Chapter 11

Chapter 11

Galina

" D asvidaniya."

That one word replayed over and over again in my head, the word Leonid had said low and mockingly in that thick Russian accent. And he'd watched me the whole time as Arlo led me out of the bar.

I now sat in the passenger seat of a Mercedes that had been parked at the side of the building. My heart was racing so fast and hard that my pulse was a constant thump-thump in my ears. I stared down at my backpack, not knowing how it was sitting on my lap, not knowing who had gotten it. I'd had it with me when I entered, my clothes stuffed inside when I changed, and as I curled my fingers around the old, stained nylon, all I saw was blood and gore and violence.

"You've put Dima out of commission," Leonid had said with controlled amusement. "You'll owe me, Arlo. I'll call, and you'll come. Remember, I now know your weakness." He'd said that last part while his gaze locked on me.

"What did he mean?" My voice was surprisingly strong given the fact that I felt as if I was having an out-of-body experience. I wasn't a stranger to violence. It was all brutal. But what I'd witnessed from Arlo, the way he used that decorative stone ball… it had been unlike anything I'd ever seen before.

He looked completely in his element, calm as he brought it down on that man's hands over and over again with bone-crushing force and precision. And his face… God, his face had been so void of anything .

My breath caught in my throat as I kept replaying those images over and over again. And he'd done it because that man had touched me. I knew that as well as I knew I was sitting in his car, letting him take me somewhere unknown.

I hadn't even put up a fight as he pulled me out of the bar, as he opened the door and all but set me on the leather seat of this car. I let him buckle the seat belt around me, his scent spicy and masculine with dark undertones that filled my nose, washing away the coppery scent of blood that had consumed my senses up until that point.

He didn't speak, but he didn't have to, to tell me the answers I needed. I could look at him and know exactly the type of man he was, who he was down to his very soul.

A killer.

Aside from the subtle tightening of his fingers on the steering wheel, his expression was closed off.

I stared at his hands, covered with now-dried blood. I wanted to ask him again what Leonid had meant, even though I could put two and two together. I would have had to be blind to not see that Leonid and Arlo were one and the same. Even worse than the men I'd grown up around in Vegas.

Then why am I not afraid of Arlo? Why do I feel like he'd kill a man to protect me… that he almost did?

"Where are you taking me?"

He stayed silent for so long that I assumed he wouldn't answer.

"My apartment," he finally said, and my heart jackknifed in my chest.

Something deep and dark in my body came alive. He cut me a quick glance before focusing on the street again, his fingers tightening once more on the steering wheel.

"If I wanted to hurt you, I wouldn't have to take you to my apartment to do it." He stated those words so matter-of-factly it was like he'd read my mind. "You're safe." A long moment passed before he said so low I almost didn't hear, "Even from me."

Twenty minutes later we were outside the city limits of Desolation and pulling into an underground garage. He parked, climbed out, and walked around the front to open the passenger door before I could do it myself. For a second I just stared up at him, my breath stalling at the cold, detached look on his face.

"Come on, Lina." His tone was hard and sharp. It was dangerous.

I slipped my hand in his and repressed a shiver, but I didn't know if it was one of disgust because of what I'd seen him do, or because I liked the feel of his slightly callused hand wrapping tightly around mine and helping me out of his car.

I followed him toward an elevator, and he passed a silver key card across a sensor. The doors opened immediately. And then we were enclosed together as it ascended.

I should have been freaking out. I should have been demanding he take me to my apartment. I shouldn't have been staring down at my hands as I curled them even tighter around the straps of my backpack and watched them shake. I shouldn't have kept my mouth shut and let my gaze trail over my dress that I now noticed was covered in pin-sized dark spots.

Blood… blood covered me.

I didn't know anything about Arlo except for his name and what he ate at the diner every time he came in. His expression was always so stone-cold, as if he was so untouchable by everything and everyone that he couldn't bother to care. And as I glanced at him, his profile severe and cut in masculine lines and strong features, I couldn't find the words to say anything. I couldn't find my voice to tell him to take me back to my apartment, even though that was the last place I wanted to go. Because I don't want to be alone.

I was rattled and shaken, not sure what the hell just happened. He'd beat a man, pulverized his hands, all because of what? The man had groped me, yeah, but Arlo had acted out of such rage I was having a hard time breathing now just thinking about it.

Maybe all of this was some personal vendetta between the two men, because surely I would have no bearing on what Arlo did or didn't do. Before my thoughts could get even more tangled, the elevator stopped, and the doors opened. He stepped out first, and for a moment I just stood there, unsure if I should follow.

A part of me felt like I was stepping through the gates of hell itself. But I found myself moving on my own accord, the elevator closing silently behind me. I smelled lemon cleaning products right away, and with the lights completely off, the only things I could make out were what the city lights touched coming through the massive windows.

Oh. Wow.

My gaze was riveted to those windows, ones that took up one entire wall of his apartment, the city and sky stretching out for as far as you could see. It looked like it could have been cut from a postcard, how perfect it all seemed, how clean and docile… so not dangerous.

I focused on Arlo again, telling myself I probably shouldn't turn my attention from him. With the shadows and light that shone through the large windows making up one entire wall, I could make out certain parts of his home. Large couch to the left. A massive TV on the wall across from the furniture. The kitchen was to the right, all dark, smooth counters and sleek stainless-steel appliances.

I expected him to turn my way, to say something now that we were in his domain, but he still said nothing, just walked ahead of me, the soft sound of his shoes hitting the floor seeming louder than it probably should.

" Are you okay?" I finally asked, although it felt so stupid to ask a question like that.

He braced his hands on the bar and hung his head for a second before he let out a low, short, humorless laugh. "You're the one who was sexually assaulted tonight, and you're asking me if I'm okay?" He turned just his head so he could look at me, the shadows from the dark apartment and figments of light coming through all the windows from the city right behind the glass making him seem almost sinister.

"Yeah. I guess I am." We stared at each other for so long it started to become uncomfortable. My body shouldn't be feeling hot, so hot that I felt a trickle of sweat trail down between my breasts.

His eyes were hard, dark. Intense. "You're in shock."

Maybe I was. But I had never felt as clearheaded as I did right now.

And me feeling like I was burning alive had nothing to do with the temperature and everything to do with the man standing just feet from me.

"Why did you bring me here?" I was fidgeting as I ran my hands up and down my thighs, picked at an invisible thread at the hem of the dress, and kept shifting on my feet, the clack-clack of my heels sounding deafening.

He didn't respond as he turned and poured himself a drink. He held his arm out and tipped the bottle in my direction, and I found myself nodding before clearing my throat and asking him for a drink too, even though alcohol was the last thing I needed right now.

Once the glass was filled, he turned and walked back to me, holding it out, our fingers brushing as I took it with a shaky hand. I didn't miss how his eyes tracked the movement as I tightened my fingers around the smoothness of the glass in hopes I could gather my control. He didn't stop following my movements with his eyes as I brought the rim to my mouth and took a long drink.

That numbness faded and the fear and anxiety coursed through me so forcefully I drowned in the liquor, inhaling it without realizing, the acidic burn of it settling in my belly like a stone in the pit of my stomach.

He didn't show any emotion as he brought his own vodka to his mouth and took a long, slow drink. He swallowed it so smoothly it could have been water for all I knew. Then he turned and headed to the bar for a refill.

The silence stretched on, the loudest thing I'd ever heard. I stood there in the center of his lavish, expensive apartment, holding a glass of vodka and wearing another man's blood on me like an accessory.

"I brought you here because it's the only place they can't touch you. It's the only place you're truly safe right now."

His words had my heart lodging in my throat. I said nothing as I finished off my alcohol, the burn already making a warm, pleasure-numbing path through my veins, my eyes watering, but I blinked it back before the tears slid down my cheeks.

He turned around to face me, drinking his second glass and watching me over the rim.

"Why would they want to hurt me?" My voice was too low, too thin. I was terrified, not just about what had happened back at that bar—with that man—but what Leonid had meant by his parting words.

Your weakness.

But most of all, the most suffocating reason why I was terrified was because as I stood across from Arlo, all I felt was the need to go to him, to press my body against his and let our darknesses coexist.

"Why would I be on a man like that's radar?" Those words were whispered, and still Arlo didn't speak even though I knew he heard me. But I didn't need him to say the words to know the answer to the question I asked. Yet again I kept firing them at him, now more than ever wanting him to lie—to deny—what I said, what I felt.

"It's my fault," he finally said, but there was no guilt in his voice. There was… nothing. He tipped back his glass to finish off his vodka before setting it on the bar behind him. "I shouldn't have let him see my reaction." The last part was said almost as if he spoke to himself.

"I don't know what the hell's going on," I admitted softly before finishing off my liquor as well. I coughed, covering my mouth with the back of my hand as the burn settled in deep. It was fire down my throat and coalescing in my belly. It was a light-headedness that made the situation a little less dreadful.

I turned from Arlo and walked toward the windows, the glass starting at the floor and going all the way to the ceiling foot after foot above me, nothing but skyscrapers and twinkling lights as far as the eye could see. Down below, there was nothing but red and white lights moving back and forth. Did the people there know the world they lived in? Did they know the evil men behind the designer suits and gentle smiles? Did they know death was right in front of them, and they opened their arms to embrace it like a warm friend?

I could see Arlo coming to stand behind me in the reflection of the glass, but I couldn't find it in me to feel any kind of fear. And although there was this awareness inside me that this man was dangerous, I never felt that his violence or aggression would ever be directed toward me. It was illogical. It was fucking stupid.

I knew nothing about Arlo, but if I looked hard enough, I could see his entire story written right on the surface.

"You're a bad man," I said as I stared at his reflection. He was looking down at me, his dark brows pulled low. He lifted a hand and ran it over his mouth, the sound of his palm moving over the stubble that created a light shadow across his cheeks and jaw loud right beside my ear. It was masculine. Arousing. It shouldn't have turned me on, but it did.

"I am." That word was final. So final that I felt a chill race up my spine as he said it in that low voice.

"Are there worse men out there than you?" I didn't know why I asked the question. Because truthfully I knew the answer.

"No."

I wanted to say I didn't believe him, but I'd be lying to both of us.

"But there are men out there who would hurt you, Lina… simply because you're associated with someone." I knew he meant associated with him . "They'd hurt you to make a point, to take a perceived weakness and snuff it out." His gaze was so fierce.

My heart hiccupped. Was he saying I was his weakness? I didn't even know him. How could I control someone that much? But my words were thrown back at me because the feelings I had when I was in Arlo's presence were soul-searing.

What Arlo unknowingly made me feel was hot enough to burn the wings off an angel.

My breath caught at the cold calculation, what he implied. What he's saying.

"And it's taking every single ounce of self-control I don't even possess not to go back there and kill any bastard who would take your life as if it meant nothing."

I didn't know why I turned around, didn't know why I faced the predator head-on. But as he took my now-empty glass from my hand and set it aside, his eyes never leaving me, there was nothing on this earth that could have forced me to look away.

I moved my arms behind me and pressed my palms flat against the window. The glass was cold and smooth beneath them. Hard. I curled my fingers against it, even though I knew it wouldn't give me any purchase.

I stared into his eyes that looked so dark with the shadows gently caressing him like a lover. And I knew the absolute truth the longer he stared at me, peeling away bit by bit, exposing me inch by inch.

"Did you kill that man in the alley?" I knew I wouldn't have to specify what and who I meant.

One.

Two.

Three seconds passed before he moved in an inch closer. "Yes."

He said that word as if it was the easiest thing to admit. As if killing was the simplest form of pleasure. I held my breath, his truth like a sledgehammer to my chest.

"Ask me why I did it." Low voice. Deep words. Tearing me from the inside out.

"Why did you kill him?" There was a hitch in my voice that I knew couldn't go unnoticed.

He leaned in until his lips were close enough to my ear that his answer would brush along the shell. "For you."

My heart was running a race in my chest . Bu-bump. Bu-bump . "What are you?"

His smile was slow. Evil. He moved a step back, and I sucked in a breath.

"I told you." One. Two. Three seconds. "The bad guy."