Page 17 of Leo, My Partner

All at once, the memories of last night flood through my brain. Walking into the building, my cell phone flashlight illuminating the hallway. Hearing a gurgled sound just as I rounded the corner of what I assume used to be an employee break room. Seeing Leo standing over a dead man, blood down his front and a drenched machete in his hand.

I scramble farther up the bed, not worried about my head pounding and how hard the metal bedpost of the headboard is digging into my back. I grab the pillow and hold it front of me as some sort of flimsy protection. It won’t help, but that doesn’t stop me. All I can think about is Leo being a killer.

Holy fuck, Sam was right. He’s dangerous. Why didn’t I listen? My stupid plan to try to make him angry wasn’t very clever at all. Anyone can fake things through text.

Leo peers at me with a patient expression, like I’m a toddler throwing a tantrum, and he’s waiting for me to see the error of my ways. It makes me angry, but my fear totally eclipses that.

“What did you do to me? Are you going to kill me?” I whisper, trying to meld by body into the headboard to get as far away from him as I can.

He takes a seat in the chair I didn’t notice when I was looking around the room, stretching his long legs out in front of him. “No, Tyshawn. I’m not going to kill you. If I wanted to, you wouldn’t have woken up.”

“Holding me hostage then? So I don’t go to the police?”

Leo raises an eyebrow, a hint of a smirk on his face. “Will you let me explain before you do something that drastic?”

Wrapping my arms around the pillow against my knees, I look at him with wet eyes. “What is there to explain? You’re a murderer. You killed that man in cold blood.”

Grinning at me, Leo seesaws his hands. “Killed him, yes. In cold blood, nah. He deserved what he got. Most of them do.”

My blood runs cold. “Most? You’re … you’re a serial killer?” Why am I asking questions instead of trying to get the fuck out of here? Why am I having a casual conversation with a murderer?

Leo blows out a long breath, but he doesn’t look angry or impatient. How does he do it? How does he stay so composed when there’s a risk of imprisonment if I’m able to escape? He’s fucking crazy.

Unless he doesn’t plan to let me live. Is he telling me all this because he knows if I’m dead, I won’t be able to share his secrets? A hot flush drifts over my body when I think that I may only have minutes to live.

Maybe if I keep him talking, humanize myself, he’ll let me go. That’s what law enforcement says to do.

Another realization flashes through me, and my hand flies to the side of my neck, the only other thing that hurts besides my head. “You drugged me? Why?”

“I had to. You hungry?” he asks casually, like he didn’t just drop a bomb on me. He drugged me and he’s a serial killer. Who the fuck did I meet? “I made you breakfast.” He holds up the plate with perfect slices of bacon and a fluffy omelet on it. My stomach growls, but I’m too queasy to think about eating.

I shake my head. “What are you going to do to me?”

Since I don’t reach for the food, Leo puts it down and stands, rounding the bed to sit closer to me. Fuck! I’m stuck at the top of the bed. There’s no way I can get away without scrambling past him, and Leo is way too big for me to slide by without him grabbing me.

It’s only then I realize he’s shirtless. Fear is still a firm passenger, but now, lust and admiration join the chat. I go to the gym often, but from the looks of it, Leo lives there. His chest is wide, his pecs hard, and his abs rippling, though a bandage covers his middle. The definition in his arms is insane. He could kill me by just flexing his bicep at my throat.

That douses my wayward thoughts. Leo could definitely kill me. He’s killed before. I walked in after the fact, for fuck’s sake.

Leo perches on the end of the bed, leaning toward me. He threads his hands together, elbows on his knees when I shrink back. “If I tell you what I am, will you believe me?”

My knee-jerk reaction is to say no, that I know what he is, and I won’t believe shit he says, but the look in his eyes radiates nothing but honesty. Leo and I haven’t known each other long, but he doesn’t strike me as a person that would lie for the sake of lying. Besides, like he said, he could have killed me when I was asleep—drugged, not asleep.

Licking my lips, I nod jerkily. “I think so. I mean, what choice do I have? It’s not like I can leave, right? You’ll make me stay here and listen?” I snap my mouth shut, cutting off the nervous rambling. Leo gives me a soft, patient smile, and my flesh pebbles while my fear climbs. My body doesn’t know what it wants to do.

“Good enough.” Leo sits back, crossing his massive arms over his chest. “Yes, I’m technically a serial killer. But I don’t go out and kill people randomly. I get paid to do what I do. People that don’t have it in them to kill someone that wrongs them hire me.”

“It’s supposed to make me feel better that you’re a hitman?” I murmur, hanging on to his every word.

He shrugs. “The truth doesn’t usually make people feel better or worse. It just is. Last night, the man I killed? He was a child molester. One of his victims hired me to torture and kill him for what he did to him when he was a child. I abhor people that take advantage of children.”

Something in the way he says that pings in my brain, and I put my fear aside, and sympathy takes its place. “Did that happen to you? Is that why you’re a killer?”

Leo smiles at me, and it’s not the smile he graced me with when we met. It’s still beautiful, his dimples popping and his teeth flashing, but it also gives me a peek at who Leo really is. There’s a sharpness to the smile, a bite to it that displays how deadly he can be, what his victims probably see before they die. A shiver runs down my spine.

“No, I was already a killer before Mr. Eldridge tried to touch me.”

“Who is Mr. Eldridge?” How did we go from him being a serial killer to me finding out he may have been a potential victim of abuse?

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