Besides… if she was being honest, she wasn’t really worried. Not because Dukewasn’ta real threat, but because something in her gut told her he wouldn’t get the chance to make good on it.
That honed awareness tightened her belly. Cecilia turned away from the microwave to lean against the two square feet of countertop her kitchen boasted. She slowly brought a can of strawberry soda to her lips as her gaze settled on a window.
There was no evidence to prove her theory. Nothing but her gut feeling and fleeting glimpses out of the corner of her eye. Sometimes she laid in bed and stared out her window, straining to catch a glimpse of a broad-shouldered silhouette on the rooftop across the alley.
She knew he was there. He wasalwaysthere.
Cecilia took a slow sip, savoring the cool, crisp sweetness of her favorite drink. It helped ease a little bit of the familiar disappointment. There was nothing to see outside the window. It was too dark outside and too bright inside. Even during the day, there wasn’t anything of note beyond the brick wall of the building next door.
Her own miniaturized reflection gazed back at her, exhausted from a long night, still wearing her ridiculous, low-cut uniform, and searching for someone she’d never see.
CHAPTER
FOUR
The microwave’scheerful ding made her jump. Shaking herself, Cecilia set her soda aside. Her fingers just grazed the button when the front door of her apartment burst open.
It slammed against the wall with teeth-rattling force. She yelped and jumped away from the counter as two large vampires she vaguely recognized as bouncers from the bar stormed into the apartment.
“Whoa, what—” Whatever she might’ve been about to say was cut off when one of the vampires lunged for her.
Huge hands closed around her arms and lifted her off her flailing, kicking feet as Duke strode through the broken door. It’d only been a few minutes since she saw him last, but somehow he looked more haggard and cruel than he had when she left him.
“Sorry about this, Cece,” he sighed, kicking the door shut with the heel of his boot. It shook the thin wall as it jammed into the frame at an odd angle. His gaze swept across her little apartment apathetically before it settled on her cell phone, which lay uselessly on the counter.
Duke strode away from the door to pocket it. Nodding to the man holding her, he ordered, “Put her in a chair.”
“Duke, what thefuckare you doing?” she cried. Her sneakers bounced off the hulking vampire’s shins as she thrashed.
He barely seemed to notice. The vampire had no trouble hauling her across the studio to drop her into the antique armchair she and Dahlia had spent a memorable weekend learning how to reupholster.
Her ass had barely hit the cushion when Duke’s other lackey dropped his heavy hands onto her shoulders, pinning her to the chair. Fear sluiced through her veins when Duke crouched in front of her, a sleek black bolt gun in his hand.
“I really hoped you’d tell me on your own,” he muttered. His free hand scrubbed across his face, briefly muffling his low voice. “You were always such a fucking chatterbox at the bar, but now you don’t want to talk. Figures.”
She’d done a lot of risky things — even things she didn’t tell Dahlia about — to chase that fleeting, dangerous high, but staring into the Duke’s flat eyes was a step beyond even her.
She recoiled as far as the hands on her shoulders would allow. Her bones had turned into something she could only compare to jelly, and her skin flashed between being too hot and too cold when she glanced at the weapon in his hand.
“Duke,” she squeaked, pressing her heels into the scuffed wood floor, “I really don’t know what you’re talking about. Please, just— just let me go.”
“Can’t do that until I find out what the Amauris did with my brother.”
Cecilia shook her head vigorously. “I don’t know where Devon went. Idon’t.”
“Of course you don’t,” he replied, sounding incongruously reasonable. “But you and I both know whodoes.”
Cold fear turned into fiery protectiveness in an instant.
“You want Dahlia,” she surmised. An incredulous laugh escaped her. “You want me to… what? Help you get to my best friend so you can get to Felix? What?”
The vampire’s lips thinned. “I don’t need your help.”
“Then why are you doing this, huh?” She looked up at the man holding her captive with scathing disdain. “If you’re stooping to terrorizing women who haven’t done anything to you, seems to me like you’re pretty desperate.”
“Oh, you haven’t seen terror yet, Cece.” Digging her glittery pink phone out of his pocket, Duke continued, “I’d really rather not hurt you, but I will if I have to. We both know that Dahlia was turned.Iknow that my brother went to her apartment the night she got released from the hospital.Youknow that she’s now living the high life in United Washington with Felix Amauri.”
His thumb tapped the phone’s screen. It lit up, casting the harsh lines of his face into even more unsettling angles. “What I don’t know,” he continued, “is what happened to my brother after he went to see her. We’re going to find that out together.”
