Page 24 of Devious Secrets

“You don’t need to walk me up,” she says, walking a few paces ahead of me.

I grab hold of her hand, dragging her to my side.

“You’re under the delusion that I’ve set you free, Megan.” Turning her to face me once we get to the main door of the building, I wait until she brings her eyes in line with mine. “I haven’t. We’re just here to get the note.”

“But I’ve told you what you wanted. Look, whatever you and your family do, I don’t care. I don’t want to know, and I want nothing to do with it.”

She’s cute, in an incorruptible sort of way.

I wonder how long it would take to ruin that? To rob her of her innocence and replace it with all the darkness that the world actually holds.

Pulling the door open, I jerk my head. “Let’s go.”

She rolls her eyes but doesn’t argue with me. It’s the first smart thing she’s done since I put my sights on her at Obsidian.

I follow her inside and up the set of stairs to her apartment. There’s a distinct stench of pot lingering in the hall and the music thumping from one of the doors we pass tells me where the party is.

There’s a crunch as she steps, and I pull her by the elbow away from whatever she just stepped on.

A glass pipe, or what’s left of it after she stepped on the bulbous portion of it, lays splattered on the peeling linoleum tiles.

“Careful.” I take the lead, bringing her to the next door, her apartment.

I pull out the key from my pocket.

“Where’d you get that?” She tries to take it from me, but one glance from me and she drops her hand. If she wants to have any chance of getting rid of me after I get this note from her, she needs to behave herself.

I’m not sure she knows how. Which only seems to feed my growing infatuation with her.

As I slip the key into the lock, the door pushes open.

“You didn’t have your goon lock it last night?” she accuses, reaching past me to push the door open the rest of the way.

“He locked it.” I step in front of her, blocking her from going inside before me.

The living room is trashed. The pillows and cushions are tossed from the couch, and the coffee table is upside down. Picture frames are scattered across the floor from where an end table had been.

“What the hell?” Megan shoves her way into the apartment, but I catch her by the arm before she gets ahead of me.

“Just wait here. Let me make sure there’s no one still here.” I leave her standing in the living room and quickly check the bedrooms and the bathroom. No one, but the entire place has been gone through.

Drawers are opened, their contents spilled everywhere.

She shuts the front door when I come back from the kitchen. The frame is busted where the bolt had been locked. Whoever got in wasn’t trying to be quiet.

The floor trembles from more music pounding from the apartment below.

“I’m going to go out on a limb and say no one heard anything.”

She frowns.

“Did your men do this?” she accuses. “Did you send them here to ransack the place while you had me locked up in that house of yours?” Her hands clench at her sides.

“Why would I do that?” I pick up an envelope, a piece of yesterday’s mail, turn it over, then toss it back on the counter.

“I don’t know.” She shoves both hands into her hair, tugging it away from her face. “To get back at me for being able to sneak into your secret fortress?”

“I already punished you for that. No need to do it again.” I lift a shoulder and walk past her to the living room. The television, a newer flat-screen model, hasn’t been broken. “Nothing seems stolen.”

---