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AndLaconia fucking Logistics.
I don’t believe in coincidence. Not at this level, at least.
Someone’s fucking with me. And I’m about to find out who.
“Beth? I have to call you back.”
I hang up and storm inside with all the wrathful force of a hurricane. I blurt who I am to a terrified front desk clerk, who waves me through security to the elevators. My thumb jams against the button for their floor. I crack my knuckles and try to calm my breathing as the elevator rises to the twentieth floor, where Laconia Logistics from fuck-knows-where,Canada, has their fancy new big-city offices.
When the doors open, I explode out, ready to rain down fire and fucking brimstone with the fury of a vengeful goddess.
…Until I step off the elevators intonothing.
No fancy big-city offices. No offices at all, even. No cubicles. No perky receptionist. No ubiquitous ferny plants, or bland, inoffensive, corporate wall art.
Nothing.
Just a single chair sitting all by itselfwayacross the open space near the wall of windows overlooking the city, next to the single land-line phone sitting sadly on the floor.
It’s utterly silent.
What the fuck is—
“I hope you found the place without problem.”
I scream, jumping almost out of my skin as I whirl at the sound of his voice. Deimos slips away from the wall beside the elevator doors he’s been leaning against, lurking in the shadows.
Like he always is.
He doesn’t step so much as ooze from the dark into the light, his eyes glinting malevolently as they latch onto me.
Honestly, I’ve been waiting for this to happen ever since I heard he was staying in New York. And I kept telling myself that he was staying, despite his hatred for this city, because of everything that’s going on with Callie.
But deep down, I knew—knew—that it was more than that.
And so I’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop—waiting for him to lunge out from behind every tree or out of every alleyway I pass. Waiting for every shadow in my peripheral vision to be him, coming for me.
Thetrulyfucked up part is, I’ve been hoping he would.
And that right there is the single most twisted part of my horrible, shattered, smoke-filled, charred, and blood-soaked background with Deimos Drakos: that as much as I hate him, and as terrified of him as I am…
I also can’t ever truly cut myself free of him. I can’t ever lop off that cancerous part buried inside of me that refuses to stop thinking about him.
Dreaming about him.
Fantasizingabout him, for God’s sake.
Whether that’sbecausehe evokes this fear and excitement in me, or in spite of it, is a conversation I’ve never really been prepared to have with myself.
But now, here we are. And those very daydreams—or nightmares—of shadows that materialize into Deimos are playing out in real life, right in front of me.
“Hello, darling.”
8
DAHLIA
Time freezes.The world grinds to a stuttering halt around us as Deimos stops barely two feet in front of me. Once again, I’m struck by the sheer power that swirls around this man like a dark, ominous cloud.
