Page 65 of The Ripper

“My friend just killed her husband.

CHAPTER 12

TRUTH

ARELLA

Grimm didn’t say anything as he turned the car around and drove to the address I gave him. He seemed unaffected by what I told him, but then again, he just admitted to killing fifteen people in my name, sixteen if we count the guy who tried to rob me in the park, and probably many more.

I wondered why I wasn’t running for the hills, but one look at him was enough to answer my question. I couldn’t. Even if I fought the unmistakable attraction between us and ran, he would have found me.

He would have found me anywhere.

The way he looked at me told me that he would have turned the entire earth upside down and burned entire cities to ashes for me.

Fleur Delacroix had been my friend ever since I moved to Chicago three years ago. We both volunteered at the same shelter for homeless children and teens, and we bonded over our wish to help everyone, up until she went from helper to victim.

She came to my door at three in the morning one night with a broken brow bone and covered in bruises, but that was the easiest of her beatings, as those that followed were so much worse.

I’d begged her to go to the police and report him. I’d begged her to leave him and move in with me for a while. I fucking begged.

Her husband was a police officer, not of the highest rank, but a man of the law, nonetheless. A piece of shit, a corrupt and aggressive man, who lost his respect for the woman he married, the same woman who’d showed him nothing but kindness.

She tried to press charges twice, and twice her statements magically disappeared as if they were never there to begin with. Both times she came to me worse than before, more bruises, more cuts, more violence.

Once she ran away and stayed at my place for two days before that animal came and dragged her back.

Somehow, Fleur was always the one person I couldn’t help, no matter how hard I tried.

The memory of seeing his brutality on her made me clench my fists over my thighs, my teeth grinding together as I felt my nails dig into my palm.

I even went to the police myself, reporting the fact that he came into my house without permission, and I asked for him to be removed from the force, telling them about how his wife always came to me covered in wounds, but they said I shouldn’t believe the lies of a former drug addict and sent me away.

The next day I received a threat from an unknown number.

While it was true that Fleur struggled with substance abuse for many years, she’d been eight months clean when I met her, and she never touched drugs again. The woman was so determined to get her life back on track that she didn’t even drink a glass of wine on special occasions, and his excuse was always that she relapsed and came home like that. He blamed dealers and played the part of the worried husband, but his excuse could have been proved a lie had they made her take a drug test.

They never did.

Shouldn’t believe her, my ass.

Who would have believed her if I didn’t?

I stitched her up so many times, cleaned her wounds, and even bathed her when she was so broken she could barely walk. Me, not the man who was supposed to protect her and be her safe haven. Me, not the man who turned her into a wreck of the woman she’d struggled so hard to become.

I took a deep breath and closed my eyes for a few seconds, feeling Grimm’s stare on me, and somehow, I only calmed down when he slowly grabbed my hand and pried my fist open, intertwining his fingers with mine. A deep exhale later, I opened my eyes to look at him, but his gaze was settled on the road ahead while his thumb brushed soothing circles on my skin.

“What are you thinking about?” Grimm asked as he turned and looked at me for a moment.

“I’m glad he’s dead,” I admitted, not recognizing my own voice as I continued to clench my fists in my lap.

An ugly side of me was asking to come out, a side I kept buried so deep, one I swore to not remember or ever speak about. I thought she was dead, but as it turned out, she was only dormant, and now she was scratching at my walls, begging to come out and unleash a little hell.

I ignored it.

“Why did she kill him?” he asked without emotion, probably trying to understand the situation better, but his lack of empathy made me want to punch him.

“I didn’t exactly ask my friend for details when she was bawling her eyes out, Grimm,” I snapped at him, and he seemed unfazed by my tantrum.

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