Page 2 of The Chief
“What are you doing here, Grady?” My voice trembled slightly, and I prayed he hadn’t heard the waver. The wobble. The clue that his sudden reappearance had left me shaken and unsure.
“I’ve missed you.” His eyes ate me up, lingering on my breasts and hips. “Why did you run from me, Mol?”
I pulled at the sides of my jacket, tugging them more tightly around my body. “What do you want?”
His gaze flickered to the students still trickling from the main doors of the college before it returned to my face. “Let’s talk somewhere a little quieter.”
Panic clawed at my throat. “I’d rather stay here.”
With a slight curl of his lip, he ascended the rest of the stairs and disappeared inside the building.
Indecision tore at me. Having Grady prowl through the halls unchecked was like letting a lion loose on an unsuspecting crowd. Reluctantly, I followed him and when I found him again, he was leaning against the doorway of a vacant classroom.
At the jerk of his chin, I strode inside. He shut the door and locked it behind him.
I spun around, forcing my eyes to lock on his face and not stray to my only escape. Old fears rose like bile in the back of my throat, and I choked them down. On a shaky breath, I asked, “Now we’re somewhere quiet. What do you want to say?”
His cold, vacant stare passed over my face and cruised down my body.
I folded my arms across my chest. It was the only shield in my arsenal right now.
“You know, I often wondered about you. About how you could’ve left me. I thought we had a good thing going.”
My mouth felt like a desert. “If my memory serves me correctly, you beat me whenever you felt like it. I’d hardly call that a good thing.”
His expression turned stormy, as his cold eyes swirled with malice. “You made me hurt you. I never wanted to.”
I could tell he wholeheartedly believed his words. Inhaling a shallow breath, I willed my restless heart to stop pounding so violently against the cage of my ribs. “What do you want, Grady?”
“I need you to do me a favor.”
“A favor?” I repeated incredulously. My disbelief morphed into viper-like anger in a flash of heat. “Go fuck yourself.”
His gaze turned predatory. “I’d watch what I say if I were you, Molly.”
“You’re threatening me, Grady? There’s nothing you could do or say that would make me change my mind about you. I made the mistake of trusting you once and it nearly cost me my life. There’s no way in hell I’d make that mistake again.”
“Nothing? Are you sure about that, baby? Are you forgetting I know about what happened between you and your stepfather? You don’t want me to share that with the Gard, do you?”
An involuntary shiver went down my spine, and my words came out as a whisper. “You promised you would never tell.”
“I also told you I loved you.” He shrugged. “I guess I lied.”
“And if I say no?”
“If you don’t want to rot in jail for the rest of your life, you won’t say no.”
Anger bubbled under my skin. Fuck him for using that piece of shit’s death against me. “It was self-defense.”
He flashed a smug smile, one that said I was being naïve, and my hand instinctively curled into a fist. “No judge would believe you, especially with the way you killed him. That shit was personal. You beat him so thoroughly there was nothing but splintered bone and brains left. You broke his hands. Sliced off his dick?—”
“Stop,” I cut him off with a whimper, my stomach turning. Memories from that night banged against the door of my subconscious, demanding to be let out. Mentally, I chained down those images tighter and let out a deep breath. What I’d done hadn’t been a choice. It had been Brian’s decision the moment he snuck into my little sister’s bedroom. Fingertips grazed my cheek, and I drew back sharply, the spark of recognition crawling across my skin.
“You did what you had to do, baby,” Grady whispered, his tone far gentler than I’d heard it before.
I stared at him, trying to find the man I’d once trusted with my heart. “I didn’t have a choice then, but I have a choice now, and I won’t do a damned thing for you, Grady.”
Like a light switch being flipped, his demeanor changed. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out his phone, tapping the screen a few times before he turned it to face me.
