Chapter 7
Seven
Katriana
The knock shatters the silence of my apartment like a gunshot.
My heart seizes in my chest, the sudden jolt of adrenaline flooding my veins with ice water and fire all at once. The book I'd been pretending to read tumbles from my fingers and lands on the worn carpet with a soft thud that sounds impossibly loud in the wake of that knock.
One week, Victor's voice slithers through my memory, cold and patient and absolutely certain. One week to pay the balance in full, or I collect what I'm owed in other ways.
It hasn't been a week. It's been two days. Two days of jumping at shadows and flinching at footsteps and lying awake in the dark counting the hours until my deadline arrives to swallow me whole.
He's early. The bastard is early, and I should have known better than to trust a monster to keep his word.
Another knock, harder this time, and my body moves before my brain catches up.
I'm on my feet and across the room in three heartbeats, my fingers closing around the baseball bat I've kept propped against the wall by my bedroom door ever since Victor's last visit.
The wood is smooth and solid in my grip, familiar from all the nights I've held it while listening to the building settle around me.
My eyes dart to my nightstand. My phone. I need my phone.
I snatch it from the nightstand and my glasses. With trembling fingers I dial Gemma's number, pressing the device to my ear while I creep toward the front door. The ring tone pulses against my skull, once, twice, and then my sister's sleepy voice fills my ear.
"Kat? It's after midnight. What's going on?"
"Gemma, stay on the line." My voice comes out steadier than I feel, which is a small miracle. "If something happens, call the police."
"What? Kat, you're scaring me. What's happening?"
I ease out of my bedroom and into the living room.
I don't answer her. I can't. All of my focus narrows to the door in front of me, to the shadow I can see moving in the gap between the wood and the frame, to the third knock that makes the cheap hinges rattle in their housings.
I'm wearing pajamas. The realization hits me like a slap, absurd and irrelevant and somehow important all at once.
Soft cotton shorts that barely cover anything and a tank top thin enough to leave nothing to the imagination.
No bra. My nipples are probably visible through the fabric, hardened from the cold fear coursing through my blood.
Not remotely appropriate for visitors. Especially not visitors who want to drag me off to work in their establishments until I've paid a debt I never owed in the first place.
Fuck it. I’m not here trying to be proper and polite.
I grip the bat with one hand, and yank the door open with every intention of swinging first and asking questions never.
The bat arcs through the air with all the force I can muster, aimed at the shadowy figure filling my doorway. I put my whole body into the swing, channeling five years of fear and fury and helpless rage into a single desperate strike.
A large hand catches the bat mid-swing.
The impact jars up my arms like I've just hit a concrete wall, the shock of it rattling my teeth and sending a spike of pain through my shoulders. But the bat doesn't move. It doesn't budge a freaking inch.
I look up, my breath caught somewhere between my lungs and my throat, and gray eyes stare back at me.
Drake Moses.
The charcoal suit is replaced with an impeccable black one. The buttons at the collar are popped open and his tie is loosened. Not much, but I can tell he’s been under a lot of pressure lately. Shadow darkens his chin with stubble that wasn't there the last time I saw him.
My stomach does something complicated, a twist that's equal parts terror and something else I refuse to name.
"What are you doing here?" The words come out breathless, and I hate myself for sounding so small when I should sound fierce.
His eyes drop from my face, sliding down over the thin fabric of my tank top with a deliberate slowness that makes heat bloom across my skin despite the chill of the October night.
I feel my nipples tighten further under his gaze, traitors that they are, and I watch his jaw clench as he takes in the evidence of my body's response to his presence.
A sound escapes his throat, low and rough, something that might be a growl, but I honestly can’t hear him over the rush of blood in my ears.
“Katriana.”
But I hear my name on his lips just fine. The sound of his voice vibrates through the air between us and settles low in my belly, warm and unwelcome yet impossible to ignore.
I don't try to hide my reaction. There's no point.
The thin cotton conceals nothing, and the way his eyes darken as they trace the peaks of my breasts tells me he's seen everything there is to see.
Something defiant rises in my chest, a refusal to cower or cover myself like I've done something wrong by existing in my own apartment in my own pajamas.
Let him look. Let him see what he's not going to have.
"Kat?" Gemma's voice crackles through the phone still pressed to my ear, distant and worried. "Kat, what's happening? Who's there?"
Drake's gaze flicks to the phone, then back to my face. He releases the bat with a casual twist of his wrist that makes the wood spin in my grip, and then he's pushing past me into my apartment like he has every right to be here.
"I'll call you back," I manage, and I end the call before Gemma can protest.
Drake Moses stands in the middle of my living room, and suddenly the space feels impossibly small.
He's too big for this room, too polished, too everything.
His presence swallows the worn couch and the wobbly coffee table and the water stains on the ceiling, making them look even shabbier by comparison.
His eyes move over every surface with the efficiency of a man cataloguing inventory, missing nothing, judging everything.
I'm suddenly aware of the pile of bills on the kitchen counter, the secondhand furniture, the books stacked on every available surface because I can't afford proper shelves.
The evidence of a life scraped down to survival, laid bare for a man who probably spends more on a single suit than I make in a month.
Heat crawls up my neck that has nothing to do with attraction and everything to do with shame.
"How did you find out where I live?" I keep the bat raised, though we both know it's useless against him. "And how did you get into my building? The front door is supposed to be locked."
He turns to face me, and the weight of his attention pins me in place like a butterfly on a board. "You wrote a wish."
The words hit me like a bucket of ice water, dousing the heat of my embarrassment and replacing it with cold shock. The whoosh of air that leaves my lungs feels like the carpet being yanked out from under my feet and I’m left wobbling.
"How do you know about that?" My voice comes out as a whisper, all the breath stolen from my lungs by the impossibility of what he's just said.
Drake reaches into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulls out a folded piece of paper. The red envelope is gone, but I recognize the paper instantly.
My stomach plummets to my knees. He has my wish. He's read my wish. He knows exactly how desperate I am, how pathetic, how completely and utterly out of options.
"I'm here to grant it."
The words hang in the air between us, heavy with implication. I feel my grip tighten on the bat until the wood bites into my palms.
"Grant it." I repeat the words like they're in a language I don't speak, trying to make sense of syllables that refuse to form meaning. "You're telling me you're part of the... what did Madison call it? The secret society that grants wishes?"
"The Red Letter Syndicate." His voice is level, patient, like he's explaining something simple to a child who's being particularly slow. "And yes. I am."
"Jonah's never mentioned that or I would have never bothered. Then again, he never talked about his family or anyone else but himself so there’s that.
" The accusation falls from my lips before I can stop it, sharp and bitter and carrying the weight of every broken promise his family name represents.
Something flickers in his eyes. It’s there and gone so fast I might have imagined it. "Doesn't surprise me, but I can’t imagine why he would tell anyone in the first place. And why?”
Curiosity moves over his tight expression.
“Why what?”
I try to fold my arms over my breasts but that’s hard to do with a bat in my hands.
“Why would you not bother to place a wish? I don’t see how me being Jonah’s brother makes a difference. "
Bewilderment takes root deep in my chest. Is he for real?
"Doesn't it?" I take a step back, putting distance between us that feels woefully inadequate.
"You show up at my door in the middle of the night, telling me you're going to grant my wish like some kind of fairy godfather, and I'm supposed to believe your brother has nothing to do with it? Is this some sick joke? Is he still trying to tear me down? Why does he care after two years?" He must have told Jonah about our encounter and they both wanted to have a little fun. It’s the only thing that makes sense to me, because fate wouldn’t land my wish in Drake Moses’ lap any other way.
Drake's jaw tightens, the muscle flexing beneath the shadow of stubble. "Jonah doesn't know I'm here. Jonah doesn't know anything about this. And frankly, Jonah can go to hell."
Oh.
My lips form an O of surprise and well, I have nothing to say to that but, “Yeah, I agree.”
The venom in his voice catches me off guard. It's raw and real, nothing like the controlled power I've seen from him so far. For a moment, he sounds like a man who genuinely despises his own brother, and I don't know what to do with that information.
"What's the cost?"