Chapter 98 A Decade Gone
❄︎ Viktor ❄︎
I stood at the window of my office watching the day come to an end. My reflection stared back at me from the glass, my jaw tight, eyes searching.
My thumb found the stitches on my wrist, and I pinched them like I wanted to tear them out. Sharp pain reverberated from the wound site through my spine, but I didn’t stop. I enjoyed the pain, the sting grounded me.
The words of the bastard from this morning had amused me. If he’d known I was on a rampage, he wouldn’t have promised me a visit from his crew.
He’d spat blood and promised that his death wouldn’t go unavenged. I’d snarled back that I wouldn’t expect any less. The fucker didn’t get another breath after that.
He’d been a name we crossed off the hit list. One of the major players sniffing around the Grand Marlow hotel with connections to the syndicate.
The syndicate wasn’t just an individual, but a disease spread across half the city, rotting it from the inside out. Trafficking, smuggling, blood money. If you cut off one limb, another would reach out.
For now, we were hacking at the New York branch and picking them off one by one before the auction. Killing two birds with one stone by reducing the bidders and gutting the syndicate.
The stitches burned when I flexed my wrist. Good. Pain meant I was still alive.
Adrian shifted behind me, his chair creaking.
I turned. “Any leads?” I asked, almost expectantly. As long as I had my hands full, I wouldn’t think about her. Maybe.
Adrian spun his laptop around, showing me the screen aglow with a map. “Yeah. Our next target uses his hospital as a front for organ trafficking. A full trafficking network under the table. He’s got an event tomorrow. After that, he goes back to his estate outside the city.”
My lips curved into a sharp grin devoid of humor. I rolled my wrist, hitting myself with another dose of pain. “Perfect.”
Just as I turned to watch the sunset once more, my phone pinged, dragging my gaze from the horizon.
The reddish rays of sunset bled through the glass, staining the desk in a glow that reminded me too damn much of Rosa’s flushed cheeks when I had her pinned under my weight. When she wasn’t plotting something.
I tilted the phone, saw the strange number. Unknown.
I hesitated, my thumb hovering over the screen.
If I didn’t already have the number, then whoever this was wasn’t important to me.
Adrian’s voice cut through my thoughts.
“I’m heading out,” he said calmly. I detected a note beneath his faux professionalism.
I dropped the phone face-down on the table and crossed my arms, turning to him. “Who’s the girl?”
For a split second, he froze. Shock flashed over his face before he caught it.
“It’s obvious,” I continued, leaning back against the desk. “You’ve got a woman waiting for you at home. And I can’t help feeling like you’re using my fucked-up memory to keep things from me.”
Adrian stood there, as stiff as stone. His mouth opened, maybe to deny it, or to explain, but I cut him off with a disinterested wave.
“Keep her hidden if you want. Just don’t let it get in the way of our mission.”
His jaw tightened. Then, finally, he nodded stiffly, and left the office without another word.
The silence was heavy after he left. I stalked back to my chair, dropped into it, and slung my feet up on the desk. I grabbed the amber glass sitting on the desk and downed the alcohol in one long swig, feeling the familiar burn coat my chest.
I shrugged at the nagging weight of intuition in my gut, telling me I was right, that Adrian was hiding something.
Why, I couldn’t figure out. He was an adult and could screw around with anyone he wanted, as long as it didn’t get to his head. It was a little hypocritical thinking like that, with Rosa making a mess of my hard earned control.
Didn’t matter though. He would slip eventually. They always did.
Outside, the sky had gone from red to black. More time than I realized had passed with me nitpicking through the agendas of those around me.
I should’ve been heading home. But the thought of Rosa arose, her smile, sharp as a blade, her soft heady scent, her voice sweet while she tried to play me.
My chest tightened. Did she think her game ended with her selling the hotel and walking away?
Not a fucking chance.
A growl rumbled out of me before I even realized it. The buzzing void in my head surged, the gap where my memories should’ve been burning like acid.
I sent the glass to the wall, hearing it shattter into a million pieces like the fragmented slots of my memories.
My hands gripped my skull as I rode out the pounding migraine, the kind that made me want to put a bullet in my own head just for a taste of silence.
When it finally dulled, I straightened, breathing heavily.
There was only one place I needed to be.
Rosa would make me feel better. Her treachery and mind games aside. I could pretend I didn’t know, pretend I was the same man I was before I found out she double-crossed me after confessing my love for her.
It didn’t matter. Not tonight.
Not now when I needed the warmth of her silken skin and the sweet words she had a way around.
She was still the only one who could silence the noise of a decade gone.
I grabbed my coat and walked out, the door slamming behind me.