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TOBY
My jaw is damn near on the floor as I watch her walk away from me. I know I should be chasing her, stopping her from leaving, but she’s just thrown me for a fucking loop.
I knew that I wouldn’t be able to hide forever, that much was damn obvious. Especially with Nico and Alex’s addiction to social media. But up until this point, she’d played right into my hands. She must have trusted me enough to not even go looking. I want to be pleased about that, but clearly, something has gone wrong, because right now she’s running in the wrong direction.
I twist in my seat, more than ready to catch her before she manages to escape me, but I pause as she stands at the other end of the restaurant, obviously weighing up her options.
Quite honestly, I’ll find her whichever route she decides to take in the next few seconds, and I can’t deny that there’s a certain thrill in the chase if she were to try to leave me. But equally, I mostly favour easy tonight.
My thoughts flicker to Jonas down in his dark and dank little basement. I wonder how many times he’s watched those videos now? How many times he’s heard his little princess call out my name?
A smile twitches at my lips, and it only grows when Jodie makes her decision, slipping down a hallway that leads to the bathroom.
Good girl, Demon.
I give her two minutes before I push from the chair and follow her lead. Eyes of the staff follow me, but I don’t pay them an ounce of attention. The rest of their customers are too distracted by their meals and company to notice anything is wrong, for which I’m grateful as I march toward the door where my girl is hiding.
Pressing my hand to the door, I swing it open with enough strength for it to crash back against the wall.
A squeal of shock rips from Jodie’s lips and she jumps back from the basins as if I’ve just shot at her.
“Toby, what are you—” Her words falter as she watches me reach back and turn the lock with one quick flick of my wrist.
“You can’t run from me, Demon.”
“I-I-I wasn’t. I just needed to take a breath. This is… this is fucking crazy, Toby. You’re… mafia,” she whispers as if the devil himself might be listening.
I’d hate to break it to her, but I’m pretty sure he already knows that deep down, I’m really not the nice guy that most people have me pegged as.
No one who’s been trained to fight, protect, and conquer from the moment they could walk is ever going to be ‘nice’. We’re monsters, all of us. Wicked, corrupt, ruthless monsters just like our fathers and their fathers before them.
I hold my hands out to my sides and I dip my head as if I’m going to look down at myself, but I never break eye contact with her.
“This is me, Jodie. Everything you already know, with a little more darkness thrown in for good measure.”
“A little? Jesus, Toby. I looked online and—”
“Okay, a lot more darkness. I didn’t tell you to protect you,” I say, dropping my arms and closing the space between us. “You’re too sweet, innocent, pure—” She scoffs, clearly not in agreement with me. “You are, Jodie. The things I kept from you… they’d have changed your opinion of me, and I wanted you to get to know me the person, not me the soldier.”
With every step closer I take, she takes another back. But as was always inevitable, she eventually runs out of space and her gasp rips through the empty bathroom as she collides with the wall.
“You should have told me,” she whispers. “You know everything about my life. Every dark and dirty bit, yet you held yours back. Can’t you see how much that hurts?” Her eyes beg with me to understand.
I come to a stop right in front of her, leaving only a few inches between our bodies. Her chest heaves with each laboured breath she sucks in, causing her breasts to almost brush against me. My body aches for her to do just that, because I know for a fact that she’ll throw caution to the wind the second we collide.
Our connection is too powerful, too potent to ignore even with the lies swimming around us.
“I never meant to hurt you, Jodie.” It’s the truth. In all of this, my intention was never to hurt her, to turn my need for pain and vengeance on her. She’s just going to be an unfortunate victim in that cunt’s final fall from grace. “I was trying to protect you. My life, it’s… dangerous.”
“Where did you really get the injuries last week, Toby?” she asks, her voice void of any kind of emotion.
“There was an issue with another gang in the area. We were sent in to try to keep some peace,” I say honestly.
“It worked well, I take it,” she deadpans, and I can’t help but bark out a laugh.
“It could have been better. But I wasn’t lying when I said you should have seen the other guys.” She sucks in a sharp breath and my hand lands on her face, my palm cupping her jaw and my thumb brushing her bottom lip. “I’m not always a nice person, Jodie. I’ve told you that before. I’ve warned you that there is an endless pit of darkness inside me, I just don’t think you appreciated just how deep that really runs.”
Her eyes darken with my words and her pulse thunders against my fingers that wrap around her neck.
