We lie like that for God knows how long, her face against my skin, my hand stroking her wet hair.
“I—I’mnotcrazy,” she finally whispers into my chest.
“I know,” I say quietly.
“I… Someonewaschasing me.” She lifts her head, her eyes pleading as they find mine. “Theywere.”
“I believe you, little bird,” I murmur, still stroking her hair.
She nods, then lowers her cheek to my chest again, her arms circling me.
We’ve haven’t done this. I mean, I’ve fucked her like a maniac five nights this week, but we’ve never shared a bed.
She sleeps here. I sleep in my own room.
I feel that’s the way it needs to be, and I don’t get the sense that she wants it to change, either.
But right now, I stay right where I am, holding her, feeling her breath across my chest as she slowly fades to sleep.
I didn’t expect this. I thought I knew what I was doing with her.
I had a plan.
And now she’s gone and smashed that all to pieces.
Damn her.
Damn the past.
Just… Damn it all.
I stay in her bed, holding her, relishing the feel of her sleeping body against mine and her breath brushing over my skin. I stay until her hair dries.
Then I very reluctantly slip out and head back to my room.
21
BANE
She wasthe last of his thirteen victims.
Thirteen girls that motherfucker stalked, kidnapped, raped, tortured, and killed. Almost all not yet twenty years old, with their whole lives ahead of them.
Lives he snuffed out, leaving gaping craters in the lives of those they left behind.
His name was Lorenzo Cielo. The media called him “The Barber” because of his fondness for shaving his victims’ heads once he had them in his clutches.
Dove and Lark were the last two girls he scooped off the street and brought to his house of horrors out on Staten Island. The authorities later found twelve other bodies buried under the basement, after the fire that razed the hellhole to the ground during the attempted rescue.
What was never revealed in the ensuing media storm was that Lorenzo had once worked for Cesare Marchetti as his driver. He’d gone by LorenzoCaputoback then: after what happened toDove and Lark, Cesare spenta lotof money to make sure that little tidbit was buried.
I looked into it later: it wasn’t anything sinister on Cesare’s part, prick though he is. He buried Lorenzo’s connection to the Marchetti family because a criminal organization doesn’t exactly want media or law enforcement scrutiny.
It could have been sheer coincidence their paths crossed. Lorenzo might have recognized the two of them at the club the night Dove cajoled Lark into going out with fake IDs.
But we’ll never know, because that motherfucker died the same night she did, in a hail of bullets when Cesare’s men kicked down the door of his hideout.
The night one life was snuffed out and another was stripped down to the bones.
