Page 93 of Ruin
I've known about the key since my bout of pneumonia a while ago.
I filed it away as one more piece of the architecture he built around me and chose not to dismantle.
"The Russians know where you live," he says. His voice drops, not softer but denser. Weighted. "They know your routines, your contacts, your connection to me. Three days ago they killed one of my men and left a message that translates roughly to 'your wolf lost her teeth.' That's not a threat. That's a promise, and you're alone in an apartment with a deadbolt that Lionel could kick through without breaking stride."
"So, I'll get a better lock then."
"You'll get a better location." He pushes off the doorframe and crosses the room, and even after everything, even with the dried blood on his collar and the scratch marks I left on his forearms, he moves with that unhurried certainty that makes the air feel thinner.
He stops a foot away, close enough to touch me, but he doesn't. "My penthouse has reinforced doors, armed security on every floor, and a surveillance system that costs more than this building. You'll have your own room. Your own space. I won't touch you unless you ask."
"Like last night? When I asked you to come here at God knows what hour and hold a knife to?—"
"Last night was a mistake."
"Which part?"
His jaw tightens.
The scab on his throat shifts with the movement, and I watch it the way I'd watch a crack spread through glass.
Slowly. Waiting for the break.
"The part where I didn't come sooner," he says.
I hate him.
I hate him with a thoroughness that should leave no room for anything else, and yet the words land somewhere behind my ribs and stay there, warm and heavy, like a stone I swallowed that won't pass.
Peter and Lionel arrive twenty minutes later.
They're efficient and respectful and they don't look at the bloodstained sheets or the evidence wall or the gun on the nightstand that I grab before anyone else can touch it.
I watch them box up my clothes, my books, my mother's jewelry case that I kept in the top of the closet.
They dismantle the evidence wall last.
Peter photographs each document before placing it in a folder, and I let him because the alternative is putting a bullet in someone and I don't trust my aim when my hands are shaking this badly.
I ride to the penthouse in the back of an SUV with Lionel driving and my father's .38 in my lap, the collar pressing against my throat with every swallow.
The key Cassius slid under my door a couple of nights ago is in my pocket.
I could have taken the collar off.
I could have left it on the bathroom counter, a rejection he'd understand without words.
I didn't.
I don't know what that means yet, and the not-knowing is worse than any answer could be.
The penthouse is exactlyas I remember it.
Floor-to-ceiling windows that make the city look like something you could own. Italian marble.
The kind of furniture that costs more than most people's annual salary and is designed to look like it doesn't.
His scent is in every room, embedded in the fabric of the place, and breathing here feels like breathing him.
