Chapter Eight

CHAPTER EIGHT

Elian

I knew they weren’t going to just let it drop. Not after something as serious as an actual public shooting.

Some part of me hadn’t been able to sleep at night, wondering if I was going to see her face on the news, if they were going to say she was a victim of some tragic, senseless shooting.

I was actually fucking relieved to hear her panicked voice on the other end of the phone because at least it meant she was still alive.

Even if someone was still actively coming for her.

The doorman was busy talking to a group of residents, telling them about the break-in, so all he did was spare me a nod as I told him my name.

I felt a surge of concern when she didn’t answer her door, and then the knob turned in my hand. I moved inside, that feeling of unease growing as I walked into an empty space.

It wasn’t until I moved into her bedroom that I heard it, a low whimpering sound coming from the attached bathroom.

That was where I found her, knees to her chest, arms around her legs, and rocking in pain next to the toilet.

A migraine, it seemed like.

As if she didn’t have a bad enough night already.

“What can I do?” I asked. “Do you want some meds?” I asked.

The balls of her hands pressed into her eyes as she nodded at me.

“Over the counter or prescription?” I asked.

“Script,” she said, voice small.

I rushed back out to the kitchen, going into her cabinet to find two different prescription meds. Not really knowing the names, I brought both of them back with me and a bottle of water.

She reached for them frantically, uncovering her face for the first time, and letting me see the bruise blooming across her cheek.

I wasn’t aware that a growl had escaped me until her head whipped up, her eyes tiny with her pain as she squinted at me, unsure why I was making that sound.

“He hit you?” I asked.

She dropped one of the bottles into her lap, using both her hands to open the one she wanted, shaking a pill into her hand, then throwing it into her mouth with a sip of water.

“I’m okay,” she said, pressing her hands into her eyes again.

She was anything but okay, but she wasn’t exactly in a place where I should impress upon her just how bad this was that they were in her place waiting for her.

“Can I get you anything else?” I asked. “Cold compress? Those pain strips?”

“Coffee?” she asked, back to rocking.

“I can do that,” I agreed, even if I was dubious about her fancy machine. I made my way back out, figuring out the buttons, then getting some espresso dripping.

I didn’t imagine she’d want cookie syrup when she was being sick, so I opted to just put a little sugar and milk into it instead, then brought it back to her.

She cradled it between her hands, taking short sips here and there, likely not wanting to throw it—and her rescue medicine—up.

Feeling useless, I moved behind her, sitting off the edge of the tub, and reaching out toward her shoulders, gently rubbing at the tension in her neck and shoulders, figuring that couldn’t be helping anything.

Slowly, she stopped rocking, her breathing going a little less frantic.

“How about you go try to get a little sleep?” I asked, fingers going to her scalp, rubbing light circles. “See if that takes it the rest of the way away?”

“I can’t—“

“I’ll stay,” I assured her. “Trust me, baby, no one is getting past me to get to you.”

That seemed to mollify her, and she let me help her up and lead her to her bed, where I pulled the covers up around her in the dark.

“Wait!” she said, shooting up, then wincing hard as the movement seemed to make pain slice into her brain.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Kevin,” she said, eyes going panicked.

“Your cat?” I asked.

“The door was open…”

“I will find Kevin,” I told her. “Just rest. I’ll find him,” I assured her. I didn’t care if I had to bring my fucking crew off their jobs to look for him, I’d find the cat.

“Okay,” she agreed, rolling onto her back and pressing her arm hard against her forehead.

I closed her bedroom door most of the way, then made my way around her apartment, flicking on lights, and looking around for the cat.

He wasn’t on any of his tree stands or beds.

I made my way into her spare room that was set up as an office. It looked like Elizabeth was some sort of art fanatic, judging by the dozens of canvases she had leaning against the walls.

Kevin was nowhere to be found in there either, though.

Concern growing, I moved toward the door, unlocking it, and looking out into the hall. But he was nowhere to be seen.

I found it hard to believe that he would have been able to find his way into the elevator or the stairwell, so I made my way back into the apartment.

I was about to lose hope when I pressed open her bedroom again to check on her, and found a mound of black fur curled up by her feet.

I took myself back out to her living room, noticing the new drapes that she had pulled closed, the alarmed door stopper right next to the door, and the little can of pepper spray now attached to her purse.

She was being careful.

But being careful wasn’t going to be good enough when you were up against a criminal organization who wanted you hurt or dead.

I sat there, trying to figure out how to break the news to her that I knew I needed to.

She couldn’t stay here.

At the very least, she had to leave this apartment. Though, ideally, she would leave Brooklyn. Hell, even the city as a whole.

She said she didn’t have any family or friends here. It wouldn’t be a huge hardship for her to leave.

Sure, it would cost money, but she seemed like she was doing okay for herself. Better to spend a few grand to take herself across the country and out of the reach of the Bratva. There were plenty of other big cities for her to live in.

I had a whole speech worked out in my head by the time I saw her door inch open an hour and a half later.

She looked like hell.

The migraine had left her eyelids puffy like she’d been crying for hours, and that bruise on her face had spread and darkened into shades of maroon and violet.

“Hey,” she said, voice small.

“Hey. How’s your head?”

“Tolerable,” she said, giving me a small smile as she moved over to sit in one of the chairs. “Thanks for staying,” she said. “And finding Kevin.”

“Kevin found you,” I told her. “I think he was probably hiding under your bed until you climbed into it.”

“That makes sense. That’s where he was most of the day when I first moved him in here. How’s this looking?” she asked, reaching up to gently probe the bruise on her cheek, wincing at the pain she caused.

“It’s gotten a lot darker.”

“I guess I have some research to do on what kind of makeup will cover it up before work tomorrow.”

“Elizabeth, you can’t go to work tomorrow.”

“I have to.”

“No, you need to leave.”

“Leave work?”

“No. Yes. Work. This apartment. Brooklyn. You need to leave.”

“I can’t just… leave. My whole life is here,” she insisted, posture going rigid.

She was going to dig her heels in about this.

“Why not? You don’t like your boss.”

“No,” she admitted. “But if I just leave, he gets to get away with what he’s doing. And so do they.”

“It’s not your responsibility to make these people pay for what they’re doing.”

“If not me, who?” she asked, gaze hard. “No one else knows what I know. No one has access to the senator like I do. He almost told me tonight. If we didn’t get interrupted, I know he was going to talk to be about it. And I had my phone recording. It was almost a done deal.”

“That’s where you’re wrong here. This is never going to be a done deal. No matter how solid your evidence is against your boss, that isn’t going to stop the Bratva.”

“But if Michael decides to tell the police about the Bratva—“

“He will almost guarantee the murder of everyone he loves,” I cut her off, watching her deflate. “He knows the risks he has taken with getting involved with these fucks. So he will either lie, or won’t say anything to the police.”

“But…” she started, but couldn’t find anything else to say.

“Trust me here. I know more about this than you do,” I said.

“Right,” she agreed, gaze going down. “But… I can’t let him get away with this. Even if I do have to leave after I turn him in. I have to do something. Everyone needs to know. He can’t get away with it and get reelected, making decisions on laws that will make it easier for these monsters to keep doing what they are doing.”

You could make a solid, persuasive argument against a lot of things. But they rarely worked against someone’s moral beliefs.

She wasn’t going to hear sense about this. She wanted to take her boss down. She thought it was worth the risk.

“You’re not safe here,” I told her, waving out at her apartment. “Even with your neighbors and the doorman alerted, if they got in once, they will get in again.”

“How did they get in?”

“Lots of ways these days with so many people getting things delivered. Or the right uniform will often get you in the front door of most buildings. And when all else fails, almost any building can be broken into.”

“I could go to a hotel,” she said, willing to give in on this, at least. “But that feels even more risky,” she said. “Anyone can walk into a hotel. And I’ve seen horror stories about how easy it is to break into hotel rooms.”

“That’s not wrong,” I agreed. A lot more crime happened in hotels than people realized.

“I could—“ she started at the same time something completely fucking unexpected escaped my lips.

“You could come stay with me.”