Page 84 of Savagely Yours
I didn’t respond.
This wasn’t a negotiation, and he wouldn’t leave without dying, telling me, or both.
“It’s about LaSalle,” he went on. “Apparently, he has a connection to one of the rebellion dissenters Neal discovered. The girl from Sanitation. I don’t remember her name.”
“Leigh,” I offered.
The least the man could do was remember her name.
“Yes, Leigh. Well, when LaSalle found out she’d been detained, he tried to get information on her whereabouts. Neal found out and took him in for questioning. LaSalle mentioned your lawyer’s name.”
“First of all,” I began, inwardly marking LaSalle for death, “LaSalle has no evidence that Tapley’s tied to anything. I’ve been keeping tabs on her. I’ve got eyes on her at all times in the event she tries to escape before her debt is repaid.”
Larke’s “debt” would be repaid in full once I was dust, and I wanted her with me right up until the end. That was where I was; she was mine and would be mine, even if the world changed course from mindless walking beings to a fiery end by meteor. I knew what I had, and I knew I’d found something I would never find again.
I was her Gimli.
She was my Galadriel.
And I was hopelessly fucked.
“What do you need my help with exactly?” I asked.
As if acclimating to the wound, Cerner’s breathing returned to a semi-relaxed tempo. “It requires us to go somewhere.”
“Can’t.” I motioned to my half-naked frame. “Not dressed.”
“Then get dressed.”
“If I were a different man, I would assume you were trying to separate me from Tapley, but I can’t imagine why that would be.”
He attempted to shrug. “Neither would I, but I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t want to be separated from her.”
“Cerner, as much as you fucking disgust me, I’ll give you credit for one thing—you’re not an idiot. You know that I spent my first several weeks here looking for her. You know that I went to Sanitation for her and kept her with me at Woodhaven until she was better. You know that if you plucked out that knife rightnow and went after her with it, I would let you stab me a dozen times before I let any part of that blade so much as graze her skin.”
“You love her?—”
“—is an understatement.”
“Which is what I was afraid of.” He sighed. “Look, Dez, we intentionally give you free rein. I let you do what you want in exchange for your expertise and skill.”
I snorted. “You don’tletme do shit.”
“Why do you think Ms. Tapley was allowed to stay with you in Woodhaven?”
“Because I went and got her and brought her there. If you didn’t like it, you could have tried taking her from me.”
“Icantake her away from you.”
Laughing quietly, I tilted my head and massaged my brow. “Please try it. Please…give me a reason.”
Perhaps I was getting soft. Possibly, I’d used too many words and not enough action. My life, from birth, had been mired in trauma. Before I fully understood what it meant, I’d had to rapidly develop street sense, speed, and strength to avoid becoming someone’s property. Less than three days after escaping foster care, I was approached by a trafficker.
Myfirstone.
I’d been searching for honest and safe attachment all my life, assuming I would never find it, but knowing if I ever did, I would do whatever I hadtoin order to keep it.
I plucked the knife from Cerner’s shoulder, grabbed his head with one hand on his chin, and brought the knife across his throat with the other.
