Page 69 of The Ripper

Three successive knocks echoed in the silence, and I watched as Grimm went to the door and opened it, then blinked a few times as I saw four men come in. They didn’t even look at us, just walked straight towards the kitchen after Grimm pointed in that direction.

Klaus appeared in the threshold like a colorful cloud, a little slow on his feet because of his wound, but otherwise unfazed by his condition.

He was a few inches taller than Grimm, but where Grimm was all muscle, Klaus was leaner.

It was the first time I allowed myself to look at them together and notice the differences between the two brothers. One was covered in black tattoos and appeared to be a dark sky, threatening to unleash unending storms, while the other had only one sleeve full of tattoos and looked more colorful than a bag of Skittles. Grimm had short black hair and blue eyes, while Klaus had a slightly lighter shade of hair and eyes as black as coal.

They had similarities, but not as many as brothers usually did, and I wondered if they had the same mother. Probably not.

Klaus looked at me briefly with that cheeky grin that seemed to be his permanent expression, but any hint of mischief was gone when his gaze fell on Fleur. His jaw clenched, and his whole body stiffened at the sight.

He looked at her for a long time, in the same way Grimm looked at me, with longing and recognition, as if he knew her, but when I moved my eyes to the woman next to me, she wasn’t looking at him.

“Tell me the fucker who did that to her is fucking dead,” he glared at Grimm.

I frowned, confused by his reaction, wondering why both of them seemed to have a weakness for battered women. Interesting.

More questions stirred my mind when Klaus approached us and dropped to his knees in front of her. He made no move to touch her, but his presence seemed to snap her out of her trance, because she raised her eyes from her lap and finally looked at him.

“It’s okay,Kukolka[6],” he whispered in the gentlest tone, one that Grimm could never master, and held out his hand to her. “I’m Klaus,” he introduced himself.

My eyes widened and my skin covered in goosebumps when I heard the Russian nickname. I looked at Grimm, whose eyes were also settled on the two of them, seemingly as shocked as me. I wanted to know what ran through his mind, but he was too closed off, too focused on keeping his feelings shackled.

“Fleur,” my friend answered and hesitantly held out her hand to him, which he surprisingly didn’t shake.

No, he tenderly took it between his fingers and flipped it around, then kissed the back of her palm and each of her knuckles before pressing his forehead to her hand in a gesture that was supposed to show… respect?

Submissiveness?

I couldn’t figure out what was on his mind, but I understood as soon as he raised his head to her and spoke.

“Otnyne ya budu oberegat’ tebya[7],” he whispered, barely audible as his eyes held hers for a few moments before he gently pushed a strand of hair behind her ear, a faint smile curving his lips.

I expected Fleur to reject him and panic, or at least flinch as when Grimm tried to touch her, but she seemed to lean into that touch, resting her bruised cheek into his palm for a few seconds before Klaus stood up from the floor, his movements measured and unhurried, so as not to startle her.

He turned to Grimm, who seemed as perplexed as I was by what he’d just witnessed.

“What’s the plan?”

*

We were back at the warehouse, and I was pacing in Klaus’ kitchen, which was much nicer than the one downstairs, where Grimm had cooked the saltiest eggs in human history. I was making tea while my friend sat on the red couch in his living room, hugging her knees to her chest, vehemently refusing Klaus’ attempts to make her eat something.

I felt as though everything spun out of control, especially my thoughts, and the smell of bleach was still very present in my nostrils, pungent, the smell that spread all over my friend’s house after the cleaning.

Her husband’s body was now burning to dust somewhere beneath us, in a crematorium that wasn’t in the yellow pages, and I couldn’t believe that I made myself an accomplice to all of this.

Grimm was leaning against the counter, seemingly as lost in his own thoughts as I was, unsure about what to say about the things I witnessed. Obviously, he wanted to give me space to process it all, but it was impossible for me to process anything without all the pieces.

It seemed to eat at him, as if he was afraid I would start judging him after having all the facts.

But who was I to judge him about his life when I was hiding half of mine from him and everyone else around me?

He wasn’t hiding at the moment, just withholding information, and he had been truthful from the start, with the kind of work he did, with the fact that he killed people, with the fact that he had stalked me, and I wondered if he found anything about my past in these past six years.

No. He couldn’t have.

The first eighteen years of my life had been completely erased. It was impossible for anyone to find anything.

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