Page 21 of Scorching Sienna

This must be what the Earth feels like when a comet breaches its atmosphere, peppering the sky with a meteor shower. It’s like I can physically feel her eyes touch my skin.

While the ride home is short, it is enough time for Sienna to fall asleep. She barely wakes when I lift her from the car or when I put her in bed.

While I would love to stay, even climb in bed with her, I had work I needed to do.

I leave out the back door, pulling the knife I had grabbed from the cubby earlier when we stopped.

The man standing in a bush in front of Sienna's house doesn’t even know what hit him. I stifle his scream as the knife penetrates his chest. Non-fatal. I needed him alive. Needed to know who sent such an amateur.

They were often the most dangerous. Their incompetence causedthem to shoot without thinking or kill the wrong person, like my rainbow.

He should have kept a better distance. Been more inconspicuous.

I saw him as soon as I left the club. While I didn’t want to lead him to Sienna's house, whoever sent him probably already knew where she stayed. Knew what she was to me.

I drag him to my truck and throw him in the back, scowling at the blood staining the seat. Another fucking car ruined. I should invest in plastic seat covers or something.

Scanning the street, I pull out my cell phone and call one of the few people I can trust.

“A call from the devil himself. This is surprising.” Sam and I went way back—to my male stripper days.

“I need you to send one of your best to watch some precious cargo for me.” I get straight to the point. The guy in the back of my car would wake soon, and I needed to get him to the warehouse before he did.

“How precious?” Sam's voice is serious, all humor from before gone.

“I’ll destroy everything everyone holds dear if just a whisper they were involved reaches my ears. No one will be spared. Hell will look like a vacation spot compared to what I will unleash if a hair on her head is touched.”

There is a long silence before Sam says, “I see.”

“Address?” His question is answered with a pin location sent to his cell, my irritation rising as I wait for him to confirm.

“One of my best, Bob, is ten minutes out.”

“Make it five.” I hang up the phone, and exactly five minutes later, a vehicle pulls up across the road from me.

The man who exits is so unremarkable that you would probably not even give him a second look if you saw him in the street. Often themost dangerous.

He gives me one curt nod in acknowledgment before disappearing into the darkness along the side of the house next door, which belongs to the older neighbor.

I trusted Sam to send me the best. With one last look at Sienna's house, I leave. The stench of blood in my car reminded me that tomorrow, her living arrangement would change. If they knew where she lived, she wasn’t safe.

There was only one place she would be safe. By my side.

Chapter 8

Light

“What do you mean I have to move out immediately?” I know how I look when asking this question. Incredulous. Dumbfounded.

Clearly, as Ralph is looking at me apologetically, his coffee cup poised at his lips before he slowly lowers it. His face scrunches up, alluding to the fact that what he is about to say won’t be good. My stomach drops as his words solidify that suspicion.

“I’m sorry, Sienna. Someone approached me to buy the house. It’s an offer I couldn’t refuse. Not with Lisa’s college tuition coming up in a couple of months. You know I have been struggling to find the money to cover it. This offer is cash and covers her fees for the next two years and some. It’s twice the value the house is worth. I couldn’t say no.”

I’m speechless. When Ralph knocked on my door ten minutes ago, this was the last conversation I expected we would have.

James and I found this place five years ago. Five years of memories. Good ones and bad. We were looking for our own house to buy whenJames fell ill. That plan permanently halted, and we continued renting from Ralph.

When James passed, I tortured myself by staying in this morbid shrine to all I had lost. But over time, it became easier. While it was a house I moved into and shared with the love of my life, it was also where I learned how to sleep alone, how to appreciate the silence at night when all I was used to hearing before was snoring, and how to fix the stripped washer on the bathroom tap because there was no one else to do it.

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