Page 35
A middle finger jams into my face.
“Like I said: I’m leaving now.”
She shoves past me and starts to storm off. Again, she makes it all of two steps before I grab her and pin her right back to that wall, my hand on her throat.
“Not until you deal with—”
“You should probably leave,” Bella says in a bored tone.
“Happily,” I reply. “As soon as I actually believe you’re going to do something with this fucking body other than walk away and make it someone else’s—”
“No, I mean right now.” Bella nods her chin past me, and when I turn, I follow her gaze to a window set into the brick back wall of The Seven Bells.
“That’s the bathroom,” she adds. “And that”…she raises an arm and points to a corner of the window, where you can see some of the interior stick-on privacy film peeling away from the glass…“is the hole my cousin Achilles just glanced out of and saw me with a strange man in a hoodie pinning me by the throat.”
She grins triumphantly as my hand drops from her neck.
To be clear, I’m not remotely scared of Achilles Drakos. I mean, he’s a big guy, but I’m bigger, and I spend the second-most amount of my free time on boxing.
That said, I can tell there’s something like me about the guy. Something off, even if he hides it carefully behind his golden boy, top of our class, president of Para Bellum and Captain of the Privateers football team mask.
I doubt he’s exactly like me, but there are enough small red flags that…yeah. I don’t need to be on his radar.
“Clean up your mess,” I mutter, grabbing a big black bag full of trash off the top of one of the dumpsters and tossing it on top of the body. “Do it with heart if you need to,” I add sarcastically. “But stay the fuck out of my way.”
Then I turn and calmly walk away, pretending I don’t feel the stabby little menace’s eyes boring holes in the back of my skull.
8
BELLA
“Wait.”
Dr. Fallon holds up a hand.
I hate being cut off mid-story. But I let it slide this time. She looks like she’s trying really hard to decide if she heard me correctly or if sleep deprivation has finally started eating holes in her brain.
That would be unfortunate. I like her brain. That’s why I keep breaking into her apartment in the middle of the night for more rounds of Captive Therapy™.
“Yes?” I sigh.
Her brows knit from where she’s sitting at her kitchen counter. And yes, she’s duct-taped to the chair.
I mean who am I to stand on tradition at this point? At least this time, it’s just one hand, so that she can sip and enjoy the lovely tea she made for us before said duct-taping.
Dr. Fallon frowns. “When you say he jumped in and killed the man before the man could kill you…”
She trails off and gives me this curious, worried look, her brows arched sharply. I’m not sure how to respond to that so I just give her the same look back.
“Yes?”
She clears her throat. “You’re speaking…metaphorically?”
“Uh…”
For a moment, my gaze slips past her to the clock on the microwave.
“One-two-three,” I hear myself whisper as I read the time…1:23 AM…on the display.
