I don’t have many memories of my mother, but I do remember she was a devout Catholic – it’s why I don’t curse. If thatvida bajaforced her to do anything, though, I will offer his soul to my mother’s God with nothing more than a smile on my lips and his blood on my hands.
Evie shakes her head, her fist tightening around something I can’t make out. “He didn’t force me.”
Her voice is quiet, quieter than I’ve ever heard it before. I don’t like it.
I take a small step forward, “What happened, Evie?”
She lets out a shaky breath, closing her eyes for a second before opening them again and looking at me with tear-stained eyes. “It was perfect, Kor. It was a perfect birthday, a perfect last night here…a small part of me even hated that we were leaving tomorrow and I was thinking about asking him to come with us.”
I’m surprised she hadn’t yet, if I’m being honest. Evie loves hard, and I knew she loved him. She loves me, too, but in a different way…not the way I love her.
She clears her throat, bringing her hand up to wipe at her cheeks. I see a glimpse of a small red velvet box in her hand and my blood runs cold.
He didn’t…
“We went back to his loft and we…we had sex.” She shakes her head. “It wasn’t forced. I was completely willing…but after…” She chokes out a sob and looks down at the box in her now open hand. “He asked me to marry him.”
I’m going to kill him anyway.
I thought I could handle it if she chose him insteadof me, but I can’t. I won’t. Evie is mine and I refuse to let him have her.
She continues on, unknowing of the dark thoughts now running through my head. “I kind of freaked out. He knows we’re leaving for college tomorrow, and we’re so young…but he started going on about how it’s the only way to keep me safe and…It just freaked me out even more. I love the dark, Kor, but…” Her eyes come up to meet mine once again. “It hit me that saying yes to him would mean forever saying no to you and I…I just couldn’t do that.”
Everything she says hits me one after the other. The proposal, the issue of her safety, her not saying yes because of…me. Does this mean she loves me, too? Does she love me like I love her? Have I been an idiot this whole time?
Something she said doesn’t add up, though – it doesn’t sit right. “What do you mean bythe only way to keep you safe?”
She looks at me like I’m crazy before shaking her head and leaning against the Maserati. “I think Atlas’s family is into some bad shit, Kor. Drugs or guns or…something. He kept talking about his father being so dangerous and then he got a text while I was freaking out about the whole marriage thing and he shoved the ring into my hand along with his car keys and told me to text him with an answer but to get the hell out of there until I decided because his father was about to be there and he’d kill me if I wasn’t his future daughter-in-law.”
And he put Evie in the middle of this?
I close the distance between us, taking Evie’s tear-stained face in between my hands and looking down at her. Even when crying, she’s the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen.
“Go inside and get some sleep,Mi Corazón.Tomorrow starts our new life together, and we can put all of this behind us.”
I can see the questions forming on her lips and I do the one thing I should have done long before Atlas Valente even stepped foot into our lives – I kiss her.
I kiss her like she’s my reason for breathing – for living – and really, she is. This time, it’s my lips, my tongue, making her moan out, and I waste no time licking the taste of her tears away and savoring the dark, rich taste of pure Evangeline underneath. My fingers tangle in her hair as her arms wrap around my waist, trying to pull me closer even though I know I’m already as close as physically possible. Our breath is rough and ragged as we pull apart, and I leave one final lingering kiss on the side of her mouth.
“Goodnight, Evie.”
Her eyes glint with mischief where there was sadness only minutes ago and my heart fills with pride in being the one who put it there. Evie should always live with a little mischief in her eyes. “Goodnight, Kor.”
I watch her walk through the back entrance of Saint Mary’s before I make my way to my car, sliding into the driver’s seat and pulling up the map on my phone showing where Evie’s location pinged over the course of the night.
Right before she headed back to Mary’s, she was at the warehouse district for a little over an hour. That’s got to be where he’s staying. Loading the address into my maps, I turn on some soft music and head across town.
It only takes me about ten minutes to get there and most of the lights are off when I pull up. I flick my headlights off and park my car next to a dumpster a few yards away. If Atlas’s family is involved in someillegal stuff, then I’m taking a risk even being here. But Evie deserves it. Atlas put her at risk for nothing more than his own selfishness and I’m her guardian angel here to seek retribution.
My door shuts with a faint click before I make my way across the lot. There are a few different vehicles here, mostly some dark SUV’s that are in line with theillegalside of things Evie mentioned, but I don’t see anyone outside.
I try the handle from a side door and find it locked, but it’s nothing an orphan can’t handle. Running back to my car, I grab a paper clip from one of Evie’s essays she has in my back seat and then go back to the door, making quick work of the deadbolt with the straightened-out paper clip.
I slide the paper clip into my pocket and open the door, finding the bottom floor of the warehouse pretty much empty. There are voices coming from somewhere above me, multiple voices, but none of them sound like Atlas. Moving around the edge of the room, I let my eyes adjust to the dark until I see movement from the far corner of the room near the staircase.
A few inches higher, shaggy dark hair, tattoos all over his arms…I press against the wall as he walks past me, and I get a whiff of Evie’s cherry blossom perfume.
That’s him.
