I glance at the bodies on the ground.
Not if I make you bleed first.
4
Anna
The heart of a woman’s innocence beats to a lie.
That lie is a circus traveler throwing sharp knives at a spinning wheel. One slip-up and your fabric is pierced, flooding you with a truth you never wanted, and polluting what’s left of your soul.
The first time I saw him I was stumbling out of Eve’s apartment with last night’s red dress slipping from my shoulders. I was drunk on sex, life, a lack of sleep, too many margaritas… My thoughts were full of a man called Manuel who’d rocked my bed and my world. It was never going to be a long-term thing; we both knew the rules, so we’d savored each other like hope and honey for the short time we were allowed.
That’s the last time I tasted pure happiness, before the blindfold was torn from my eyes and the circus traveler did his thing. That night signified the final bow for a woman who, for twenty-five years, had been blessed with roses and encores.
The curtain fell for good the moment I caught Joseph Grayson’s attention.
Standing on the sidewalk by the black SUV, stone still, with a haunting presence about him, like a figure carved into an English mountainside. I couldn't tear my eyes away, and he couldn't tear his eyes from me, not even when his companion—the dark-haired devil my best friend seemed so enamored with—started talking to me.
He made me afraid. More afraid than I’d ever felt in my life. More afraid than the night my mother died, and the cold blue walls of loneliness turned her bedroom into a prison cell. He was a beautiful savage. A terrible monster… And he wore his danger like a Congressional Medal of Honor.
The wheel spun; the air parted as knives were thrown. I didn't know him, but he was the kind of corruption who would govern my world. In truth, he’d already started. I was drenched in the scent of another, but it was him who commanded all of my attention.
I flinch at the memory as he takes another sharp right.
“Are you injured?”
He’s driving fast—one hand loose on the wheel, the other clenched around the stick. His deep drawl is demanding answers, but offering nothing in return. I’m huddled up against the window, staring out at a blur of lights. The scent of his sin is an unwelcome backseat passenger. The front of his T-shirt is more red than white, and his fists are bleeding with another man’s blood.
“Do you need medical attention?” he demands again. “How bad did they hurt you?”
Not enough. Not as much as I deserve.
“I’m okay,” I croak.
There’s a pause. “You still high? What the fuck did you take this time?”
“Your lack of conscience.” I shoot him a look that's just as scathing. “The same thing you and Santiago built your kingdom of depravity on.”
More silence.
More time to drink in his dirty, savage profile without interruption.
His jaw is too rigid, too perfect for a man like him. Long straight nose, cut cheekbones, a golden tan and black tattoos on both biceps. He’s a cold heartbreaker all rusted up with sin. Captain America went rogue and landed in the devil’s playground.
“Five minutes, Luna,” I hear him rumble. “Five minutes later and there wouldn’t have been much of your ass left to save.”
I press my burning cheek against the glass and say nothing. That’s another thing I hate about him: I constantly find myself in his debt when he’s so complicit in my chaos. Then, I remember his declaration in the alleyway:
“I want the pleasure of breaking you all for myself.”
What a beautiful delusion he has. Why? Because he’ll never get the chance. I’m staying broken. It’s written in a sky that will never shine with stars again.
“Did you hear what I said?”
“Yeah, I heard you,” I say quietly. “But that doesn't mean I’m listening.”
His mask slips for a split-second, and I see the full flood of his frustration. Suddenly, I want to drive him so far away he’ll regret ever wanting to fix me.
“Maybe I was enjoying it… Maybe I wanted those men to do that to me. Maybe I like it rough, like they said. Have you ever stopped to consider that?”
He changes gears with a furious jerk.
“You're a bad fucking liar, Anna.”
To me?
To us?
To the dream of a possibility?
I hear the real accusation in his voice, but I block it out along with everything else.
“Do you want to know how I can tell?” He brakes violently as the lights change from yellow to red. “Because primal screams don't sound pretty, Luna, and yours were ugly as fuck.”
I dig my fingernails into my palms. Luna. He always calls me this, but I’m not deserving of that endearment. There’s nothing whole about me. I’m as empty as that word is complete.
“Open up,” he orders, his voice rough and abrasive like the carpet in the institutions he locks me up in.
“No.”
Never.
“Fucking do it!”
“It’s not your decision to make!” I dig deeper with my nails until I feel the sting.
“Staunch the wound. You’re bleeding out. You’ve been bleeding out for months.”
“This coming from a man who thinks stone-walling is a regular state of mind.”
I press my palms together to hide what I’ve done to myself.
“Tell your shrink what happened to you six months ago. Tell the mirror. Tell God, if you’re a believer. Don't keep it all inside. Trust me on this—”
“Does your skin ever burn when you say His name?” I mock, turning my inner masochism onto him. This man’s lack of morality is scrawled all over the gates of Heaven in crude graffiti. “I talk to God even less than I talk to my shrink.”
“Talk to Eve then.”
I turn back to the window. “I don't even know who she is anymore.”
“New last name, a little older, a little wiser, but the rest is the same.”
“How’s your Greek mythology?” I mutter, tears muddying my vision. “Hades and Persephone were just reincarnated in the twenty-first century.”
“Who gives a shit what they are if they work.”
“I do! She made the biggest mistake of her life marrying that man!” I swipe at my face angrily. “I hate her for making me her collateral. I was guilty by association the minute she fell in love with him. I was abducted because of that bastard, even though he’ll never own up to it.” And you’re just as complicit, I want to add.
“There are no mistakes, Anna, only consequences.”
“Bullshit. You’re all animals!”
“And you're self-destructing.”
I suck in a sharp breath. “Maybe I prefer to play God with my choices instead of talking to him.” He brakes again, and the seatbelt slices into my chest. “You want to know what happened to me six months ago, asshole? You and your jefe decided to play movie directors with the story of my life. You switched me from lead role to supporting without my permission…” I pause, turning back to the window. “I don't know why I was taken, Joseph. I don’t know why those men did what they did to me. Do you know how much that screws with a person’s head? And now? Now I’m as much in the shadows as you are in this epically fucked-up Santiago show.”
“Anna—”
“We’re toxic! I run—you chase. I mess up. You clean up. Don’t you ever get tired of it?”
He exhales on a curse, but doesn’t comment.
“Why me?”
“One day you’ll remember.”
“What does that even mean?” I say angrily. “And anyway, I have no interest in revisiting any of the sick shit that was done to me.” I’m never going back to that basement again.
I’m tired of this unresolvable, mute beast between us. I’m tired of the fact that I’ll never be able to thank him for saving me, because to do so would be to acknowledge our truth behind his gray-blue walls, and that scares me most of all
.
Why won’t he tell me why I was taken?
“I could never love a man like you, Joseph...” I trail off, refusing to give him a justification. What can I say? He inhales secrets and he exhales lies, but he’s also the only person who’s come close to reaching me in the last six months, and I can't have that complication in my life.
“Who says I want your love?”
I glance across at him, failing to disguise my shock. I’ve heard of hate fucks, but guilt fucks?
How stupid of me to think he’d want more. I’m damaged goods. I’m dented and crumpled and bent out of shape.
“Take me back to my apartment.” I slouch down into my seat, exhausted and bitter. My head is aching and I need to wash the night from my skin.
“No. We’re heading straight to rehab.”
“No. I’m going home!” I reach for the door handle, but he’s too quick for me, slamming his palm down on the universal door lock before I have a chance to open it. “I need to change my clothes,” I tell him, dragging a note of calm into my voice. “I can't go back to that place looking like this.”
He knows I’m right. Cursing, he takes the next exit, swerving across three lanes of traffic. He’s oblivious to the beeping horns and the chaos he’s causing, but men like him never care about the devastation in their rearview mirrors.
Ten minutes later, he’s pulling up outside my building. We fester to the tune of the running engine; the space between us crowded with the odor of dead things and all the stuff we can’t say. I watch him run his hand across his jaw, his icy gaze fixed on a point outside the vehicle.
“Joseph…” It’s right there on the tip of my tongue. Thank you.
“Be quick.” He pulls out his cellphone and switches off the locks. “Move. Before I change my mind.”
Without a backward glance I’m gone.
* * *
The elevator is out of order. My tears are a gathering storm as I climb the stairs to the third floor. They burst and spill as I’m slotting my key into the lock. By the time the door is shutting behind me, my pain is so great I’m collapsing against the wall to catch my breath.
Through a veil of matted blonde, I see the evidence of my former life all around me—the goofy smiling photos, the college memorabilia; the stupid sombreros that Eve and I bought on a trip to Mexico three years ago.
Llévame de vuelta.
I close my eyes and I’m right back there again, feeling the sunshine on my skin and the reckless joy of an unwritten future. It’s true what they say—youth is wasted on the young. It’s also wasted on the trusting and the naïve, and those who haven’t been touched by evil.
Brushing away my tears, I kick my heels off and scrunch my bare toes into the carpet. I want to be the girl I don’t recognize in those photos. I want to dance and laugh and act wild and crazy under a brave new moon. Most of all, I want to forget.
A weird sensation is creeping up on me as I move into the living area. It’s an old favorite that doesn't fit, but I keep it hanging in the closet of my mind anyway.
Run.
Before I know it, I’m tearing off the remains of my dress and stumbling into the bathroom.
Run.
After a three-minute blast from a hot shower, I’m pulling on skinny jeans and a black sweater over damp skin. Next, I’m throwing a random collection of clothes into an overnighter and ransacking my nightstand for my passport. I have no plan, no destination…just this manic urge to go backward instead of forward, to reset my life without fear and without him.
It has to be without him.
My shadow is the fault line separating my before and my after, and I’m done surviving on his earthquake tremors.
Once I’ve finished packing, I peek through a crack in the curtains to the street below. His SUV is still parked. Driver’s door shut. I know he’s in there, waiting not so patiently for my compliance.
Run.
Flinging my cellphone onto the bed, I throw my bag over my shoulder, yank my pink Chucks on, and let myself out of the apartment. I make it halfway across the threshold, and then I’m leaning back in to grab the Polaroid of Eve and me that I keep tucked into the mirror. Shoving it into my bag, I cross the hallway and rap on my neighbor’s door.
I’m praying she’s up late watching Frasier re-runs again.
I’m also praying she still has fire escape access from her kitchen balcony.
5
Joseph
Rick Sanders’ number is tapped into my cell before Anna is out of the car. The call connects as she’s entering the building.
“Where are you?” I grit out.
Rick laughs, wicked and rough, a sound that would make any outlaw proud. “Balls deep in heaven, if you must know.”
Some woman starts giggling away in the background.
Jesus Christ. “Put your whore to bed. We need to talk.”
“Call me back in an hour. She’s just come all over my cock, and I’d like to return the favor. I offer up the veneer of a gentleman, if not the longevity.”
Motherfucker. Rick’s no more a gentleman than I am. He bleeds Brooklyn swagger and perversion. He’s the biggest distributor of cocaine in New York and Florida. A position that Dante and I just strengthened for him when I fired a bullet into his biggest rival.
“Speak now, or you can deal with Dante’s displeasure. Your choice.” And, let's be honest, neither of us wants to fuck with that.
There’s a pause, and then he’s making a big show of groaning out his irritation.
“Jesus. Fine. Hold on.” There’s the sound of rustling sheets and female squawks of protest. “Okay, I’m listening… Is this a local call or an international one?”
“Local.”
“Thought you were heading back to his island?”
“I had some business to take care of in Miami first.”
Rick laughs. “I see. Does this business happen to be a hot blonde, around 5’7”, with a suicidal disposition?”
His curiosity turns my hand into a tight fist. I’m not the only predator with Anna in his sights, but our respective end games couldn't be more different. He wants to fuck her. I want to fight for her. I want to slay every demon she wages war with, and restore her crown. As for Sanders, he’d rather hang it on the bedpost when he was done and leave her drowning in dirty sheets.
I need to make shit right. Years of working for Santiago have twisted that compulsion to match the direction of his bullets, but the rules have never changed as far as I’m concerned.
My fingers stray to the chain around my neck, to the two wedding rings locked together there.
Protected.
Respected.
Lost.
Not this time.
“We need to meet.” I wrench my fingers away.
“Fine. I’m in Miami. I flew in last night.”
“Where?”
“I bought Andrei Petrov’s old place down on the waterfront. Had to wash Dante’s blood off the desk first, though.” Sanders chuckles darkly at the memory.
“Give me an hour, and Rick?”
“Yeah?”
“Lose the company.”
He sighs in annoyance. “Stop shitting on my parade, you moody asshole.” And then I’m left listening to the silence of a disconnected call.
I check my watch. Fifteen minutes. I’ll give her another five, and then I’m banging down her door. I’ve called ahead already, and the team at the Greens facility is expecting us. Rehab will keep her safe from herself, from all those who’d take advantage of her, from me...
Next thing I know I’m ramming my fist into the center of the steering wheel—inhaling the pain like it’s a goddamn drug; blind rage hitting me square out of nowhere.
“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”
I slam my fist down, over and over—my loss of control as shocking to me as it is to the couple passing by outside.
I had no business spilling my lust to her. It broke all the rules. She wears her emotions like an armor to hide th
e emptiness inside, whereas I feel the slices and cuts of both of our agonies behind an ice-cold exterior. Anything else is a weakness I can't afford.
Flipping off the couple outside, I send a message to the cleanup crew. My hands are still stained from the mess I made. First the Russian, and then those two bastards downtown, and for the second time tonight I regret killing too quickly. Their deaths should have symbolized their stupidity. They hurt something of mine; something I’ve already claimed—in mind, if not in body and spirit yet.
I should have toyed with them the same way Dante does: exposing new facets of fear behind their eyes, stripping them of their masculinity. Making them beg for their mothers and for a mercy that would have been a pleasure to deny them.
Instead I lost control.
Red dress. Spun gold. So much fucking life.
Nineteen minutes.
Where the hell are you, Anna?
I pull up the tracking app I installed on her cell. She’s still in her apartment. Inactive. She must be in the shower. I imagine her slumped over in the stall, bruised and wrecked, the water running in messy rivulets over the marks left by two dead men.
Five more minutes, I tell myself, hissing out a breath.
I last three, and then I’m striding across the sidewalk and into the building, letting the door slam shut behind me, the thin metal frame rattling like thunder in the still, dark quiet of the night. I’ve known her security code for a long time. I know everything about her except for her thoughts, but I’m learning to predict them, and that’s what’s making me uneasy.
The elevator is out so I take the stairs at a run. The feeling that she’s slipping away is icing up my spine. It’s a feeling I never thought I’d have again. It’s a feeling that drives down deep into my bones like that twister all those years ago. Mixing with the poison there. Making me want to fix her even more.
“Anna?” I reach her apartment and pound my anger into the woodwork. Once, twice, three times... “Anna, open the fuck up!” I pause for a beat to listen. No pleas to keep the noise down or panicked footsteps. Nada. Nothing. She wouldn’t dare. “Anna! Open this goddamn door now!” I take a step back to gain some traction, lifting my boot to smash it in.
Shadow Man: Grayson Duet: Book One Page 3