Chapter 9 #2
Samuel's compound is a fortress. Blackened steel, poured concrete, walls of floor-to-ceiling glass reflecting the landscape lights back at us. The architecture is sharp, angular, stripped of anything soft. There’s no ivy climbing the walls or warm stonework to soften the edges.
From what I can see through all the windows, there’s not even a banister worn smooth by the hands of people who loved living there.
My father's home was built for gathering people.
This place is built for keeping the world out.
My heart breaks a little for the father of my child. But somewhere behind all that reinforced glass, I spy the faintest glow of warm light that gives me hope.
After the gunfire and the breaking glass and the screaming of tires on asphalt, the absolute stillness on the other side of those gates presses against my eardrums.
All the men climb out and take stock. Magazines are ejected, checked, reloaded. Oliver rolls his shoulder, wincing. Bastian inspects a graze across the back of his hand. Valerian stands apart, his cigar a bright orange point in the dark, scarred face unreadable. Does that man ever not have a cigar?
Samuel comes around the car and stops in front of me, blocking my view of everyone but him.
"Are you okay, princess?"
Cold air bites at my bare skin and I wrap my arms around myself. The halter top, the short skirt, the fishnet stockings. Yeah, it doesn’t really keep a girl warm.
"I'm fine, but now what?"
He ignores the question. His fingers work the buttons of his shirt, pulling the bloodied white fabric free of his body, and he drapes it over my shoulders. The warmth of him clings to the cotton. I inhale deeply and pull in the scent of Samuel, but also the metallic scent of blood.
His body is a map of violence I remember tracing our first night together.
First? As if there will be a second. What am I thinking?
I know there will be another. And more. Every fiber in my being knows this man will not let me leave here.
Not with me carrying his child. The question is, can I afford to align myself with him knowing I need the law on my side in order to get Edgar and my stepmother behind bars?
I hope so, because I don’t think Samuel will care how justice is served as long as the right graves are filled with the right bodies.
White letters over blackout ink catch my eye and pull me out of thought. The black hole over Samuel’s heart is no longer empty.
Letters curve along the edge of the void. My name is inked into the center in a script so fine I almost miss it.
The little control I gained over my thundering heart vanishes when I find him staring back at me.
I lick my lips. “Samuel.” What else can I say? Uncertainty threads through me and I can’t control the shaking of my hands.
"Cinder.” He steps into my personal space, erasing all the space between us. I raise my hands and rest them on his chest, my right hand over my name.
“Tell me. Are you and our baby okay?" His voice is quieter now, the adrenaline edge gone.
I pull his shirt tighter around my shoulders and reach for his arm. The wound is a graze, a bullet that carved a shallow trench across his bicep. Blood has soaked through and run in thin lines down to his wrist.
"We are okay, but you are the one bleeding." I take his hand and turn it over, inspecting the split knuckles, the dried red flaking from the creases of his fingers. "You're dripping blood everywhere, let me fix it."
His jaw softens a fraction. Those dark brown eyes hold steady on mine, patient and warm in a way that makes my chest ache.
"But after this, Samuel." I straighten my spine and meet his gaze. "I have to go back. We have to get the rest of the proof that will seal Edgar’s fate. My stepmother’s. I have to pull those leeches off my father’s empire or they will suck it dry and ruin what he left behind.
I don’t trust the detective working the case to not destroy evidence if he ever finds out about it. "
Grunts roll from behind him. I peer over his shoulder at the three men leaning against their vehicles, arms crossed, expressions ranging from amused to incredulous.
The wind cuts through the thin fabric of Samuel's shirt and raises goosebumps across my bare legs. I cross my arms over my chest, tucking my fingers under my elbows, and step sideways, putting myself in their full line of sight.
"By all means, gentlemen, if you have something to say, please say it. You’re good with guns, but are you good with your words?"
Bastian's brow arches and he looks over my head to Samuel. “I like her spunk. She’ll definitely get along with Lili.”
Oliver pins me with a narrowed-eye look, his jaw working. Valerian just stands there taking a long drag. He considers me the whole time he exhales smoke through his nose without blinking.
Oliver chimes up first. “That’s not the problem, sweetheart.”
“Cinder, please. And I’m all ears. Please tell me what the problem is.”
“The men in this circle operate on a set of rules most people will never know about. We shed blood and dropped bodies on another man’s property. We declared war.”
That’s Valerian. He steps out of the shadows as he speaks.
We haven’t all been formally introduced, but I know their names all the same. There’s not a soul in this city who doesn’t.
“I understand. I'm not completely naive. I just hoped it would be as simple as me returning to my father’s, I guess.”
Samuel turns me back to face him. His palm cups the side of my face, his thumb catching the edge of my cheekbone, and he drags the pad across my skin. When he pulls his hand away, the tip of his thumb is red.
Blood. I got nicked by flying debris during the gunfight, I guess.
He brings his thumb to his lips and holds my gaze while he presses the blood away.
"Hope tends to get people killed and you are too precious to me to ever put in harm’s way.
Your father would agree. Any father would.
" He drops his hand and squares his shoulders.
"Hope is not a plan. If leaving here is what you are after though, give me an hour and I'll have you on a plane to wherever you want to go. If that is what you want."
His voice softens and turns rougher around the edges when he speaks those last six words. They settle heavily over my heart. Despite his words, hope threads through the offer, fragile and barely disguised, and it hits a place in me I've spent five months armoring.
He wants me to stay, but he won’t force me.