The Devil's Beauty (Crime Lord Interconnected Standalone Book 2)

by Airicka Phoenix

  But he shot Penny a text despite the insane hour to find him a suit. Then a second one to find a good trauma counselor. Then a third text to Saeed, telling him to meet Dimitri at the hospital by five.

  Then there was nothing to do, but write out what he would say during the meeting on his phone and wait for the sun to come up.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  There was a strange man sitting by her bed when Ava jolted awake. What was odder than that was the glossy fashion magazine he was flipping through. Vogue, by the look of it, and he appeared to actually be reading an article with single minded focus, like whatever it was about, had him riveted.

  Ava didn’t move. She lay perfectly still, trying to get her bearings. She’d had a dream she was back on the boat, but the room had been converted into an auction house and it was full of people all bidding on her. Faceless voices kept shouting out numbers, increasing it each time until it was a sum that didn’t even exist. She kept begging them to stop, to let her go home, but no one was listening.

  Then her eyes had snapped open. Just like that. No sound. No warning. Just popped open and she found herself eyelevel with a bent knee clad in soft, black trousers. The leg it was joined to was too big, too muscular to belong to Dimitri or John Paul. She’d followed it up to a pair of enormous hands with long fingers gripping a magazine and concealing the owner’s face. She stayed quiet and only because she still had no idea where she was. What if it hadn’t been a dream? What if getting found by Dimitri had been the illusion? What if she’d been sold and was now in some nightmare?

  It came back to her then, the shooting and doctors and tests. She dared a glance past the man at the end table, then down the length of the bed to the open doorway and the nurse’s station on the other side.

  She relaxed.

  “They brought you breakfast.” Gruff and deep, the voice rumbled like an approaching thunderstorm through the soft silence. The magazine rustled as a page was flipped. “It might be cold now.”

  No use pretending to be asleep, Ava shifted upright. The blankets were tangled around her legs and her IV tube was partially wrapped around her arm, and she had to fight to free herself from both.

  “Who are you?”

  The magazine was folded and lowered into his lap. Eyes the warm, dark brown of rich chocolate met hers from a face void of any expression. They sat beneath dark brows and a prominent brown that expanded high over his smooth scalp. There were no visible facial markers, no scars, no lines. It was impossible to tell his age at all, except he could be anywhere over thirty. He wore a dark suit a tone shy of funeral clothes with a white shirt and a black tie. The light from the window sparked off the toe of his gleaming shoe as his right foot was lowered off his left knee.

  “I’m Frank,” he told her. “I’ve been hired by Mr. Tasarov to accompany you.”

  “A bodyguard,” she mused.

  He considered this, then gave an almost imperceptible shrug. “If you like.”

  Her gaze moved over the room, not really excepting Dimitri to be there, but in case. “Where is he?”

  Frank rose, tossed the magazine down on the end table and nimbly fastened the button on his blazer. “Mr. Tasarov had business to oversee, but will return the moment he’s able. In the meantime, would you like breakfast?”

  He walked towards the rolling table at the foot of the bed holding a covered tray. He pulled it over until it was over the bed and directly in front of her.

  It was cold toast, a small cup of butter, a plastic knife, one boiled egg, a tiny carton of orange juice, a cold, plastic cup of coffee, and a thin packet of cheese that had gone rubbery. None of it looked appealing.

  “Where are my clothes?” she asked instead. “Am I allowed to leave?”

  Frank didn’t push her to eat. Maybe he too noticed just how prison worthy the display looked, because he set the cover back on top and pushed the table away.

  “I have not been informed of your discharge,” he informed her curtly. “The doctor has not yet arrived.”

  “Could you—”

  “No, my job is to stay with you at all times.”

  Ava thought of Robby and Ki and inwardly grimaced.

  Carefully, she nudged back the covers and rose to her feet. She’d kept her socks on, which she normally hated, but no matter how gleaming the floor, she couldn’t help envision puddles of puke and piss everywhere. Having it touch her bare feet made her want to shudder. Plus, cold laminate made her think of the showers back in that … place. She still didn’t know what it was, but she remembered the feel of its iciness, the slime squishing between her toes … it was enough to make her want to throw up.

  Her hand went to the steel pole containing a clear, plastic bag of fluids and she edged towards her shoes where they sat side by side beneath a nearby chair. Her clothes were on top, neatly folded and waiting to be pulled on. But she only tugged on her shoes, not sure if there would be more tests and not wanting to get undressed a second time.

  Feeling better, she turned back to the man across the room. She took a deep breath and tried to remember he was there to protect her and it wasn’t his fault she was in this mess.

  Ava smiled. “I’m Ava.”

  He inclined his head, but said nothing. It wasn’t like he could introduce himself a second time.

  She let it go. “I’m going to find a doctor,” she told him simply, deciding the sooner they were all on the same page, the better. “Once we know when I’m leaving, I need to go home, and shower and change. I don’t know how you do things, but I don’t have many friends, only one, actually. His name’s Robby. Please don’t tackle him, or ID him, or pat him down.”

  She thought of Ki as she said the last part. Last thing she wanted was to have everyone she knew ID’d and frisked. Her circumstances were different from Robby’s, clearly, but better safe than sorry.

  Frank actually cleared his throat. She wasn’t sure if he was concealing a laugh or he just needed to clear his throat, but there was a glimmer of something in his eyes.

  “I’ve already been given very specific instructions,” he said. “Robby has been cleared by Mr. Tasarov. Anyone else, I will have to follow up with him.”

  Oh God, she thought miserably. This wouldn’t end well. She didn’t like having her day planned out by someone else and authorized by yet another person. She could accept Frank’s presence as protection. She was even willing to accept that protection with grace and silence. But who she saw and where she went … that needed some discussion. Not with Frank, because he was only following orders. She needed to go to the source.

  “All right.” She willed herself to work through it. “Well, doctor first, yeah? Then we’ll work on the rest.”

  Frank said nothing, but he followed her from the room to the nurse’s station, a massive shadow at her shoulder. Not exactly touching her, but his presence was an unwavering force pushing against her back.

  “Excuse me?” She released the IV pole and set her hands on the cool surface and leaned in to peer over at the tiny blonde on the other side. “Excuse—”

  “Please wait your turn, ma’am,” the woman mumbled, never looking up from the file she was flipping through.

  There was no one else anywhere near the oval set up. There was one man in the waiting area across the room and a dozen doctors and nurses hurrying back and forth, but not a single person waiting.

  Nevertheless, Ava waited. She waited and watched as one file after another was opened, peered over and set aside. It went on for ten minutes before her patience waned.

  “Excuse me?” she said again, firmly. “Can you please just tell me if I can leave?”

  Annoyance blazed behind round glasses. The nurse raised her head and pinned them on Ava.

  “Name?”

  Ava told her and waited while the files were rifled through. Hers was unearthed from the very bottom and smacked open.

  “No.” The file was slapped shut. “The doctor still needs to see you.”

  Ava tried n
ot to sigh. “Do you know how much longer—?”

  “It’s a hospital,” the nurse interjected. “Doctors are busy helping other patients. They will get to you when they can.”

  “Is Doctor Allen—”

  “He’s gone home and won’t be back until late tonight.”

  In no mood to spend another full day there, Ava stiffened her spine. “Can I discharge myself? This isn’t a prison, right? I’m not under arrest? Can I just leave?”

  “We would not advise—”

  “It’s fine. I feel fine. Please, where are the forms?”

  The nurse—Dorothy, from what it said on her nametag—sat back in her seat. “A doctor has to sign off on them. They’ll be with you shortly,” Dorothy added when Ava started to protest. “Just be patient. You’re not exactly our main priority right now, not after what happened yesterday. There are people who need every available body on hand.”

  Ava froze. She hadn’t thought, not once, it hadn’t even … how could she forget? How could she not still be hearing the sickening, sucking sound of iron piercing flesh? The gurgling gasps of desperate lungs trying to keep functioning. The cries, the pitiful sobs of those remaining in the aftermath. It had only happened yesterday and yet it felt like it hadn’t happened to her, like it had been a movie she’d seen ages ago. Even the memory of climbing to her feet and reaching for Robby felt distorted. She couldn’t even remember coming to the hospital. Had they been picked up by an ambulance? Had they walked? Caught a cab? How was she not feeling anything? What was wrong with her?

  “Miss Emerson?”

  Cold fingers clamped around her arm. She had no recollection of doubling over until she was being shoved into a chair.

  It was too much. She could feel the entire world rocking back on her, a vicious wave careening out of control as everything, every moment of the last two weeks rushed up at her. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t inhale past the airtight box closing around her. Faces rose up behind the darkness of her closed eyelids. Ilsa with her big, green eyes. The other girls, their faces twisted in terror as they were hauled out of the room. She remembered each one with a clarity that shouldn’t have been possible. She knew what they’d been wearing. She knew what color their eyes were. She remembered the people from the bistro, remembered them with painful accuracy, despite having only glanced their way once the entire time. They were all there, all the people she couldn’t save, all the people she put in danger, all rising and falling with the tides.

  “How … how many died?” she heard her voice ask from a distance.

  “What?” Dorothy sounded confused. “Just keep breathing, Miss Emerson.”

  She pulled away from the hand rubbing her back. “How many died?” she asked again, louder.

  Dorothy drew back, lips pursed. “Eleven.”

  Eleven.

  Eleven dead.

  Eleven dead because of her, dead by the bullets meant for her.

  “Let’s get you back in bed, yeah?” Dorothy hooked her hands beneath Ava’s arms and hoisted her up forcibly. “I’ll have a doctor come see you.”

  It was what she’d wanted, a doctor to tell her she could leave, to head out and live her life while all that blood was still wet on her hands. She was as guilty as the people responsible. She should have realized she was a danger to others. She should have stayed home.

  “Miss Emerson.” The voice was too male to be Dorothy. Its deep baritone had her head coming up and focusing on the soft, dark face of the man assigned to stay with her. “Are you all right?”

  “I killed them,” she blurted without any thought, without a second to even realize what she was admitting to. “All those people … I killed them.”

  Frank’s eyes narrowed. Then he was pulling back and addressing someone else in the room. Dorothy maybe. She heard footsteps hurrying from the room. Then Frank was back, closer, his voice low and gentle.

  “Miss Emerson, can you hear me?” He didn’t wait for a response. “I advise that you say nothing else, do you understand?”

  What had she said? She couldn’t even remember.

  Dorothy returned then with a glass of water. It was tepid and smelled of rusted pipes, which reminded her of the boat, the rancid air. Poor Dorothy had no time at all to jerk back before Ava threw up on her sneakers.

  “I’m okay,” Ava swore for the ninth time in the last hour and a half. “It was nothing. I’m still just a little tired. That’s all.”

  No one believed her. Not the doctor that rushed in. Not Dorothy, who kept insisting she was fine and had another pair of sneakers in her locker. Not John Paul who one of the other nurses must have called. Even Frank look skeptical standing by the door, watching the commotion in his dark, silent way.

  The doctor checked her again and a janitor was brought in to mop up her mess. It was all done thoroughly and with a lot of placating smiles.

  God, they all thought she was some poor, traumatized child who needed to be assured everything would be okay. They didn’t seem to realize nothing would ever be okay again. They didn’t realize that those people were never coming back and Ava would have to live with that for the rest of her life. It was just another notch in her rapidly growing list of sins she would need to account for in the afterlife.

  “Ava.” The cot dipped as John Paul lowered himself gingerly down next to her hip. “Darling, it’s okay not to be all right. You’ve had a bad couple of weeks.”

  Dorothy came up behind him with a clear, plastic cup of water and another of pills. She passed both to John Paul.

  “No … please.” Ava turned her head away at the sight of the liquid, already knowing it had come from the same place as the last cup. “I can’t drink that.” Already her stomach was beginning to rebuff the idea.

  “Is there a vending machine nearby?” Frank said, speaking for the first time.

  Dorothy nodded and directed him to some place down the hall.

  Frank left.

  “Could we have a moment, please?” John Paul asked the doctor and nurse.

  Both nodded and walked out without a word.

  John Paul faced Ava. He smoothed her clammy face and peered into her eyes.

  “What happened, love?”

  She couldn’t meet his eye when she told him. “It smelled like rust,” she whispered, feeling ashamed for reasons she couldn’t fathom. “It reminded me of…”

  John Paul took her hand gently in his. “You’re not there anymore, Ava. I know it’s too soon to get past it, but you will. One day at a time.”

  She could think of nothing to say to that, so she sat quiet, studying the crisscross pattern on the itchy blanket.

  Frank arrived with a bottle of water. He passed it to John Paul, who unscrewed the top and passed it to Ava. She took it gingerly and sniffed.

  It smelled like nothing, just like water is supposed to smell like. She guzzled half of it down, chasing away the rawness in her throat and taste of vomit on her tongue. She was panting when she finally stopped.

  “Thank you.”

  Frank inclined his head, and said nothing.

  “Get some rest,” John Paul suggested. “And when the doctor okay’s it, I’ll take you home.”

  He took the bottle from her and set it next to the plastic cup of pills he hadn’t made her take.

  Ava didn’t argue. She felt exhausted. Her very soul felt weary. All she wanted was to wake up and it be a month ago, back when her biggest concern was getting an article read and edited before Melanie threw a fit. All that seemed so inconsequential now. Melanie. Chaud. Who cared what the spring colors were or what popstar wore what best. It didn’t matter when there were girls being carted across whole countries like cattle, when they were being ripped away from their families and sold. Everything she loved in the past seemed utterly frivolous and ridiculous. She was mortified she ever allowed herself to be so incredibly shallow.

  “It’ll be all right,” John Paul soothed, stroking her head as she curled onto her side.

  She didn�
��t have the heart to tell him nothing would ever be all right again. How could it?

  “How do you do it?” she asked instead. “How do you do what you do and sleep at night?”

  His hand stilled. She didn’t look at him. There was a fine, jagged scar along the side of the end table. She stared at that.

  “I don’t hurt people,” he said quietly, a little hurt.

  “Then what do you do?”

  She’d never asked before. Not him. Not Dimitri. She’d gone on in her little fantasy haze with the illusion that just because they were her entire world, that they weren’t criminals, people who did bad things.

  “I do many things, and yes, sometimes people get hurt,” he said.

  “How do you sleep?” she asked again, her voice oddly hollow even to her own ears.

  He was quiet a long time. She was beginning to think he wouldn’t answer, when he shifted.

  “The world isn’t black and white, Ava. There is no all right or all wrong, all good or all evil. A powerful man could be cruel and just. A good man could kill without mercy. A child could steal—”

  “But he’s not hurting anyone,” she protested.

  “Isn’t he?” he answered in that same calm tone. “What about the shop owner who has to cover the cost of that stolen item? That’s money he could be using to buy food for his family. Without it, his own children could starve.”

  Cause and effect. He’d been drumming it into her head since she was a little girl.

  “I killed those people,” she whispered. “I shouldn’t have left the manor. I should have realized … I should have been smarter. They would all be home with their families right now.”

  “No, love.” He touched her shoulder. “This is on Elena. The blood is on her hands.”

  “I should have stayed home.”

  Her voice broke. Her face crumpled as hot tears flooded down her cheeks to dampen her pillow. John Paul comforted her until there was nothing left but to shut her eyes and will herself to rest.