Watching her curling into a tight ball on the floor and Drake towering maliciously over both of us, I realized what Elana had been about to say before the explosion. It had been neither Vincent Cole nor Jase Parker who attacked me. It had been Cameron Drake.
She had known that, and she had been foolish enough to believe his promises of clemency. She had made a deal with the devil to protect herself, and in return, it was going to cost us both our lives.
Drake’s arm thrashed in the air like a whip, whacking the particles of dust out of his way as he stepped closer. His eyes were cold and punishing when they finally found me, and when he smiled, he appeared cruel and menacing.
I wasn’t sure if my lungs still functioned or if my heart still pumped blood. There was a disconcerting heaviness dragging me down as if molten lead was sluggishly rolling through me.
I brought my hand to my nape and gripped the flesh hard until my nails punctured the skin. I felt slickness under my fingertips and ice pervading my flesh.
“It’s so nice to see you again, Charlotte,” Drake drawled in what he certainly believed was his most seductive voice. The light flickered, creating a sinister image of Drake, who shuffled forward and gesticulated with his gun. “After how we parted the last time, I was not so sure that you’d be happy to see me.”
Drake ducked to see my face and stomped like a child when all he found was contempt. I narrowed my eyes to keep the dizziness at bay and looked around for a way out, which made him chuckle and throw his hands in the air.
“Now, don’t be sullen,” he said. “I made all this effort to bring you here, and you already want to leave? Shame on you, Charlotte.”
“You’re deranged,” I coughed.
“Mouth, please. It doesn’t suit a lady to speak so rudely.”
His manner was so polite and collected, much like it had been the night of the Aequitas Awards, and I wondered, with a suffocating load of frustration, how I could have missed the signs. How could I have missed the crazed glint in his eyes or the danger he emanated like a poisonous, invisible twin?
Drake followed my gaze to Elana, who was whimpering and clutching tighter at her wound. “Oh yes, fascinating conversation you two had. Not quite what is expected from defending counsel, or better said, former defending counsel. But then again, you were never interested in defending Jack, were you?”
“I was interested in the truth, and I think you are right. Jack needs to be defended—from you and his father.”
My voice sounded stronger than I felt, a possible effect of the adrenaline rush still propelling me.
Drake shook his head and pursed his lips. “See, it’s this exact attitude that brought you here. Elana, on the other hand, was smarter, but well, not smart enough.”
At the sound of her name she whined and hugged her knees tighter with the little force left in her. She sensed Drake walking to her before she saw him and made a sound so terrifyingly pained that I shuddered in sympathy.
“I did say I would spare you,” Drake told her, poking her legs with the tip of his shoe. “And I would have kept my promise if you had been wise enough to leave and skip the chit-chat.”
I looked with eyebrows squished together and clouded vision from Drake to Elana’s rocking body, wondering why she had gone to all the trouble of filling the gaps in the story if she had already planned to sell me to Drake. The taste of betrayal rankled like a savage insult in my brain, but the sight of her, terrified and hurt, didn’t let me despise her.
“You seem confused,” Drake muttered, spinning back to me so fast that my world spun with him. “Why did she tell you everything if she had already stabbed you in the back? Because she had already decided to trade your life for hers. That’s what smart people do.”
I shook my head vigorously, not sure whether to show my disagreement or disgust.
“Oh, don’t give me that judgmental look,” Drake complained. “Being a coward and staying alive is more productive than being brave and dead. What good does it do you to know the truth?”
Regrettably, Drake was right. Searching and finding the truth behind Jennifer Gunnar’s death had brought me no benefits, yet I couldn’t convince myself that bowing my head and mindlessly complying would have been the better option.
“But now that you possess this truth you have been avidly looking for, let’s put the cards on the table. I didn’t kill Jennifer Gunnar because she threatened the mayor’s family and career with her unborn spawn, but because she was a gold-digger and a whore who deserved to die.”
My nostrils stung, and my throat ached as I sucked in a breath. I moved a step back for every step forward that Drake took. With his eyes wholly concentrated on me and his nostrils flaring, he looked just like the sociopath he was.
“Come on, ask the question you are dying to ask. Ask me if I enjoyed it.”
“You are a monster,” I breathed and covered my mouth with both my hands.
“What did I say about that mouth of yours?” he barked and flung himself into me with such force that he knocked the air right out of my lungs.
I hated the shriek of fear that escaped the taut line of my lips and the maddened satisfaction that gleamed in his gaze. I hated how I cowered when his hand fisted in my hair, and he shoved his gun between my eyes. And I hated even more that my body failed me. My legs quivered, and my hands limply gripped the arm he used to restrain me.
“You should think twice before taunting me,” Drake spat out each word, enforcing the threat and hatred behind them with a merciless shove of his gun against my forehead. “Now, ask me the damn question.”
I flinched and shut my eyes as his snarl reverberated around the room. “Did—did you enjoy killing Jennifer?”
“Oh, damn, yes,” he sighed heavily and looked as euphoric as a normal man would have after having an orgasm. “She was lucky number 33.”
My eyes bulged, and my feet, although bare, wobbled and almost bent at the ankles. Jennifer hadn’t been the only one. She had been the 33rd victim on a horrendously long list of fatalities.
“When she came into that room to find me sitting on the edge of the bed with a syringe between my fingers and a gun lying on the mattress, she was as surprised as you are right now. She begged, you know? She used her despicable child to try to save herself. I didn’t like that, not one bit. And I didn’t like either that I couldn’t make her hurt for every little stupid thing she had done. The bruises would have messed everything up. The police had to believe that it had been a crime of passion, that Jase Parker killed Jennifer because he couldn’t stand the idea that she would marry another man.”
With the gun still pressed to my head and his hand pulling at my hair, Drake looked into the distance, almost nostalgically. He recollected the whole ordeal through the eyes of a serial killer, enjoying his crime but still considering ways of perfecting it, ways that might come in handy for his next crime.
“Then you came snooping around, asking the wrong questions and ruining my hard work,” he snarled. “But you see, Charlotte, there will be no problem if you die with a few bruises and some broken bones because by the time they find you, they’ll need to run your dental records to identify you.”
I sniveled and braced myself for the impact of his strike, yet when he used the full force of his fisted hand coupled with the butt of his gun and hit me, I lost my balance and dropped like a lifeless puppet to the floor.
“You’ll be number 35,” Drake crooned and kicked me in the stomach.
I curled into a ball, exactly like Elana in the other corner of the room, and tried uselessly to get away from him. I crawled, ignoring the pain in my side and legs as shards and splinters and the cemented ground itself scraped at my skin. Drake kicked me again with all the anger he must have gathered ever since this nightmare began.
“Rheya was number 34,” I moaned as he planted his foot in my stomach again.
“Smart girl,” he laughed and clapped his hands mockingly.
The all-consuming pain of his
onslaught, combined with the choking smoke drifting inside the building, made me gasp and convulse, unable to draw in oxygen. Then I saw the hammer seated a mere three feet from where I was tossing and turning like a wounded animal.
If only I could reach the handle, if only my fingers could wrap around it and hold tight just for a second. I only needed a second to swing the hammer at Drake’s crotch, a blow that was certainly going to make him double over. I just needed a second of distraction, then this nightmare would be over.
But first I needed to reach it.
I slithered across the floor, my arm extended and my nails digging into the cement as my fingers groped for the hammer. My ribs ached with the movement, and my skin burned as fragments of dirt scratched it raw, but I forced myself to keep going.
“That would have been too easy, wouldn’t it?” Drake ridiculed and placed his foot over my fumbling hand.
I lifted my eyes to a diabolical face screwed up with severe loathing and wondered how I could have ever considered him beautiful. Drake winked right before his foot pressed down on my hand, and the bones in my fingers crunched noisily in protest.
I screamed so loud that my anguished howl boomed long after my jaw clenched, and my bones shattered. My small and ring finger hurt the worst like thick needles were inserted beneath my nails, right through my bones.
Drake chuckled.
The fluorescent lamps flickered again, then they were out with a sizzling cracking sound, leaving the room in shadows and lit only by a small poorly-functioning candle bulb that hung above a series of empty shelves.
“Charlotte,” I heard Marcus’s wild scream, and for the first time since I left his side on the dance-floor, I felt a glimmer of hope.
Once Drake had shut and blocked the door of the storage room, fear had been a constant clamor in my head, so loud and crippling that it had drowned out the screams and pleas for help and the crackling of fire from upstairs.
Now that Marcus’s voice permeated the fear and agony, every sound, thought, and smell bombarded me with keen accuracy.
I propped my weight on my elbow and pushed myself against the ground, closer to the door. I was almost smiling as I opened my mouth to shout back, to tell him that I was locked inside with a murderer, to tell him to get everyone out, to save himself. But Drake sucked the hope and happiness out of everything. He hit my calf and tsked while shaking his head in disapproval.
“You don’t want to do that,” he cautioned. He sounded unflappable and sympathetic, but his counsel was the clever disguise of a menace. Drake dangled the small black device he was holding in his left hand and smirked. “One tiny twitch of my finger on this little, red button and he goes poof.”
“You’re not getting away with this. If you kill me, everything I know will be on Leon Holden’s table by the morning.”
Drake read right through my bluff and laughed. He circled me slowly, venom dripping from his gaze.
“Pathetic,” he spat. “The most important piece of information you hold is right here.” He gestured to himself and took an unflinching hold of his gun, training it at my head. “And we both know you are not getting out of this room to share it with the prosecutor or anyone else for that matter. So there’s nothing you can threaten me with and nothing you can do to save yourself. I’m really sorry, Charlotte. If only you weren’t so nosy and so stupid...We’d have made an exquisite couple.”
I heard the furious roaring of the fire, and although dreadful, it was also comforting. I remembered the incandescent logs in the chimney of a Swiss chalet and the fire smoldering on a cold late night. I remembered the smell of freshly baked apple strudel and boiled cinnamon wine. I remembered peace, and I was dearly tempted to just close my eyes and let Fate have its way.
The flames kept crackling loudly, and the smoke threw the already dimly lit storage room into shadows. I glanced up at the ceiling just in time to see the vent grid blazing red, then a small explosion sent the grid to the ground like a projectile launched with the sole purpose of damaging everything in its path.
Elana, who I thought had already lost consciousness, hissed loudly just before I managed to roll over and out of the flaming grid’s radius. The grate only grazed Drake’s shoulder, but the collision had been so unexpected and so brutal that he fell to his side, cursing and snarling in pain. He cradled his shoulder, holding the gun awkwardly while completely forgetting about the black device he had used as a bargaining chip earlier.
I swiped the ground with my eyes and saw the small gadget flash a red light somewhere halfway between me and the blocked door. I lurched toward it, managing to prop my battered body on shaky, bruised hands and knees. If Drake couldn’t detonate another bomb and no harm would come to Marcus and whoever was still in the building, I could scream for help, I could—
Slick fingers gripped my ankle and pulled hard enough for it to dislodge. My arms gave up, and my body crashed to the floor with a dull thud. I cried as my chin connected to the ground, and my teeth chattered.
“Where do you think you’re going?” he demanded furiously as his fingers dug painfully into my ankle.
The vent hole spat flame after vicious flame, and the room started catching fire like a torch. Part of the ceiling crumbled down, pieces of concrete falling in a curtain of dust and ashes. The flames grew thick and merciless and scorched everything in their wake.
I looked in horror at the blazing inferno and struggled to pull myself to my feet. The firestorm had taken an ugly, painful form. And from its untamed flames stepped the perverted killer I had been hunting for. It was he who hunted me now, and he was ruthless.
Staggering and hunching in pain, Drake was no less lethal than he had been all this time, yet in his arrogance and physical agony, he’d granted me the only second of distraction I had needed.
I fished the revolver from the leather holster that was clasped around my thigh and forced my broken fingers to wrap around its handle. With every movement of my hand, it was like Drake was stepping on it all over again. But I had to learn to make the pain my dearest strength.
“Oh, that’s unpredictable,” Drake laughed as he watched my trembling hand aiming for him. “You want to shoot me with a toy and a broken hand?”
I nodded, not because he had expected an answer, but because I needed to believe that I could. While my right hand was severely hurt and my aim wavering, I knew it would have a more significant chance at succeeding than if I used my left one, which wouldn’t be able to hit a target even if it were glued to it.
“Very nice, but useless, nonetheless.”
With eyes full of hatred, Drake pointed his own gun at my head.
The thought that crossed my mind then was so ridiculous that it made me laugh. It was Friday. The story Marcus and I had written started on a Friday night, and sadly, it was about to end the same.
Two months was all we’d had, but I didn’t regret one second of it. What I regretted was that the last face I saw was the one of a murderer instead of the face of the man I loved.
Drake kept his gun pointed at me and walked to the step ladder that led up to the windows. “Goodbye, Charlotte.”
I didn’t know who pulled the trigger first.
The revolver shook and fell from my hand, then the most excruciating pain warmed my chest. I gasped, one last toxic breath before I hit the ground and rolled listlessly to my back.
Someone screamed for help and glass rained down from above, but my attention was solely focused on the fire. It was wild and incessant and beautiful. And it was burning as mercilessly as the pain in my chest.
“Charlotte,” I heard again and smiled.
In the dark, among the falling ceiling and through the chaos that had been unleashed, I fumbled for Marcus’s touch. But he was out of reach, and I was running out of time.
My vision clouded, and I reached one last time for him. There were no warm, soothing hands waiting for mine, no tender lips to brush across my forehead and urge me to be brave, nor strong arms to protect me.<
br />
There was only pain and fire. I coughed blood, feeling oddly cold except for the flames pounding a lulling rhythm in my breast.
Then fear finally wore off, and everything went slowly, peacefully dark.
About the author
Michelle crafts love stories that go beyond the flesh and touch the heart. She loves the perfect imperfections of her characters and favors alpha males with a soft side, who live by a code of honor, and witty ladies who are willing to risk everything for their men.
When she is not writing, she likes to read, travel, and watch her favorite TV shows. Among other things she is in love with chocolate, sunrises, and the sea.
Her debut novel is called Darkside Love Affair. She is currently working on her second novel, Love in Disguise, which is the sequel to Darkside Love Affair.
Michelle would love to connect with her readers. You can reach her at:
www.michellerosigliani.com
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The story continues in:
Love in Disguise
Preface
The heart is an exquisite machine—a little fist pumping life into your body, from the day you are born until you fall in love.
And then, it stops working properly.
The clockwork mechanism becomes faulty and unreliable. The cadenced heartbeats turn erratic until the pounding threatens to tear a hole through your chest. Then they falter and turn slower, soundless, until you fear your heart has stopped working altogether.
Love is an irrational, painful feeling.
Darkside Love Affair Page 55