Page 41 of A Deal with the Bossy Devil

Adrien shrugged. “Why do you care?”

“It’s a literal death threat, Adrien. How do younotcare? They had your address written right on there.”

“That leaked a while back,” he said. “Someone posted it on the hate club website you now mod for.”

You could actually hear my mouth snap closed. That was how effectively he’d shut me up.

“Go home,” he said, the quiet venom returning to his voice. “You’re done for now. I’ll call you if I need anything else today.”

Heat bloomed across my cheeks, and I didn’t say anything else as I turned around and walked out of Adrien’s office with my chin tucked an inch lower than usual.

The very first thing I did when I got home was scour the forums on the hate club’s website and start flagging posts that included any of Adrien’s personal information. I didn’t have the clearance to delete them, but at least this way they were hidden from view.

And then I deleted my account.

12

“What’s that?”

I gave Adrien my most innocent of looks and pretended like I didn’t know exactly what he was talking about. “What?”

We usually didn’t converse this early in the morning, so my voice came out all dry and scratchy. I cleared my throat.

Adrien jerked his chin at me, looking pointedly at my hip as we fell into a light jog. “That,” he said.

“It’s nothing,” I retorted, making use of my croaky morning voice to mimic him. He’d said that to me three times yesterday.

I could have sworn I saw his lips twitch from the corner of my eye. Not that I could blame him. My impression had been spot-on.

“It looks like bear mace,” he pointed out.

I didn’t answer him this time, keeping my eyes on the path ahead. My legs were too stiff and sore to be forced into another run. I hated this shit.

“Are you planning on running into bears out here, Sanchez?”

I stayed quiet, but mostly because my body was already needing to hoard oxygen. A problem Adrien didn’t seem to have.

“Since I know you didn’t bring that thing with you to use on me or any other human. Because that would be very illegal,” he went on.

You know what’s more illegal? Attempted murder.

My eyes inadvertently darted around, scanning our surroundings in the dark. Rows of buildings, parked cars, shrubbery. Birds chirping in the background, an engine revving a few streets over, and—

“And even if that was your plan,” Adrien said, interrupting my surveillance of the area, “you’d have at least thought to try and conceal it in some way, so the other person wouldn’t see it ahead of time.”

“Deterrence,” I rasped. But also, I hadn’t packed a small waist bag that I could put it in. I needed to go back to my apartment and grab one later.

“Yeah, I’m not sure how effective bear mace is going to be at deterring someone with a gun.”

I looked up at him, already panting. “You… think… they’d have… a… gun?”

Adrien huffed a chuckle as we entered the park. “If they do, it probably won’t be aimed at you.”

Except I wasn’t the one I was worried about.

Not that I’d ever admit that out loud. I’d barely even allowed myself to acknowledge it.

If he dies, Alba doesn’t get paid, I kept telling myself. That was the only reason I was worried. I swear.

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