Page 61 of Marked
My gut flips. Not with anger, but excitement. I push from the old wood edge. “Prove none of it is yours then.”
She pulls an older model cell phone out of her pocket and opens an app before turning it around. A local bank logo glares back at me. Along with a very low number in the only account underhername.
When I glance at her, her face is blood-red. “I’m fucking broke, Ruin. Don’t you think, if I had more money somewhere, I would have lived in better conditions than my apartment?” She waves angrily around us. “I had to pay Vic rent for the room down the hall. Almost half of my damn check every week so he could–” Her words choke off.
She bends in half and pulls at the leg of her jeans inside her boot. The hem is patched with an uneven stitch in ugly red thread. “This is not from all my offshore accounts,” she hisses.
My hand closes over her arm. “The room down the hall ... You had topayhim to stay there?”
She goes very, very still. “You’ve seen it?” Her voice is soft, horrified.
“What was the room used for, Lilah?”
Her eyes dart to the door behind me. She licks her full lower lip as her pulse races way too fast in my ears. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
I run a hand through my spiked hair, mouth dry. Itwasas bad as I thought. And I thought– “Fuck.”
Her eyes darken to cerulean. “You really believed the properties were mine, didn’t you?” I stay silent. She rocks back. “I can’t believe this shit. After how we met?”
“Lilah–”
She turns away and stalks to the door. I run after her.
“Where are you going?” I call.
“To my supposed house on Lock Lake.” Her lithe frame stops in the center of the stairs, and she turns to glower down at me. “Markus said something about a property on the lake yesterday. Even hinted at letting me work with him on it. Was that more lies?”
I stare up at her.
She talked to Markus? When?
“I have no idea what–”
A heavy clatter sounds upstairs, close to the hall entrance. Too close. I grab Lilah from the step, arm around her knees and her midsection level with my face. I pull the light cord as quiet as I can, plunging us into complete darkness. Her little fists pound at me.
I slide her down my body, burying my face in her neck. “Quiet. There’s someone upstairs.”
She stills and her hands clench in my shirt. I ease her slowly to the floor and urge her behind me and into a musty storage closet.
With the door cracked, I peer through it. Waiting. Her heat presses over my spine but her heartbeat is loud in my ears. Too loud. I grab her hand as another creak sounds above. She whimpers.
“Lilah, calm down,” I whisper. Still the beat thrums. I roll my head on my shoulders, fangs dropping with force at the erratic rhythm. Fear for a vamp is like salt on a steak. Just enough makes the meal. Too much and it’s ruined.
She clings to me. “Ruin, I can’t do this. What if you were wrong? What if it’s Vic?” Her pulse pounds faster. “He’ll kill me. I know it. I’m no use to him now. And the waitress was just as expendable. Oh god. I’m dead. I’m fucking dead.” The last comes out on a desolate mewl.
Shit.
I snare her in my arms and press her head to my chest. “Stop. If he comes near you ...” I swallow. Hard. The fucker will never get her. Ever again. “You’re safe, Lilah. Just breathe.”
Her fists dig into my skin.
“Listen to the beat of my heart, okay?” I whisper. “Hear the steadiness. The calm. And breathe.”
Her breath is hot over my sternum.
“Good girl. Again.”
She inhales and exhales in a shaky push. But her heart begins to slow. I stroke my hand over her back, calluses catching in the silky fabric of her blouse. Even more of the tension leaves her frame. I step back into the corner of the closet, pressing her into the small space and boxing her in. Shielding her from whatever is outside.
