Chapter 31 Reva #2
My face hurts from smiling. My teeth ache from holding back questions. Newcomers blur into potential threats, and every second stretches long enough for my imagination to sharpen it.
Then I see the tattoo. It throws me, making me stumble momentarily, because it’s not on a man.
The rosary winds around the bone of a woman’s wrist like blood.
My breath snags, and Nash steadies me, following my gaze. I turn to follow her approach, heartbeat stuttering, and I catch Nash’s face just long enough to see his eyes flash with something like regret.
Tiny. Fast. Real.
I mark it, my stomach dropping further. Because if Nash regrets me seeing that, then he knew. Maybe not this exact thing, whatever it is. Maybe not all of it. But enough.
Then the room shifts—kind of the same way Noir upstairs did the day Nash arrived.
Subtly at first. A change in air pressure. In posture. In the direction of gazes. Like water parting around a stone dropped into it.
And he walks in.
Deacon.
I know him immediately from the file on Nash’s computer, but the pictures didn’t do him justice. Or perhaps justice isn’t the right word. They didn’t capture the weight of him. They didn’t capture what happens to a room when a man like that enters it.
He doesn’t rush.
He doesn’t posture.
He doesn’t need to.
He simply belongs.
He’s around Nash’s age, maybe a few years older, and made of the same kind of brutal refinement.
The same old money violence polished until it gleams. But where Nash is dark velvet and a blade hidden under a tuxedo sleeve, this man is harsher.
Leaner. Severe in a way that catches low in my gut.
A scar arcs along one side of his jaw, not ugly enough to diminish him, only to warn.
His face is cut in clean, hard lines. His suit is charcoal. His gaze colder than river stone.
He has a woman with him. Elegant, self-possessed, the tattoo visible at her wrist where the rosary winds. But I can’t see her face. Can’t see if she wants to be on his arm.
The room bends toward him as he passes.
And underneath everything—beneath the music, the clink of glass, the rustle of silk and cards and currency—I understand one simple, horrible thing:
He has been under my feet this entire time.
I try to move. I don’t even know if it’s toward him or away. It doesn’t matter.
Shiloh’s hand closes over at my elbow. Ever’s presence warms my back. Nash slides to my side, immovable.
Stay.
The message is clear.
Blood roars in my veins. A dark veil creeps in at the edge of my vision. Red spots flicker and disappear.
Deacon. In the flesh. The man who stole my life is standing twenty feet away trading greetings in the place that helped build him.
Nash steps forward to meet him near the base of the stairs, trusting the other two to contain me. They clasp forearms. Heads tip low. Men who know one another too well and have a lifetime of memories. I can’t hear every word over the pulse in my ears, but I hear enough.
They share history; this I know. It’s not new. This wasn’t a rumor—they told me, themselves. This is real.
The men I’ve given pieces of myself to are tied to him. I knew that before I ever stepped over the line with them.
Deacon’s gaze moves past Nash. Past the tables. Past the glittering room.
And lands on me.
For one awful beat, everything in me stops.
Those eyes are familiar now. More than familiar. Something in them slides into place with a sick, final click. The sense of being seen and not understanding why. The old shiver at the back of my neck.
His mouth curves in recognition.
He steps away from Nash and comes toward me with the measured confidence of a man who has never had to hurry for what belongs to him.
Ever’s hand flattens at my back, a brace. Shiloh’s fingers close more firmly over my elbow.
I should be afraid. Shit, I am afraid. But underneath the fear is something darker and harder. A filthy, feverish triumph.
This is it.
This is him.
I force myself to stay upright as he stops in front of me.
Up close, he smells expensive. Smoke and clean starch and some darker note that reminds me of old churches and blood on stone. His scar is worse near than far. His eyes even less forgiving.
He looks me over once, head to toe, in a way that feels less like desire than assessment.
Then his gaze returns to my face.
“Hello, Little Ghost.”
The world tilts.
Little ghost.
Something starts sliding home inside me so violently it almost hurts with the precision of it. Every near miss. Every file that led me nowhere but the bayou. Every whisper. Every impossible instinct I’ve had since stepping into New Orleans.
That fucking bathroom.
The man from the bathroom. The one whose voice chased me. The one whose presence brushed me like death stepping politely aside.
I go cold and hot all at once.
The strange pull. The certainty that something had brushed past me in the dark and known exactly what I was.
I stare at him, lips parting, but no sound comes out.
He knows. He knows me. Or enough of me to call me that. He’s not just the man from the bathroom. He’s…
“Ash?”
Behind me, Ever goes taut. Shiloh’s fingers bite. Somewhere to my left, Nash says Deacon’s name in a warning tone that doesn’t so much as dent the moment.
Deacon barely flicks him a glance. His attention remains fixed on me.
And then I see her.
At first it’s only the tattoo again, glimpsed as the woman at his side turns and shifts closer. Rosary beads inked around a slender wrist. The same mark. The same sick sigil threaded through too many pieces of my life.
She turns, and the room, the music, the lights, the men, the entire poisoned underworld of Noir Night falls away.
Familiar eyes, familiar mouth, familiar bone structure under a stranger’s polish. My heart clenches. Misses. Then misfires completely.
No.
No no no.
Our eyes lock. The woman looks at me the way a person looks at a ghost. Or maybe a mistake resurrected.
My sister is dead, but somehow she’s standing in Noir Night with a rosary tattoo on her wrist.
She’s been here.
This whole time.
Living an entire world, an entire life…without me.