Page 73 of Dark Ink

“I didn’t do anything to your brother,” Nick answered with a sigh. “And Rian said nothing about him.”

I remained numb where I stood, rainwater dripping to the damp carpet. I glanced over my shoulder at the door. Had they locked it behind me? If I went to leave, would they let me?

“Are you going to hurt me?” I asked, looking back at Nick. “Is that why you let me inside to see you?”

I saw a trace of the dangerous man I remembered from my apartment as he looked me down from head to toe. He grinned.

“It seems you don’t know your dog is off his leash,” he said. It wasn’t an answer, and this frightened me.

I remained silent.

“He’s out of control,” he continued in an almost solemnly silent voice. “Do you know that?”

He laughed when I said nothing. It seemed he found it answer enough.

“To attack me in the middle of the night with my own baseball bat,” he whispered as the rain fell heavily outside. I couldn’t look away from his burning gaze. “To cut my face, to break my ribs, to snap my fucking leg in two.”

Nick stopped to get control of his breathing. I thought I’d never been colder in my life than right then, waiting for him to speak as he exhaled shakily from his flared nostrils still flaked with blood.

“To provoke me, to call for war with me,” he said so softly I almost had to lean forward to hear. “And to be so foolish as to mention your sweet little name. To say it was for you. That it was all for you.”

Nick clicked his tongue as my blood ran even colder. I was paralysed by fear.

“I just came for my brother,” I repeated, voice small, weak, afraid. “Have you seen him?”

“He was high off his mind, you know,” Nick continued, penetrating me with his black eyes. “That wagon, if there ever was one, is so far gone I doubt he’ll ever find it again. Do you know why?”

I shook my head, my wet hair lashing my pale cheek.

“Because I could see it, see clear as day, that he liked it, your little professor. The high, the being out of control, the violence.”

“Are you going to hurt me?” I asked.

It didn’t seem worth it to tell Nick that I’d tried to stop Rian. That I thought I had stopped him. That I’d given him a reason to stop: me. My body. My devotion. My love, even. What good would it do to tell this drug dealer that I was just as surprised as he was, there with his broken body? That I, too, had seen a different man that day? A man who was needlessly cruel, disturbingly driven, shockingly violent. A man who slipped in behind those pale blue eyes like a Trojan horse. Would it save my life? To tell Nick that part of me never wanted anything to do with Rian, ever again? That I feared he hurt my brother? Or worse. That I wanted to be done with him? Prayed that I would find a way to break the hold he had over me.

“Am I going to hurt you?” Nick questioned, drumming his fingers against the couch. The chance to torture someone after himself being tortured seemed to have raised his spirits, a sort of natural pain killer. “Am I going to hurt my sweet little artist, Eithne Brady?”

I wondered if I would even fight. Or whether I would just take Nick’s revenge as the punishment I escaped that afternoon in the dean’s office. Maybe it was just better to let him have me. I was, after all, so fucking tired.

Did I start crying? Was that the wetness on my cheeks? Or was it still the rain?

Nick extended his bottom lip as he watched me. It was impressive really, given that he was smiling, too. He made a sympathetic “aww” sound which a lion about to eat me could have done more convincingly.

“Baby doll,” he whispered, cooed really. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

I sobbed. A sense of relief swept through me. My body ached from the tension. I started to shake.

“I’m not going to hurt you for the same reason I’m not going to hurt your little professor,” he said, pouting again as the corners of his mouth curled up even higher. In a baby voice he said, “Because he’s going to do it himself.”

I ran. Nick laughed, half falling onto the floor as if he made to crawl after me, drag his leg across the wet carpet to grab my ankles and trip me. I yanked at the door handle. It didn’t budge.

“Do you hear me?” he shouted. “He’ll drown himself and take you down with him.”

I tried again and dark faces loomed above me. I pushed through them like branches in a dense forest.

Nick’s laughing voice followed me as I ran.

“Rian’s going to destroy you.”

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