by Anne Malcom
His threat was clear. Though I held majority shares, he could cause some serious trouble for me if he misrepresented the situation to the shareholders. Or even if he represented it exactly as it was. Because he was right, this business didn’t bother with morals when money was concerned. They didn’t care about bloodstains on a contract, heck they’d sign in blood if it meant more zeros at the end of their already bloated bank accounts.
I stared at Abe over my papers, gaze focusing across the room with cold indifference, like his was nothing more than an annoying fly.
My pause was long, purposeful and much longer than his. Long enough to make the stuffed suits shift uncomfortably in their chairs. The women smirked knowingly. I stayed stock still, not moving my gaze.
“I would advise you not to belittle me, nor make any assumptions about my work ethic based on the fact I wear heels,” I addressed Abe mildly. “Because, that, my dear uncle, would be a grave mistake.” I leaned back in my chair slightly and crossed my legs, so the red soles of my shoes flashed to the table.
“You see, the fact I wear these shoes makes me so much more dangerous than you could ever be because I do everything you do, except I do it better. And I do it wearing shoes that you couldn’t even walk a centimeter in, let alone a mile. There is nothing more dangerous than a woman who does everything a man can do, and all the while gritting her teeth in the pain that her six-inch heels cost her.” I didn’t move my gaze. “Nothing. You’d do well to remember that before you make any more threats, veiled or otherwise.” I stood, straightening my skirt and not addressing the variety of stares and slack jaws. I handed my iPad to a grinning Vaughn while I kept my face blank and tone empty. “I apologize, but I have other meetings to attend to. I assume we’re done here?”
Without waiting for an answer, I turned on my thousand-dollar heel that sent spikes of pain up my calf and walked out of the room like I was in my comfiest slippers.
That was the trick. Even when the pain was so deep you thought it might cripple and scar you for life, you never let on. You outwardly acted like there was nothing that could hurt you. Because if you acted otherwise, then everything could.
I didn’t know why it surprised me, considering the fact that I’d been almost killed the week before. But maybe that’s why the man in the apartment did surprise me. I somehow thought I was safe. That I escaped with only scars of just how deep death’s grip had sunk into me.
But no one escaped death. And it seemed death had its eye fixed squarely on me.
I was surprised, because I was glancing down at the three-page email Abe had sent me after the meeting. I was dealing with lawyers who were advising the best course of action in exiting the merger at the last minute.
None of it was an excuse to not notice the presence of a stranger in my apartment. But living in one of the most expensive and well-protected buildings in Manhattan gave me a misplaced sense of security. Ivory towers, no matter how tall, were never as safe as they seemed. In fact, tonight, my ivory tower was about as safe as a dirty and dark alley.
I didn’t scream when he came at me. It wouldn’t have been prudent, anyway. I had the entire top floor. No one would hear me. I could’ve run, I supposed, but in the time it took for me to register his presence and assess my options, he was already dead.
Because there wasn’t just one man in my apartment.
There were two.
The second was standing beside the body he’d just created, his knife dripping with blood, crimson droplets landing on his scuffed boots.
I blinked down at the body slowly leaking blood along my marble floor. Freshly polished, too. I made a note to call my housekeeper.
I stepped to the left to avoid my shoes bearing evidence to its journey. Whatever cool detachment had been keeping me level started to shake as reality set in. I couldn’t lose it. Even when I’d just witnessed another man murdered. In my apartment no less.
It was not the dead man’s wide and empty stare I should’ve been focused on.
My gaze moved up to a stare that was anything but empty.
Eyes that had been regarding me since the body of my would-be murderer hit the floor.
Wolf eyes.
I focused on them. Tasted the texture of the gaze that was both wild and caged at the same time.
I licked my lips.
The wolf eyes followed this movement.
“That’s number two,” I observed, finding the key I’d been struggling with to shut the door to my mind. The one where your right and left combine. Where it was a free for all between logic and pure human instinct. I had to struggle to keep the left on top, instinct, feelings could be the end of everything. I was no longer under the illusion that I was safe. Even with the man who’d tried to kill me dead. Danger still permeated the air.
Wolf eyes flickered, betraying confusion while staying silent.
“Number two on the list of people that you’ve killed,” I clarified.
He laughed then. It shocked me at first, the way it bounced off the bitter air and tasted sweet. The chord of it was throaty and masculine, underlying a rough growl.
“Number two,” he repeated, his voice that same rough growl. Deep, thick, like he was unused to using his tongue to form words. Like he was testing them out, rolling them around in his mouth.
I nodded.
He stepped forward and I wished my body didn’t betray me by involuntarily moving back half an inch. Retreat was a sign of weakness. He noticed this and his eyes hardened, but he didn’t stop his approach.
Then he was there. Close enough that the fabric of his leather jacket brushed against the silk of my blouse. Close enough so the weight behind the intensity focused on me was suffocating.
“Two perhaps a number for another list, but not that one,” he rasped, searching my face.
I searched his back, hoping for answers to the enigma that was this man. The answer behind his words was death. The promise that he’d dealt it. Yet somehow I couldn’t bring myself to care.
“What’s the other list?” I asked.
For some reason, perhaps insanity, I wasn’t threatened. Or scared. For my physical safety anyway.
His eyes flickered over me, cool and hot at the same time, his gaze caressed me with his hands fisted firmly at his sides. He didn’t speak so I guessed this was his non-verbal reply. He didn’t need to speak.
The other list was about me.
It was comforting at least that this obsession wasn’t all in my own head. Sharing an obsession with a man who’d murdered two human beings without hesitation shouldn’t have been comforting.
But it was.
The eyes that have served as wallpaper in my brain were now here, unblinking, cold, ruthless.
Now I was staring at them, up close in all their wild beauty, tasting the scent of his presence, I didn’t want it to become a memory.
So I did something impulsive.
Or said something impulsive.
“Do you happen to have a job?”
Wolf eyes flickered and his face tilted with confusion. He still didn’t speak. What he did do, was step back.
“It seems to me that there is someone rather intent on causing me harm and you’ve been in the vicinity to stop that happening...twice.” I frowned at him, and at myself for not choosing to question him on how he came to be in the vicinity twice. The alley was explainable. My apartment, not so much. But I didn’t query about that. I kept speaking.
“I’m taking an educated gamble that if it was you that wanted me dead, you could have just sat back and watched the show the first time around. Or the second.” I glanced around the room that smelled familiar—blood and death was a scent that was an unwelcome but permanent fixture in my brain—I chased away the memories that came with it. “And, if you really wanted to, kill me, that is, I’m sure you could. Now. Third time’s a charm.”
I waited. The silent invitation filling the air while his eyes, never leaving me charged it with something else.
Something else that wasn’t murder.
Yet it was carnal all the same.
I blinked it away. The desire. I reasoned it was connected to adrenaline and the near-death experience. My body was clutching onto something that wasn’t pure terror. I had a hauntingly beautiful man right in front of me. It made sense.
“So. You’re not here to murder me,” I deduced when he didn’t use the knife he was still clutching to slit my throat. “I don’t believe in coincidences, we’ll have to address how you happened to be inside my apartment to prevent my death at a later juncture. For now, let’s start with a simple question. Are you gainfully employed?”
He stared at me another beat, perhaps gaging my sanity. He didn’t speak.
I crossed my arms, partly for the gesture but mostly to hide the way my nipples decided to harden at an inopportune moment. “I’ll take that as a no. As it happens, I have a position available that you’d be perfect for.” I glanced to the body and swallowed the bile that came with it. I kept my mask on my face. It was always on. Even when I was alone. Especially when I was alone. The most important person I needed to hide from was the reflection in the mirror.
“You’ve already aced the interview,” I continued. “So I’d like to formally offer you the position. It’s a generous salary and comes with full benefits.”
“Position?” he repeated on a low grumble.
I nodded, his voice hitting me physically. “As head of my security.”
Again, that ripple flickered across his gaze. “I killed a man in front of you, inside your apartment, a place I should not have been, and you’re not asking me why I was here, you’re offering me a job?”
“Correct,” I replied. “Though I will have follow up questions on how you got here. For now, I’m alive and I have you to thank.”
“I’m not a bodyguard,” he clipped.
I glanced down to the body once more. “I beg to differ.”
He scowled at me. “I’m not the man for the job.”
“You seem quite suited.”
He gripped his knife, his eyes emptying of whatever had been there before. Humanity, perhaps.
Real fear came creeping back in, caressing my spine with its claws.
“You don’t even know me,” he said, registering my fear but not doing anything to quell it, if anything, he schooled his features to increase it.
I nodded after swallowing roughly. “No, I do not. And you do not know me. Yet twice you have risked a lot—killed—to stop me from becoming nothing more than a stain on that floor.” I nodded to the marble. “I doubt anyone I meet and do an expensive background check on will be able to boast the same.”
He stared at me, into me, it seemed. But then that fire in his eyes wouldn’t be burning if he saw into me. If he glimpsed the rotten core.
“I don’t need a job.”
I raised a brow at him, staring pointedly at his boots. I didn’t know why they had become the signifier that the man needed a job, but they somehow were. Because everything about this man, from his sculpted muscles to his entire energy told me he would not be the kind of man to walk around in scuffed and almost ruined leather boots if he could help it.
“I freelance,” he all but growled at my silent assumption.
“What does that mean?”
His eyes narrowed. “Means I freelance.”
I tilted my head. “Does that mean you’re a hitman?”
His mouth twitched. “No.”
I nodded. “Okay. Well, whatever it is you do isn’t affording you enough resources to buy you new footwear, so how about you do a week trial?”
He stared at me. “You offerin’ me a job protectin’ you despite the fact not one second ago you thought I was a hitman.”
I didn’t waver my own stare, hadn’t in the years I’d been in business, but in a decade, I’d never had to try harder to keep my face impartial. “You disputed that.”
His eyes were glaciers. “I could have lied.”
I raised my brow. “I don’t think you did.”
He stepped forward again, the fabric of our shirts, our worlds, brushing once more. I didn’t feel the fear this time, because he did it deliberately to prove a point. You didn’t get to where I did without recognizing when men decided to use their size to intimidate.
Terror was what any normal person would feel having a brute of a man—a killer—do such a thing as step forward with wild eyes and clenched fists.
I wasn’t normal.
“A hitman would’ve lied,” he murmured, his voice a blade.
I swallowed. “Yeah,” I agreed. “And I would have been able to tell.”
He eyed me. “I’m a good liar.”
I eyed him right back. “I’m better, baby,” I rasped. “I may not be able to hit like a man.” I glanced down to the fists. “But I can lie like one, fuck like one and recognize sincerity, or lack thereof. You’re not a hitman. Yet you’ve killed people.” My gaze flickered over him, the way he held himself. “You’re most likely a SEAL, or at least a high-ranking officer in the army, in a branch that the government would never admit existed.”
He stepped back suddenly and glanced from the body to me. “You know that, how?”
I shrugged. “I’m observant.” My eyes went to his bicep. “Semper Fi.”
His eyes went there too, for a split second looking at his own skin as if it were foreign, as if someone had etched the ink onto it without him knowing.
Or maybe it was the face of someone looking at their solid, corporal skin, when they realized they were not invisible as they pretended to be.
As they needed to be.
Or maybe I was just reading far too much into it.
Because I was reading far too much into him.
His gaze quickly met mine once more, eyes shuttered, blank. Animal once more.
“Doesn’t matter who I was,” he growled. “That’s a different life. I’m a different man now.” He paused. “I’m not a man now. And I’m not someone to be protectin’ anything.”
And then, with one more loaded moment, with one more second of a pause in my heartbeat, he turned on his boot and walked out of my apartment.
He left bloody footprints in his wake.
“This is the second time you’ve been attacked, and a dead body was left by a mysterious stranger, Ms. Crofton,” the same detective from last week said, looking up from his iPad.
We were in his offices now.
Or someone’s office.
I doubted that this man had an office of his own, even if he was a detective. There were no such luxuries as a police officer. Then again, this was New York. Police officers didn’t need offices because their office was the streets. It would be a cold day in hell before this violent city banished law enforcement officers behind a desk pushing paper.
But I was high profile.
I had a reputation.
I needed privacy to be interviewed.
Or interrogated.
His tone didn’t exactly betray suspicion or accusation, merely curiosity. It was rather obvious I hadn’t committed the murder since my white sheath dress didn’t even have a speck of blood on it, nor did my smooth and steady hands. I had called in the body mere seconds after a man left bloody footprints and a shaking soul in his wake.
The police arrived mere minutes later.
I was Charlotte Crofton. A member of the elite. The one percent. The people that ran the world and could get away with murder (and they did, routinely, though not usually with their hands dirty) as long as they had enough money and sway to do so.
Of course, rich people got convicted of things all the time.
But it was not just about the money.
Money was easy to make.
Easier to lose.
But it was power.
Power was one of the hardest currencies to become wealthy in. But once gained, it bought more than billions of dollars.
And I had it.
Hence me sitting in what I guessed was the chief�
��s office with a glass of sparkling water—that I had no idea where they got—comfortably sitting across from the officer who had found me at a murder scene for the second time in as many weeks.
“Yes, I do agree it’s all rather dramatic,” I said, my voice calm.
My mind was not focused on the office with a laboring air conditioner causing my glass to sweat like a criminal in one of the interrogation rooms. Nor the shrewd and probing gaze of the detective, his whisky colored eyes inspecting me. My mind was on a very different pair of eyes. Eyes that did not inspect me. Eyes that dissected me.
Boots that smeared blood on marble as they strode away from me.
“Dramatic and unusual,” Detective Maloney, ‘but please call me Dominic’ said. “Something beyond a random act of violence, like we deduced last time.”
He said last time with a heaviness, a weight that settled on me with the memory of my terror. My weakness. My power being snatched away from me.
Of course, I didn’t betray that outwardly.
I never would.
It was tantamount to suicide in my world—admitting weakness. And that was amongst the men. Me, a woman, one who paid dearly for her position, it was something a lot more than that. Because the thing worse than death for me, was being helpless. Powerless.
“This is a violent world, Detective Maloney,” I replied, my voice steel. “A violent city.”
He narrowed his brows at me. The gesture itself was not threatening or aggressive, he was a man trying to figure out a puzzle.
“It is,” he agreed. “But in this violent world, it is an anomaly to be saved by a stranger once. Let alone twice. Factoring in the fact that this stranger killed both attackers with skill and efficiency only possessed by career criminals, or professionals, it is not random.” There was no question in his words yet one in his tone.