by Rebel Carter
The dream had been lovely.
So lovely that when my phone began to go off I chose to ignore it until I couldn’t anymore. The pinging of its notifications pulled and tore at the edges of my dream until I knew there would be no repairing it and I had to wake up. I sighed and picked up my phone, but even in my irritation I had a smile on my face.
Will you listen to me? I want you.
I shivered, rubbing my legs together beneath my blankets and breathed in the chilly air of my apartment. I’d forgotten to turn on the heater before bed and the last of the spring thaw was making itself known in the early morning.
I want you.
He wanted me. Law Sokolov wanted me. The joy from that was fierce, the warmth of it enough to make me forget about my cold apartment. I wrapped the quilt around my shoulders and sat up, focusing on my phone. I slid my finger along the screen to see what jobs were up for grabs and instantly hit accept when I saw the familiar name of A Different Brew. I definitely wanted that shift, not only because I’d get to see Tiffany and work in a shop I adored, but because of Law.
I would absolutely get to see him if I took it.
The shift started in 45 minutes which meant I had just enough time to get dressed and out the door. I could skip breakfast so long as there was coffee, but I might not even have to do that if I was with Tiffany. There was a bakery nearby that she loved and I knew all I had to do was offer to pick up something and she’d be game.
I hopped out of bed and made a beeline for my closet while firing off a see you soon text to Tiffany. I heard my phone sound with a text message from where I had tossed it on the bed and knew Tiffany must have sent me a reply. I yanked on my clothes, snagged my bag, phone and pulled on my shoes and was out the door in record time. I was hurrying down the stairs when my phone went off with another ping, but I didn’t check.
It was probably Tiffany. I could respond on the subway, but making the train needed to happen first. I sped up, power walked the rest of the way to the subway and it was only when I was securely on the train and sitting down that I checked my phone.
‘Stop ignoring me’
I frowned, staring down at the phone in my hand. The message made no sense. When I tapped on the message to look at the sender I saw a number I didn’t recognize. It was a New York City area code, but that told me nothing, and when I tried searching the number online it came back as a dead end. I bit my lip, eyes on the text message that was sending up warning bells.
“It has to be a wrong number,” I whispered, and shoved my phone back into my pocket. The alternative to that wasn’t something I wanted to think about. The only person that would send me a message like that was forbidden to do so. Christian’s face flashed in front of me and I shook my head. “It’s not him. It’s not.”
Christian was a lot of things, but going against Connie, Zeus, and now Law, was not something I saw the man capable of doing. The memory of Law leaning in close, whispering in his ear, those few quietly said words had been enough to nearly drop Christian where he stood. He’d gone from taunting and aggressive to silent and frozen where he stood. My phone pinged again and I squeezed my eyes shut, the familiar dread of knowing someone was watching me, that Christian was out there keeping tabs on me, was slowly settling over me.
“It’s not,” I insisted again, fixing my eyes on the advertisements that lined the top of the subway car. I didn’t take out my phone to check the message.
The entire trip to A Different Brew passed by in a blur, my feet carrying me on autopilot. The worry over the text message had been buzzing in my brain the entire way, so had the phone that was burning a hole in my cardigan pocket.
When it had buzzed as a reminder a few minutes after it arrived I’d nearly jumped, but I’d kept my focus and resisted the temptation to check. I ran my hands through my hair and inhaled deeply, trying to settle my nerves before I pushed open the door to A Different Brew. The familiar smell of coffee beans hit my nose and instantly I felt more at ease. This I could do. This I understood. I raised my hands over my head and stretched as I walked towards the counter where I spotted Tiffany’s familiar ginger curls. She was bent over, head low as she took the starting temperatures of the fridges.
“Hey!” I greeted her with a fake brightness I didn’t feel.
Tiffany’s head popped up and she beamed at me. “Honey! I’m so happy it’s you. This is going to be such a good day. Did you get the pastries?” she asked.
I blinked in surprise at her question. I’d wanted breakfast but I hadn’t really made the jump to getting some or asking her like I’d planned, not with the eerie text message throwing me off. “The what?”
“The pastries,” she said, leaning over the counter to see if I had anything in my hands. When she saw that I didn’t she pouted. “Boooooo. Did you not get my text?”
“Your what?”
“My text.” She tipped her head to the side and gave me a second look. “Are you...okay?”
“Yeah, I mean-” I swallowed hard and then shook my head, reaching for my phone, “I’m sorry, I’m just a little off is all.” I thumbed past my lock screen and saw that I had a message waiting from her. I breathed out a sigh of relief, my eyes drinking in the sight of her ‘Get pastries from the fancy schmancy bakery for brekkie! Gus already paid. Just pick them up, please!’
I smiled when I saw the message. It had been Tiffany, not whoever sent the first. “I’m sorry. I was spacing out and didn’t check,” I said, lifting my phone up and giving it a wiggle. “I can go get them now though.”
She clapped her hands excitedly. “Would you? He told me he got all the good stuff because he’s trying to convince you to take the job!”
“Tiffany...we talked about that,” I laughed.
“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to give up. Plus, we get bougie bakery breakfast, so what’s not to love? Let us woo you with your favorite foods, woman.”
I dropped my bag behind the counter and grinned at her. “Yeah, okay. I can tolerate that.”
“Awesome!” She hugged me tight and then gave me a gentle push towards the door. “It’s all taken care of. Just let them know it’s for Gus and they will hook you up.”
I saluted her on my way to the door. “On it!”
I rolled my shoulders and stepped out onto the sidewalk. The morning air was crisp and fresh. My earlier good mood slowly returning with each step I took towards the bakery. It didn’t have to be Christian that sent the first one. Maybe that one wasn’t even for me. That happened all the time in a city as big as New York City. Someone had hit the wrong number before they hit send and bam! I had a message not meant for me.
“That has to be it,” I told myself. And because I couldn’t take any other truth, I accepted that, lifted my head and enjoyed my walk to get breakfast.
Today would be utterly normal. A good fucking, perfectly normal, day.
“How the fuck…” Law’s annoyed grumbling pulled my attention away from the movie that I was watching. I was in his apartment, I mean if you could call this place an apartment. It was a penthouse really, the entire floor was his with the elevator taking you right up to his front door from the ground floor.
“This is super fancy,” I’d told him when I’d stepped out of the elevator for the first time last week.
“It is,” he’d agreed.
“I get why you replaced the lights in my building,” I said, looking around the spacious apartment we were entering.
He chuckled, a hand going to the small of my back. “Wanted you to be able to see is all.”
“Sure, sure,” I replied, coming to a stop when I caught sight of the glimmering New York skyline visible through his floor-to-ceiling windows. Law’s home was more comfortable than mine by a mile, everything in it was luxe and top of the line, while I had a drafty walk up with a heater that banged when it kicked on. But if Law ever thought anything less than about where I lived, he never let on. We’d been dating for three weeks and I’d only started coming t
o his place a week ago with an equal number of nights spent in each of our homes.
I liked that he made the effort to spend time where I lived, even if I was still struggling with doing my best to figure out how to make it home. I’d bought a handful of houseplants and even hung art on the walls, a piece we’d found wandering around in the Village. It was slowly becoming a place I wanted to be in, a place that felt good to take up space in, and I knew that had a lot to do with who I was becoming with Law. I turned to look over the couch I was sitting on and hit pause on the movie, a fairy tale retelling that was just chef’s kiss perfection, and laughed when I saw Law, hands on his hips and glaring at the pot in front of him.
He was making me mac and cheese. When I’d told him I had a craving for the comfort dish he’d assured me it was “not a big deal, it comes in a box, how hard can it be?”, but from the way he was standing, I could tell it was plenty hard.
I turned completely, rising to my knees and leaning forward, bracing my elbows on the back of the couch. “You okay in there?” I called out to him, leaning my chin in my hands.
“I’m fine, princess.”
“You don’t look fine.”
Law snatched up the box and shook it over his head. “I swear to god, they didn’t say,” he lowered it to read the instructions again and then sighed heavily, “fuck, they did say.”
“What’d they say?”
He tossed the box to the side and picked up the pot he’d been making the macaroni in. “Some cooking shit. I got this. Go back to your movie.”
“But do you need help?” I asked, knowing from the determined set I saw in Law’s shoulders he wasn’t going to be asking me for help, even if he needed it.
He turned, looking at me over his shoulder and winked. “Daddy’s got it, princess. Go back to your movie.”
The warmth that always bloomed in my chest when Law talked to me like that hit me square in the chest. “Okay, Daddy.” I ducked my head and turned, knowing my cheeks had a faint blush on them. It was hard not to blush when Law talked to me like that. One word capable of making me warm skinned and fidgeting. In the few weeks we’d dated he talked to me like that often. A soft voice, a tender word, the affection blatant and I succumbed to it each and every time.
“That’s fuckin’ soup. Not goddamn mac. I’ll show you mac, ya damn box,” he muttered, sounding pissed from behind me, and I giggled.
Law hummed as I heard him pause in what he was doing in the kitchen. “Laughing at Daddy, little girl?” He asked, and I sank lower on the couch, pulling the blanket beside me up to my chin.
“No! It was the movie,” I shouted, hitting the play button and muffling another laugh behind my hand. I waited, wondering if Law would come see if I was telling the truth and a minute later I saw he had come to investigate.
“You’re lying, sweet girl.” He moved, putting a hand on the couch beside me. His other went to my neck, fingers gentle on my skin. “Aren’t you?”
“No,” I insisted, but I was smiling. I looked up at him and felt the warmth his words had brought to life spread over my body. He was open faced, his eyes had lost the sharp edge they often had in them when we were in the city, “out in the open” as he called it. There was a past to my man, one that was dark if the signs I’d picked up on were telling the truth, and I knew they were. His tattoos and scars were more than enough proof of it, but he hadn’t brought it up, and so neither did I. Whatever it was that had Law slipping into high alert when were in too crowded a space, the way he moved when I insisted on a late night walk in Queens, the outright scary aura the man put off that had more than one wannabe goon on the street backing up and giving us space, was not lost on me. I saw it but didn’t ask where the sharp edges and steel in my man had come from.
He hadn’t given that to me yet. I knew that meant something. There was a reason he hadn’t and I was smart enough to know better than to let my curiosity get the better of me. Law was good to me. He treated me right and there was no cruelty in him when it came to others.
I had zero reasons to push for information Law didn’t want to give. But when he was like this, tender looks and soft eyes, he wasn’t the man with a past I knew was violent. He wasn’t even Lawson Sokolov, CEO of Law Acquisitions now, he was just Law. He was mine.
He moved close and kissed me, lips soft against mine and he pulled back to look at me. “You’re lucky white lies are okay, little girl.”
I rolled my eyes at him. The move earned me a gentle squeeze on the neck and then he was pushing away from the couch. I raised my arms, reaching out for him, but Law dodged my hands. “I’ve got unfinished business in the kitchen,” he said, shaking a finger at me. “Go back to watching your movie.”
I pouted, but did as I was told and turned back to face the television. I hit play on the remote and leaned to the side, the blanket I’d wrapped around myself once more settled over my shoulders. The sounds of Law cooking resumed, along with a curse here and there and I grinned. I was happy. This was perfectly...perfect. At least it was for me. I was smiling, not even focused on the movie that was going on in front of me, but enjoying the domestic feel of the moment—the outright hominess of it when Law called out to me.
“Honey, your phone’s going off.”
“Thanks.” I waved a hand and hopped up from the couch. “I bet it’s Elaina letting me know if she wants me to water her plants while she’s outta town with the twins,” I told him, ambling over to the counter where I’d tossed my bag. When I got closer, I heard the familiar ping letting me know I had a text. I reached in the bag and tried not to laugh when I saw Law in front of me. He looked like he was making a study of the mac and cheese box, hands on his waist and eyes on the box in front of him.
“Just let me-” I began, ready to pressure him into letting me help cook when I saw the messages on my phone. I had several. The first of them was blinking up at me.
PICK UP YOUR PHONE!
I stared at it, fingers going tight on my phone for a second before I raised my other hand and slid the lock screen open. I had to see the others. This couldn’t be for me. This couldn’t be for me. It had to be a wrong number. I knew it.
I opened the texts and saw I had four waiting. The newest was the one I’d just read. The others were just as unsettling, but the first, the first had to be the worst of them all.
‘Honey. Stop ignoring me.’
That cleared it up. The messages were for me. When I scrolled to the top I saw the first message I’d ignored from three weeks ago sitting there taunting me.
‘Stop ignoring me’
So it had been for me after all. There were also three missed calls from different numbers to my phone, all within the last fifteen minutes. What the hell was I supposed to do with this?
“What’s wrong?”
I jumped, eyes flying from the phone screen to Law who was looking at me. The mac and cheese forgotten beside him. “Nothing, nothing,” I said quickly, giving him a strained smile.
“Honey…” His voice had dropped and he crossed his arms over his chest. He knew I was lying. Fuckity fuck. Fucking hell. He wasn’t going to let this go.
“How’s the mac and cheese coming?” I asked, and started to come around the counter to help him, “I really think you should let me help you with that an-” My phone buzzed again and I jumped, flinging the phone away from me with a yelp.
Law’s eyes followed the phone and he flicked a finger at it. “What the fuck is on that phone?”
“Nothing.”
“Don’t lie to me, Honey. You know that shit isn’t allowed.” He took a step towards me as he spoke, “And this isn’t a white lie. I know the difference, and you know it.”
We stared at each other, locked in a standoff, and neither of us moved a muscle. He knew I was lying, I knew he knew it which meant I was kind of screwed on buying time to figure out who the hell was sending me messages.
My phone’s text reminder went off and we both looked at it where it lay on the counter.
>
“Answer me, Honey.”
“I don’t know,” I whispered when I finally found the will to speak. I swallowed hard and reached for the phone with a sigh. “I don’t know who it is.”
“Who it is what?”
I picked it up and held it out to Law with a shaky hand. “Who’s sending me these messages.”
Law’s eyes narrowed and he took the phone from me. He dropped his eyes to the phone and tapped on the screen. I knew he had seen the messages when I saw his mouth go tight, his chest rising with a deep inhale as he read. “I’m going to kill them.”
My eyes widened. “What? But you don’t even know who is sending them.”
“Doesn’t matter. They’re dead.”
“Law, look I know that-” I broke off and considered his words, “Wait are you serious?”
He was silent, but his look told me everything. The past that I didn’t know about, the one that I was content to look past, reared its ugly head and I felt my stomach go tight. “Holy shit, you’re serious, aren't you?”
He looked away. “I’m going to find them,” was all he said.
“What did that one say?” I asked, nodding at the phone he was still holding.
“How long have they been sending these?” he asked, holding the phone out to me.
“A few weeks,” I whispered, and I was glad I had whispered because Law’s face got scary.
“This has been going on for weeks and you didn’t tell me?”
“It was just one, well, until tonight,” I informed him. I reached out and took the phone, my curiosity getting the better of me. I needed to see what they’d sent that had Law swearing he was going to find them. And kill them.