Page 15 of The Ripper

Unbeknownst to her, she had found herself a protector, one who reaped souls and found release between screams of agony, but even though I was as far away from heaven as possible, I wanted to do whatever was necessary to make sure she got everything she deserved in life.

CHAPTER 4

BLOOD RED ROSES

GRIMM

Present day

I parked my car in front of Northwestern Memorial, rolled down the window to light a cigarette, and waited.

Arella was nearing the end of her second year as a surgical resident.

I was nearing the end of my sixth year of following her around, and I had yet to lose my interest in her. I believed her work to be important, and I felt a rush of power from the fact that I was the one who protected her, making sure she was safe and able to do it.

~ Such a humanitarian you are.

~ I prefer the term philanthropist.

~ I prefer the term self-important asshole.

~ You should expand your vocabulary.

I bumped my head against the headrest and pinched the bridge of my nose between my fingers, trying to shake off that dreadful voice in my head.

I’d known she was special from the moment I saw her with my sister that very first day. I’d known she would be hard to shake off the day I shared a dance with her, but something shifted when we took the same flight, my obsession morphing into something unknown to me. I also knew there was a darkness inside her, something I had seen over the years every time I witnessed a confrontation she had, something that yearned to be let out. I had yet to uncover that mystery she kept in chains, locked in a well-guarded cage, but I couldn’t wait to meet that side of her.

Arella made my skin itch with want. She made my insides shrink at the sight of her. And that feeling was dangerous, because it turned me into a man who killed for her.

After being her shadow for seventy-one months, three weeks, two days, twenty-two hours, and forty-three minutes, my initial assessment of her proved to be correct.

She was the brightest light, and she shared that brilliance with everyone, selflessly, which made the fact that my father had been giving me more and more time-consuming tasks fucking inconvenient. He’d stopped giving me names to wipe off the face of the Earth and started making me attend all kinds of boring meetings. Not that more responsibility bothered me, but it kept me away from her.

The thing was, I excelled at killing. He trained and molded me into the perfect assassin, and I never missed my target, but while I had no problem with that part, as it actually relaxed me, I thoroughly despised the meetings. They were so tedious, and most of the men there only had two functioning brain cells, if that. It made them easy to manipulate, but terrible conversationalists.

~ I thought you didn’t like talking.

~ I don’t.

When I was merely a hitman, I wished to be part of the meetings, but as I got into it, I realized that the business side of things bored me more than the weather channel.

~ It’s raining shit and smells like sulfur. There will be precip…

~ For fuck’s sake, would you just shut the fuck up?

I followed each mental word with a smack to my temple, wishing there was a cure for auditory hallucinations, and I say cure because I would never regularly take pills to keep him at bay. Sometimes the voice in my head helped me, sometimes it made me want to blow my brains out.

That was the reason why I absolutely had to see her as soon as I landed, because I hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in a month.

All I needed was one look at her and the ravaging waves inside me would settle down, like they did since the moment she entered my life.

I needed mySnezhinkato be able to rest.

She tamed my demons, illuminated my darkness and above all, she silenced the fucking voice, even if just for a moment.

That was the first thing I’d noticed over the years: the quiet in my head, the calm her proximity offered, and when I wasn’t close to her, I could think of nothing but when I would see her again.

~ Lucky I’m here to keep you company.

---