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Chapter 38
Celeste
The jet's wheels screeched against the tarmac, a rude awakening from the faux tranquility of the high-altitude. I pressed my forehead against the cool glass, watching as the gray expanse of O'Hare Airport swallowed us whole. Italy felt like a fever dream now—its sun-drenched streets and ancient whispers replaced by Chicago's unapologetic chill. But it wasn't just the scenery that had shifted; something inside me had been altered in ways I couldn't fully comprehend yet.
Welcome back to reality. Though 'reality' was a piss-poor term for what awaited.
Nash caught my gaze across the aisle, his dark eyes piercing through the veil of weariness that hung between us. "It changes you, doesn't it?" he asked, as if reading the mess of thoughts threatening to spill from my mind.
"Understatement of the century," I replied, half-laughing despite the tightness in my chest. "Italy was all 'Eat, Pray, Love' until it turned into 'Survive, Slay, Repeat.'"
He smirked, that knowing tilt of his lips that said he got it, the entirety of the crazy shit we'd waded through. We deplaned like a pair of war-torn comrades, stepping onto American soil with more baggage than our carry-ons could hold.
The limo ride to Vanguard was a blur of cityscape and silence. Nash was on his phone, fingers tapping out commands like a general marshaling his troops. The closer we got, the more the bitter taste of revenge coated my tongue. I wanted blood for the things I’d seen, the nightmares that had been etched onto my retinas.
Vanguard was a fortress disguised in the glass and steel robes of commerce. The lobby was sleek, all pretense and no hint of the beast it harbored within its belly. But once we hit the command room, any semblance of corporate normalcy dissolved like sugar in hot coffee.
"Positions, people!" Nash barked the moment we entered, and bodies scrambled like a colony of ants disturbed by an intruder. His authority was absolute, each syllable clipped with military precision.
I leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, watching him unleash his inner dictator. It was a dance I'd grown accustomed to—the push of his orders against the pull of my rebellion. But there was no denying the thrill that shot down my spine at the sight of him owning the room, every inch the leader of this fucked-up crusade we were on.
We stopped in front of a sprawling cork board that looked like a constellation map—if constellations were made of bloodshed and chaos.
"See this?" Nash's arm swept over the display, red pins peppered across it like drops of blood flung from a killer's blade. "Each one represents the end of a life, an 'art piece' by some sick fuck who thinks they're the next goddamn Da Vinci."
"Murder as art," I mused aloud, my gaze tracing the crimson trail of destruction. "Sounds like someone's taking 'tortured artist' too literally."
I caught the slight tightening of Nash's jaw, the way his eyes darkened—a storm cloud over chiseled stone. It was clear that every red pin struck him like a personal attack, a failure to protect the innocent from the darkness that we both knew all too well.
"Damn right," he groaned, voice low and dangerous. "And we've got jack shit for leads. Whoever's doing this is meticulous, methodical. Leaves nothing but corpses posed like fucking masterpieces."
"Charming," I said, but the acid in my tone couldn't quite hide the shiver that traced my spine. Someone else was painting with blood, and here I thought I had cornered the market on morbid artwork.
A commotion at the far side of the room drew my attention away from the macabre map. A flock of women, each possessing a beauty that seemed both cultivated and effortless, clung to the edges of their seats, gazes locked onto Nash with an intensity that bordered on hunger. It was a buffet of lust served up in pencil skirts and tailored blouses.
"Looks like you've got admirers," I commented dryly, nodding toward the group.
"Christ, Celeste, not now," Nash groaned, but I could tell it was half-hearted. The man wasn't blind, after all.
"Can't help it if your fan club's drooling over Mr. Tall, Dark, and Bloodthirsty. Makes me wonder what they'd think if they knew the real you—fangs, vengeance, and all."
"Let them look," he dismissed with a flick of his wrist, his focus already shifting back to the problem at hand. But I couldn't shake the image of those women—and the unexpected twist in my gut at the sight of them lusting after the same man who was stirring something dangerously close to desire in me.
"Business-like" didn't do him justice. Nash was all command and control, his voice slicing through the chatter like a scalpel—precise, decisive. And fuck me if it didn't turn me on more than I cared to admit. That power, that intensity... it was like watching a lion command his pride, natural and unapologetic.
I tore my eyes away from the spectacle of Nash in his element. There was work to be done, a mystery to unravel, and despite the clusterfuck of emotions tangling inside me, I was here to paint in shadows and unveil the truth hiding behind the crimson pins.
The red pins on the board blurred into a sea of blood as I squinted, trying to make some goddamn sense of it all. There was something nagging at the edge of my vision—a pattern in the chaos that tugged at the corner of my mind like a thread begging to be pulled.
"Shit," I muttered under my breath, stepping back to take it all in. "It's almost like a sick joke. Look at this—doesn't it remind you of a smiley face?" My finger hovered over the map, tracing an invisible line between the pins. But one detail was off, leaving the sinister semblance incomplete. "Except, it's missing an eye. Like a wink, or maybe it's just playing peek-a-fucking-boo."
I expected a scoff, a condescending joke about my overactive imagination, but Nash just stood there, his dark eyes locked on mine, and for a heartbeat, I thought he might actually be impressed—or at least not laughing in my face.
"Show me," he said, his voice low and unexpectedly serious. "Where would you put the last pin?"
"Here." Confidence surged through me as I stabbed my finger down onto the map, pointing to a spot that felt eerily right. "Right there. That's where our twisted artist would complete their masterpiece."
"Interesting," Nash murmured, leaning closer, his gaze intense. It was like electricity crackled between us—an understanding that danced on the edge of something deeper, something dangerous.
