Page 53 of Cruel Devil

Vito lights another cigarette and offers it to me, but if I inhale any more nicotine tonight I’ll fucking puke. It’s had the complete opposite effect, anyway. I’m jittery, distracted, near feral with frustration.

The line at the door dissolved over an hour ago. The stragglers arriving now simply pause beside the bouncers for a minute for the obligatory search and ID check before being let through the doors.

I should have stayed inside. I considered it, but the thought that my wife might leave via an exit and I wasn’t there…Of course, I don’t know if she’s leaving via the front entrance.

They could decide to throw her out in a trash bag out back.

Andy gasps and Vito mutters “Jesus fuck,” under his breath when I slam a fist onto the dashboard.

“The fuck is taking her so long?” I grit out.

“Negotiations and shit.” Vito’s words give me deja-vu, I’m guessing because we’re stuck in a loop now. I demand to know where my wife is, Vito or Andy try to come up with explanations for her disappearance, I go back to glowering.

I flick a hand toward Vito’s pocket where he keeps his phone. “Check on Matias. It’s been a while since he’s?—“

Nyx walks out of The Foundry as soon as I focus on the entrance again.

At first, I think I’m fucking hallucinating. It’s happened a few times tonight. I see a blonde in a black dress, and I have the binoculars pressed to my face in an instant. But then I make out their features, I realize it’s not her.

It’s never her.

But this time, when I focus the binoculars, when I shush Vito with a click of my fingers, when he utters the inevitable, “Do you see her?”…

I fucking see her.

Vito fumbles with the binoculars when I toss them absently in his direction. I don’t know how I make it across the road, because I stopped breathing the moment I zoned in on Nyx’s navy blue eyes. On the way she flicked her hair over her shoulder, standing at the entrance like she didn’t know where the hell she was.

If a car had come down that road right then, I’d be fucking dead, and I wouldn’t care.

Because reaching Nyx is as much a relief as death would have been.

I don’t care who sees. If both the bouncers managing the entrance have fucking dinner at Sully’s goddam house every motherfucking night.

I scoop my wife into my arms, turning as if to shield her from the neon yellow glow of The Foundry’s sign.

I hear a muffled, “Caesar,” against my chest, but I’m too busy suffocating Nyx against my body, making sure she’s real, that her bones are intact, that her hair hasn’t been replaced by a wig, that she’s not some doppelganger I got back instead.

Wouldn’t put any fucking thing past O’Brien.

She whimpers when I fist her hair and yank back her head, because she feels real, smells real, even warms me like a real person would…but the true test is in the eyes.

And when she looks up at me with her blown out irises, face white, lips trembling, I can’t believe it’s her. The anger and sullen fury I’ve grown to crave is back in a heartbeat.

She grabs the lapels of the stupid fucking blazer I’m still wearing, and yanks me down so she can kiss me.

It is her.

She came back to me.

My joy is bright and effervescent, like the sparkling charge on a firework’s fuse.

And, just like I knew she was gone, I know we’re set to implode.

But I have no fucking clue how long the charge is.

Now, with the taste of her in my mouth, her warm lips sliding against mine, tongue tangling and fighting like I knew she would…

Fucked if I care.

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