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“Did you sleep with him?” I interrupted, examining her face.
She stood there saying nothing, just staring at me until her tongue darted to the corner of her mouth. “No, I did not sleep with him. He wanted me to, but I refused and told him I would rather spend eternity in the fire pits.”
I could feel the relief wash over me. Why? I have no clue, it’s not like she would ever allow me to redeem myself but all the same it was important to me that she didn’t sleep with the lord of the underworld. “How did you manage to escape that?”
She walked over to the wall where her coat was hung and put it on. Pulling her long hair out from it, she donned a winter hat and gloves.
“Bones, come.” Ava took a sweater that was hanging on the peg beside her coat and went ahead and put it on the mutt.
Fine, she doesn’t want to talk about it.
I walk over to the sink, taking the frying pan by the handle and start scrubbing it so hard that the blacked surface starts to shine. But then barely above a whisper she says, “Because I wouldn’t sleep with him, he made me his exterminator.”
I froze. From the tone of her voice, I knew it was way worse than being his whore. “What did you say?”
She cleared her throat and looked straight at me jutting her chin out. I knew that look. The look that said, ‘dare me’. “I was his hitman. A killer, is that what you wanted to hear?”
I stood there speechless. Ava. My Ava was a killer for the underworld?! So many thoughts ran through my mind that I couldn’t even voice one of them. I just stood there like the idiot I am and watched her and the dog walk out the door into the freezing cold night.
Chapter 6
AVA
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ICAN’T GET AWAY FROMNoah fast enough. I rush blindly into the night, headed straight for the forest, needing to get as much distance from him that I could.
All the years that I sat down in hell looking out the otherworldly window, wishing and praying that one day I would get to see his face one more time. And now that he’s here I can’t face him. Can’t face the look of... judgement in his eyes when I told him I was a killer. I lean against a tree and sob because that’s not the kicker to this whole train wreck of a reunion. The kicker is so much crueller than anything I ever did.
The forest swallows me in its darkness, offering a blanket of solitude that both comforts and terrifies me. The irony is not lost on me; I've sought isolation, yet isolation is what's breaking me. The whispering of the wind through the trees almost sounds like voices—accusatory and unforgiving.
After what seems like an eternity, I hear footsteps. Crunching snow. Breaking twigs. My heart leaps into my throat. Is it Noah? Or something worse like my boss?
I'm faced with a choice. I can continue to run, both physically and emotionally, or I can confront what I've been avoiding all these years of knowing what I am. Before I can make up my mind, a voice pierces the darkness.
“It's me,” Noah calls out softly, as if afraid to shatter the fragile silence.
