Even though Daryl wasn’t the nicest of guys, and I definitely did more work than he did, we had gotten into a rhythm.
The kitchen had been hot today, the back fire exit opened earlier than normal, and a few times, I wanted to step out to the back alley and catch some fresh air. I hadn’t been out, knowing Jimmy wasn’t there, and also I didn’t want any of my new co-workers to suddenly recognise me from before. However, as today’s special had been steamed lobster linguini, I knew I would need to either peel my clothes off or step outside.
After service was over and we waited for the last few plates to come back to the kitchen, I bit the bullet and stepped outside.
My first thought was how incredibly dirty it was, my second was how narrow it was. I’d been away for what, four weeks, and I was suddenly too good for the back alley? I took a further step out and looked for Jimmy’s boxes. They weren’t here. No one had taken up our spots. Where was Jimmy? Was he okay? Had Raphe hurt him?
The alley was so quiet. Desolate. It felt wrong. I was aware of him before I saw him, and taking a further step out, I looked up the alley to see Raphe leaning against the wall, his eyes fixed on me as he smoked a cigarette. He was standing in the exact spot I used to sleep. His gaze locked with mine, and I wet my lips, my mouth dry with apprehension. He tossed the cigarette and walked towards me. No, he didn’t walk, he prowled.
“Homesick?”
I shivered at the sound of his voice, the cold tone matching the frozen eyes. “Where have you been?”
“Get your stuff, you’re done.” He went to walk past me into the kitchen.
“I haven’t finished work,” I protested.
He half turned to look at me, and I couldn’t hold his cold glare, instead dipping my head in acknowledgment before meekly following him into the kitchen. Without a word, he headed straight through to the main dining area, while I hastily collected my coat after stripping off my apron and hat, shaking my hair free. I went after him, ignoring Daryl’s protests and some other questions from my co-workers. I’d rather endure their wrath than Raphe’s.
He was talking to Levi when I went out, his mouth closing tightly when he saw me. He waited, and I hurried to him, sensing his impatience. Levi went to speak, but one look from Raphe, and he glanced at me with a frown. Raphe walked out of the restaurant, and with an apologetic look to Levi, I once again followed.
The shiny black car was waiting, Raphe standing beside it holding the passenger door open. I got in without question, wincing as the door slammed shut behind me. I watched him stalk around the car before he slid into the driver’s seat. As he started driving, I wasn’t sure if I should speak or not. Deciding it couldn’t get worse, I opened my mouth to speak.
His hand came up, one finger raised in warning. “No.”
My mouth snapped shut. Fine then. Turning slightly in my seat, I stared out the window as we drove the few miles back to the condo, taking in the darkened streets and watching with slight envy, the seemingly carefree lives of the people as we passed them. Raphe drove into the underground parking, and in silence, we walked to the elevator together. My anxiety became more intense as we rode up to the penthouse, more so when we reached the door and he looked at me with a raised eyebrow. Gritting my teeth, I opened the door, noting that Raphe was not happy at the knowledge I really could come and go.
As I walked into the penthouse, the door closed quietly behind me. My emotions were threatening to burst, and with a bravery I didn’t know I had when it came to confronting Raphe, I turned to face him. The words didn’t come, the sheer fury on his face was enough to render me once again speechless. Raphe took a step towards me, and I shrank back from his anger, starkly reminded in that moment of the danger from the man in front of me.
“Did I tell you that you could go out?” Raphe asked me as he held my gaze.
“I’m not a prisoner,” I whispered softly.
“Yes.” He took another step towards me. “You fucking are.”
Suddenly my own anger rose at his sheer arrogance. He’d been gone for four days. “Fuck you.”
“I told you, I don’t fuck vermin.”
“Go to hell. Better yet, go wherever it is that you’ve been.” I stormed past him, my anger overtaking my common sense, and I spun back to confront him. “You left me. Again! What if something happened to me?” He stood there, coolly, not even the slightest bit concerned at my anger. How could he be so indifferent? “While you were gone, yes, I got out and you know what, I got a job. I’ve worked at that job and not mentioned you once, or what I saw. If you don’t like it, fucking do something about it.” My breathing was rapid as I fought to control my emotions. “Or better yet, do something about me.” Turning my back on him, I walked away from him, scared I had pushed him too far. However, my temper was still high, and I couldn’t stop the words spilling free. “Until you decide what you’re doing, you don’t need to talk to me,” I tossed heatedly over my shoulder as I reached the bottom of the stairs.
“You’ve not said my name once?” His voice was soft, quiet, and instantly I knew something was wrong. It was dread that caused my feet to freeze in place.
No, he couldn’t know. My eyes closed in silent prayer. “No.” My voice wavered slightly, the lie betraying me.
Suddenly, he was behind me. He dipped his head into mine, and my skin prickled at his closeness, goose bumps covering me as he gently lifted my hair out of the way, baring my neck. “Really?” His voice was a whisper as his lips brushed carelessly against my ear. “Because when you were lying there, fucking yourself with your fingers, it sounded a lot like Raphe that you cried out as you came.”
My body flushed with horror and embarrassment. He stepped back, and it broke the immobilising spell he held over me. Wordlessly, I ran up the stairs, fleeing to my room, his soft laughter following me before I slammed the door behind me, a useless barrier between me and the man below.
Slumping against the door in complete mortification, my hands covered my heated cheeks as overwhelming dismay washed over me.
How the hell did he know?
Watching her run up the stairs, I fought the smirk even as my laughter echoed around the room. I was still so fucking furious with her and Aiden. He needed to keep his distance, or I was liable to shoot the insufferable prick if he came anywhere near me. Crossing back to the kitchen, I grabbed a bottle of water before heading to the den. Pausing in the corridor, I headed back to the front door. Stepping out into the foyer, I closed the door firmly behind me. Satisfied that I had locked the penthouse, I opened the door with my thumb and the retinal scan. Once inside again, I pulled up the system on my phone and overrode her access.
I didn’t even begin to understand Aiden’s security system, but as I was living here, he gave me access to the system for ease of use. The fact it was controlled through an app on a phone gave me pause initially, but as Aiden commented, God help the stupid fucker who tried to break in when I was here. Content that I had wiped the street rat from the system, I headed back to the den. I hadn’t even changed clothes before I went looking for her. I needed a shower and hopefully a few hours of sleep. My anger was still coursing through my veins, and I didn’t trust myself to go upstairs in case I strangled her for her disobedience.
Sitting down in the soft leather recliner, I felt my muscles relax minutely. Aiden may be a dick, but he had great taste in furnishings. The bed and the seating were top class, and I had crashed on this chair more times than I should have.
Drinking deeply, I let the cool water ease the tightness of my throat as I thought over the last few hours. I had come straight to the penthouse from the airport. I hadn’t announced myself when I came in, taking note of the place and that she had obviously been cleaning it. I had left her with food, but I had never planned to be gone for more than two days. New York had been satisfying. I had eliminated the threat to Ray’s life on the very first night. I had been wrong, Carlisle had tried to run. There was no honour in running. If you wanted to make the move t
o kill the head of a family, you owned that move. You did not have a bag and a private jet waiting to take you from the country. Not even to another state, Carlisle was ready to abscond to another country.
Fucking dipshit.
The first thing I did on the drive to the motherfucker’s house was check flight manifests. Although I had been sure he wouldn’t run, it didn’t mean I didn’t check the fucking basics. He even had the flight details in his name. I shot him in each kneecap for that insult.
I’m a confident man. I’m sure I would never spill my secrets in the face of death, and it always disgusted me how easily others spilled their secrets. However, I had never faced me, and maybe my moniker of the Wraith was enough to make even the hardest of criminals cry like a baby. Because Javier Carlisle had wept like a newborn after I shot his kneecaps out. By the time I was finished with him, I knew everything there was to know about the East Coast unrest between families. Unrest I had, up until that point, been sure that Ray was in control of.
Armed with information that many wouldn’t be happy with me knowing, I returned to Ray. I told him what I felt he needed to hear, and this time he did pay me. He paid me to wipe out some of the higher tiers of the factions. They had fired a shot at Ray Lastra, and he had fired back. Only his shot was me. I wasn’t a warning shot. I was retaliation and retribution.
Having gotten his business back in order, I had left my cousin to continue holding the East Coast, as was his right. Two days later than planned, I returned to Denver. Louis and Malcolm were back in Colorado and secure, both left New York the day after the event at the house.
Arriving back in Denver, I had headed straight to the penthouse, sure I would be faced with a sullen guest. I had not expected to find her gone. It hadn’t even occurred to me that she would get out. Careless.
I had checked the rooms I knew she could access, including my own. Instead of finding shredded clothing, which I had been half expecting, I found dry cleaning hanging outside my closet. Her room was slightly untidy, but she had obviously been there recently. Making my way to the security room, a room she couldn’t get into, I switched on the surveillance tapes.
Aiden had trust issues. Or a kink. I didn’t really know or care which one it was. I suspected the latter. I didn’t judge. The fact he had cameras was advantageous to me at this time. He didn’t have cameras in the bathrooms; apparently, that was a step too far over the line. My question of why he thought there needed to be a line apparently made me more of a “scary fucker” than he initially thought.
Flicking through the last few days, I saw her leave the first day with Aiden before watching her come in and out of the penthouse like she owned it. My jaw clenched as I watched the footage. I watched her strip her clothes off as she came home and climbed the stairs, walking up them with only her underwear. Should I feel guilty I never told her she was being filmed? Probably. Did I? No. I didn’t give a fuck about her sensitivities.
I watched her in her bed, looking for a clue as to where she was going. I had almost skipped her restlessness on the first night, but when she got up out of the bed again, I rewatched the tape, realising what she had been doing under the privacy of her blankets. I never expected to hear her whispered cry of my name. Being a sadistic bastard, I then watched her the following nights too, paying close attention. When I heard her call my name out on the third night too, I felt a thrill of pleasure. My name on her lips sounded good, too good. I didn’t like it, and I definitely did not like the hardening of my dick either when I played it back one more time, relishing in hearing her soft moans.
Despite Devon’s obvious bad taste in men, neither of the times she called for me actually told me where the hell she was. Frustrated, I’d ended up having to call Aiden, knowing the petty bastard would be delighted I had to ask him.
“Where is she?”
“Ah, you’re back. You’ve been gone a while.”
“Where is she?”
“Are you worried she won’t come back?” Aiden asked me with a laugh.
“I know she comes back. Now for the final time, where the fuck is she?”
“I conducted a small experiment—” Aiden began.
“Aiden, they’re going to need fucking science experiments to identify your body if you don’t tell me where the fuck she is.”
His laughter made my blood boil, and I knew then that I would need to keep my distance, or else I would be ripping his spine out through his throat. “She’s somewhere you’d never expect.” He sounded smug. Fuck it, I was going to hurt him on principle. “My experiment was to get her a job and see what would happen. See what she would do. What you would do. Will you leave her or run to her?”
“What?” I stopped pacing. “You got her a job and left her? Where?”
“Yes.” He sounded so smug. “She surprised me. So far, you haven’t.”
“Are you stupid? Do you know why she wasn’t supposed to be free?”
“No. She wouldn’t tell me and neither did you.”
“Because she’s a fucking witness,” I growled down the phone.
“Oh.”
“Where?”
“Levi.”
I hung up on him.
He had taken her to the scene of the fucking crime, and she had what? Stayed there? They were both fucking crazy and both fucking stupid. I had absolutely no tolerance for stupidity. What the hell was she thinking?
When I saw her tonight, the only thing that kept me from shooting her in the fucking alley was the fact she had returned to her job each day. Why? To actually work or to gain trust from others before she ratted me out. Once I had answers, I would get rid of her. She was more of a liability now. More people would notice her absence. I should have killed her the very first night I found her passed out in the alley.
I had no fear she would get much attention if she did go to the cops. I owned most of them, and the ones that I didn’t, well, she wouldn’t get that far. What I would not allow was her thinking she was free to come and go as she pleased.
Devon was not free. I owned her right to freedom, and the quicker she accepted it, the easier it would be for me.
As I drove to the bistro, I did question again why I was so intent on delaying the inevitable. However, the need to know also drove me. Why was she on the street? Who had she run from? How far had she run before she settled? She said she was from Nevada, but so far my guy hadn’t found a trace of her. Her last name was Lancaster. She had given the information to Lucille, who had inputted it into her system. Unbeknownst to Lucille, I had access to her system and had removed Devon from it, because Lucille let cops into her system when they were looking for those who didn’t want to be found.
Devon Lancaster didn’t want to be found.
I knew it. I simply didn’t know why.
When I got to the bistro, I’d avoided the main restaurant and headed straight to the back alley. It was empty. I knew it would be. Les had taken care of the homeless guy, and I had taken care of Devon. Kind of. Walking up past the fire exit from the bistro that led to the alley, I’d once again checked around the corner, making sure she couldn’t have seen anything conclusive from that night.
Other than me.
As I looked at her small sleeping area she had called “home,” I’d lit up a cigarette, hoping the few minutes it would take to smoke would calm me down before I saw her. Because right now, I was furious, and I didn’t lose my temper often.
As I smoked, contemplating my next move, she’d stepped out from the fire exit and looked straight at me, like she had a fucking homing beacon and I was her safe haven.
Her hair was pulled into a low bun, her hairnet trying but failing to capture all the loose strands. Her hair was like her, untamed and trying so desperately to be free. Jeans and a T-shirt covered by an apron, sneakers on her feet. She looked so fucking normal it hurt my teeth as my jaw clamped tight to stop me from cursing. I half expected the inner runner in her to bolt when she saw me. Instead she’d looked at me with resignation.
That had only fuelled my fury.
She had waited for me. Why the fuck didn’t she run?
There were far too many questions unanswered for me in regard to Devon to get rid of her yet. In the morning, she would start talking, and when I had my answers, then I would decide finally what was to be done with her.
In the morning, after a couple hours of sleep, I was pouring a cup of coffee as I watched her cross the living area and take a seat hesitantly at the kitchen island. Tucking her hair behind her ears, she fidgeted for a moment more before she clasped her hands together, threading her fingers together tightly, a tell-tale sign she was nervous. Her long-sleeved black T-shirt was pushed up past her wrists, and the V-neck of the shirt accentuated her ample chest. My gaze roamed over her critically. She looked better. Her face had more colour than the washed-out pallor she had when I first met her. The dark circles less prominent under her light brown eyes. Her skin was clearer too, except some dry patches that would benefit from a better skin care routine. I noticed last night her skin wasn’t clinging to her bones anymore, she had some weight on her. Four weeks of regular eating had benefitted her immensely. I studied her quietly as I took a drink of my coffee, leaning against the counter, watching her as she in turn watched me.
The street rat was attractive. I knew that. I had seen her potential hidden under the dirt and grime when I lifted her out of the street. What I hadn’t expected was the fact that Devon was so attractive that I was now essentially checking her out. I didn’t like it. Attractive women were remembered. Women who looked like Devon shouldn’t be washing dishes in a kitchen. Levi was going to place her in the front, bringing more attention to her. Attention that I didn’t want or need her to have.
Fuck.
“You won’t return to the bistro.”
I watched her jaw clench in annoyance as her eyes flicked to the side, breaking our eye contact. Wetting her lips, she met my gaze again. “Why?”
Beautifully Broken (The Denver Series Book 2) Page 16