Page 131 of Fall Into Me

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Pulling up to my little, loving shit box felt surreal.

It looked the same as always. Well, it looked the same as it did when Fane left.

His marks on the house were everywhere. The eaves no longer sagged. The small garden that had been growing in the gutters was long gone. The single panel of wood on the second step to the door—the one too rotten to save—had been quietly replaced. Fane had fixed it without saying a word, while I’d always just stepped over it instead of stepping on it.

My eyes snapped to my front door. “What’s that?”

I didn’t wait for Ash to reply before I jumped out of the car and headed straight for it.

It was an electronic panel. On the wall next to it was a very fancy-looking doorbell.

“These aren’t mine.” I looked back at Ash, who loitered on the steps behind me with his usual, easy going grin plastered on his face.

“They are now.”

“You’re smiling like a weirdo.”

“Just enjoying the look on your face.” He pulled out his phone and snapped a photo. “I’ll make this into a poster for Fane’s birthday.”

“I’m missing something crucial here.” I waved my hands in a panic while miming punching numbers on an imaginary number pad. That’s when Ash strolled up, punched four numbers into the real one, and the door unlocked with a faint beep. He stepped aside, ushering me in with an exaggerated flourish.

Everything looked the same. Everything except the shaggy rug that used to live in my living room—it was gone. And so was Declan.

“Who did all this?” I asked, my voice smaller than I’d intended.

“Fane,” Ash said simply. Then he shrugged. “Well, me, but through his minimal direction and credit card.”

“When did he tell you to do this?”

“When he called me.”

The call that came somewhere between me stabbing Declan in the ass and running for my life.

Ash leaned casually against the doorframe. “He messaged me first. I was almost here when he called. Told me, ‘I’m on my way back. Make sure you fucking kill him and install that goddamn security system.’”

“He knew you’d do it?”

“Which part?” His head tilted in the same predatory way I’d seen Fane move, but it was different on Ash. Darker.

“All of it?”

“He’d already asked me to get the security system. It just so happened to arrive this morning. I was supposed to install it while you were at work, but…things came up. It’s the same system I have in Artington. My guys installed it once the police cleared the scene.”

“And the whole killing him part?”

“Yes. He knew.”

“How?”

Ash’s face didn’t flicker. “Because I never miss.”

He didn’t say it with cockiness, just straight truthfulness. And something else. Regret, maybe. Sadness.

He dropped my new keys into my hand and mentioned that Jerry would be ready to come home in a couple of days. Even though he was okay, they didn’t want to risk any allergic reaction or the small chance of it affecting his liver or kidneys.

Those words were like another slap to the face, but I listened with no more than a tremor of my bottom lip, because I was capable of holding heavy things. That much, I knew. I nodded, holding onto the knowledge that he was in the best place for him. That he’d be home soon. That he was probably wooing all the nurses within an inch of their lives.

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