Page 12 of Razor
“If you’re not ready to tell me, I understand, but I’d still like to know,” she said.
“I’m worried that when I tell you the whole story, you’ll end up hating me,” he admitted.
“Why would I hate you, Razor?” she asked. “You and your family are just as much victims of the Devils as I was.”
“Yeah, but I could have taken them down. I should have stopped them, so they could never hurt anyone else the way that they did Tori. They wouldn’t have been around to abduct you either—if I had just done my fucking job.” He sat up and scooted over to his side of the bed, tossing off the quilt and putting hisfeet on the floor. For a second, she worried that he was going to get up and leave the room, but he didn’t. He just seemed to need some space, and that was something that she was willing to give to him.
“How could you have taken them down?” she whispered.
“I was working undercover in the Devils’ organization. I was there for years before someone, somehow, blew my cover. It was Violet’s first birthday party, and Tori was going out of her mind getting everything ready. I told her that I’d take Violet with me to pick up the bounce house that she had ordered, leaving her to finish cooking and getting everything ready. I shouldn’t have left her. I could have sent Spade or one of the guys. If I had been there, things might have ended differently,” he said.
“Yes, it could have,” Ella agreed, “you and Violet could both be dead too.”
He scoffed at her idea and continued. “I came home to find her in the kitchen, on the floor with her blood pooling around her. She was already gone. They had stabbed her in the stomach and killed them both.”
“Both?” she asked.
“She was pregnant, but we didn’t know about the baby. I found out when they did the autopsy,” Razor admitted. “You and Spade are the only people that I’ve ever told that last part to.” She wasn’t sure what she could say to make any of this better. It was almost as though she was living through his torture with him as he told her the story.
They sat in silence for what felt like an eternity until Razor took a deep breath and went on. “To this day, I have no idea who killed her. Hell, maybe they had made a good guess as to who I was or where I lived, or maybe I had slipped up and led them to my real life somehow. What if someone from the Devils followed me home and I was the one who led them straight to my wife?”
“The what-if game is a dangerous one to play, Razor,” she said. “I’ve done that to myself for months now. What if I hadn’t gone out with friends that night? Or what if I didn’t go home alone and asked someone to come along with me? Hell, there were a zillion what-ifs that ran through my head while I sat in that cell, and none of them made me feel any better to think about.” She wanted to reach out and put her hand on his shoulder, just to let him know that she was still there with him, but Razor didn’t seem to need that right now from her. She could feel the heat and anger radiating off his big body, and she knew it would be best for her to leave him alone.
“You’re right, but I just can’t seem to stop myself from doing it—especially since meeting you. God, Ella, if I had just stayed in town after Tori’s death and worked the case, I might have made a difference. I might have been able to bring them down, and you wouldn’t have ever had to go through the hell that you did.”
She couldn’t help herself anymore; she reached out and ran her hand over his shoulder, leaving it to rest there. “I wouldn’t have met you if that never happened to me.” Now, she was getting into the murky waters that she tried to steer clear of with Razor. They hadn’t talked about feelings or anything of the sort, but she definitely had them for him. She was falling for him, knowing full well that he still loved his wife. It was going to hurt like hell when she had to let him and Violet go, but that was the endgame—she knew how it would play out.
“Maybe it would have been best if you never met me,” he said. “It felt like a slap in the face, but she refused to back down. He was lashing out to protect her, and for that, she was grateful.
“You can’t push me away that easily,” she whispered. “I’m not going anywhere, no matter how mean you want to be to me, Razor.” She swiped at the hot tears that spilled down her face.
“I don’t want to be mean to you at all,” he admitted.
“Then why tell me that you wished that you had never met me?” she choked.
“I didn’t say that. I said that you would have been better off never having met me,” he said.
“To me, that is the same difference. I am so thankful that I met you. I know that you have a past—one that you might never get over. If the situation were reversed, I don’t think that I’d be able to get over a loss like that. But I will always be thankful that I met you and that you’re helping me the way that you are. You’re putting yourself and Violet in danger, and if something ever happened to either of you, it would gut me.”
“Nothing will happen,” he said. “I won’t allow it.”
“You won’t be able to stop it, either,” she said. “Bad things happen, just like they did with your wife. I’m sorry that a bad thing happened to you and Violet.”
“And I’m sorry that the Devils took you and that you had to endure being raped in order to escape. None of the things that happened to either of us was fair,” he insisted.
“No, they weren’t, but here we are,” she said. “We are quite the pair, aren’t we?”
He lay back on the bed and pulled her into his warm body. Every time the man so much as touched her, she felt safe. She wondered how it was going to feel when he had to let her go, because she knew that someday, that would happen. But for now, she was going to soak up every touch and kiss from Razor that he gave to her and cherish the memory of them when he was gone.
They lay in silence for the rest of the night, neither of them sleeping. They just held each other and listened to the other’s heartbeats. It was the most intimate thing she had ever shared with another person. And as the sun came up, she knew that her time for talking was almost over. She had something that she needed to say to Razor, and then, she’d let the chips fall wherethey may between the two of them. “You don’t have to let Tori go to be with me, Razor,” Ella whispered. “I don’t have to be anything to you.” Saying that broke her heart. She wanted him to want to be with her as much as she needed to be with him, but she’d take him any way she could get him. And if that meant playing second fiddle to his dead wife, then so be it.
“How is that fair to you, Ella?” he asked. It wasn’t, but she wasn’t about to tell him that.
She shrugged, trying for nonchalant but probably failing miserably. “I’ve never been anyone’s number one. I’m not saying that to get you to pity me, or to change your mind. It’s just the truth. The only real fun I ever had as an adult was going out with my girlfriends. Sometimes, they’d all pair off with guys on the dance floor, and I was left sitting on the sidelines. Don’t get me wrong, I liked things that way since I’ve always been a bit leery of strangers. Women from my culture have to be careful. As a cop, you probably know how many of us have been abducted, never to be seen again. Native women are expendable. No one comes looking for us like they would a white woman. I’m not saying that to sound racist; it’s just the facts. I was one of the lucky ones. I escaped, and now, I need to tell my story. Hiding here for now will keep us all safe, but when this is over, I plan on broadcasting the injustices happening to indigenous women in this area.”
“It’s not just this area,” he breathed, “it’s everywhere. And I love that you want to tell your story, honey. It might help other women out there to watch their backs. Hell, it might end the human trafficking rings in the area for good, but there is a lot of work to be done first.”
“Right, and I’m ready to take down the Devils with you, no matter what that entails,” she said. She wasn’t going to tell him about her plan to become human bait to trap them into coming for her. That was something that she had shared with Spadeduring his last visit, and something that he had promised to keep quiet for now. Spade told her that he hated her idea, but she could tell from the look in his eyes when she told him about it that he had already thought about using her. They wanted her back. They considered her their property—as disgusting as that made her feel. But she was stronger now, after spending these past months with Razor and Violet. For the first time in a long time, she felt as though she had a family again. Her father was all she had left, and she missed him every day. Being with Razor and his daughter made her long for something that she never thought she’d have—a family of her own, and now that she had a taste of that life, she was ready to fight whoever got in her way of having that.
