I peeled the phone off my ear, ending the call before slipping into the car, the door slamming with a dull bang.
The feel of warm leather against me didn’t numb the migraine pressing into my skull. It didn’t calm the blood turning to poison in my veins. The comfort it offered was fleeting as the storm in my head refused to cease.
I was already worn thin from searching endlessly for a missing ledger, trying to find myself a steady ground in case I didn’t find it. And now, I had to find the damn killer who did such a sloppy job at the Japanese boy’s house.
I wasn’t even angry about being wrongly accused. I didn’t care about what became the fate of the boy and his mother. He deserved it for trying to take away what belonged to me. He was simply punished for his sins.
I just hated the fact that such a messy situation was being pinned on me. The stab wounds were disappointing, obviously nothing from a steady hand.
I needed to find the killer because it wasn’t me.
The night Kenzo Takahashi died, I remembered killing three people that same night, but I swore none of them lived a mile close to that boy’s house.
I was just at the right place at the wrong time, I guess. All I did was kill the detectives that came into my home, threatened me and took away my bride. I just appeared at Takahashi’s to take my woman back home. But of course, my darling wife already had this preconceived idea that if anything ever happened to her friend, it was me.
I agreed, I often made a lot of threats. I do intentionally push her buttons sometimes…then apologise for my actions between her quivering legs. Most times, it was just to see the flicker of rage in her eyes.
I wouldn’t have killed her best friend. I was uncomfortable with her loyalty to him. But I would have given him a lot of grace for her sake. I wouldn’t have killed him…just yet, and if I was, my death would have been…kinder.
I wanted to break her.
But not like this.
“Where to, Marshal?” The soldier behind the wheel asked, snapping me from the war within me.
“Home.” Was my curt reply.
I wondered what my grieving wife had been up to. I wondered what she would press against my throat today. Another dagger? A gun? Maybe poison. God, she was so hot when trying to kill me.
???
The room was quiet when I walked in, thick with somethingunsaid.
I looked around, and she was there, exactly where I was sure I left her earlier this morning; the window side. She was always there.
My gaze lingered on her for a moment, a faint flicker of curiosity threading through my exhaustion. What exactly did she see out there that seemed to have her eyes so glued all the time? The mountains that wrap around the manor like a fortress were the same every single day. They were unchanging and eternal. Yet every day and every minute, she would stare as if expecting something, as if something beyond these walls called to her in a language only she understood.
Exhaling, I moved further into the room and dropped onto the black leather couch. I said nothing. Neither did she.
For a moment, I considered fucking the silence out of her; face buried in the mattress, red hair tangled in my grip as her hips snapped back on my cock. At the very least, she would moan my name. I would make her. It was always a drug–my name on her lips. Sharp and immediate, something I could sink my teeth into.
But she was empty.
A shell.
A fucking zombie.
And I hated that. I hated this.
I preferred her feral, raging and bleeding. I had the most fun when she would act like a wounded bull, lowering her horns and charging at me even as she lost.
I wanted her resistance, that fury in her pretty eyes. The way she fought and cursed and burned. That was when she was most alive. That was when taking her felt earned.
But this. This grief was just…wrong.
I wondered when this stage would end. I didn’t want her like this another day. I didn’t want to touch something already dead. I didn’t want to fuck a corpse that could still breathe.
Breaking my eyes away from her before I would follow my instinct and slice a part of her skin just to get a reaction, I rested my gaze on the bottle of whiskey instead. A drink. I needed a drink. Whiskey always cleared my mind and burned away the tension like fire licking through my veins.
