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The thought makes me grimace, as it has the ten thousand other times it’s crossed my mind since then.
…The night she almost saw the part of me she never can.
I reach across the back seat of the limo, entwining my fingers with hers. Fumi turns to smile at me, her eyes sparkling before she turns to stare out at Fifth Avenue as we approach the Guggenheim for tonight’s fundraiser.
Despite that smile, my thoughts are black.
I could have lost her the other night.
We revealed a lot to each other the night I chased her through my house and fucked her like a maniac. Not just that I knew from the start who she was at Venom. That I actively sought her out, even drew her into following me there the night I took her to the basement room and chased her for the first time.
But needless to say, my “other” nocturnal activities that feed the darkness inside of me were not brought up.
She doesn’t know I’m a killer. But she came close that night she followed me to Dwayne Halbertson’s apartment. If it hadn’t been for the guy with the knife, she very well could have walked in on me with my hands around Dwayne’s throat.
Instead, the piece of shit who tried to intimidate her outside caught my attention before I could even set foot in Dwayne’s apartment.
Dwayne managed to escape death that night—though I’ll certainly be paying him another visit soon. Instead, I sated my monster’s hunger with the blood of the predator who was after Fumi. The one whose throat I cut with his own knife before he could harm a single hair on Fumi’s head.
I’m not usually careless or reckless like that. And I never act—by which I mean “kill”—impulsively.
That night was a first for that.
I’d like to blame it on being over-worked, or stressed about the whole campaign. But I can’t. I’m always stretched thin at work. And it’s not the campaign.
It’s Fumi who had me distracted the other night when I went to Dwayne Halbertson’s apartment to kill him. Which is, go figure, how I missed that she’d followed me there.
Or, at least, she thinks it was me she followed there. But she doesn’t have any concrete proof. I managed to get the cab’s plate number that dropped Fumi off in that shit neighborhood. The next morning, I called the taxi company, tracked down the driver, and met up with him.
For five hundred bucks, cash, he was able to “jog his memory” about the night before. That he’d picked her up at my house, where she’d asked him to follow Trevor driving me to the office. There, he mentioned her seeing someone leaving through a side door and hailing a cab, which she also had him follow.
But she doesn’t know that the second man she followed was me, and I’ve confirmed this. The cabbie had a dash cam set up in his car. For an additional hundred bucks, he even showed me the footage. You see a figure in black stepping out of the side door of the Crown and Black building. But even with his high-def camera, from that distance you can’t tell who it is.
Fumi followed me that night thinking I was slinking off to Club Venom again. I know that because when I caught a glimpse of her following me, she was wearing fucking Versace.
But she doesn’t know for a fact it was me she followed to that shithole neighborhood that night.
But no secrets stay buried forever. Especially bad ones…
“Oh, we’re here.”
I shake away my thoughts as we pull up in front of the Guggenheim. Tonight is the biggest “blowout” fundraiser I’ve had so far, and the museum is already packed with political allies, a few celebrities, and no less than seven of New York’s resident billionaires.
Cameras flash as I step out of the limo. I slip the mask into place. I smile, I charm, I point to people I recognize with a raised brow and a wink. Then, I turn to reach inside the limo and take Fumi’s hand to help her out.
Christ, she’s stunning.
She always has been. There’s always been something about her that captivates my monster.
A glint of something sinister in her eyes. A hint of blackness behind her professional smile. Even before I met her darkness face-to-face that first night when I watched her walk into Venom in that lavender-silver wig and the mask, looking so smug, like she’d fooled everyone, I knew. We were two of a kind.
And I knew she’d be mine.
Did I let her win the audition? No. Meredith wouldn’t have allowed that to happen. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t instantly fixate on her after she came out miles ahead of anyone else vying for the position.
I didn’t have to “let” her be the best match for me. She clearly was.
And even if I didn’t quite understand it myself, the beast inside me did. And it’s that beast inside that has guided me all my life.
