Chapter 14 14

Chapter 14 14

Caelum's POV

I stood stock-still and I didn’t even know what to do with myself for a minute.

Celine kissed me, lips crushing mine in an embrace that wasn’t really such and only a clawing embrace at that. No thoughts filled my head except for one screaming command: more.
Then I kissed her like I was drowning and she was air.

My hands reached for her waist and I drew her close. She gave a soft little sound into the back of her throat that nearly ruined me. Her fingers tightened in my hair again, but now she was tugging it hard enough to sting.

Good. I wanted the pain. Wanted proof this was real.

We fell back in a sprawl against the wall. I pulled her up and her legs locked around my hips without urging. She nipped at my lower lip, and I moaned her name like worship, like a curse, like the only word I’d ever learned.

"Celine." It came out rough, desperate.

She kissed me fiercely, angrily, as if she were attempting to make me pay for every lie, every secret, and every time I sent her away.

I pulled her across the room, overturned a lamp, didn’t care. He put her on the kitchen counter and stood between her legs. She was panting, her eyes wild, her lips swollen.

Beautiful. Devastating. Mine.

I kissed down her neck, felt my lips pounding with the pulsating of her pulse. She pushed against me, her nails biting into my shoulders.
"Caelum."

My name in her mouth undid me.

I withdrew, breathing heavily, my hands trembling where they pressed on the counter to either side of her. “Once we do this, there’s no turning back.”

Dark and fierce and filled with something that I feared in my bones, her eyes found mine. "Then don't let me go back."

This time I kissed her again, more gently. Reverent. Attempting to pour all the things I could not say into the touch.

This was wrong. She was my student. Too young. Too innocent. Too good for someone like me.
But I couldn't stop.

My phone rang.
I paid no attention to it, whispering so softly as I kissed her jawline and captured the taste of her skin in memory.

It rang again. And again.

"Caelum," she breathed.

"Ignore it."

But the fourth call got through. I swore, and jerking loose I reached for the phone in my pocket.

Kent.
He would not ring a phone four times unless there was an emergency.

My reply was terse as I didn't move my gaze away from Celine. "What?"

"Boss, we have a problem. Nikolai just struck three of our warehouses. Simultaneous attacks. We lost everything."

My blood ran cold. "Casualties?"

"Twelve dead. Eight injured. He's declaring war."

I closed my eyes, the high disappearing and replaced by cold reality. This was it. The moment I had been bracing myself for. Nikolai was making his move.

"When?"

"Twenty minutes ago. He's moving fast, boss. This isn't a warning shot. This is the real thing."
I looked at Celine. Her cheeks were flushed, hair tousled from my hands, eyes still muddied with hunger.

She couldn't be here. Wouldn’t be anywhere near me when this war began.

"I'll be there in ten." I hung up.

"What's wrong?" she asked, reading my expression.

"You need to leave. Now."
"What? Why?"

I stepped away to stand further from her. “My world just turned into a war zone, and you can’t be in it.”

"Caelum—"

“No.” My words were solider than I meant them to be. "This isn't negotiable. You need to go. Now. Before this gets worse."

I took out my phone, sent a text. Two of my men popped in the doorway a moment later.

“Take Miss Moretti back to school. Full protection detail. Don’t lose her.”

"Yes, sir."

Celine leaned back from the counter, her anger washing over desire. "You don't get to do this. You don’t go kissing me and throwing me out!”

"I'm protecting you."

"By pushing me away? Again?"

"By keeping you alive!"

We looked at each other across the room. You could see her struggling with tears, struggling with anger, and that same pull I was feeling.

"Go," I said quietly. "Please."

For a second, I worried that she would decline. Thought she’d be a bitch about it, make this harder than I already knew it would be.

But then she gathered up her bag and headed toward the door.

She stopped at the door and turned around to face me. "Don't die."

Then she was gone, my men with her.

I acted as soon the door shut.

I returned to my bedroom, the secret safe behind the painting. Guns. Ammunition. Knives. Everything I'd need for war.
I loaded guns expertly taking too much time as my mind was moving already. The professor was gone. The mask I sometimes put on in order to pretend at humanity had been torn away.
Only Don Morano was left.

And Nikolai Volkov was going to find out what it meant to declare war on me.
My phone buzzed. It’s a text from Kent with coordinates. The first target.

I reached for my jacket, re-examined my weapons and then went out the door.

But I stopped, and glanced back at the counter where Celine had been moments before. I could still feel her, taste her, hear her whispering my name.

This was why I never should have let her anywhere near me. Why I never should have gone in the first place.

Now because I had something to lose again.

And in my universe, this was the most dangerous kind of weakness.

I checked the apartment and rode down, in an elevator, to the parking garage. My men were formed with arms in their hands. Kent was leaning against my car with an expression of concentrated gloom.

"Targets?" I asked.

"Three warehouses hit. Nikolai’s side all got high, torched the surplus. Left messages." He handed me his phone.

Photos of bodies. My men. Executed. And on the wall behind them, painted in blood: “The girl dies next.”

Suddenly I was consumed by rage -- icy, controlled rage. "Where is she?"

"Safe house on campus. Six men watching her. She doesn't know they're there."

Good. As long as she was safe, I could worry about finishing this.
"Nikolai's location?"

"Unknown. He's in the wind. But we know where Amaya is."

I looked at him sharply. "Where?"

"Back at the university. After the library, she went straight to her dorm. Either she’s naive or she thinks we will keep our hands off of her there.”
"She's bait." I opened my car door. "Nikolai says I'm to fetch her. Wants me angry and careless."

"So what do we do?"

I smiled, and he actually took a step back at what he must have seen in my smile.

"We give him what he wants. But on our terms."

I was getting in the car and Kent came around and got into the passenger side. The rest of my unit climbed into vehicles and went in three cars behind us.

Then we toured the city in motorcade, armed to the teeth, combat ready.

This was what I was. What I’d always been under the professor costume.
A killer. A Don. A monster.

And Nikolai was about to recall why it had become such an infamous name for everyone who knew it.

My phone hummed one last time. A text from a 3rd number I don't know.

“Savoring your final moments with the girl? Don't get too attached. She's mine soon. -N"

I smashed the phone in my hand, plastic and glass slicing across my palm.

Let him try.

Let him bring on all his men he had.

Before I’d let him get his hands on her I would torch the whole world.

The university came into view. Quiet. Peaceful. Students were walking between buildings, blissfully ignorant that a war was about to be fought in their shadows.

"Sweep the campus," I ordered. "Find Amaya. Quietly. No civilian casualties."

The troops around me were scattered as the cold, calculating soldiers found their way among my students.

I parked and got out, arranging my coat to cover the guns. To a casual observer, I probably appeared to be a professor coming back from lunch.

But I was counting exits inside. Calculating angles. Mapping violence with the precision of someone who had done this 1,000 times.

Celine was somewhere on this campus, doing Celine things. Probably in class. Most likely trying to make sense of what I’d just told her.

She was not aware men were watching her. Protecting her. Dying for her if necessary.

She had no way of knowing that the man who’d kissed her an hour earlier was now hunting through her campus like a predator.

And she would never have guessed that before the day was out, a man’s blood would be shed in her name.

She placed what remained of the phone on the floor, and I reached for my back-up phone, which had yet to show any new messages on its screen, however many times I’d turned it over.

"Found her yet?"

"North dormitory. Third floor. She's alone."

"On my way."

I hung up the phone and made my way across campus, just another professor on the move.
But walking there, I had silently promised the girl left back at the apartment.

I'd protect her from this. From me. From everything.

Whatever it took to become the monster everyone already thought I was.