Page 9 of Devil's Retribution

I caved in and gave him the number. The man had run background checks on every guy I had dated, and I’m sure some of my professors and employers too. He had the worst case of rich-guy paranoia I had ever seen, and refused to admit he had a problem. I tried to be patient with him, but sometimes it felt like my privacy was being violated far too much for it to be just a matter of a concerned relative.

You’re smothering me again. I knew it came from a place of love, but that beyond anything else, it was the very quality that had driven me out of his household. I wanted my freedom. But with freedom came danger, and my uncle knew that.

We said our goodbyes, and he disconnected after promising to share any information his investigator found, and extracting a promise from me to visit that weekend for supper. When I got off the phone, I sighed in exasperation and put it on vibrate, preparing to ignore it completely for the next four hours of sessions.

I couldn’t forget Viktor all morning. I was distracted by the memory of his face, his voice, his scent. The strangeness of our meeting. How much my body had responded to his presence, a mix of desire and fear. I could tell where the desire came from, I couldn’t remember the last time I had met someone so attractive, and I had met celebrities. But the fear surprised me. I wondered where it had come from, and why my instincts had screamed at me to refuse him. I put it down to the strange feeling I had had earlier that morning, and hoped my uncle’s paranoia wasn’t catching.

Other than that, my day so far was almost painfully normal.

My ten o’clock, Mike, went through half a box of tissues dealing with the divorce papers he had just been served. I had warned him for six months that it was coming, but it had still hit like a sledgehammer. I felt bad for the guy, even though I had warned him more than once that his porn addiction and cheating were sending his marriage off a cliff.

My eleven o’clock, Annabelle, had a breakthrough with her body issues, finally buying clothes that fit instead of getting them two sizes too small and trying to use that as an incentive to starve herself. The last thing she needed right was to fall back into disordered eating now that her mother—her abuser—was fresh in her grave.

Everything else was a blur of routine, therapy sessions, paperwork, a lunchtime trip to the shipping store to send out invitations for our Fourth of July picnic. I had been out of stamps. When I got there the wait didn’t look that long, which was a relief, because I was meeting my best friend Darcy for sandwiches in fifteen minutes.

Standing in line at the store with an armful of envelopes, I thought I glimpsed a fancy black coupe driving slowly by the glass storefront. I turned to look at it, the windows of the vehicle were darkened, making it impossible for me to see if it was the man from earlier or someone else at the wheel. It picked up speed and drove on after a few seconds, blending into traffic and leaving me wondering if it had been Viktor, or if my imagination was playing tricks.

Darcy was running a bit late, she texted me her order as I stood in line at the bagel place, promising to pay me back as soon as she found a damn parking space. Finally, just as I was being rung up, she swept through the door, looking frazzled.

Darcy Adams had gone through UCLA with me, but her education as a psychotherapist had been brutally cut short when her now ex-husband had decided to sabotage her—by sabotaging her birth control. She had taken him for everything in the divorce, sold their overpriced, sprawling house, and bought a small art gallery. Now she sold overpriced modern art to overly wealthy stars, directors, producers, and their hangers-on then went home and rocked the single-mom life harder than I could ever have managed.

She wore slim velvet trousers in deep purple, a cream silk blouse that popped against her dark skin, rimless glasses, and a duster made from patches of sari fabric in shades of purple, cream, and copper. Gold gleamed on her fingers and wrists and capped each of her pharaoh’s bob of braids. Her deep brown eyes sparkled with good humor, despite the look of controlled tension on her face. Her eyeshadow was a layered confection that matched her coat. A faint cloud of Chanel No. 5 followed her over to me as I turned to walk to a table.

She hugged me by putting her slim hands on my shoulders and kissing the air on either side of my face. “Darling! How have you been doing since my last show? It’s been ages.”

It had been three weeks, with both of us incredibly busy the entire time. “Not much. Just super busy with the new clients and Nick’s end-of-school stuff. He outgrew his shoes again.”

She chuckled as we sat at the table. “That boy’s going to grow up tall. Seems he’s already gotten a head start. Guessing he takes after his daddy.” She smiled brilliantly. “I’m guessing my baby’s going to take after me. How’s the little guy doing with summer coming?”

“He’s worried he won’t see his friends again. I told him we can have them over, and maybe arrange some play dates.”

“Not going to talk about sleepovers with him yet?”

“God, no, I think I’d lose it if he was out of my sight for a whole night.” My laugh sounded high and nervous. I forced a smile.

She tilted her head slightly, bird-bright eyes fixed on my face. “You seem a little stressed, sweetheart. You sure nothing’s happened?”

I hesitated. I didn’t know how I could explain how off-kilter the whole morning had been. First that weird moment at home that had me checking all the locks, then the strange encounter before I’d even gotten in the door at work. “Just some weirdness this morning. There was a guy waiting for me outside my office this morning. He came in cold, looking for a therapist. It was a little unusual. Not sure I can explain exactly how. Just something about him, I guess.”

“Well, what was weird? Just the way he caught you off-guard first thing?”

“That was probably part of it,” I admitted. “But no. This man... he seemed so in control. Not like the kind of men who come to me looking for treatment, they’re always embarrassed to admit they need help, especially to a woman. He was so sure of himself it was like he was discussing the weather, not treatment for his mental illness.”

She took a sip of her drink, holding her cup daintily between gold-manicured fingers. “Well, you know what I’ve always said about trusting your instincts. Did you feel any fear around him?”

“I...” I frowned, thinking back to my brief meeting with Viktor. “I didn’t feel like he was a threat to me exactly, but I didn’t trust him. There was something off about his story. I feel like maybe he had some other reason to come in and seek treatment.”

“Or come in and talk to you. Have you ever seen him before?” She lifted an eyebrow slightly.

“No, I’ve never seen the man before in my life. I would definitely remember.”

“What did this guy look like?”

My brow furrowed. How much detail to give? But then I just smiled awkwardly. “Smoking hot.”

“Oh! Huh. I haven’t heard that from you for a while. What flavor of hot?”

“Tall, dark and pale, neat beard, blue eyes. Very intense, but not in a threatening way. More brooding than overbearing or anything. He was huge, but he didn’t carry himself like a bully or anything.”

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