn signature.” He motions and Caleb steps in behind him, a towel-wrapped bag of ice already in his hand like he knew how this would go.
Caleb shoves the ice at me. “PD chatter popped ten minutes after the body was found. Patrol canvas, no names yet. You want me to be able to keep doing the books? Stop adding line items.”
I take the ice. My knuckles don’t deserve the mercy, but I let the cold bite anyway.
Adrian’s cane ticks. “Keep yourself together. You want her? Fine. But if you get us burned because you can’t control yourself, I’ll put you somewhere the sun never shines. Matter of fact, I’ll put her there and you can live with never knowing where she is again.”
“Adrian,” I say, stepping in, voice flat. “You ever say shit about hiding her from me again, and I’ll put you somewhere so dark your cane will never find the floor.”
The room goes tight. Caleb slides between us, palm to Adrian’s chest, eyes on me. “Back off, Cassius.”
“If I wanted him gone, he’d already be dead,” I say. “And we all know it.”
Adrian doesn’t flinch. “Threaten me all you want. You’re going to ruin everything over a woman. I will end it before I let that happen. Even if you kill me for it.”
“You won’t end a fucking thing,” I tell him.
“You don’t get to disappear her. Not from me.
You think you scare me? I’m the reason you two sleep at night.
Your hands are clean, have stayed clean your whole goddamn lives, because mine never have been.
You want your Machine on a leash? Stop fucking choking me with it. ”
Caleb’s voice lowers. “You can’t keep going off half-cocked like this. You’ll get arrested or killed. We aren’t going to leave her unprotected but you can’t kill everyone just because they breathe in her direction.”
“I’ll keep her safe,” I shoot back. “I’ll keep us covered. Like I always have. But either of you ever threaten to hide her or take her from me again, and you’ll experience a side of me you’ve only heard alleys whisper about.”
Adrian taps his cane and exhales. “Truce,” he says.
“Fine,” I say.
Caleb nods, tension easing a fraction. “No more bodies.”
I lift the ice back to my split knuckles.
As soon as they leave and the door shuts, I throw the ice in my freezer.
I can’t breathe when I’m not messaging her, and now that I’ve seen her, heard her voice, there’s nothing on this Earth that will keep me from her.
The only thing that eases that tightness is knowing that either Adrian, Caleb, Atlas, or I have eyes on her at all times.
I hate that I have to involve Atlas at all but I can’t be there twenty-four-seven, people need killing.
Atlas is just as busy as me if we’re being honest and he has people to watch, people to find, material things to find too, so Adrian definitely doesn’t understand why he’s watching Melinda so much for free.
Or why he’s paying Mavik to help. Adrian won’t question me again after today.
Neither will Caleb and that’s great because Atlas busts my balls any chance he gets over Melinda, enough for all three of them.
What Atlas doesn’t do is fail to show up. He does every single thing I ask, which is the only reason I don’t deck him in his face for his annoying comments.
I haven’t slept since we talked on the phone.
No surprise there. She’s all I think about.
No matter what I’m doing, or who I’m with, she’s there.
Not just there, she’s front and center. I have to have her, make her mine, but how?
She’s a shooting star. How do I possibly capture and hold on to that?
You don’t trap a shooting star. You fly with it and pray you don’t burn up.
That’s when Detective Sarah Blake flashes in my head.
Exposure. I don’t say it, but it sits on my tongue like a nail.
Cops don’t scare me, but patterns do. Men get caged and killed for patterns.
And mine looks like this: street cams, office cams, inboxes, and a woman with bodies stacking near her orbit.
Detective Blake, if she has the brain cells I think she does, will make that connection at some point and the heat won’t land on me first. It’ll curl toward her.
Witness. Person of interest. Bait. Blake will tie the dead to her, yank her into rooms and ask her questions until she cracks.
I can eat prison. She can’t. I’ll walk in there willingly if it’ll keep her from ever having to sit in a fucking interrogation room.
My stomach rolls. I didn’t know it could do that. Knife tap. One, two, three.
I’m no different from the men I cut out of alleys. I call control protection and watch without consent. I refuse to hand Detective Blake a map that starts at my shadow and ends at Lindy’s door.
I have to do the only thing that scares me more than getting caught.
Try to let her go. Put distance between my hands and her life.
I won’t tell her any of this—the risk, the detective, the part where she’s a threat to me and I’m a threat to her.
She gets to keep her light and I get to keep the ache.
Knife tap. One, two, three. I’ll stop looking. For as long as I can.
I’ve already gone through my twenty-seven minute routine and am standing at my front door about to leave when my phone pings with an email from Adrian.
Subject: Update
Cassius,
I've finished looking into Melinda's situation regarding her transfer from the London office. Officially, there's nothing on record about why she decided to move.
After further digging and chatting with a few contacts, I've managed to uncover a bit of the story that didn't make it to any official documents.
It seems there was a bit of an issue with her boss.
From what I've gathered, this guy was pestering Melinda non-stop.
The word 'relentless' came up more than once in the conversations I had.
It sounds like he made her work life pretty miserable, and no matter how she tried to handle it, he wouldn't back off.
This situation apparently went on for a while, and it looks like Melinda tried to deal with it as quietly and professionally as possible.
Melinda was trying to get away from a bad situation and start fresh somewhere else.
-Adrian