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Light from the hallway spills into the room through the open door, though it’s hardly enough to see by. It certainly doesn’t allow me to see where Timofey is in the hallway. But it sounds like he’s further down the hall and retreating.
I peek out. When I don’t see Timofey, I step into the hall and pull the door closed again so the light doesn’t wake Benjamin. I follow the sound of Timofey’s voice.
“Maybe I could relax if I wasn’t the only one paying attention to the shit that actually matters,” Timofey snaps. “We call an all-hands meeting for one dead Albanian, but I’m the only one with an actual ear to the ground.”
Timofey goes quiet. I’d kill to hear who he is talking to. What are they saying? What’s going on?
Maybe I don’t need to hear the other end of the line, because they seem to be asking the exact same questions I am.
“You’d already know what’s going on if you’d answered the first time I called.”
I make it to the end of the hallway and peer around the corner. In the center of the hallway, not six feet from me, there he is.
I jerk back and press my good hand to my mouth. It takes a few seconds for my brain to recognize that Timofey’s back was to me.
He didn’t see me.
“Emily’s murder is being investigated again,” Timofey snarls. There’s a pause before he curses under his breath. “If the police are reopening the investigation, it doesn’t just concern you; it concerns all of us.”
He’s talking to Rodion. He has to be.
No…he’swarningRodion.
Because of me.
I panicked and blurted that I knew about Emily and the locket, about Rodion being his hitman. Now, Timofey has a leg up on the police.
I’m an idiot.
“Come tomorrow to talk strategy,” Timofey says, confirming my worst fears. “If Rooney can’t handle this, then we’ll have to figure it out ourselves.”
Can he do that? If he doesn’t have someone working for him on the inside, can he sway an investigation?
Who the hell am I kidding? He probably has an entire squadron of officers working for him. Based on this mansion alone, Timofey can afford to buy off almost every morally gray officer in the city. Then he can cover up the murders of every officer too ethical to join him.
It’s been quiet for a bit too long, so I chance another peek around the corner. Timofey is gone.
I lean my head against the wall and blow out the oxygen that has been burning my lungs. It doesn’t make me feel better. Instead, I feel hollow. Scraped dry.
“It’s what I get for kissing the devil,” I mutter. “He probably stole my soul.”
My lips tingle, my body remembering the way Timofey felt against me. Of course the first guy I kiss in months turns out to be a monster. It’s just my luck. The people in my life can’t be normal and healthy. They have to be unbalanced. Fundamentally broken. Skewed far, far beyond the grotesque.
I tap a finger to the center of my forehead like a cartoon character trying to focus. It’s the only way I can orient my thoughts. It’s the only way I can ground myself in this moment. Here and now—if I don’t force myself to stay right there, I’m going to die.
“What am I going to do?” I whisper. “What do I do next?”
Don’t kiss him.That’s step number one, obviously.
Definitely do not, under any circumstances, kiss Timofey Viktorov again. No matter how lush his lips look. No matter how good he smells. No matter how strong his hands feel around my waist.
I bite my lower lip hard between my teeth. This calls for a little negative reinforcement, I think. Timofey, bad. Kissing Timofey equals pain.
That way lies trouble.
“Okay, next,” I say, trying to keep myself on track. “What next?”
Again, the answer is obvious.
