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My heart caught in my throat as I noticed that these were not simple mementos from his childhood; these were little headshots of the victims that had been found outside of Neon.
There was nothing else, just passport-size pictures. Some of the people in them were smiling, some weren’t, but they were all either missing or dead. I recognized them from their social media pictures; they were the ones I’d painstakingly spent time on and had plenty of notes about.
I had no idea how he had managed to getthesepictures. They seemed intensely personal and also official, the kind of thing no one would put on their social media pages. They also didn’t look like they were all printed from the same place. This seemed like the kind of media that only a thief would be able to get; someone sneaking into the victim’s household, taking their belongings and maybe killing them. What is it that he had said? It wasn’t that he didn’t kill people. It was that he didn’t kill peoplefor sport.
So maybe in his weird thought process, he thought that the murders were for a good reason. I just needed to figure out what the fuck that was.
I quickly closed the drawer, my heart pounding in my chest as I tried to process what I had just seen. Teo was keeping headshots of the victims in his drawer? What kind of sick obsession was this? Was he keeping them as trophies? Or was he involved in the murders? My mind raced with a million possibilities, none of them good.
Maybe the investigation on his part was a ploy to take the heat off him. He could pin it on anyone; he was the boss and everyone trusted him. Of course everyone trusted him.
Fuck, I had let things go so far. I had even believed everything he'd said, like a lovesick teenager. I was such an idiot.
I wanted him to want to protect me and I had become blind to how dangerous he was, even though he never held it back from me.
I thought about escaping out the window, but I had no belongings on me, nothing that could take me anywhere. And if Teo had lied about this, he could’ve lied about anything.
He certainly could lie about whether he was going to hurt my brother.
So I had to stay.
And I had to nail the bastard.
Even if it cost me my life.
Chapter Twenty-One: Teo
IknewIprobablyshouldn’t make her breakfast, but I always found it relaxing to cook, and making French toast just for myself felt strange. I made enough for her, made her a cappuccino–I knew how much she liked cappuccinos–and then hesitated before I knocked on the door of my own goddamn bedroom like a fucking child.
She took the decision out of my hands when she opened the door for me. I could tell she hadn’t slept; her eyes were bloodshot and there were dark shadows under them. She wore one of my black v-neck shirts, which fell loosely over her shoulders and down below her underwear.
No. My underwear.
My eyes flickered down to the sight of her legs, smooth and toned, peeking out from underneath the hem of my shirt. I swallowed hard, feeling a familiar heat pooling low in my stomach.
”Good morning,” she said softly, holding the door open for me to come in.
”Morning,” I replied, trying to keep my voice steady. I handed her the plate of French toast and set the cappuccino down on the bedside table.
”Thank you,” she said, taking a seat on the edge of the bed. She picked up a fork and began to pick at her plate, but I could tell her mind was elsewhere.
”Did you sleep okay?” I asked her.
She barely looked up at me. ”You have a very nice bed.”
”Sofia, about last night…” I began. She wouldn’t look at me. I knew that things were awkward between us, but she was acting even more scared than she had been that first night, and it was weirding me out. ”What’s wrong?”
”Nothing,” she said, putting the plate on the bed and talking far too quickly. ”I…no, it’s nothing.”
I knew she was lying. I could see it in the way she avoided my gaze. I reached out and took her hand, pulling her towards me until she was sitting on my lap. She tensed at first, but then relaxed into my embrace.
”Talk to me,” I said gently.
She picked her head up to look at me, and when she set her gaze on mine, her eyes were brimming with tears. ”I can’t, Teo,” she said. ”I can’t…I can’t trust you.”
”What?”
”I was thinking about it,” she said. ”You were right. This was stupid and I should’ve, you know, never kissed you. You said some very nice things last night but it doesn’t change our situation.”
