Page 50 of The Ripper

That’s how much power she had over me.

I was fucked.

“I was going to kill Boris,” I told her the truth and waited for her to lose her mind, but she didn’t.

In turn, she looked at me calmly with a raised eyebrow, as if I told her I was going to take out the trash, not kill someone. I was too shocked by her seemingly unscathed behavior, by the fact that she didn’t care much about her surroundings.

She hadn’t shied away from my men for a second since she’d arrived, and in that moment, as that unimpressed, defying eyebrow shot up and taunted me, I wondered if I truly knew anything about her?

How could she be so unmoved by crime? Why didn’t she contact the police after I had openly admitted to being a murderer?

Granted, I didn’t tell her that they were among the most corrupt of people, clinging to the mafia’s pocket as tightly as babies clung to their mother’s nipple, but still.

Arella, the woman I stalked for six years, the woman I thought I knew everything about, proved to me that I actually knew nothing. She was a walking, talking contradiction. A fucking enigma, and I was crazy about her.

“You’re not going to kill him,” she said simply, with a little too much certainty.

~ But I want to.

“He fucking touched you,” I hissed.

“He was doing his job,” she almost shouted. “You can’t just kill people for touching me, Grimm. This thing between us will never work if you don’t get your murderous tendencies under control.”

“Burn,” Klaus pretended to cough as he said the word, too amused by the whole situation.

“What thing between us?”

Now it was my turn to raise an eyebrow, because she hadn’t said a word about us, or about her choice, and while it was true that she came to me when I called, she didn’t come for me.

She came because her first fucking instinct in any fucking situation, on any fucking given day, was to fucking help people, dammit.

~ You’re exaggerating a bit, don’t you think? Isn’t that what you like about her? Tone it the fuck down.

“I don’t think we should be having this conversation in front of your brother,” she said.

“Then let’s go somewhere else, because I’m confused,” I raised my voice, and she rolled her eyes.

Once again, she didn’t bat an eye at the fact that she was surrounded by criminals, especially one who was particularly on edge and on the verge of going on a rampage, namely me.

~ Who the hell are you, woman?

“I have to keep Klaus under observation,” she sighed, and when I opened my mouth to argue, she took a step closer and pressed a finger to my mouth, completely disarming me.

A touch. That’s all it took.

“I know he seems fine, but he has a deep wound. I need to stay here and watch him in case he gets a fever or shows any signs of infection.”

“But…”

“Besides,” she interrupted, “if he’s half as stubborn as his brother, he might try to get up against my advice and rip his stitches.”

“I like her,” Klaus said as he looked at her.

He seemed as puzzled as I was by how Arella could separate her feelings from her work, by how she put her personal life second and prioritized the safety of her patient.

“Get in fucking line, asshole,” I muttered, and she gave me a smile that deserved every minute I had to wait.

I took out my pack of cigarettes and shoved one between my lips, ready to light it up, but she quickly took it out of my mouth and threw it in the trash, then pointed to the door without saying anything. I rolled my eyes and left the infirmary, hearing her giggle after I slammed the door closed behind me.

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