8
“So, where is my gun?” I whispered as Ezrah the prick sat beside me in the Finance class, squashing me in against the wall so no one could sit beside me.
“You’re not getting it back, sweetheart,” he stated confidently as his hand landed on my thigh and lay my hand over it, giving him the false impression that I enjoyed it.
“I’ll find it,” I said self-assuredly, even though I wasn’t sure how I would find it in a minefield of frat boys in the Lud and their stinky underwear.
“No, you won’t.” His hand squeezed my thigh, but I caught a glimmer of fear in his face for the second time in thirty minutes, and I knew this man had many dark and devious secrets.
As his hand squeezed tighter, I dug my fingernails into his skin, deliberately targeting a vein, and even though his gaze was focused on the front of the class, where the finance tutor, Dean, was talking about our latest assignment, he flinched in pain.
But he refused to move his hand away until I pinched his skin between my fingers and dug my fingernails in until he snatched his hand away from my thigh.
“I want my gun back,” I said softly, pretending to peruse my finance textbook as Dean glanced in our direction.
“You're not getting it,” he breathed, rubbing the reddened area of his hand where my fingernails just were.
“And my knife. I want my knife back,” I stated as I pursed my lips and blew on my fingernails as if they were a smoking gun.
“Too bad,” he shrugged his shoulders.
“I’m not asking,” I abruptly educated him. “I don’t need to ask you for my property back. I will take them back whether you say so or not.”
He snorted, and Dean glanced up at him. “Something funny?” he pressed, sounding annoyed. “Would you like to share what’s so funny about finance?”
“Nothing is funny about finance,” Ezrah answered wryly, and I bit my lip to stop myself from laughing.
Dean turned away and continued to outline the assignment and what was expected of us.
A few minutes later, when the focus was away from us, Ezrah leaned in and whispered, “Now that your father is dead, you don’t need to study finance anymore, do you?
I mean…who is going to take over his business? It won’t be you, will it?”
His comment annoyed me because it was plaguing my mind. The sole reason that I went to college to study business was the deal I made with my father. Once I achieved my diploma, he’d reward me with a senior position in his company.
“Why won't it be me?” I hissed back at him.
“Too young. Too inexperienced,” he said softly as so many scenarios circled in my mind of how it could work and how it couldn’t. But the one obstacle was Leslie. “Too reckless.”
“Too reckless?” I questioned, then opened my mouth to argue that point, but he interrupted by asking, “Have you seen your father’s will?”
“No. He only just died. How…” I swallowed hard over the lump in my throat as emotions swelled in my chest and stomach, and hot tears burned in my eyes again.
I breathed through the emotional pain to ease the tears away, but I couldn’t focus on what Dean was talking about as the room seemed to swirl around me.
With an impending panic attack, I couldn’t stay in this state, so I swiped off my note app on my phone and closed my finance textbooks to leave quietly. But Ezrah had other ideas and shook his head, quietly, grabbed my wrist, “You’re not going anywhere.”
“I’m ab…,” my breath felt trapped in my chest, and my head was about to explode. “P-p-panic attack.”
I leaned over my desk as the blood drained from my cheeks and my head grew light and dizzy.
“A what?” he pressed, confused. “Are you faking, Adina?”
I shook my head, unable to answer, clutching my chest because I couldn’t breathe, but I didn't want to attract the attention of the students and tutor.
I tried to stand up to leave, but that would have required me to go to the front of the class, past the tutor, and be on display, and I couldn’t move. It was as if someone was sitting on my chest and an invisible pillow was suffocating me.
I felt a hand sweep my hair from my eyes as Ezrah leaned in to inspect my face, “Are you having a panic attack?” he whispered, and all I could do was nod. Then I heard him say to Dean, “Ignore us. Carry on with the tutorial.”
“Do you want me to call a medic?” Dean’s voice nearby.
“No. I’ll sort it,” Ezrah assured him, and I gripped his forearm to imply that I did want help, but not from him. I didn’t trust him, and even at this moment of panic, I felt he had something to do with it. Did he drug me again? Asshole.
Ezrah glanced at the students behind us and snarled, “The front of the class is that way,” demanding that the students stop looking at me.
Then he wrapped his arms tightly around my body and began rocking me as my head grew lighter, but I had no strength to fight him.
I longed to bite and kick him, and imagined a gun in my hand, and squeezed the trigger.
“Shhh,” he whispered as he stroked my hair, warm breath gracing my cheek. “Don’t fight it, Adina, don’t fight it.”
I knew we were on display, and I hated anyone noticing how weak and pathetic I looked, but more than anything, I hated students assuming Ezrah and me were a couple.
There was no way in hell I’d even think of this man as my boyfriend.
Even as he gently rocked me back and forth, cradled in his firm and warm embrace, never in a million years would I want him, Ezrah bloody Warwick, as my boyfriend.
He pressed my head against his chest and held my head there, and at first, I thought I was going to explode as it made me worse, but I had no clear way to communicate with him because the hitched breath took my words away.
So I tried to wrestle his arms off me, but it only made him clamp his hand against my head even more, pushing it hard against his chest.
Then I felt a solid, strong thudding of a heart against my skin, and the beating rhythm was hypnotizing, pulling me under a soothing spell.
His hand continued to stroke my hair, and he whispered words too quiet for me to pick up, and Dean’s voice echoed in the background, waving in and out as I became more and less aware of my surroundings.
Several moments passed, and my breathing eased, and the brick in my chest dissolved, and I loosened my grip on his forearm. “Are you alright, Adina?”
I nodded, and he released his hold on me, but I was self-conscious of the students in the room, and he read my mind. “Let’s go for a walk in the fresh air,” he suggested, and I murmured, “Yep.”
He helped me to stand up, grabbed my bag, and threw his bag over his shoulder. I kept my eyes low because I didn’t want to see the looks on students’ faces, studying the strange scene before them.
Ezrah kept his arm around me as he led me down the stairs, across the front of the class, then out into the hallway. “I’m okay now,” I told him meekly and tried to pull away, but he kept his arm around me, pulling my body close to his as we walked down two flights of stairs.
Finally, we’re outside, and I breathe in the fresh air as he leads me to a raised garden with a concrete wall for us to sit on. My chest hurts, and the environment was surreal and glassy as nausea stirred slightly, then dissipated again, but I still felt ten times better than moments ago.
“Did you drug me?” were the first words I spat once we sat down.
“No,” he sniggered. “Not that time. You had a panic attack.”
My mouth was dry as a desert, and I unzipped my bag to search for a bottle of water that I always had. It didn’t matter where I went or for how long, my bag always contained a bottle of water and my knife. There was no knife because these assholes stole it, but luckily, I had water.
I took a sip to wet my dry mouth, swallowing slowly so I didn’t unsettle my already delicate stomach. “How did you know what to do?” I asked him, avoiding his eye.
“Part of gym training, first aid, and all of that. You’ll be coming back to the gym tomorrow, won’t you?” he said, brushing aside his explanation and quickly changing the subject. Yep, this man had many secrets.
“Can you teach me how to kill my enemies?” I proposed, shooting him a sharp look, making him smile, which wasn’t my intention. It was clear that I was no threat to him at all, and that annoyed the living crap out of me.
“You can never kill us, sweetheart,” he replied, smug as fuck, then he grew distant for a few beats before adding, “And we’re not your only enemies.”
“Yeah, I know,” I mumbled, taking another sip, then swallowed the refreshingly cool water. “More money, more problems.”
“Pretty much,” he said, cocking his head as his hand affectionately pulled my head closer to him, where he kissed my cheek, then pressed his lips against my temple, holding it there for a few seconds, breathing in the scent of my hair.
When he pulled away, I lowered my eyes, shyly unsure what to make of his tender side.
“Don’t worry, the class will think you were having a killer orgasm. ”
“Oh god, no,” I slapped my hands over my face in embarrassment. “Is that what it looked like?”
He sniggered mischievously, “Nah, I’m only fucking with you. Although there was a fair amount of sighing and moaning, if I weren’t a decent man, I’d get hard.”
“Says the man who drugged and kidnapped me,” I hit back as my body started to feel normal again. “Because ‘decent’.” Then a terrible thought struck me. “Did you do anything to me while I was drugged out?”
“No,” he answered swiftly, and I glared at his face to read his expression, and it seemed like he was being honest, but I’ll ask Lev as well to see if his answer was different.
I sighed, “Anyway, thanks for you know, what you did in there. Everything just built up inside of me, and nothing makes any sense.”
“No big deal. I was hardly going to allow you to flip out alone,” he said flatly, “especially while he was around.”
“He?” I questioned.
“Dirty ol’ Deano,” he replied, and I snorted at the ridiculousness of his comment.
“You can’t honestly believe that Dean the tutor would do anything worse than what you did to me?” I contended, and he shrugged casually, like it’s no big deal
“He likes to fuck his students,” he said, taking my water bottle from my hand, unscrewing the lid, and then taking a few sips without asking.
“With their consent, which again, is not as bad as what you and Lev did to me,” I rationalized.
“It was all for the ultimate cause,” he exclaimed proudly because he had achieved his objective and was satisfied with the result.
“To control me?” I was horrified by his blatant disregard for my feelings, but who was I kidding? He’s a Warwick, of course, the number one goal was to protect his family and his own skin from being arrested by the police.
Detective Magone caught his eye in the distance, walking casually about in no hurry, eating an apple.
He hadn’t seen us yet because he seemed fascinated by a mural on one of the building’s walls and took a pic on his phone.
It was a mural I had barely looked at, but on this angle, all I could see was long pink arms attached to a blob.
“I have to go,” Ezrah blurted, then grabbed my face before I could react and forced his mouth on mine, shoving his tongue aggressively inside, kissing me like an enemy who just won a battle, while I pressed my palms against his chest, trying to push him away.
My body melted under his touch, hands running up and down my back, tongue running over my teeth, dancing with my tongue, triggering an unwanted heat between my legs. “If I had my knife,” I snarled into his mouth, “I’d stab you right now. Plunge the blade into your shriveled, black heart.”
He sniggered into my mouth, “Then I’d bled all over you, rub my blood through your hair, cheeks, and in your mouth.
” He pulled away from the kiss, and I gasped, taking in air, breasts heaving from the titillation claiming my entire body, annoying the crap out of me.
“I’ll be taking you down with me, sweetheart. ”
The jock stepped away, taking two large strides with those long legs, heading in the opposite direction to where the detective was. I didn’t know where Magone had gone, but I hoped he didn’t see me kissing the Warwick, or more accurately, the Warwick kissing me.
Ezrah stopped to turn back as I wiped the taste of him from my lips.
“Don’t even think about running, sweetheart, because we’ll find you.
Wherever we go, we’ll find you, and once we do…
” He didn’t need to finish the sentence as the message was loud and clear.
If they were capable of breaking into my house, interfering with the security system to kidnap and drug me, then they were capable of anything.
I waited until he was gone before I gathered my things and walked to where the mural was that had infatuated the detective.
I’d walked past this wall a few times and hadn’t taken much notice of it, and assumed the detective just liked it for the artistic side.
It was of a pink creature, a cross between an alien and an octopus, with several long arm-like tentacles.
And in the grasp of each tentacle was a person strangled, struggling to breathe, meeting their deaths perhaps.
The artist’s name, written in brushstrokes at the bottom of the mural, was Theo Abbott.
It wasn’t someone I had heard of, and I brushed off the idea that it mattered to the detective.
I was about to walk away when my shoes froze on the pavement at the sight of one of the people caught in the monster’s inescapable grip.
A boy with brown, curly hair who looked eerily like the student on the train—the student Ezrah was threatening in the bathroom, the same student who was found dead.
It might be a coincidence, but I searched for Theo Abbott on my phone, and two pics of him came up on Google on social media pages.
He looked like the same man on the train and the same man who painted this mural.
I searched some more for media statements on a death at Castlehill and found only two short articles in two different publications.
Neither dropped a man of the deceased, but both said that the death was suspicious.
“Are you okay?” someone asked, and I turned to find mean girl Carrie.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I answered, walking away from her.
“No, I mean…in class when you had a panic attack,” she added, and I turned back. “I used to get those all the time. At least Ezrah was there to help you.”
“Yeah,” I replied firmly, wondering if she was being authentic because I thought she had a mad crush on him. Maybe I was wrong, but I was in no state to talk about it and politely said goodbye and walked away.