CHAPTER 17
THE SECRETS WE KEEP
GRIMM
I didn’t leave the hospital all day. I sat in the car, in the passenger seat, and reviewed every second of surveillance footage Hannibal sent me, but I couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. No strange looks, no out-of-place individuals, nothing.
I banged my head against the headrest repeatedly, then slammed the laptop shut and cursed.
I was missing something; I could feel it in my bones, and I didn’t like it.
~ Maybe you’re just stupid. Just saying.
I had to find out what before it was too late, before I went completely off the rails.
~ I think it’s a bit too late for that.
I assumed Arella held the missing piece in her hand, and if she wasn’t willing to share it with me, to tell me what she was hiding, I actually considered myself incapable of solving things on my own.
~ My, my, how the mighty have fallen.
~ Just shut the fuck up.
My phone rang as I counted down the hours until the end of her shift.
“Ripper,” Hannibal’s voice scratched at my eardrums.
“Tell me you found something, kid,” I sounded almost desperate.
“Not much. I managed to dig up the camera footage from the airport where you told me she first saw you, and she picked up her luggage from a flight that came from Colombia. Now, there’s no way of knowing if she’s originally from there, or if she was back from a trip. My money’s on a trip, because your lady friend doesn’t look Colombian at all. But just to be sure, I ran her face through all the international databases, again, and still couldn’t even find a birth certificate in her name. It’s like I told you the first time, Arella Santino didn’t exist before she went to college.”
“You’re thinking about witness protection?”
“Could be,” he sighed. “Or someone really good at their job helped her erase her existence and gave her a new identity. Either way, I think it’s caught up with her.”
“What do you mean?”
“I found it odd when I saw that she came from Colombia, and I remembered all those guys you asked me to look into, the ones who were always watching her.”
“Spit it out already,” I said, gripping the phone tighter, close to breaking it in my hand as I bit down my fist.
“Eight of them were also Colombian, but all fourteen were involved with the cartels.”
“What the fuck?” I ran my fingers through my hair, then rolled down the window and lit a cigarette.
“It’s a stretch, I know, but I find it a bit odd that there are no records of her existence before she came to the States, that she passed through Colombia and then all the men seemingly stalking her were from there as well, Grimm,” his voice echoed in my ear, because it was the first time he used my name.
“What do you mean seemingly stalking her?” I bit the inside of my cheek. “They tailed her for days.”
“Well, it’s just a theory because none of them are alive to be interrogated, but I don’t think they were stalking her; I think they were protecting her, and you pissed off whoever hired them.”
“How did you come to that conclusion, kid? They were ten steps behind her at all times.”
“Yeah, and you were ten steps behind them, and they never made any moves to approach her.”
As I listened to him talk, it made more and more sense. How they didn’t display typical stalker behavior, how they never took pictures of her or tried to accidentally bump into her, how they didn’t seem obsessed with her, but rather too serious, too focused, too fucking on alert at all times.
“Shit!” I punched my leg, lighting another cigarette as I looked at the hospital doors, feeling just about ready to pull out my hair.
I hung up, feeling like I was only getting answers that only raised more questions. She had changed her name, she had something to hide.
Those guys weren’t stalkers.
~ Like you.
They were bodyguards.
~ And you killed them.
Arella didn’t know about their existence.
~ Or maybe she did know.
~ Maybe you shouldn’t trust her so much.
~ Maybe she was strategically placed in your path.
~ How was she, of all people, your sister’s roommate?
~ Maybe you walked right into her trap.
~ Why isn’t she afraid of who you are?
~ Why doesn’t she flinch when you talk about murder?
~ Maybe she wants to slit your throat when you’re asleep.
~ She speaks Russian, Grimm. Why does she speak Russian?
~ Maybe she’s a spy.
“SHUT THE FUCK UP!” I punched the dashboard so hard my skin burst open.
Blood shot out of my split knuckles, but the pain didn’t help anymore. Fuck, nothing helped.
None of the shit going through my head could be true. Even if I was blinded by my feelings for her, my father would have noticed something, but all he told me was that she was innocent. He dealt with spies often, with rats and undercover agents, everything of the sort. He would have told me if she gave him any signs.
He said she was hiding something.
But I knew that as well.
I looked at my watch and saw she still had two hours until the end of her shift, so I decided to trample the trust she had in me and drive to her apartment, where I was going to turn every floorboard upside down until I found something. Anything.
If there was something, no matter how small, that she kept from her previous life, it had to be there. Maybe that’s why she reacted like that when I told her I moved her things.
I tore apart her mattress, flipped the pillows inside out, knocked on every inch of wall and floor, looking for hidden cabinets, searched every nook and cranny and found… nothing.
Absolutely nothing.
I smacked the side of my head and bit down my fist, pacing in front of the only place that remained unopened, namely her safe.
The safe that she’d quickly locked again after putting the Glock back in. The safe that I left untouched when I sent my men to pack her things because I didn’t want to betray her trust.
I started entering combinations of numbers that meant something to her, hoping that I could open it without having to destroy it. Her birthday, August twenty-third, her graduation date, her first solo surgery.
Nothing worked.
“Think, you idiot,” I whispered to myself as I tapped my fingers on the wall. “Think, think,” I paced back and forth, running my fingers through my hair and muttering curses.
?I dreamed about this,” her words echoed in my head.
She thought about me after the flight.
“No, it can’t be…” I said as the crazy idea erupted in my brain and hurried back to the safe where I slowly typed in the date of the flight.
Exactly three years ago today. I was so lost I hadn’t even realized it was our anniversary.
Shock took over me when the safe popped open with a click and I found her gun, a passport in her name, an envelope with cash, her graduation cap and… that was it. I could have sworn I saw something red in there last time.
I betrayed her trust for… fucking nothing.
~ Say nothing one more time, I swear to fuck.
Angrily, I slammed the safe shut and looked at my watch, realizing I had to drive back and pick her up from work.
I drove like a maniac. I ran three red lights, exceeded the speed limit many times over and nearly crashed into a wall, but I arrived at the hospital just in time to see her come out.
She was hugging her bag to her chest, looking left and right as if something startled her, and when she spotted the car, she ran towards it. I could tell she had been crying again and my heart fucking broke in my chest as she got into the car.
No, she wasn’t just startled, she was fucking frightened.
Her eyes read panic, and her fingers trembled on the seatbelt as she pulled it over her chest with uneven movements.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, my voice sounding rougher than I intended.
She shook her head and finally managed to snap the seatbelt in place, then lit a cigarette and hugged her knees to her chest as she looked out of the window back at the hospital doors.
She seemed so lost inside herself and I felt so fucking powerless. I had no idea what to do or how to get her to open up to me.
What the hell could be so bad that even I couldn’t know about it?
“They fired me.” she replied as she took a long drag out of the cigarette, the confession causing tears to stream down her face.
“Why?” I clutched the steering wheel tighter.
“They accused me of trying to sleep with an Attending to get surgeries.” She wiped her eyes. “One of my colleagues, Lana, said she saw me slip my underwear into his pocket. They even had the fucking panties to show, so they made me sign my resignation and sent me on my way,” she sniffled. “Fuck, she always had it out for me, you know? Since day one, we had been competitive with each other, but I never thought she would take it this far.”
I looked at her for a while, my brows drawn together in an angry frown as my jaw clenched.
“Can I do anything to help?”
She shook her head and wiped her tears, then propped her forehead between her knees and sighed deeply. “Can we just go home?”
My heart leapt in my chest.
Home
.
Fucking hell. There was no way a spy would say that word so genuinely. She wasn’t one. She couldn’t be one. Not her.
Whatever Arella was hiding, it had nothing to do with me or what was growing between us, it had to do with her past and why she ran away from it, and I was going to turn the world to ruin until I found the one who was coming after her.
If what Hannibal told me was true, and the men who were following her were truly her protectors, not stalkers, that meant whoever was coming for her didn’t want to hurt her.
However, since the whole doorknob thing happened after I made our relationship public, I could safely assume the people behind it wanted me out of the picture.
She was safe until I showed up and messed up her life.
It was my fault. For everything.
“Can we order in?” she asked as I parked the car in the garage and turned off the engine.
“Yeah, sure.”
I got out of the car, and for the first time — without even realizing it — I didn’t open the door for her. She didn’t seem to mind, but she could tell I was on the verge of breaking. I guessed that was why she didn’t say anything to me during the elevator ride, and I tried hard not to lose my shit and start questioning her, especially since part of me wondered why she was never the one to initiate a kiss.
~ Because she doesn’t want to kiss you. She does it because she has to.
“Grimm, what’s wrong?” She grabbed me by the arm as I took off my boots, forcing me to turn and face her.
“You tell me,” I sighed. “You’re the one keeping secrets.”
She gulped and let go of my arm as if it burned her. Admittedly, my tone wasn’t the one she was used to.
It wasn’t the soft voice I used to whisper fucking poetry to her, nor the demanding one I used for dirty talk. It was the one I used with everyone else in my life, and she wasn’t accustomed to it being directed at her.
But I had to know.
I had to know what the hell was going on, because I had never been so confused in my entire life.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she replied, turning her head to the side and avoiding eye contact.
Just like she always did when she was fucking lying.
“What’s your name?”
“W-what?” she stuttered, looking up at me.
“What. Is. Your. Name?”
“Grimm, you know my name,” she shook her head and took a step towards me, and for the first time, I was the one who took a step back.
Not because I was scared of her or because I didn’t want her to touch me, but because I was afraid of myself. I was afraid of hurting her because of the anger that kept burning brighter inside me.
Fear was another feeling I’d never known until I met her, and I shoved my hands in my pockets to avoid hitting the nearest surface.
“I know the name you told me. I know the name you wrote in your notebook three years ago. I know the name you use, but I don’t know the name you were fucking born with,” I raised my voice.
I could see the fear in her eyes, but it wasn’t directed at me. She was afraid of what I’d found out, afraid of herself and of the people coming for her, and her reaction raised another line of questions.
“I can’t tell you that,” her voice softened as she started shifting her weight from one foot to the other.
“Why the fuck not?” I shouted, stepping closer to her.
“Because she’s fucking dead,” she yelled right back, and I almost flinched.
Almost.
All that pain in her voice, the way it cracked, and how fast the tears ran out of her eyes, which she wiped away as if they disgusted her.
“Ever since I became Arella Santino, I swore I’d never say that cursed name again, and I won’t.”
“I can’t protect you if I don’t know what I’m protecting you from, Arella,” I mocked her alias, the name of an angel, which now tasted like acid on my tongue.
“I didn’t ask for your protection, I didn’t ask for any of this,” she waved her hands in the air.
More tears.
~ Are they even real?
“Well, tough fucking luck, we’re both smack in the middle of this shit storm, and ex-fucking-cuse me if I’m wrong, but didn’t you fucking say that communication is important if we want this to work?”
“I didn’t count on my past coming back to bite me in the ass when I said that,” she countered. “I didn’t count on the one person I can’t talk about coming to look for me right when I am happy again.”
I could have sworn a vein popped in my brain, because hearing her voice sounding so broken softened me all the way down to my toes, and somehow, the agony she carried in her tone diluted my anger in an instant. Seeing her like that tore me apart and scattered me, and I preferred to die a death by a thousand cuts than hear her voice so tormented.
“Who is that person, baby?” I grabbed her arms and pulled her to my chest. “Please, tell me,” I whispered, returning to the tone she knew, the tone that somehow only came out for her.
She began to sob, clutching at my T-shirt.
“I can’t,” she shook her head, then pulled out of my hold and headed for the elevator.
I frowned and paused in place for a second. “Where the fuck do you think you going?”
“To take a walk, I need to clear my head…”
I bit my fist and stormed towards her.
“If you think I’m going to let you go out there alone when someone is following you, you’re sorely mistaken,” I said as I grabbed her by the arm before she could push the button to call the elevator.
“Are you holding me hostage now?”
“If protecting you is synonymous with holding you hostage, then yes, I’ll tie you to the fucking bed if I have to.”
“Let go of my arm, Grimm,” she looked up at me.
The cold look she’d had on when she pointed the gun at me was back, so was the tone of her voice. Fucking freezing cold. The woman in front of me was nothing like the angelic version I had come to know. She wasn’t the woman I thought could never be ice. The woman in front of me was a fucking menace, and I felt myself getting hard at the sight of her, suddenly itching to test a theory.
I pointed to her wrists, where the words I told her were etched into her skin.
“That’s a reminder, huh? A fucking reminder not to allow that side of you to win?” I shook my head.
Her eyes bore into mine, almost detached, but I could still see her. I could still see the real her, not this icy version she kept buried.
“Let me go, Grimm,” she repeated.
“Or what?” I asked, tightening my grip on her.
I barely had time to blink before she lifted the arm I was holding, pulling mine up with it, and spun around, touching her back to mine for a second before kicking the back of my knee, causing me to fall backwards, giving her enough momentum to haul me over her shoulder and lay me on the fucking floor.
Me, a two-hundred-and-forty-pound man, hauled over and knocked down by a woman at least fifty pounds lighter.
~ Why is she so strong? And why does she know that move?
Groaning in pain, I jumped back up and hissed as I felt one of the stitches pull at my skin when my muscles tensed.
“You want to fight, baby?” I grinned and stalked towards her. “Show me what you got,” I urged her to come closer. “Come on, fight me.”
I had no intention of fighting back, but seeing her so angry turned me on so much that I wanted more of that anger boiling inside her. I wanted it poured out on me, as hot and acidic as I was seeing it.
Arella didn’t wait for a second invitation and pounced on me. She kicked and punched, using moves I never thought her capable of, all of them with trained precision.
It was odd, because in the years I stalked her, I never saw her take a self-defense class or even go to gym. This was simply her body remembering what it was trained to do, sort of like riding a bike. Her moves came from muscle memory, so much so that she didn’t even have to think about it.
I took them all without moving much, allowing her to pour out all the agony and despair, to unleash all that rancid anger she had shackled.
Only when I felt the fight in her wane, I finally blocked one of her attacks and turned her around, pinning her body against the wall and holding her arms above her head as I pressed my knees to the back of her thighs.
She was panting, but she wasn’t crying anymore.
~ So that’s what we have to do to stop her from crying. Good to know.
“Are you done?” I whispered in her ear.
She nodded.
“Do you still need to clear your head?”
She shook her head, and I pressed myself harder against her for a second before letting go.
“I still can’t tell you, Grimm…” she said as she rubbed her wrists.
“I know,” I sighed. “I’m willing to wait until you’re ready to talk about it.” I took her face in my palms and tilted her head up. “But you have to know that I’ll never judge you, because trust me when I say that whatever it is, I’ve done much worse.”
“What if I’m never ready to talk about it?” she barely whispered.
“Then I’ll wait for forever.”
I wasn’t expecting it, not after all the wrath and tension that had erupted between us tonight, but for the first time…
She was the one who kissed me.