He’s looking at Kristen with the usual fascination that men have with her. But Kristen isn’t returning that energy in the slightest, not even politely faking it.
I want to ask her what the hell is going on, but not in front of this Damien guy. So we follow him to the elevator in silence. As we ascend, I shoot Kristen an inquiring look, but she just shakes her head.
“Later,” she mouths to me.
Suddenly Damien hits the stop button on the elevator and whirls around. A bundle of plastic zip-ties are in his hand.
“No!” Kristen screams as he lunges towards me.
7
Vincent
“Black, what have you found?”
“Nothing, sir,” he says, his voice grave. “We tracked them into the bathroom and waited for them outside. Never saw them leave, but when we entered to locate them, they were gone.”
“So you lost them,” I snarl. “You fucking lost them.”
I should have handled this myself. All of it. Finding Hazel.
Shouldn’t have let her leave my hotel room last night. Should have kept her there, held her against her will if needed, then had Black transport her to a secure location until I could ensure that Damien was six feet under.
But I was a fool last night. Just like I always am for Hazel. My judgment is clouded by emotion. Too stunned by her admission that she feels nothing, that she’s over me. Over us.
Maybe in the back of my mind I always counted on being able to come back to Hazel after everything was over. I fantasized about detaching from my life of crime and reforming my lifestyle. Becoming a better man, a man worthy of a woman like Hazel.
That was my plan. Damien was the last loose end I needed to wrap up before I could find her again, apologize, and do my best to fix the shit that broke between us.
But this hypothetical future went out the window as soon as she uttered that word:Nothing.
She feels nothing.
I’ve put her through hell. And now she’s still in danger, a year after we broke up. Thanks to my fuck up. My failure.
Damien is a dead man.
I make another lap around the perimeter of the conference area, eyes roving over the crowd. My phone buzzes in my hand. I answer the call without taking my eyes off the crowd, still searching for Hazel’s espresso brown hair among the others.
“Black, you better have news,” I say into the phone. “Or I’m going to fucking kill you.”
“Always making promises you can’t keep,” a man says on the other end. “You told me you’d kill me years ago, yet here I am.”
I glance at the phone and see the ID on the screen. Hazel’s face and number, the number I’ve dialed about a thousand times today only for it to go straight to voicemail.
She blocked my number a long, long time ago. Seeing her face pop up on my phone now is like seeing a ghost.
Ice flows through my veins as Damien continues.
“Just borrowing a friend’s phone,” he says breezily. “Hazel lent it to me. You know Hazel, right? Beautiful girl. Not as beautiful as her friend, but much less violent. The blonde has a mean right hook.”
He chuckles.
“Hazel still has your number saved, although not under your name,” Damien continues. “You’re saved as ‘Do not call him no matter what.’ Break-ups suck, don’t they?”
“Where are you?” I hiss into the phone.
I look around as though expecting to see him casually walking my way. But of course. He’d be hidden. Hidden, but not too far away, if he found Hazel here so soon after she gave a presentation.
