Chapter 58: Distracted pt 2

Then the wrists. The fingers. One by one, I turned the man into a collection of broken parts.

I’m going to make all of them pay, I thought, the rhythm of the hammer providing a steady beat to the mantra. Every person who was there. Every person who helped. Every person who took him from me.

By the time I was finished, Lopez was barely a man. He was breathing, but he would never walk again. He would never hold a weapon again. He was a living ghost, a message waiting to be delivered.

“Bundle him up,” I said, wiping a stray drop of blood from my cheek with a silk handkerchief. “We are going to give our next target a little heads up.”

I walked out of the processing plant without looking back.

The drive back to Seville was long and cold. I sat in the backseat, the city lights blurring into streaks of neon as we sped down the highway.

My phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out, expecting a report from Lake.

Instead, the screen lit up with a name that made me exhale a long, weary breath.

Cyan.

I answered. I didn’t even have a chance to say hello before a voice shrieked into my ear.

“CASSIE! OH MY GOD, CASSIE!”

I pulled the phone six inches away from my head. “Hello to you too, Cyan.”

“Since when did you get out of prison?! Why didn’t you call me?! I had to find out from the news! The news, Cassian! I don’t even watch TV! I only saw it because I was at the gym and it was on the big screen and I almost dropped a dumbbell on my foot!”

“I forgot,” I said nonchalantly.

“Forgot?! How could you forget me?! We were cell-block soulmates! We shared a toaster, Cassian! A toaster!”

I closed my eyes. Cyan was the son of a wealthy family who had served time for drug possession and a string of felonies he’d committed mostly out of boredom. He could have been out in weeks with his family’s lawyers, but he’d stayed for nearly a year because he claimed he “liked the vibe” and “the jumpsuits brought out his eyes.” He was a lunatic, but a loyal one. He’d latched onto me during my eighteenth month and had refused to let go ever since.

“I apologize, Cyan,” I said dryly.

“Fine! I forgive you because I’m a saint. Anyway, I’m in Spain! I live here now! Well, I live everywhere, but currently, I have a boutique in Seville. You MUST visit. I’m sending you the address. If you don’t show up, I will find you, and I will be very loud and embarrassing in public.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“You better! Bye, Cassie!”

The line went dead. I stared at the phone. “Another headache,” I muttered.

The car pulled up to the hotel. I felt the weight of the day pressing into my shoulders. I wanted a drink. I wanted a shower. And, much to my own annoyance, I wanted to see Noah. I’d been hard on him at the hospital, perhaps too hard, even for me. I’d considered an apology. Or at least, a less-insulting demand for his presence.

But as I stepped off the elevator into the penthouse foyer, the atmosphere shifted.

My security team was standing like statues, their faces masks of professional dread. Lake stepped forward, his jaw tight.

“Is Noah in?” I asked, my voice already sharpening.

Lake shook his head. “No, sir.”

I didn’t ask questions. I walked straight to the monitoring station in the side room. “Show me.”

The footage was clear. Noah leaving the hotel, looking over his shoulder like a guilty child. And then, the sleek car pulling up. Alexander Hendrix stepping out, smiling that polished, “angelic” smile, and ushering Noah inside.

My jaw tightened until it ached.

He’d left. After I’d told him to stay. After he’d nearly died. He’d gone straight to the one man he knew would irritate me.

I didn’t go after him. I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of a chase. Instead, I went to the living room, poured myself a double whiskey, and sat.

I waited.

Thirty minutes. One hour. Two.

I watched the clock, the ice in my glass melting into the amber liquid. I loosened my tie, pulling it free and tossing it onto the table. I unbuttoned my shirt, the cool air hit my chest, but it didn’t do anything to dampen the fire burning in my gut.

Finally, the door opened.

I didn’t move. I stayed in the shadows of the high-backed chair, watching as Noah stumbled in. He looked flushed. Happy. There was a lightness to his step that hadn’t been there this afternoon. He looked… pretty. Soft.

He was humming. A tiny, cheerful tune that grated against my nerves like a serrated blade.

He was halfway across the room before he realized I was there.

He stopped dead. The color drained from his face, his “independent” posture crumbling in an instant.

I let the silence hang, thick and suffocating. I leaned forward, the light from the window catching the gold of my watch and the ice in my glass.

“You’re late,” I said. My voice was a low, raspy growl, raw from the smoke of the processing plant and the whiskey in my throat.

He stood there, frozen, looking like a deer staring into the barrel of a gun.

“Cassian,” he breathed, his voice trembling.

I pushed myself to my feet. I was exhausted, I was covered in the metaphorical filth of a murder-interrogation, and I was dangerously, violently sober. I walked toward him, my movements slow and deliberate, closing the space until I could smell his clothes and the lingering scent of Hendrix’s cologne.

I stopped inches from him, looming over him until he was forced to tilt his head back to meet my eyes.

“Where,” I whispered, the word vibrating with a promise of consequences, “have you been?”

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