Page 81 of The Carver

Just hurry the fuck up.

What’s the rush?

Afraid you’ll change your mind.

Guilt struck me like the blunt end of a hammer. It hurt because it was his truth. I kept him at arm’s length because I was constantly afraid he would hurt me, but he was just as afraid of me hurting him.I’m not gonna change my mind, babe.

My apartment was full of boxes now. My clothes were packed away, which was the bulk of my possessions. I needed five boxes alone just for the shoes. Bastien said he would have his guys move everything for me, so it was nice I wouldn’t have to do that part by myself. It was my last night in the apartment, the last night I would sleep alone and try to stay warm under the sheets.

Moving in with Bastien was a big decision, not just in our relationship, but in my life. I knew he was a dangerous man living a dangerous life. I’d seen men try to kill him with my own eyes. Even if he was the ruler of the city, the predator at the top of the food chain, I was still signing up for a life that was different from the one I’d always known. It was a risk, but Bastien was a risk worth taking. When he said he would keep me safe, I believed him.

For better or worse.

I was tired from working every day and then packing at night, so I went to sleep early. I normally went to bed at eleven and woke up at eight, but I was so tired I didn’t eat much of my dinner and passed out shortly after nine.

I was dead asleep when I heard the sound of the front door.

I lay still for a moment, the sleep paralysis keeping me frozen in place. I fought against it, and then a smile spread across my face because I knew who it was. Tomorrow was when I was supposed to officially move in to his apartment—but he couldn’t even wait a day.

The footsteps were audible in the hallway, coming closer to my bedroom.

I was so tired from working these last three days that I didn’t even want to have sex, but snuggling with Bastien felt better than sex sometimes. The smell of his skin, the heat from his muscles, the way he could touch me so softly and then grip me a moment afterward.

When I heard his footsteps enter my bedroom, I felt my exhausted eyes open. “Couldn’t wait another day?” My voice was quiet and cracked, my throat hardly able to work because I’d been asleep for so long. When I glanced at the clock on the nightstand, I saw that it was one in the morning.

He moved toward the bed, but he didn’t undress.

That was when I realized there was another man in the room, moving to the other side of the bed.

The alarm defeated the haze of sleep as my fight-or-flight response kicked in. I pushed the sheets off me, screamed, and tried to crawl down the center of the bed to get away from them both.

I was grabbed by the arm and shoved down on the bed.

I screamed like my life depended on it. “Help! Help me!”

A gloved hand cupped my mouth and muffled my screams.

A needle poked me in the arm, and then the skin burned when something was injected into me. It took a second or two to kick in, but then I could barely stand, the world started to blur, and I found myself toppling face first into the sheets.

Then it was black.

I heard voices.

“Give me that list—or she dies.” It was a voice I didn’t recognize, but he was clearly the instigator because he spoke so calmly, like my life literally meant nothing to him. “I will bury her alive, and you can watch her suffocate.”

I was aware of the cool tile against my cheek, of how hard the floor was. My eyes strained to open, strained to lift and fight the fog that was still potent in my blood.

“She’s not my wife anymore.”

I recognized that voice. Adrien.

“Let her go,” Adrien said. “She has nothing to do with this, and you’re violating the code.”

“I’m violating the code?” the man asked incredulously. “You rob our museums and sell our artwork to foreign pricks, and I’m the one violating the code? Like the civilized man that I am, I offered you a pardon. All you had to do was bow out, but you’re too much of a fucking prick.”

Adrien’s voice started to shake. “Then I quit. There you go.”

The man laughed. “Doesn’t work like that, Adrien. It’s too late.”

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