38. BIRTH OF POWER

38

BIRTH OF POWER

YARA

T he next day, I was waiting for Ryden, dressed for the art exhibition. He said he’d pick me up at seven. I opened the text messages from The Strangler and read it for the hundredth time.

There were exactly thirty-two days until my birthday. What did he mean by gifts? More dead women?

A strange part of me wanted him to kill. It would serve as a confirmation that he had indeed arrived in Detroit at last, closer to me than ever. Closer for me to finally have my hands on him. I felt bad thinking like that, but…

My thought was interrupted by the sound of the doorbell chiming. I adjusted my pantsuit with a smile and walked out.

It was exactly seven. His punctuality only added to his magnetic charms. The man wasn’t just sexy, he was also… respectful. Not when he was ordering me to suck his cock, or when he was stalking me, but those were the times I didn’t need him to respect me.

I opened the door to see him in a suit, his tie slightly crooked, and my breath hitched. He took me in from head to toe, and his eyes changed.

“God, no one will be looking at the paintings if you’re dressed like this. You’re so fucking intent on killing everyone, aren’t you?” his voice was soft, almost a gasp, as if he couldn’t properly breathe.

With a grin, I leaned closer and kissed his stubble. “You look just as magnificent, Ryden. Good enough to eat in a single bite. Shall we leave?”

“Let me look at you for a few more minutes,” he said, running his finger through my hair. “I want to take that suit off of you, Red, and do dirty things to you,” he whispered, tugging at the lace bodice of my pantsuit, his eyes darkening in lust as he took in the bra I had chosen just for him.

The naked desire in his eyes made me want to pull him into my house by his coat lapels and never let him leave. To tie him to my headboard and do things to him… things he would enjoy.

“I do love art, but I want to… explore more of your body,” I whispered, running my fingers down his shirt until I reached closer to the visible outline of his erect cock. “It’s art in itself.” He jerked back from me as if my touch was fire.

“Don’t say things like that, Yara, and don’t touch me… if you touch me, I’ll come right here. I can’t,” he groaned, tugging me by my hand. “I promised you an art exhibition, and you’re getting it. Come on, let’s go before I fucking change my mind,” he growled, his voice pained.

Smiling, I locked the door and walked to his shiny black car as he continued to stare at me, his eyes wide with appreciation. He opened the door for me with a bow.

“Why are you so fucking beautiful, Red?” he grunted as he took his seat on the driver’s side.

“I’m sorry. I know it’s such an inconvenience,” I said with a teasing grin. I pressed my hand to his thigh when he finally started the car, after staring at me for another few minutes.

“Red, I’ll die from a perpetual erection if you continue with this,” he said as I ran my finger up his cock, which was already hard as rock. Fuck. The man was easy to turn on, and it gave me the power to know that he was putty in my hand.

“We already established that’s a good way to die,” I winked, playing with him, enjoying his little grunts and remarks until we reached the gallery.

The name of the gallery, Arts and Apostles, was shining in silver glowing letters. Everything smelled like paint and turpentine. Ryden held my hand in his and walked me through long corridors dotted with white lights on the ceilings, casting a soft glow over everything.

The display itself was art; each piece hung in a perfect corner, where it belonged in such a way everything came together in perfect harmony.

“We’re committed to showcasing a diverse array of mediums, from abstracts and sculptures to digital installations. I hope you’re enjoying our first showcase.” A woman was talking to a guest.

The man laughed, and Ryden’s body tensed as soon as he heard that laugh. It was not a good laugh. My eyes searched the crowded room until it fell on a tall man in a cream suit.

“You know him,” I said, and Ryden nodded, his brows knitted together in disdain. An invisible storm cloud settled over him, and I knew that Ryden wanted nothing but to kill this man. His desire was so apparent; knowing that should have put me off, but it didn’t.

“We want to redefine the boundaries of traditional art by using new techniques and concepts that challenge the viewers to feel the art. It is more than just… looking. We want you to feel every piece deep in your soul,” the woman continued, but I could see the look of apparent disinterest on the man’s face. He was here…but not for art.

From the way he dressed, it was clear that he was rich, and it was evident that he was the type of person who took pride in flaunting his affluence.

“She’s barking up the wrong tree. Thatcher Perry knows nothing about art.”

“How do you know him?”

“I work with him, and he is as artlessly ugly as they come,” Ryden muttered, his words dripping with contempt, guiding me away from the man, as if he didn’t want Thatcher’s eyes on me.

Tracing a soothing path along Ryden’s corded muscles, I smiled and felt him relaxing under my touch as we walked away from Thatcher.

“I’m sorry. Tonight is not about him,” Ryden apologized, turning his full attention to me, an earnest look in his eyes. When those gray eyes were on me, sometimes, it was so hard to think, to talk. “It’s about you. Let’s enjoy this, shall we?”

“Ryden Sinclair, is that you?” Thatcher Perry said in a high-pitched voice.

“Fuck,” Ryden hissed when Thatcher walked toward us, his steps confident, his smile sleazy. He had roaming eyes—eyes that were made to make a woman uncomfortable, but I had mastered the art of never allowing a man’s gaze to impact me.

“Why didn’t you say hi?” he said, giving me another unsettling smile. “Who’s the pretty woman in your arms?”

“No one you should be interested in,” Ryden said, his voice clipped, his eyes direct as his arm came around my waist, pulling me snugly against him. He was marking his territory—he would gladly piss around me if he could.

I bit back a smile.

Thatcher let out a small huff. “That’s rude. The lady can talk, can’t she?”

“The lady can talk very well, but she’d rather not right now. The only one I want to talk with is this man next to me. Excuse us, Mr. Perry.”

Thatcher’s face soured, but Ryden’s lips widened in a smile. I walked forward, pulling Ryden along with me.

“I would have broken that smug nose of his if he had looked at you a moment longer.” His fingers dug into my hip, pulling me closer to his body, his voice a possessive warning.

We finally stopped in front of a painting of a horned man standing over a woman, sucking her soul out of her. Her eyes were half closed, and there was a smile on her lips as if she was enjoying whatever it was, he was doing to her. She looked half alive, half dead.

“She looks happy,” Ryden said, his brows furrowed.

“She looks more than just happy,” I said with a chuckle. “It almost looks like the woman is in the throes of an orgasm. I wouldn’t mind him doing things to me.”

Ryden grunted something under his breath and shook his head. “Yara West, who in the hell are you? The prim and proper ME I met the first day or this woman who wouldn’t mind being fucked by a horned man?”

“Can’t I be both?”

“Oh, you can be everything you want to be, anything you want to be,” Ryden said. “But… the only one who is going to fuck you is me.” The way he said it in a whisper made me shudder. “And when I fuck you again, you’ll forget all about him.”

“Are you… comparing dicks with a creature in a picture, Ryden?” I chuckled, and he leaned closer and pressed his lips to my shoulder.

“Yes, and I want you to only think about my dick because your pussy is mine until this thing between us ends.”

My head spun from the rush of what he said and how he said it.

“You get it, don’t you, Little Killer?”

“I get it,” I whispered breathlessly, my lungs suddenly forgetting something they had been doing for years now. How to fucking breathe.

We walked to the next sculpture, which was titled Birth of Power.

The sculpture was of Medusa in dark blue, with golden snakes twisting out of her broken skull. The snakes slithered down her back and made holes in it until they were coming out of her gaping ribcage.

It looked so realistic, so powerful.

“That’s beautiful,” I said. “And powerful. You can see her wrath and her fearlessness in her eyes, and the snakes… their hunger.”

“Thank you,” a deep voice said from behind me. “It took me a while to perfect that look in her eyes.”

I turned around and gasped. I immediately recognized the face. He was much older than the one I had of him from the case file, but it was the man from the coffee shop. Logan Jones. One with the vandalism charge against him. “She is beautiful, isn’t she?” he said, his voice soft, loving.

“She is. You sculpted her?” I asked, studying his face. He wasn’t wearing a hoodie anymore. The suit was costly, and there were no paint smudges on his clothes. He looked powerful, and his smile was confident and charismatic.

He gave me a nod, running his fingers through his hair. “She’s a difficult woman to understand, but once I understood her, she came alive in my hands.”

“I love how real she looks and yet untouchable.”

“She’s real. She’s honest. There’s no lies in her. No masks.”

My eyes went to his shining brown ones, and he smiled. A flash of something passed in his eyes, and the snakes on Medusa slithered down my spine. Cold. It was so cold.

“I’m Logan Jones. I have a few more pieces lying around. You’ll enjoy them.” His smile was glib before he walked away toward a crowd of men and women staring at another sculpture. This wasn’t the surly man who ordered coffee in a cold voice. This man was charming, and he knew how to work the crowd.

“Are you alright?” Ryden asked as he softly caressed my spine. “You look uncomfortable.”

“I met him before and I got a bad feeling about him,” I said to Ryden, twisting my fingers.

Logan Jones was now talking with a tall woman, and she was laughing at whatever he said. The way The Strangler was so kind… the way all these women died without having a single defensive wound… they trusted him not to hurt them until the very last moment.

I didn’t know why looking at Logan Jones reminded me of The Strangler, but could he be… The Strangler? The meeting at Coffee Connexion didn’t feel like a coincidence. I didn’t believe in coincidences.

He looked so fucking harmless, and his smile didn’t feel forced. After spending years trying to distinguish men from monsters, I was so good at reading a person, but I suddenly felt lost, confused.

Logan Jones didn’t fit the profile, but he also made me feel uneasy.

Ryden and I walked to the next display and the next, talking about them, when another voice cut us off and this time, Ryden smiled.

“I see you’ve brought a beautiful woman with you,” the man in front of us said.

He was tall and pale, with brown hair that was cropped closer to his skull and pale blue eyes. He stopped in front of me and pushed a hand forward, showing off his tattooed fingers. “You must be the one who made my guy go raving mad over the past few weeks.”

“I did?” I shook his hand with a smile.

“You know you did. Don’t pretend like you don’t know anything about it,” Ryden said with a frown before he turned to the man. “You can let her hand go now, Enzo.” He stared at Enzo’s hand in mine, and I smirked. He was so fucking jealous, and I loved it. “Yara, this is Enzo. My friend. Enzo, this is…”

Enzo. I remembered that name. He was the one who was a partner at Onyx.

“Doctor Death.”

I laughed. “Doctor Death? Is that my nickname?”

“Don’t mind him. He’s a pain in my ass, and he himself is a master of death. He owns a funeral home,” Ryden said to me, and my ears perked with curiosity as I scanned Enzo. The two men looked comfortable around each other, and Ryden wasn’t bursting with anger or fake charm. He looked… at ease. He looked like himself.

Ryden Sinclair had a best friend who owned a funeral home.

I now knew exactly where Phil disappeared. Into the fucking fire. Until he was nothing but ashes. Marvelous.

Oh, how useful!

I once had a best friend who carried a small plastic bag she used to fill with pineapple candies.

“So, where’s the artist who drew that judgmental crow?” Ryden asked Enzo with a smirk, making the other man turn red.

“Come. She has two of her paintings on display today. They’re so damn good,” Enzo said, looking excited.

Ryden turned to me. “Do you want to go see it? But it’ll be more disturbing than good.”

“I want to,” I said as Ryden took my hand in his.

The three of us walked toward a woman standing there, twiddling with the edge of her long-sleeved jacket. She shifted her weight from one leg to another, looking nervous.

When we moved next to her, she jerked back like a startled animal, ready to flee at any moment.

I stared at the painting, noticing the soft lines but also the harsher undertones. The picture was of a man in a goat mask, horns twisting from the sides of his head. His face was entirely covered by the mask except the eyes, and the look in his eyes was sinister. The lower half of the man was cut open until his intestines spilled out of him, and he was carrying it with his bloodied hands.

If I wasn’t someone who dabbled in death and murder, I would have retched right here. Thankfully, the three of us, all well-versed in dead bodies and gore, didn’t even flinch.

“I told you,” Ryden said. “God. He looks ugly as fuck.”

“It’s provocative,” I said, studying him. He reminded me of most of the men I killed. He could be any one of them behind that mask.

“Did it provoke your puke response?” Ryden rolled his eyes, and I chuckled.

“Ryden, dude,” Enzo huffed. “Shut the fuck up.”

The woman standing next to us let out a small squeak.

Oh fuck, she must be the artist.

“Please, don’t mind him,” Enzo said to her, his voice kind.

“You’re the artist.” He looked at the blushing woman, and she nodded, rubbing her hand against her jacket. She must be younger than me, but behind those doe-like eyes, I saw something else—something that came with pain and suffering.

“I-I am. I’m Trish,” she said. “I know everyone won’t like the… depiction of the gore and brutality, but…” she trailed off, looking flustered.

“I love it,” I said. “You expressed his cruelty in his eyes. He wanted to hurt someone, and then… when you look closer, you know he can’t hurt anyone because he’ll be dead in a few seconds, and then the way he is holding on to his intestines… It’s desperation. He wants to live, just so he can hurt her.”

Her eyes widened as if she couldn’t believe I said it before she gave me an enthusiastic nod. When I looked up, Ryden was looking at me with a strange expression, and Enzo was giving me a bright smile.

I could see how much Enzo liked Trish. His eyes were gleaming, and he couldn’t take his eyes off of her.

“Yes,” she finally said, rubbing her fingers against the back of her neck. “It’s my way of giving someone courage. Look, he’s stronger, but you’re not weak, either.”

“I love it. Is it for sale? Can I buy it?”

She gasped again. Her fingers went to her brown hair, which was cut closer to her chin as she tugged at it.

“What!” Enzo said. “I was going to buy it, Doctor Death.”

She smiled a little. “I can paint you something else,” she said to Enzo in a whisper, her eyes away from his, and Enzo glowed.

Oh, fuck. This is cute. I had never been shy in my life, and this was… making me feel strange, which became stranger when Ryden placed a hand on my ass, leaning closer to me as if he didn’t want there to be any distance between us.

“Do you promise?” Enzo said, and Ryden laughed next to me.

“Of course,” she mumbled.

Ryden and I shared a quick look, grinning. Oh, this was turning out to be an interesting date. I didn’t expect to meet so many new characters in my old story.

“Oh, and you can talk to Daphne,” Trish said, biting her lips. “I mean, if you want to buy it.”

“Of course, I want to. But who is Daphne, and where can I find her?”

“There. Talking with Logan. That’s Daphne Morgan, and she’s the owner of the gallery.”

Thanking Trish, Ryden and I walked away. Enzo stayed, chatting with her, looking animated.

“It’s you,” Logan said to me when I reached Daphne. “Did you take a look at my other pieces?”

“No, I was busy looking at that,” I said, pointing to Trish’s piece. Daphne Morgan brightened, and I could see the glint of dollars in her eyes. She was ready for the sale.

“Trish is good.”

“I want to buy that piece.” Daphne smiled eagerly when I showed her the painting.

“So, Logan, are you from Detroit?” Ryden asked, a friendly smile on his face. I knew what he was doing—he was vetting Logan for me. I had never had a partner in crime before… but this was something I could come to like.

That line of thought… it’s dangerous, Yara.

“No. I’m from NY, but Detroit is like a home away from home.”

“Do you travel often for art exhibitions?” I asked, studying his eyes. There wasn’t a flicker of emotion in his eyes as he gave me a cool nod.

“He does, but he always comes back home,” Daphne said, smiling.

“Yes, I fell in love with Detroit when I first came here years ago, and I can’t walk away even if I want to. I’m here to stay now.”

“Really?”

“Yes. I want to enjoy everything Detroit has to offer. Everything.”