Page 12 of Tempest’s Torment

Evan raises the knife, and I scream.

I jerk awake with Lucy's name tearing from my throat. For a few seconds, I don't know where I am. The room is dark, and my sheets are tangled around my legs. My heart is beating so hard it hurts, and each breath catches before it reaches my lungs.

I shove the covers away and scramble backwards until my spine hits the headboard.

Boston. I'm in Boston, in my apartment, the bedroom door is closed, the windows are latched. Evan isn't here and Lucy isn't either. That truth hurts more than the nightmare.

I press both hands over my face and try to breathe, but I can still see her reaching for me, I can still hear her telling me to run.

A floorboard creaks somewhere outside my apartment, my head snaps toward the door. I stop breathing as another sound follows: footsteps in the hallway.

Slow, heavy, and coming closer.

I reach beneath my pillow and wrap my fingers around the knife I keep there. The footsteps stop outside my apartment. Silence. I sit frozen, the blade clenched in my hand, waiting for the handle to move. It doesn't.

A key slides into the lock across the hallway, and the door opens, then closes. My neighbor, nothing more. I lower the knife, but it takes several minutes before my heart follows. The clock beside my bed reads 3:17 AM I won't sleep again tonight.

CHAPTER TWO

tempest

Being the club secretary is the most thankless job in the club. I've said it before, but nobody listens. Probably because they're all relieved it's me sitting here at stupid o’clock in the morning, staring at a stack of vendor renewals and insurance paperwork instead of them.

I take a long sip of coffee and turn the next page. The clubhouse is quiet this time of morning. The prospects swept through last night, so it smells like cleaning products instead of beer, which is an improvement. The stools are all still upright, nobody's asleep on the couch, and I count these as wins.

My phone says 7:50 AM. I've been here since seven. I'll be here until the work is done, which means I'll miss lunch at the current rate. I turn another page and get back to work.

The door bangs open at eight on the dot. "Tell me there's coffee." Venom drops into the chair across from me without being invited, which is standard. He never waits for an invitation. "Please tell me there's coffee. I had a morning."

"You always have a morning."

"This one was worse." He points at the pot on the counter. "Is that fresh?"

I shrug. "I made it at seven."

"So no." He gets up anyway and pours himself a mug, takes a sip, and grimaces. "That's terrible."

"Then make a new pot."

He doesn't. He drops back into the chair with the terrible coffee and starts scrolling his phone. That's also normal for Venom.

Hades comes in twenty minutes later, takes one look at me buried in paperwork, and heads straight for the coffee without comment. Smart man.

"Vendor renewals are due Friday," I tell him.

He grins at me. "That's your problem."

I raise a brow. "It's the club's problem, which makes it your problem too."

"Funny how that works." Coffee in hand, he drops into the chair beside me.

"You look like shit," Venom says.

Hades snorts. "Cheers."

"Kids?" I ask.

"Lily decided she wasn't tired."