Page 6 of A Light in the Darkness
No, scratch that. He doesn’t even have to try at that. It’s effortless.
Thankfully, he doesn’t try to talk the rest of the way upstairs. It isn't until I’m fishing my keys out of my bag me that I hear him say, “See you for dinner at 7. Taco Tuesday, princess. I’ll even let you have a margarita if you promise not to get sloppy.”
“Fuck off.” I snap, too tired to come up with anything better. It wouldn’t matter anyway, because his door is already slamming shut as I fit my key in the lock.
Some fucking bodyguard. He can’t even see me safely into my apartment? I almost wish someone would come and snatch me out of the hall, just to spite him. It would be preferable to going inside, anyway, because as soon as I open the door, I can hear Rhea’s giggle and a not-so-subtle,“Shh!”.
I lock the door behind me and growl out my frustration, sick of the monotonous loop my life has become. I’m trying sohard to hang on. There are only two months of school left, and I should be studying for exams or soaking up the last few months of my senior year with my best friend, but instead, I’m hanging on to the mind-numbing thread of normalcy. As if I was ever normal to begin with.
Rhea pokes her head out from around the kitchen, licking the frosting off of a rubber spatula. “You're home early,” she says, glancing at the time on the microwave to confirm what she just said.
“Yeah, well Howlett kicked us out early so he could go sleep with his mistress before his wife gets home.” I roll my eyes, turning the corner just as Eli shimmies his jeans up his waist. His abs ripple, and an innocent dimple appears in the corner of his lip as he waves.
“Hello, Claire.”
Flour coats his jeans and nearly every surface of the kitchen, and as Rhea turns to take in her mess, I notice the handprint on the back of her skirt. “Eli.” I nod at him in greeting and turn to shake my head at Rhea. “I’m ordering takeout tonight.”
“Oh, come on!” Rhea calls after me as I head to my room. “It’s not like he was railing me while I stirred the salsa.”
“No,” Eli agrees. “But I did enjoy that blowjob while I was frosting the cupcakes.”
God.
Sometimes I want to disappear into the floor. I don’t know what would happen if I did—would I slip into an alternate reality, or sink straight to Hell? Either way, today is one of those days.
“I’m going to shower.” I call behind me. “Try not to set the kitchen on fire.”
Eli chuckles, and Rhea laughs with him. “She meant that literally, not figuratively.”
The sound of his hand clapping against her ass is the last thing I hear before I shut my door and spin the lock. Rhea’s peel of laughter cuts through the wood, but I hit play on Spotify and turn the volume up just as my favorite song comes on.
Having a rich friend has its perks, even when that friend is a nymphomaniac who can’t keep her conquests private. We both have our own ensuite, which means I don’t have to subject myself to their ridiculous sexcapades again just to get in the shower. It also means she won’t find what I’m hiding in the back of the toilet.
I can be convinced to believe that keeping the gun Dimitri gave me was ridiculous. I don’t know how to use the damn thing and knowing that it’s there doesn’t really give me the peace of mind he thought it would. As if someone is going to come slip past not one buttwobodyguards? As if I’d have time to get to the gun in an emergency.
I feel like a drug dealer every time I take the heavy lid off the back of the toilet and pluck the waterproof bag from the reserve. That feeling only grows every time I take out the burner phone—an ancient brick with a freaking antenna on it that I have to tap the keys on several times to get to the right letter when I’m sending a text.
When he gave me these for an emergency, Dimitri told me to keep them hidden, and that’s exactly what I’ve done. I’d bet my life that Rhea would never betray me, but he was insistent that I not let anyone see these items and find a good hiding spot. He warned me that the apartment could be bugged and wired, which would explain the random times I feel like someone is watching me… or maybe I just get that feeling sometimes because he put that idea in my head. Either way, if there’s a camera in my bathroom, I really hope someone is enjoying my shower performances. It would be a shame for those to go to waste.
I avoid the gun, slipping the phone from the bag and powering it on to see if I have any new messages. It takes a minute, but eventually, the little rectangle pops up, so I open the message and read the single line of text written there:
Send the next installment & I’ll send the address.
My heart hammers at the words on the screen, their implication. I’ve been waiting months for this… or rather, I’ve waited months for the address.
I know this isn’t what Dimitri intended when he gave me this phone. He wanted me to keep it handy in case anyone took mine from me… like if I get kidnapped again.
Little does he know, I’m using it for the exact opposite.
Chapter five
Remy
The crew doused the house in kerosene and Harley lit the match, but I threw it.
Watching the place go down in flames wasn’t nearly as satisfying as it ought to be. The failure sits square on my shoulders, weighing me down even though I didn’t have this team ready to go when those women likely died. I should have had it ready. I should have got it together from the start. I let Davos think I was playing by his rules because I knew I couldn’t operate within the law to make a difference… not when the game was rigged against me. What I didn’t think about doing was finding people like me back then. Davos had told me that they breed their soldiers—it’s why he forced Genevieve to fuck me that first night I met her, why she ended up pregnant with our son. It’s why I was born—why Wes was born.
As much as I hate my stupid half-brother, I should have realized what he was all along. He and I are more alike than I will ever admit out loud, more alike than I want to even think about. We were both dragged into our father’s bullshit, given two different jobs. Mine, thankfully, let me stay out of the fray. To that end, I kept my head down and tried not to make waves. I watched a hundred girls slip through the cracks, and I only reached out a hand a few times. It’s better than serving them up for him, but, like me, I’m beginning to realize, Wes never had a choice.
