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I might as well have been in the fall of drizzly, dreary rain. The storm that surrounded, my heart a mad thunder where it beat at my ribs. Viciousness crawled as I waited.
My head jerked to the left when a heavy metal door rattled open, spilling light into the alley before it slammed shut behind the man. He turned to walk toward where his car was parked, his back to me, the murky light spreading out in front of him as his footsteps clacked on the pitted pavement.
I moved.
Quietly.
Stealthily.
Different than the way I used to handle things all those years ago.
My position at the company might have changed, but underneath, the same man remained. Even if I tried to repent, it was still there, this wickedness that turned my blood to oil. Venom that beat in my veins.
I had the knife pressed to his throat before he even knew I was there.
He flailed, a gurgled sound spilling from his mouth before he stilled, fear radiating from him as I leaned in close to his ear. “It’s so good to see you again, Tarek.”
Donovan’s brother was a piece of shit. I didn’t mind shaking him down, and I’d do a whole lot more if I found he was responsible.
“Greyson,” he wheezed. “What the fuck? Haven’t you already stolen enough from me?”
I grabbed him by the back of the neck and hauled him over to the trunk of his car. I shoved him forward until he had his hands braced on it, and I reached into the inside of my suit jacket.
I tossed the first picture down and forced him to look at it.
“Oh God.” Tarek moaned, trying to turn his face away like he was sickened by the gore tossed to the glossy shine of his trunk.
“Look at him,” I demanded.
Raffi stared back with lifeless eyes, his throat slit, blood spilled around him where he’d been left at a worksite where an old building had been dozed to make room for a new luxury apartment building. My Director of Project Management.
“Look at him, Tarek. Look at him. Did you do this?”
I tossed down the next.
Miles. Our corporate attorney.
In the same position, outside in the alley that ran the side of his house where he’d been climbing into his car to come into the office that morning.
Lifeless. Cold. His throat cut open.
Tarek Paltrow wretched.
“Did you do this?” And why now? All these years later?
“What? You think I’m responsible for this? Are you fucking insane?”
I might not have thought Tarek was a monster like Donovan, but he was slime. And I knew he hated me for what I’d done to his brother. Hatred made you irrational. Made you thirst for revenge. Wickedness your master. Donovan’s fate had never been confirmed, but Tarek knew. Of course, he did, since I’d threatened the same result would befall him if he ever came near Kimberly.
Now, I was sure that he had.
Bile rose up my throat as I threw down the last, agony sharper than the knife I held at the fucker’s throat.
Kimberly.
Her brown eyes wide. Unseeing. Gone.
Her body found behind the Greyson Industries building.
Hatred filled me full, sickness boiling from the abyss that festered inside, my voice haggard when I demanded low, “Did you do this?”
“No,” he whimpered. “I heard about it, on the news.” He gulped and trembled. “But it wasn’t me. Swear to God.”
Of course, he’d heard. Everyone in this city knew. There had been an immediate connection between the killings and Greyson Industries. They were tied. Related. The investigators had no idea who. But I knew well enough it was done as retaliation. That someone out there hated us enough to hurt people who had not earned the retribution.
Innocent.
I might deserve it, but they did not.
My gut told me it was this fucker.
“I will find out. I promise, I will find out.” I hissed the threat at his ear. “If you did? There is no place I won’t find you.”
I shoved him forward farther, and I gathered the pictures and stuffed them back into the inside of my suit jacket. Without looking back, I headed in the opposite direction down the alley.
Loathing ran on a circuit. Every molecule in my body throbbed with abhorrence. I just didn’t know who it was directed at.
By the time I made it back to my building, I could hardly breathe, revulsion marching over my flesh, like I was on my hands and knees in the sewers, crawling with the rodents.
Covered in disease.
I rode the elevator to my penthouse apartment, and I went directly to the shower in the en suite. I turned it to hot and peeled my clothes from my body like it could peel away the atrocity.
Make me someone else.
I stood beneath the scalding water as if it could make me clean.
Wash it away.
The vileness that filled my soul.
