Chapter 112
Chapter 112
-Hailey-
“Who told you?” Logan’s voice came from directly behind me, and I jumped. I hadn’t heard him move.
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I turned around, and he was standing, leaning heavily on the back of the couch with his cigarette dangling from his fingers. The raw pain on his face was gone, replaced by a scary level of focus.
“Anatoly.” Goosebumps trailed down my arms. Every time I said his name, I felt like I was summoning him.
“You said he wasn’t there.”
“He wasn’t. No one was there. He… he called me.” The slip was tiny, almost nothing. But I felt the blood drain from my face the second the words left my mouth. I took a step back, and my hip bumped against the windowsill.
Logan went completely still. Ash collected on the end of his cigarette as he stared a hole through me. “He called you,” he repeated. His voice was dangerously soft now. “When?”
“In the house. After… after we found Stella.” I crossed my arms over my chest like a lousy shield.
“What did he say?” He took a limping step toward me. His eyes were locked on mine, missing nothing. He was in that mode now… the one I’d seen after Leo was shot. The tactical, analytical mind was cutting through the emotion.
“Logan, it doesn’t matter-”
“What. Did. He. Say.” Each word was a hammer strike. He was inches from me now, and the smell of smoke and whiskey and him was overpowering the fresh air from the window. “What aren’t you telling me? What really happened in that fucking house?”
He was too close. I could see the pulse hammering in his throat, the calculation in his eyes as he dissected my every flinch.
The lie was impossible now. He would smell it on me.
So, I gave him truth… some of it. I looked down at the floor, at the scuff marks on my boots, and started talking to them instead of him.
“There was a man,” I started, barely a whisper. “He was in a chair… like Stella. But his throat was cut. It was… fresh.” I swallowed as the memory came flooding back. “There were pliers on the table. And a tooth.”
Logan’s jaw flexed, and his breath hissed between his teeth.
“He was one of theirs,” I continued. “Anatoly did it himself, I think. He made Stella watch. And he took pictures.”
I risked a glance up. All traces of his earlier self–pity were gone, replaced by a cold, professional disgust. Good. This he understood. This was a language he spoke.
“He took Stella’s phone,” I said. The words were coming faster now. “He sent the picture of Stella to me.. the one with the address. It said to come alone… Then he sent the picture of the tooth. To make sure I would.”
“Why?”
“I told you.” I finally met his eyes. “It was a test, Logan. The whole thing. Stella was never the real target. She was past, bait. The message was for me. But it was “about you.”
His brow furrowed. “What the hell does that mean?”
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Chapter 112
I had told him too much already. I knew I should have shut the hell up. But his eyes were like a truth serum.
“He told me,” I said, throwing Anatoly’s own words back like a weapon. “He called you a blunt instrument. A hammer. That you’d see a nail and strike… and that’s why you’d lose. He set the trap knowing you’d be the one to charge into it. He wanted to see if I was smart enough, or scared enough, to stop you.”
The air left Logan’s lungs in a slow, controlled exhale. I watched the brutal psychology of it settle over him.
His jaw worked. The anger was still there, but it had found a new target on Anatoly. The man who’d so casually dissected and manipulated him.
The betrayal by his family was momentarily eclipsed by the scale of the insult from his enemy. The audacity.
“He was watching.” Logan stated. His mind was already racing ahead, piecing it together. “Hknew you didn’t show up alone.”
“Yeah. He said he knew before we even left the city.” I left out the part about the man walking his dog. It sounded paranoid “The point is, he orchestrated the whole thing. To prove a point. To me. To you. To show that he’s always three steps ahead
Logan was quiet for a minute, processing everything. “The house was empty besides the body?” he asked, all business.
“Yes.” I hugged myself tighter. “That’s it. That’s what happened.”
It wasn’t. It wasn’t even half of it… but it was enough. It was the story he could handle. The one that turned his fary outward Away from the club.
–
The other truth – the intimate threat, the command for silence – was a bomb I would have to hold onto alone. Letting hi try to diffuse it would only get everyone killed.
He moved back over to the couch to take another drink from the bottle of whiskey. The truth, or the version of it. I’d given him, was just hanging in the air between us.
I couldn’t stand the distance. Without a word, I turned and walked to the door.
My hand reached out and locked the deadbolt. The solid, metallic *thunk* sealed us in Locked the world out Locked other, scarier secrets away with it. For now.
I turned back to him. He was watching me. The rigid set of his shoulders had softened just a little. I peeled my boots of ant crossed the room again, not stopping until I was standing in front of him.
I put my hands on his shoulders, feeling the tight, tense muscles under his shirt, and gently pushed.
He sank back onto the couch with a grunt, but his eyes never left mine. I followed him down, swinging a leg over his up settling into his lap.
The familiar shape of him, the solid warmth, was an immediate, almost painful relief. It felt like coming home to the wreckage of a house that was still on fire… but it was home.
leaned into him, burying my face in the curve of his neck, breathing in the scent of him.
And then I remembered his leg.
‘Shit, sorry–” I started to push myself up, to take my weight off him as the guilt surged back.
He grunted and it sounded almost pained, but his hands flew to my hips. His grip was iron, forcing me baxdows, hobling me firmly in place against him. “Stop,” he gritted out. Just stop, Ass
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Chapter 112
One hand left my hip and came up to cup my jaw, his thumb stroking over my chefoon spardy with hooker arm wrapped around my back, pulling me flush against his chest
He looked at me, searching my face, finding the fear, the guilt, the exhmentio, the begeede need for authen
Then he pulled my face to his.
The kiss was a desperate, hungry collision that tasted like whiskey and fory and forge
It was an apology, from us both. A claiming. It was the only language we hard left that made an
–
Everything else the lies, the war, the rotting corpse in the empty home on Oakmon Lane–otot e di leaving nothing but the two of us, sucking each other’s faces in the wreckage.
宙
AD
Sara Lili is a daring romance writer who turns icy landscapes into scenes of fiery passion. She loves crafting hot love stories while embracing the chill of Iceland’s breathtaking cold.
